Time Riders

CHAPTER 73

1957, New York

Liam gazed out of the window at the streets of New York, crowded with brown andgrey stone skyscrapers so tall he had to scrunch down in his seat to look up to catch the verytops of them.

Some buildings he remembered seeing before when Foster had taken them through Manhattan: theEmpire State Building — Foster said a movie called King Kongwas made that featured the building and an eighty-foot gorilla swinging from the top of it.Liam suspected the old man was joking with him. The idea sounded too daft to be made into areal movie.

He noticed Kramer’s influence was already stamped across the streets of the city. Largebillboards seemed to hang on every street with the man’s face smiling benignly down uponthem. Messages such as ‘We are here to unite the world in peace’, ‘Unity isProgress’, ‘I promise you a thousand years without war’ were stamped beneathhim.

Liam could see troops on the street, checkpoints at some of the busier intersections,soldiers stopping pedestrians and inspecting identification papers. Above the tall buildingseither side of them, hoverjets patrolled the sky. And hanging motionless above the HudsonRiver he could see another one of those colossal grey command saucers — a clear reminderto everyone that the war was over, Kramer’s forces had won and that continued resistancewas… well, futile.

The uniform Liam was wearing was uncomfortable — the stiff collarmade his neck itch. Bob wore a similar uniform — SS. Black with silver buttons andepaulettes, an eagle on the left breast pocket and a red armband on the left arm featuring thelooped serpent.

Bob had managed to stop a German army automobile, a VW Kubelwagen, earlier this morningas it cruised down a quiet suburban road in Queens. The officers were both easily dispensedwith by a quick edge-of-the-hand chop to the neck. The attack — Bob’s suggestion- had been a calculated risk. Some civilians on the road had witnessed it, but hurriedalong on their way rather than remain at the scene and risk being questioned. Somebody mightcall it in. It was possible. Either way, the bodies were going to be found sooner orlater.

Liam craned his neck to look up at the patrolling Messerschmitt hoverjets and wondered if thealarm had yet been raised to be on the lookout for the stolen vehicle.

Maybe. So far at least, the risk had paid off well. The uniforms and the vehicle had ensuredthey’d only been stopped at one checkpoint, and even then Bob’s fluent German hadgot them through without a problem as the young soldier eyed the death’s-head insigniaon their collars and dutifully waved them on.

Up ahead, Liam recognized the grand front of the museum. It looked no different from the lasttime he’d seen it, except, of course, for the fluttering crimson pennants dangling fromtwin flagpoles above the main entrance. He could see a lot of activity out front: workmengoing in and coming out of the building laden with boxes and crates.

‘What do you think’s going on there?’

Bob looked. ‘I do not know.’

Liam leaned forward, squinting as the Kubelwagen slowly edged up the busy street throughseveral traffic lights. ‘Looks like they’re emptying the place.’

That seemed to make sense of some of what they’d heard.

Last night they’d stopped off for food. As Liam enjoyed a plate of grits and bacon andBob joylessly slurped a dubious-looking mixture of porridge and scrambled egg, they’dlistened in on the quiet talk among the diner’s regulars: truck drivers and localworkers stopping off on the way home. There were cautious words being exchanged about someresistance leader down in Washington state ‘givin’ them Naziscum a goddamn hiding’.

One of the men perched on a stool, wearing a grubby old Yankees baseball cap and threadbaredungarees, piped up. ‘I hear’d say them fighters is led by the ghost of none otherthan George Washington! Ain’t no harm them Germans can do tohim… seeing as how he’s a ghost an’ all. Bullets go right onthrough.’

‘Ain’t no ghost, Jeb. Shee’oot, that’sthe dumbest thing I hear’d in a long time,’ said another. ‘What Ihear’d is he goes by the name of Captain Fantastic, orsomesuch. Folks are sayin’ he’s some sorta… military superhero. Reckon maybehe’s like some secret super weapon the guv’mint was holdin’ backon.’

‘Either ways,’ said a third, ‘them Jerries is gettin’ kinda nervous’bout him, ain’t they?’

Murmurs of agreement.

Talk moved on to Kramer’s recent grand announcement that mankind’s history was tobe completely wiped clean; all of history’s past hatreds, religious intolerances, racialbigotry was to be put behind them… and erased. And that,more than anything else, seemed to be an issue that enraged the men gathered around thecounter.

‘They ain’t gonna get away with it!’ snapped one of them. ‘We foughtthem British for this here country of ours. Then we fought us a civil war too! Theycain’t take that kinda history off of us… an’… an’… burn it!’

‘I’m hidin’ my books an’ stuff; my encyclopedias what I bought my kids for school. I’m hidin’ that stuff in my attic incase them Krauties come house-searchin’. Sure as heck ain’t burnin’ it like they told us we got to.’

‘Ain’t right,’ agreed the waitress behind the counter. ‘Justain’t right.’

Now up ahead at the museum, it seemed Kramer’s dictum was already being put intoaction. As Bob passed over the intersection, swung the vehicle right and parked on the kerb infront of the museum, Liam got a closer look at what was going on.

‘Oh boy,’ he uttered.

On the forecourt in front of the steps leading up to the museum’s grand entrance, hecould see what appeared to be a large pile of bric-a-brac, a rubbish tip of twistedwooden things, books and papers, frames and furniture, the tangled limbs of stuffed animals ofall sizes. He watched in growing horror as half a dozen museum workers carried out an Egyptiansarcophagus. Faded flakes of blue and gold paint and shards of ancient dry wood crumbled awaybeneath the fragile object, leaving a trail of debris down the steps.

And then, under the watchful eye of several soldiers standing guard, they casually tossed iton to the pile, where it split and shattered, revealing the brittle, shrivelled carcass of amummified pharaoh, snapping into several pieces as it tumbled stiffly down one side of thelarge pile.

A dozen yards away several drums of fuel were lined up and a soldier stood beside themwaiting for the order to douse the exhibits and set them on fire.

‘My God… they’re going to burn it all,’ he whispered.

‘It is logical,’ replied Bob. ‘Kramer wishes not to be located by anyfuture agency operatives. No history will mean no reference points.’

‘I hope to God they haven’t made a start on the things storeddown in the basement.’ Liam cast a sideways glance at Bob. ‘How long have we gotleft before your brain explodes?’

Bob’s cool eyes narrowed. ‘Two hours and fifty-three minutes. We have little timeto waste.’

Liam realized he was trembling from head to foot, and cursed the fact that he looked soyoung. Perhaps the SS uniform he was wearing would be intimidating enough to ensure none ofthe workers nor any soldiers they might encounter would dare to look too closely at him, dareto question why someone so young should have an officer’s rank.

‘We must proceed,’ rumbled Bob.

‘You’re right.’ He puffed out nervous breath. ‘Bob, you go tell thosesoldiers we have come directly on Kramer’s orders to supervise the job.’

‘Yes.’

‘And tell them we will be inspecting the basement area.’

‘Yes.’

Bob climbed out of the automobile with Liam following in his wake.

Oh boy… this better work.