Time and Time Again (29 page)

Fortunately they were more surprised to see somebody besides themselves on the roof than Stanton was, and he recovered first.

‘Good morning,’ he said loudly in German, moving to place the sun behind him. ‘The staff in the coffee garden informed me that there were men on the roof. Kindly explain your purpose for being here.’

Again the natural presumption of authority was the key. Had he hesitated it was possible that the men might have challenged
him
, but he gave them no chance.

‘We’re works and maintenance,’ one of the men replied.

‘Please may I see your authorization,’ Stanton went on.

Stanton could see that they were hesitating. No doubt they had performed maintenance work on the roof many times and never been challenged before. If he gave them time to think they might just decide it was them who should be asking the questions.

‘His Imperial Highness is making an appearance in Potsdamer Platz this lunchtime. I’m sure you are aware of this. The surrounding area is therefore subject to inspection. Kindly show me your authorization
at once
.’

That did it. The men produced their time cards.

‘Thank you,’ Stanton said after a cursory glance, ‘this is in order. Please inform me what the purpose of your work is here today.’

‘A couple of the girls in cushions and soft furnishings were complaining about a fluttering and banging. They thought it was a bird, which sometimes do get caught in the air vents, but we can’t find anything so either they imagined it or else it’s got away.’

‘Or it’s dead,’ his companion volunteered. ‘They sometimes just die of panic. In which case the girls’ll smell it in a day or two and we’ll know to take the grid off and fish it out.’

‘That’s right,’ the first man agreed.

‘Good,’ Stanton said, ‘and your purpose here is finished?’

‘Yes. We’re done now. We was going on our break. We had thought about taking it here, sir. What with the sun and air, sir.’

Stanton noticed that the second man was carrying a vacuum flask and a small cloth-covered bundle, which he took to be their lunch.

‘I’m afraid that will not be possible today. The roof must be cleared.’

The two men shrugged, touched their caps and left, exiting via a service hatch, which Stanton noted as a possible escape route should he need to make a hurried exit.

When the men had gone, Stanton pondered the encounter. He didn’t
think
it would cause him problems. After all, he intended to be back in his apartment in Mitte before the police had even deduced that the shot might have come from the top of the Wertheim store. There was no doubt that his bullet, if successful, would make a pretty big mess of the Kaiser’s skull and in the process punch the man clean off the podium. Working out an angle of trajectory from the corpse would be impossible so the cops would only ever be able to guess at the location of the gunman. He was a very long way away and the shot would be difficult using a gun made in 1914. It would therefore take them some time to include the Wertheim roof in their list of possibilities. If they ever did get around to interviewing the two workmen about the ‘official’ who had ordered them from the roof, the trail would be long cold.

It had been an unsettling moment, though, and he slipped off the safety catch of the Glock in his pocket just in case. If necessary he would kill anyone who attempted to confront him.

He was horribly aware that he only had one shot at saving the world.

Alone once more, Stanton made his way to the edge of the roof. There was a small ledge from which the slate-tiled ‘helmet’ of the building sloped steeply away for three metres or so, ending in a fringe of iron guttering that prevented him from seeing the colonnaded edifice beneath.

Stanton sat down, opened the bag he was carrying and took out the pieces of his rifle and sight. Having assembled the gun, he took off his jacket and bunched it up on the ledge as a cushion for a steady aim. Then he took stock of the scene that was now gathering in the Potsdamer Platz three hundred metres to the west.

Lines of troops had now assembled and the viewing stand was filling up. By looking through his telescopic sight Stanton could see the faces of the dignitaries and their wives quite clearly beneath their polished top hats and fancy confections of lace and flowers. The centre of the presentation podium was still empty but there were a number of people assembled at either end. Glancing further afield Stanton saw that a military band was playing, the sound of which was reaching him borne on the breeze. Between the band and the podium there was a space lined on either side with soldiers where it was clear the Emperor’s car would cross the
Platz
.

