The Empire of Time (10 page)

‘We are exceptional men, Herr Seydlitz, are we not? Is it not right, then, that destiny places us at the fulcrum of history?’

It was too perfect, too opportune a moment to be missed. Seydlitz nodded and took his seat, then broached the subject. There would be no better time than this.

‘Barbarossa will fail,’ he said. ‘In October the line will be halted, at Leningrad in the north, at Rzhev, Mozhaisk and Orel in the centre, and at Stalingrad, Grozny, Pyatigorsk and Maikop in the south.’

Hitler’s smile had gone. He stood there by his chair, staring at Seydlitz as if he had suddenly changed shape. Across from them Goebbels was watching, equally intent, his eyes going from Seydlitz to Hitler.

‘What?’ Hitler said after a moment. ‘What did you say?’

Seydlitz reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope, then handed it across. In it was a report from General Guderian, from the Russian front, dated late October 1941.

Hitler took out the report. Seydlitz saw how his face twitched as he read it, noted how his left leg and left arm trembled when he was excited by something – advance signs of the savage disability to come. Hitler looked up abruptly from the report and glared at Seydlitz, then threw the paper down. There was spittle on his lips.

‘What lies are these? What vicious game is this, Herr Seydlitz?’

Seydlitz had prepared himself for Hitler’s anger; even so, its sheer, elemental force was unexpected. It was like facing the figure of Hatred itself. He rose from his seat and bowed deeply, as a soldier bows before his commander.

‘Forgive me, Führer, but it is how it will be,’ he said. ‘I have built a machine that sees the future.’

Hitler laughed at the absurdity. Then he looked to Goebbels. ‘Did you know of this, Joseph?’

Goebbels nodded, but you could see how intimidated he was, how reluctant he was to own up to what he knew for a fact. For a moment it was even possible that he was going to deny Seydlitz. Yet he
did
believe, and in his sharp but devious mind he could imagine what defeat in Russia would mean.

‘It’s true,’ he said, softly at first, then, much louder. ‘Herr Seydlitz has proved it to me beyond all doubt. His machine sees into the future.’

Again Hitler laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘Have you
all
gone mad? Even you, Joseph?’

He turned away, a look of sheer disgust on his face. Then he turned back. ‘We cannot
see
into the future, we can only
make
the future!’ And he hammered his right hand into his left palm as he said this, glaring at Seydlitz defiantly.

‘Let me prove it, Führer. Please! For the sake of us all!’

The sneer grew more excessive. He shook his head in a gesture of finality, but it was all or nothing now and Seydlitz risked his fury, pressing on.

‘In my bags I have further documents. Maps, newspapers, secret documents, transcripts of conversations. All of them copies of things that do not yet exist. Look at them. Examine them. See if these things come about. And meanwhile put me under house arrest. Under armed guard. Then, on the twenty-first of June, at Wolfensschanze on the evening before the Russian invasion, see me again.’

Hitler was looking away from him now, staring directly at Goebbels. ‘This proves it to me. We attack Russia in May, not in June. The man is raving.’

But Goebbels shook his head. ‘Listen to him, I beg you, Führer. If he’s wrong then no harm is done. But if he’s right …’

Hitler stood there a moment, glaring at his Propaganda Minister, then he seemed to relent and soften. Goebbels was, after all, his oldest friend. They had shared this journey since the early Twenties.

‘There will be a coup,’ Seydlitz said. ‘In Belgrade. On the twenty-seventh of March. Ten days later you will strike hard to avenge this outrage. The operation will be named Retribution. You will crush the Yugoslavs. Then you will turn and face Russia. But only then.’

Hitler laughed scornfully, but met his eyes again. He had calmed down, but his eyes were dangerous, incensed even by the sight of Seydlitz. ‘A coup? In Belgrade? They wouldn’t dare.’ He shook his head exaggeratedly. ‘And yet you see all this as if it has happened.’

Seydlitz nodded. ‘As though it were all in the past.’

For a moment longer Hitler stared at him, then he waved him away impatiently. ‘Put him under house arrest.’

Guards came to his summons, took Seydlitz by the arms.

‘You are a fool, Herr Seydlitz. But I will humour Joseph here. I will look at your evidence. And when I know it for the garbage that it is, I will have you killed. Understand?’

