Time and Time Again (15 page)

It occurred to him to look further into her bag and he found himself whistling at the brazen deceit of the woman. She’d come
fully
prepared. There were three sets of underwear, a plain black ankle-length dress of late Edwardian design and a brushed cotton nightie, all tightly rolled and packed Girl Guide-style. There was also British and German paper money, plus what looked like treasury bonds. There were various pills and medicines and, to Stanton’s surprise, a small handgun, a Ruger LCP Six Shot in pink polymer. He wouldn’t have imagined she’d tote such a girly piece but, pink or not, he knew the make and it was lethal at close range. He cracked it open and emptied the chamber, pocketing the bullets. His old professor had done a pretty bad thing barging into his mission and she was also severely concussed. For the time being at least he decided he’d prefer to have such an unpredictable associate unarmed. There was much else besides in the bag, which seemed to be bigger on the inside as ladies’ bags often were, but Stanton had no time to explore the limits of his old professor’s audacious duplicity.

He wrestled her into her nightdress and with some effort carried her to bed in one of the rooms that adjoined the sitting room, just as the ice arrived. Using a towel and a pillowcase to make a pack, he laid her head against it and took further stock. As long as the ice contained the swelling, he reckoned she’d be all right. A blow like that against a person in their early seventies was a serious thing, but for all her unhealthy lifestyle McCluskey was a tough old war horse. With luck she’d pull through. Not that he ought to care, of course. She was a lying, cheating traitor who had deliberately put the entire mission in jeopardy for her own personal gratification. But he did care. He liked her and always had. Now that she had made the leap with him and they were together on the strangest adventure in all of human history, he hoped she’d get to see whatever stupid ballet it was she’d set her heart on.

Her breathing was easier now. He felt that she was more asleep than unconscious. Apart from anything else they had both been up now since 4 a.m. the previous morning. He glanced at the beautiful carriage clock that stood on the mantel above the fireplace: 2.15 a.m. Allowing for a two-hour time gain for Central Europe, that was more than twenty hours.

And a hundred and eleven years.

No wonder McCluskey needed some sleep.

When she woke she was going to be in for a shock. A shock that he knew he himself must now begin to assimilate. It was time to accept it. Newton had been right. It was the early hours of the morning on the first of June 1914.

Not one shred of his life existed any more.

Apart from McCluskey, which was little comfort.

He took out his smart phone, looking for a signal despite knowing full well there could be none. But who knew? Those techy guys in LA were so clever that perhaps they’d downloaded him an app that could facilitate calls across separate dimensions in space and time. But of course they hadn’t, and there was an empty pie shape where that morning four black bars had been.

He pressed music and scrolled through his library. Perhaps he would listen to some tunes. He didn’t. It was just too strange.

He went out on to the balcony and stood against the railing. The Pera district was on a hill and Stanton could see the whole of Istanbul and the waters of the Golden Horn stretched out below. Lights twinkled then dimmed as slowly the last remnants of the city he must now call Constantinople went to sleep.

If history were to run its course, within three months the city would be at war. Europe would have embarked on the bloodiest and most terrible conflict the world had ever known. Only he and McCluskey knew that and only he could do anything about it.

He felt very small.

He didn’t feel like sleeping so he sat on the balcony looking at the city for most of the night, going back inside only to check on McCluskey and change the ice until it had all melted. At about five in the morning dawn began to glimmer on the distant horizon.

The dawn of his first day.

He decided to go for a walk. McCluskey seemed OK. The signs of fever that she had exhibited earlier had disappeared. She was sleeping easily and soundly as her body readjusted to the shock. He dressed her wound, put water and a bowl of fruit on her bedside table and wrote her a note, which he left on her pillow.

DON’T PANIC! Newton was right and it has happened as he said it would. You have suffered a concussion and must rest. Do NOT leave the room. There is fruit and water and a Mars Bar (which I found in your cardigan) on the bedside table. I will return by lunchtime. Your watch is set to the correct time and there is a clock on the mantelpiece. You are a very bad woman but I guess I’m stuck with you.

Hugh

For the briefest second he almost added,
P.S. I’m on my mobile
.