He settled down to wait, hoping that the celebrated German efficiency would deliver the Emperor on time. In fact, he arrived a few minutes early, perhaps anxious to get such a boringly non-military function over with as soon as possible so that he could get back to his beloved parade grounds. There was a stirring in the crowd, and the rhythm of the distant music changed to what Stanton thought he recognized as ‘God Save The King’. He was momentarily taken aback before recalling having read that the German Imperial anthem
Heil Dir Im Siegerkranz
used the same tune. The anthem signalled the arrival of the royal motorcade.

There was much cheering and waving of hats as the middle car drew up in front of the red carpet. The small crowd, which had been swollen by the host of golden daffodils on their lunch break from the department store, were clearly enjoying the occasion. A gaggle of dignitaries scurried forward to greet the monarch. Stanton couldn’t see this part of the proceedings because the royal car was in the way. He could only imagine the great man trying to look interested while the details of the new tram-line pattern were explained to him.

A few moments passed and the party emerged from under the cover of the roof of the car and the Kaiser strode up the red carpet towards the podium. Stanton viewed the scene through his gun sight but there was no chance to get a clean shot. The monarch was leading the group and all Stanton could see through the crowd of top hats that followed him were the ostrich plumes of his ridiculous helmet. Wilhelm was, of course, in uniform. Only he would have felt it appropriate to dress up as an admiral of the fleet or a commander of the heavy cavalry in order to open a new tram junction.

The Kaiser mounted the platform. Stanton, who was already stretched out on his stomach behind the telescopic lens of his rifle, placed his finger against the trigger and took a view through the cross hairs. It was a fairly long range so the target bobbed about considerably in the circle of his lens but hopefully when it arrived at centre stage it would be still. But Stanton doubted that the Kaiser would remain still for long. The whole event was scheduled for only fifteen minutes and the Kaiser appeared to have brought no notes with him. Perhaps he would not speak at all and simply deliver the snip.

Stanton settled deeper into his firing position, the barrel of the gun resting on his folded jacket on the ledge.

The Kaiser took his position in front of the ribbon and nodded. It seemed he definitely did not intend to say anything as an officer approached him at once carrying a cushion on which was a pair of scissors. The Kaiser took up the scissors and reached forward to cut the ribbon.

Bang!

A shot was fired.

But it wasn’t Stanton who fired it. Stanton felt a massive pain in his back, as if somebody had taken a clump hammer and brought it down with all their might on a space just to the right of his spine, just behind his heart.

He’d been shot at and but for the polyethylene ballistic plates in his Gore-tex vest he would have been dead already.

Stanton let go of his rifle and rolled over. Already the Glock semi-automatic was in his hand. All in an instant he saw a grey-clad figure with a shaven head standing ten metres or so away with a rifle at his shoulder. The figure must have managed to cock the bolt with inordinate speed because there was another crack and Stanton felt another horrendous blow to his chest, a ferocious steel punch from a tiny ballistic fist which left him gasping for breath. However, the body armour saved his life a second time and despite the twin blows he’d taken on the back and front of his body, Stanton was able to bring his handgun up into the firing position and return fire. He loosed off three rounds in scarcely more than a second. The first missed, but the second two hit the man in the arm and upper chest, knocking him backwards against the chimney in front of which he was standing.

Stanton didn’t even watch his assailant fall fully to the ground. Even as the man slid down the chimney into a heap, Stanton had rolled back over on to his front. Gasping at the pain in his bruised chest, he took up his telescopic rifle once more. It had been incredible misfortune that some sort of guard had happened upon him at that time. The Kaiser’s people were clearly a massive step up from the Austrians, as indeed Stanton had feared they would be. They must have decided to sweep the roofs after all. Nonetheless as long as there weren’t any more of them he might still have time to get his man.

Glancing down into the Potsdamer Platz he realized that the whole incident with the guard had only taken a matter of seconds. The Kaiser was still cutting the ribbon. It seemed to be proving troublesome and two officials had stepped forward to pull the thing tight to make it easier to cut.

