Flashback (The Saskia Brandt Series Book Two) (5 page)

Something inside Saskia assaulted the Internet.

(A match from a photo taken at Maynard School, Exeter, 1998: Jem Shaw, British)

Saskia smiled. The woman smiled back: relief. She entered the café as though the meeting were arranged.

Before the Smurf joined her, Saskia thought,
Tell me more
. Data rushed through her. She noticed an email attachment from a therapist registered in Exeter and stopped it with a twitch of thought. It began:

Jem Shaw: There is this anxiety in the background... like the hiss of a TV tuned to a dead channel.

Me: This hiss actually comes from the music box, doesn’t it?

JS: (is startled) How did you know about that?

Me: You mentioned it yesterday, when you were under.

JS: Perhaps it comes from the music box, yeah.

Me: Do you know the name of the tune?

JS: No, I never did.

Me: Sing it.

(JS hums a tune which I think is Bach’s ‘Ich rouff zu dir mein Jesus Christ’)

Saskia frowned.
Ich ruf zu dir
, she thought,
Herr Jesu Christ
.

Me: Tell about feeling split in two.

JS: Split in two?

Me: Feeling like two people.

JS: Two people. Well.

Saskia lingered over those words.

Two.

People.

She thought back to a letter she had written earlier in the summer.

~

To whom it may concern:

My name is Saskia Brandt but I am living under an assumed name in Berlin. Use the attached information to contact me. It is the year 2003, some twenty years before the summer of my departure, the Indian summer of 2023.

As per the instructions of my representatives, this note should be delivered by hand to my friend Professor David Proctor or his daughter, Dr Jennifer Proctor, no earlier or later than September of 2023. I choose paper and ink because digital media are ephemeral, and I choose plain English because this letter might require the involvement of a third party. This third party should be a close professional associate of either David or Jennifer in the event they cannot be contacted.

Please: To the Proctors – or the person reading in lieu of them – if the technology to travel in time has not been lost or suppressed, I request and require that you make all reasonable efforts to rescue me. I claim this as the right of the second person in history to travel in time. To convince a third party for whom my story is unfamiliar, I will outline my circumstances and how I came by them.

Today, somewhere in Germany, is a little girl no more than five or six years old who will grow up to become the same person who writes this letter. This fact alone makes me sad in a way unique to me.

There was a hope that the time traveller would arrive in some parallel version of their past.

This has not happened. There is one world.

I began this letter with the statement of my name. You should know that my mind is a fusion – I can find no other word – of two people. Some time in the spring of 2023, a woman was convicted of multiple murders. Her name was Ute Schlesinger. This woman was forced to undergo a surgery in which her brain was emptied of all but the deepest structures of her being. Then, a glass bead containing some form of nanoprocessor was implanted near her brain stem. My attempts to identify the source of this nanoprocessing wetware device have come to nothing. It is, I believe, an experimental technology whose existence may not be widely known beyond a few individuals.

The device contains the identity of a second human being. Through some form of impregnating mesh, it imposes this donor mind on the victim’s brain. It is this donor mind that I, Saskia Brandt, am. It is this donor mind that writes these words. Other than my name, I know little about this mind – little, that is, about myself.

I ask but my memories do not answer.

Saskia Brandt was the name given to me by the Föderatives Investigationsbüro, or FIB, upon commencement of my employment (against my will) as a special agent. It was made clear to me that I could leave employment at the FIB only with my death. For this reason, I am wary of strangers here. I have become remote and paranoid. I can only clear my name in 2023.

This is what I know: In June of 2002, an artificial wormhole opened in the sky above West Lothian, Scotland. That wormhole connected to the underground facility of a secret, US research programme codenamed Project Déjà Vu. I tumbled through that unnatural conduit in the brief time that it was open, though my mission – to stop the billionaire John Hartfield rewriting history to his advantage – was over before it began. He was already dead.