Next he bundled up McCluskey’s blood-stained jacket and scarf in preparation for disposal. He took up the smaller of his two bags and went out into the corridor locking his suite door behind him and hanging out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. Then he headed for the lift.

He thought he would wander down to the Bosphorus and watch the sun rise from the Galata Bridge.

Within a few hours he would have saved the lives of a young Muslim family and narrowly avoided sabotaging his own mission by confronting a group of British officers in a cafe.

History had begun anew. The future was already changing.

THE ORIENT BAR
was thick with cigarette and cigar smoke. Stanton breathed deeply. Inhaling was almost as good as having one yourself and didn’t break any vows. He ordered a second Laphroaig, The drink measures served at the Pera Palace were generous but he didn’t feel at all affected. His whole situation was so intoxicating that he wondered if mere alcohol would ever do it for him again.

Since returning from his eventful morning in the old town, he’d been back to the suite twice to check on McCluskey. She seemed to be coming good slowly and he didn’t think she’d suffered any serious injury. Of course, in 2025 he’d have taken her straight round to casualty for an MRI scan but that not being an option the best he could do was draw the curtains tight, advise rest and hope she didn’t have any delayed traumas. He guessed that it would be at least a couple of days before he could move her, which worried him considerably, since having exposed himself so recklessly to fellow members of the British community he was anxious to get out of town.

It turned out he’d underestimated the old professor’s recuperative powers.

‘Hugh! Order your old mother a Bloody Mary, won’t you?’

McCluskey was standing at the door. She’d got up, got herself dressed, found the lift and made straight for the bar like a homing pigeon. And there she was, in her floor-length dress, making a passable impression of an Imperial English lady, her hair done up in a bun at the back to cover her wound. She looked pale but she’d put on some lipstick and a bit of blusher to help with that, and although her walk wasn’t exactly steady, she was certainly on her feet.

‘Jesus, prof,’ Stanton said as McCluskey walked towards him, holding on to chairs for support, ‘you were out cold for ten hours, you need to be in bed.’

‘Hugh,’ she replied, her eyes shining despite her weak condition, ‘I’m seventy-two, I don’t have a lot of time. I am embarking on the single greatest opportunity that any bonkers old historian has ever been granted and I am not going to spend the first day of it in bed.’ Reaching out for the support of the bar she leant forward and hissed into his ear in a robust stage whisper, ‘Hugh, Sweetlips. We are in nine – teen – four –
teen
!’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ the barman interrupted before Stanton could tell her to shut up, ‘but I’m afraid ladies are not accepted at the bar. Madam is welcome to take a seat at a table.’

‘Bloody Mary
s’il vous plaît, garçon
!’ McCluskey said, turning her back on the man and tottering towards a table.

‘Plain tomato juice,’ Stanton corrected, ‘and some water.’

He hurried over to join her.

‘Professor, you have suffered a concussion.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ McCluskey replied. ‘My head feels like the council are digging it up and laying drains.’ She reached into her handbag, the same vast container that she’d brought from the future and which Stanton now noted was antique and had clearly been chosen to pass muster in an earlier age. She pulled out a little blister-pack of Ibuprofen, popping four out of the foil.

‘Prof,
please
,’ Stanton hissed.

‘Oh come on, Hugh, nobody’s going to notice.’

‘We don’t know
what
people are going to notice, professor. Now shut up and listen to me.’ Stanton paused in what he was saying while the waiter delivered McCluskey’s tomato juice. If she noticed the absence of vodka she thought better than to complain about it.

‘Cheers,’ she said.

‘Never mind cheers! What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I’ve told you. I’m not hanging about in bed while—’

‘I don’t mean here in the bar. I mean
here
in 1914!’

‘Ah, yes … bit naughty that. Sorry.’

‘
Naughty
. What you’ve done,’ Stanton went on, struggling to keep his voice low, ‘is betray every principle you’ve been claiming to hold since the day you brought me into this business. For five months you’ve been talking about a world reborn and a second chance for humanity and saving all the millions of soldiers in Flanders’ fields and the prisoners in Russian gulags and it turns out the whole thing’s been just a cover for you to go and see
Pygmalion
.’

‘No, Hugh! Really. I promise. It’s always been about the mission … but when it came to the moment I couldn’t resist—’

‘Crap! You’d been planning it from the start: getting ID made for yourself, renting that bloody pantomime frock.’