Stanton thanked the heavens for the German public’s appetite for military bands. Gun fights make a noise and while his own Glock was a relatively quiet piece the two rifle shots might easily have carried as far as the podium had a brass band not been playing. They had no doubt been heard in the roof garden but Stanton could only hope they had been ignored. There were plenty of motor cars in Berlin and cars from that time backfired a lot.

Putting all other thoughts from his mind, Stanton settled once more and, after a moment’s searching through the magnified lens, picked up his target in the cross hairs. The Emperor was standing quite alone, behind the little ribbon at the front of the stage. The dignitaries had all gathered at the edges of the podium, apart from the two holding the ribbon. Stanton was glad to see that the Kaiserin was not present. He had no wish to shoot a man in front of his wife.

Now, with the Kaiser in his sights, he could see the man’s face close up for the first time. It was shocking how familiar it was, even to a man born towards the end of the twentieth century. That moustache, so fierce and uncompromising, the waxed and carefully arranged glory of what had at that time been the most famous whiskers on the planet. The eyes, not unkind at all, but made deliberately fierce from years of assuming a look as stern as he could make it. Stanton knew that the Kaiser had been quite friendly and considerate as a schoolboy, but later as a guards officer and young ruler he had deliberately cultivated an abrupt and imperious manner. He’d thought it was expected of him.

Looking at the man, Stanton was also struck by his resemblance to the British royals, even the ones who had been born a hundred years after him. That was one strong gene pool. And powerful.
Incredibly
powerful. The British King, the German Kaiser, the Russian Tsar. All
first cousins
. How strange the world had once been.

Stanton raised the angle of his sighting by an infinitesimally small margin, bringing his cross hairs up to a point an inch above the space between the Emperor’s eyes. The man was speaking now, perhaps complaining about the bluntness of the scissors, but keeping himself stiff and rigid as he did so.

Formal, proper.

Dead.

Stanton watched his target’s head explode through the magnified lens. He had known he’d only get one shot and so had used ammunition that was designed to do the maximum damage.

And it had. As the man’s body seemed to half float, half stagger backwards there was almost nothing left above its shoulders at all.

Stanton had completed his mission.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was alive and the Kaiser was dead.

The Great War had been averted.

The world had been saved.

STANTON DISMANTLED HIS
rifle and stowed it in his bag. He picked up the spent cartridge shell and stowed that also. Next he took a second empty rifle cartridge shell from his pocket. It was for a Mauser Gewehr 98, the German army rifle of the period. He put the empty shell on the ground where his firing position had been.

When the police discovered the shell they would presume they knew the make of the murder weapon. A German gun for a fictitious German killer. His own bullet would have disintegrated.

Now there was just one last element to the Chronos plan to be completed. An element Stanton found almost as distasteful as having been required to shoot an innocent man from a safe distance. This was to give the authorities someone to blame for the killing. Someone
German
so that the nation would look within itself for revenge and not abroad.

Stanton couldn’t fault the logic. By 1914 Germany had the most developed and the most sophisticated left wing in the world. The pace and sophistication of Germany’s economic revolution had led to a huge new class of educated men and women who were more than aware of their own exploitation. The Red Scare bogeyman was alive and well in pre-war Germany and hysterical reactionaries were ready to believe any slander against organized labour.

Stanton was about to give them a bigger stick to beat them with than they could have ever dreamt of. He didn’t like doing it. Blaming the Left for crimes they hadn’t committed was an age-old establishment sport. But it had to be done.

Better a Germany fighting itself than fighting the rest of the world.

Stanton took one of the leaflets from his bag and placed it under the Mauser shell case. The leaflet was bright blood red in colour. It featured a stern and noble-looking working man who was bringing his mighty fist down on the head of a vicious little devil with the face of the Kaiser. The wording on the leaflet was very simple –
The Kaiser is dead! Workers rise up and take control!