I want rescue. Failing that, I want help, or some form of connection to 2023. I want to know that I am not forgotten.

There are, of course, comforts in this period of our history. I am well; I have money. But I am adrift a greater distance than the furthest astronaut. Am I alone? Are there other time travellers?

I want the Indian summer of 2023 again.

If you are not the Proctors and have the power to help me, I hope that my statement has convinced you of my sincerity. I have little in the way of hard evidence. The surgical procedure that led to the imposition of the donor personality left me with intact implicit memory – I have a complete martial skill set – but I find it impossible to recall the name of the German Chancellor at the time of my departure, or the US President, or key figures in popular culture. I am aware, too, that any such information, including the list of sporting fixtures with which I intend to finance my exile, could be viewed as a simple forgery by the time you receive this letter.

But why do I need to send this? David, you were certain that you had seen me, as a woman in her forties, in the year 2023. How certain were you? So certain that you have given me up to a future of waiting for the world to change, to become my future? Ask yourself if your judgement was mistaken and consider whether this is sufficient to abandon my rescue. This belittles me and I know it. Even writing this letter is a risk.

David, you are the finest man I know. Why haven’t you come for me? Did something happen to you? I remain,

Yours, in hope,

Saskia Brandt

Berlin, 2003

~

Close up, Jem Shaw’s eyes were shadowed and full. She might have crossed a No Man’s Land to reach this door.

I have crossed one, too, Jem. Twenty years wide.

‘
Guten Tag,
’ said the woman.

‘
Guten Tag
. It’s OK. I speak English.’

‘Please, I was told you can help me.’

Jem’s brother was a lawyer called Danny, and his university roommate had once conducted a romance with a friend of Torsten Wechsler, the son of Rudolf (Rudi) Wechsler. Rudi had moved to West Berlin in the 1970s to avoid national service and now lived above Saskia, where his piano often carried the sombre notes of ‘I call to you, Jesus Christ’.

Small world
, Saskia thought.

‘I have time. What can I do to help?’

Chapter Six

Munich: the day of the crash

Cory, known to some as the Ghost, arrived at Munich Airport on the S-Bahn. The carriage was crowded. Cory stood at the rear and listened to the passengers. They discussed nothing but the cause of the turning tower of smoke to the south-west. It was curious, he thought, how stranger now spoke to stranger, as though the crash was a connecting event. He sighed and leaned on his cane. At this, a young woman stood and offered him her seat. Her expression of concern reinforced a truth that Cory tried to avoid these days. He was old. Absurdly old by the standards of these people.

Cory smiled and shook his head.

Soon the doors slid wide and he followed the slow spill of passengers and gave himself up to the coloured routes, the cattle-run simplification of the walkways, slopes, and escalators. Dumb posters rolled in their illuminated frames. He kept to the wall. He was happy to stay in the slow lane.

The Munich Airport Centre was enclosed by a transparent roof. Heavy clouds could be seen beyond. Snow clouds, he guessed. Cory stopped by a tree and considered the windows of a meeting room on the first floor. Through them, he saw a group of men who looked ready to be called to attention. No doubt this was the press conference he wished to attend.

He recalled the southern gentleman he had once been. Then, keeping his youth in focus, he crossed the atrium.

~

The carpet of the press room was hard and its chairs were modernist twists of plastic. There could be neither echo nor fuss. As the air conditioning whispered around them, fifty journalists took their seats. Conversation ebbed. Phones were muted and stowed. A suited man shared a last murmur with his secretary and assumed the lectern.

It seemed to Cory, the Ghost, that nobody had noticed his arrival. He remained at the rear: standing, easy on his cane, quiet behind the cub reporters and the veterans. His frostbitten thumb and forefinger drummed the knuckles of his opposite hand. It was a habit that he could trace back years. It did not matter that Cory was sorry. It did not matter at all.