Unsmiling, like the soldier that he was, Seydlitz bowed his head silently. Hitler’s threat meant nothing now. He had won. Day by day the evidence would mount, until, when they met again at Wolfensschanze, Hitler would be his.

Seydlitz was in his rooms in Friedrichsfelde when the summons came. It was 6.15 a.m. on the morning of 21 June 1941. More than one hundred and fifty German, Romanian and Finnish divisions were waiting on the Russian borders, complete with nineteen armoured divisions, twelve motorised divisions and air cover of 2,700 planes. Three great armies under Generals Leeb, Bock and Rundstedt. Great but fragile, for none of them was equipped for a winter campaign.

He had an hour to get his things together before they came to take him to the aerodrome for the flight east. This in itself was different. Historically, Hitler had been in the Chancellery in Berlin on the night of the invasion, Goebbels entertaining some Italian guests at the Schwanenwerder. But not this time.

‘Otto, come …’

I follow Hecht out, along the broad, central corridor that leads directly to the platform. There, in that great, domed circle, surrounded by the buzz of our technicians, we wait. The women look up from their screens expectantly. It is not often that Hecht comes to greet an agent at the platform, but everyone here knows how important this is.

Seydlitz will appear any moment now, returning for the first time since he boarded ship in Sweden.

There is to be a meeting – one final consultation before he goes back. Hecht looks at me and smiles. He does not need to tell me to say nothing. That goes without saying. Things are more complex than normal. While
we
know what has happened, Seydlitz does not. In his time-line he has yet to meet Hitler; has yet to have that fateful meeting in the Wolfensschanze. In his own personal time-line, Seydlitz has yet to send his report back. And that could prove dangerous. To prevent the possibility of time paradoxes, he must go to that meeting without prior knowledge of its outcome.

Oh yes, it happens sometimes. From our viewpoint, here on the very edge of Time, our knowledge of the Past is not always sequential. Yet we must deal with it as though it was. Harsh experience has taught us so. Play games with Time and Time can play wicked games on you. Ask Hans Gehlen. Or what’s left of him.

There is a sudden pulse in the platform, a crackling in the air as ions spark and tiny flashes of electricity pass across its surface. Then, with a sudden surge of power, Seydlitz begins to appear. I put my hand up, shielding my eyes, as a tiny circle of intense light – the focus – jumps into being, and in a fraction of a second, Seydlitz himself takes solid form, ribcage and arms only visible at first, then pelvis and head and legs, the whole thing sprouting, fleshing out from that single, brilliant point, blood vessels and nerves, muscle, bone and inner organs visible for the briefest instant as the focus bleeds light into the living body, slowly fading with a dying flicker.

As Seydlitz blinks and looks about him, I realise that this could well be the last time it will be like this. This is not just some pawn’s move in the Great Game but a bid to take their queen, maybe even to checkmate the king itself. As the repercussions of his scheme begin to take effect, so this all would change. I shiver at the thought of it. If all goes well, the circle will be broken and Berlin –
our
Berlin – will cease to exist. And we with it. But that would be a small price to pay for such a victory. Neu Berlin might die, but Europe would live, the
Volk
be saved.

As the force shield comes down, Seydlitz looks across at us and smiles. From the thirty-two long, low desks about the great circle of the platform comes a murmur of greeting. Seated at those desks, the
Volk
’s technicians – all of them women, many of them heavily pregnant – smile back at him, pleased to see him safely home.

Objectively he has been gone less than a day; subjectively it has been close on eleven months.

Someone throws a cloak about him, another hands him a drink. One of the women gives him a hand and helps him down.

‘How goes it?’ Hecht asks, as if he didn’t know.

For a moment Seydlitz finds it hard to understand what Hecht has said. His ear has grown too accustomed to the old tongue. The Anglicised ergot we speak is very different, more American than German, the bastardised product of a thousand years of change. Hecht repeats the question.

Seydlitz smiles. ‘I’ve met him. Got him to listen to me. And I am to see him again tomorrow. At Wolfensschanze. I think he’ll listen.’

Hecht nods. There is sadness as well as hope in his face. For Berlin there are possibly only a few, small hours remaining, whatever happens. If Seydlitz’s scheme succeeds it will wink out of existence – or exist only in the memories of those who have gone back.