‘No! It was only in the last week or two. As time got near … I was thinking two could fit in a sentry box, so why not?’

‘Why not? Why
not
? Christ Almighty, you could have ruined everything before it even began. You might just as easily have knocked me out of position as get yourself into it when you were fighting with that drugged-up Turkish girl.’

‘God,
her
!’ McCluskey said with a smile. ‘I’d forgotten about her. Anyway, I didn’t knock you out of position and we both made it through so no harm done, eh?’

‘No harm done yet,’ Stanton said. ‘But the fact that I was able to get a bleeding, semi-conscious old woman in what was basically a mini skirt out of that cellar, across Constantinople and into a hotel without being arrested for indecent assault was a bloody miracle. I thought very seriously about just knocking you off and leaving you there. I
should
have left you there. I’m responsible for the fate of the entire British army. You should be disposable collateral.’

McCluskey’s face fell.

‘Disposable collateral? That’s a bit harsh, Hugh … I know what I’ve done is wrong but …
1914
. I just couldn’t resist.’

For the first time in all the years he’d known her McCluskey actually looked contrite.

‘Now, look,’ Stanton said. ‘The truth is we have both been screwing up. Our most important duty is to leave no trace on history until we’re in a position to change it and neither of us are doing very well.’

McCluskey’s mood lightened immediately.

‘Really?’ she asked. ‘How do you mean we’ve
both
screwed up? What have you been up to, my boy? Not been making a beast of yourself with the belly dancers in the bazaars, have you?’

‘As it happens I prevented a terrible car accident. Saved a mum and her kids.’

‘Ah,’ McCluskey replied, avoiding his eye, clearly all too aware of the resonance of this in Stanton’s own past life. ‘Well, you had to do that, didn’t you? Of course you did.’

‘Yes, I did. But if that family now decides to take a holiday in Sarajevo and bump into someone who bumps into someone and somehow changes the course of the Archduke’s day …’

‘Pretty bloody long shot, Hugh.’

‘All events are long shots until they occur. That’s what chaos theory’s about.’

Stanton decided he wouldn’t share the details of the rest of his morning’s adventures with McCluskey. He felt foolish enough about the near catastrophic confrontation in the cafe as it was.

‘So you listen to me,’ he went on, ‘I want you to go back to your bed and lie down again. You’ve had a massive blow and need to rest as much as possible. We leave town tomorrow and I don’t want you keeling over on me at the station with some kind of cerebral haemorrhage.’

McCluskey’s face fell.

‘Leave town? I was thinking we could have a day or two in Istanbul. Constantinople, Hugh, in the dying days of the Ottoman dynasty. Think of it! The mystery, the magic. We can’t just walk away from that.’

‘We can and we must.’

Stanton was uncomfortably aware that the young men he’d nearly had a punch-up with were soldiers. Officers who would, in the way of the British army of the period, have plenty of leisure time. Leisure time they might very well choose to spend right where they were sitting, in the bar of the Pera Palace Hotel.

‘We have four weeks to get through till our appointment in Sarajevo,’ he went on, ‘and we need to draw as little attention and make as little impact as possible. So, my plan is to leave Constantinople in the morning and head to Britain, where we’ll stand out least. What’s more, spending four days on a train is as good a way as any to avoid leaving any footprints. Once in the UK we’ll lie as low as possible for a fortnight till we make the trip back.’

McCluskey frowned. There was a pocket on her dress, from which to Stanton’s astonishment she now drew rolling papers and a pinch of loose tobacco.

‘Jesus,’ Stanton hissed. ‘You can’t roll a fag
here
!’

‘Why not? I’m an eccentric English lady. There’s no law.’

‘There’s convention! We are trying not to draw attention to ourselves. We are on a
mission
.’

‘But actually that’s the point, isn’t it, Hugh?’ she said, reluctantly putting the tobacco back in her pocket. ‘
You’re
on a mission. I’m not. You don’t need me. In fact, let’s be honest, a gouty old drunkard like yours truly would be a liability. Why not leave me here? I’ll be fine. I’ve got a million quid in forged Imperial Bonds sewn into my knickers and quite frankly the minute this Nurofen kicks in I’m ready to party.’