‘I am Manfred Straus,’ said the man at the lectern. He spoke in German touched by a Swabian accent, ‘It is with deepest regret Free Flight must confirm the loss of DFU323. The aircraft was travelling on a regularly-scheduled route between Berlin and Munich. All 132 passengers and crew are missing, presumed dead.’

The metal tip of the Ghost’s cane put zeros in the carpet as he began to pace. His arthritic wrist ached and the frostbite stung. This news confirmed the obvious cause of the turning tower of smoke. Yet he felt no horror. Even now, the Ghost could see patterns in the victims’ statistics: coincidental shoe sizes, birthdays, those strangers who lived only streets apart in a life they would never regain.

‘Ground staff lost contact with the aircraft at 8:47 a.m. and communications were never re-established. The local authorities in Regensburg received word of an explosion at 9:21 a.m. Though emergency services arrived at the crash site within minutes, no passengers or crew could be saved.’ He paused. ‘On behalf of the airline, I extend my deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of those touched by this tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. The Bureau of Aircraft Accidents has dispatched a team to the site. It is headed by Dr Hrafn Óskarson, who has more than twenty years of experience in accident investigation. He will be assisted by representatives of the American National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing.’

‘Can you give us some details on the aircraft?’ asked a British man. ‘Make, and so on?’

‘It was a Boeing 737-300,’ said the press officer. His extemporised English was slower than his German, but perfect. ‘The 737-300 uses two wing-mounted turbofan engines produced by CFM International, which is jointly owned by the American company General Electric and SNECMA of France. This type of aircraft has a span of twenty-seven metres, a length of thirty-three metres, and weighs 124,500 tonnes. It can carry 140 passengers. The lost aircraft had eleven years’ active service. It was certified airworthy as little as three months ago.’ He stopped, uncertain of his next words. ‘It was carrying 132 souls.’

Souls.

The Ghost let the word find a way through him. Abruptly, he felt those deaths. Perhaps his humanity was not as buried as he had feared – or hoped.

‘What about the pilots?’

‘The commander, Kurt Weber, had more than three thousand hours’ flight experience with this model of aircraft. He was certified as an instructor. His co-pilot, Rudi Stammler, was his former pupil and had more than five hundred hours’ flight experience. Both men were physically fit and considered exemplary aviators.’

‘Was there a distress call?’ asked a red-haired woman.

The press officer adjusted his notes. The Ghost knew he was playing for time. There was no official line on the transmission. Despite himself, the Ghost felt his interest focus on this disciplined spokesman. How would the distress call be handled?

‘I see that none was received by ground staff.’

‘Are you certain? Amateur radio enthusiasts reported–’

The press officer smiled briefly at the woman. In German, he said, ‘We cannot comment on what radio enthusiasts might, or might not, have received.’

‘They heard a male voice that they described as ‘agitated’,’ she persisted.

The press officer laced his fingers. ‘At this stage, nobody can–’

‘He spoke a single word. ‘STENDEC’.’

Heads turned towards her.

‘Spelled?’ asked a man.

‘We have no comment,’ the press officer said, leaning close to his microphone. ‘However, I would ask that you make your information, and your source, available to Dr Óskarson of the BFU. Next?’

‘Please,’ she continued, ‘can you comment on the fact that the last transmission of the pilot corresponds to that of the British South American Airways airliner
Star Dust
?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘You refuse to comment?’

The press officer removed his glasses. ‘Frau...?’

‘Frau Doktor Birgit Weishaupt,
Jump Seat
.’

‘Frau Doktor, many of us with aviation experience will know the story of the Avro Lancastrian.’ He dropped into English as though it were a lower gear. ‘Now let me be brief. There can be no connection between this morning’s crash and that of an aircraft whose trace left radar screens fifty-five years ago. As a mark of respect for those who died today, I will not discuss such, shall we say, fantastic irrelevancies.’ He stared at the journalist for a moment longer, then replaced his glasses. ‘We have time for one or two further questions.’