Seydlitz is clearly disoriented. After the open skies and freedom of the Past this place is acutely claustrophobic. I know from experience what he is thinking: how had he stood this? How could any of us survive like this, cooped up like prisoners in this air-tight hell?

Walls are everywhere. Four-Oh is the last bunker, the last gallant outcrop, fighting against the Russian enemy that surrounds it on every side and in every dimension. Each day, each hour, almost every second, quantum missiles hammer into our defences, homing in on the platform’s carrier signal, slowly weakening our force fields bit by tiny bit, breaking down our mighty resistance. Clever, subtle missiles, like the probability worms, which burrow into the very fabric of the
Nichtraum
itself, destroying the bonds between moments.

Things we don’t feel or hear, but which are there all the same.

We have bought time – each tiny change has guaranteed our survival and extended it – but all about us lies the darkness, and a map drawn red from Atlantic to Pacific.

Maybe that is why Hecht has decided on this final cast. Nothing small this time. Instead a major change, for whatever results can surely be no worse than this slow attrition, this gradual wearing down.

Seydlitz looks about him once more, noting the brave, familiar faces that surround him. These are his people, his
Volk.
For them he has gone back. For them he has striven to change the destiny of the Reich. For if the Reich fails a second time then there is nothing.

Yet it is hard, standing there, not to feel doubt. In spite of all we have done – both here and in the Past – it all seems so very fragile. One wrong decision, one moment’s tiredness, and it would all be gone. As if it had never been. History would forget us.

Seydlitz stays an hour. Friends come and wish him ‘
Stärke’
– ‘strength’. Not ‘luck’ or ‘love’ but ‘strength’. Such is our world – the world he now goes back to change.

On the morning of the twenty second – the first day of Barbarossa – Seydlitz held a conference. There were six of them: Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann and himself. The projector was set up in the Map Room and a screen hung in front of the Graf portrait of Frederick the Great. Elite members of the
Shutzstaffel
, Himmler’s SS, stood outside, alongside Hitler’s personal bodyguard, Ratenhuber, guarding the doors, ensuring no one entered. Inside, four of them sat in a staggered line facing the screen. Seydlitz at the projector just behind them. At his signal, Goebbels dimmed the lights and returned to his seat. A moment later the beam from the projector cut into the darkness. The screen lit up, forming flickering images.

And so he began showing them, for the first time, the future he would now set out to change.

Seydlitz kept his comments brief and to the point. Several times, at Hitler’s order, he froze the image and wound it back. He could sense that Hitler was still reluctant – that part of him refused, even now, to believe in what he was seeing. It was hard for him – harder than for any of them – for it struck at the very core of what he thought of himself, the Man of Destiny. This was the outcome of
his
vision,
his
failure. But Seydlitz could not present it as that. He knew Hitler too well.
This is betrayal
, he had to say.
This is what will be unless we act
. He had ready a list of traitors and their crimes.

The images were simple but effective. The Russian snows. Transport and soldiers floundering in the mud of the sudden thaw. Zhukov’s Siberian regiments driving the Wehrmacht back. Then on in time – to General Paulus surrendering at Stalingrad. Burning tanks in the Tunisian desert. The British liberating Athens. The failure of the U-boat campaign. The sky dark with American bombers, Dresden a single burning pyre. The landings in Normandy, the gallant Rommel thrown back. Then, shocking in its juxtaposition, the Map Room where they sat, devastated after Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on the Führer. Black American troops sitting in an amphibian vehicle, crossing the Rhine, grinning into the camera. Berlin in ruins, the Chancellery a pile, Hitler Youth detachments fighting a last-ditch battle against the Russians. Then Mussolini, bloodless, hanging from a meat hook in the Piazzale Loreto between Gelormini and Petacci, his mistress. Goebbels’ body, charred but still recognisable, beside those of his wife and six children. Goering, sat in the dock at Nuremberg, Judge Robert Jackson pointing across at him.

And nowhere a single sign of hope. These were images of annihilation – of a Dream reduced to nightmare. When the lights came up again Seydlitz went to the front and looked at them. Goebbels, beside the light switch, was ashen. Bormann looked down at his feet. Goering was tugging at his collar as if it was too tight and staring away distractedly. Himmler, however, was looking to the Führer, waiting to be told what he should do. There was a kind of hopeless trust in him, a deficiency of character. Seydlitz had kept back his death.