Time and Time Again (30 page)

That was all, no detail. Nothing more specific.

‘Let ’em sweat over it,’ McCluskey had said. ‘Let ’em
obsess
over it! Who killed Bill? The whole country will tie itself in knots.’

Having left his false evidence, Stanton put on his jacket ready to leave. He allowed himself one last glance down into Potsdamer Platz where, not surprisingly, absolute pandemonium had broken out. The crowd had surged forward and lines of soldiers, including the entire brass band, were struggling to keep them back while all the top-hatted gentlemen clustered together behind the podium where the ex-Emperor’s body no doubt had landed.

Stanton knew that he was watching the epicentre of a storm. That moment when the pebble hits the pond. Already he could see many figures scurrying not towards the tragedy but away from it. Most of them would be police fanning out in an effort to find the perpetrator, but there would also be reporters, anxious to be the first to file the most astonishing and momentous story of the century. The undisputed ruler of the German Empire, virtual dictator of the most vibrant economy and fearsome military in Europe, had been murdered! Arguably the single most powerful man on earth was dead. Stories simply did not get any bigger.

So far the shock waves had scarcely reached the edge of Potsdamer Platz since they were still being propelled on foot. But let the first man reach a telephone or a telegraph office and the world would tremble at the astonishing news.

Stanton turned away. He had killed the Emperor less than ninety seconds before. The scene in the roof garden cafe would remain undisturbed for perhaps another two or three minutes. He wanted to be there when the news hit, not still out on the roof. He thought for a brief moment about checking on the guard he had shot. Possibly he was still alive and, if he was, there was an outside chance that the man could identify him later. Stanton decided to let it go. One cold-blooded murder was quite enough for one day. Besides, he needed to clear the scene of the crime quickly and distribute his leaflets.

Having sprinted back across the roof, Stanton paused for a moment outside the
Verboten
door to collect himself, then strode through, as ever looking confident, relaxed and in command. He doubted that anybody noticed him but if they did he was pretty sure the moment would not register. Why would it? The world was still the same as it had been for decades. A charmed, Edwardian world, ever steady and reassuringly unchanging.

That world would last about another minute.

Stanton exited from the roof garden by the same door he had entered it, walking down the flight of stairs to the fifth-floor furniture department. Then he strolled casually across the floor until he came to the top of the grand staircase which descended in gilded magnificence down five floors. Looking down, Stanton could see the top of the head of the female statue. It was also possible from where he was standing to imagine that one was squinting down inside her plaster blouse, a circumstance that had given a generation of schoolboys enormous comical pleasure. As Stanton passed the top banister he took from his jacket another sheaf of a hundred or so of the forged Socialist leaflets. Scarcely breaking his stride he balanced them on the top balustrade as he passed and then began to walk down the stairs.

He knew that they would not balance for long and, sure enough, before he had taken another five steps the pages came fluttering down the great stairwell of the atrium like large pieces of red confetti. Looking down as they fluttered past him Stanton could see that at the bottom of the fifth flight, down on the ground floor, clusters of people were gathering together and gesticulating; one woman had even swooned. Time seemed to slow down for a moment as Stanton watched the intense conversations begin to spread up the stairs as the leaflets descended to meet them.

People were grabbing at the red confetti now and as they did there were cries of anger and horror all around. Stanton kept walking down on to the ground floor where the shop was all of a sudden in complete uproar as everyone began to digest and protest the terrible news.

Stanton pushed his way through the excited throng, through the doors of the shop and out on to Leipziger Strasse.

Although it was a warm day there was a stiff breeze blowing east across the twin
Plätze
of Leipzig and Potsdam. Stanton turned west and as he did so he plunged his hand into his bag where the rest of his leaflets were hidden. In one confident movement he drew them out and dropped them to the pavement. Then he just kept walking, not looking back even once. He didn’t need to. He knew that behind him the red leaflets would be gusting across the tram lines towards where the Kaiser’s corpse no doubt still lay.

Stanton’s mission was complete.

As the adrenalin rush of the previous hour began to subside, he had leisure to realize that he was finding breathing a little painful. Putting his hand to his chest he felt the rough quality of singed cloth and remembered for the first time since leaving the roof that he had been shot at twice. Glancing down he saw a black burn mark on his tweed jacket right in front of his heart. He knew there would be identical damage on the back of his jacket, again right in front of his heart. That guard had been a bloody good shot. It seemed German police training was as efficient as their army and their industry.

Stanton took off the jacket and folded it over his arm. Better to be out in shirt sleeves than displaying what might be recognized as bullet holes in your clothing.

Stanton probed gently at his chest and back as he walked, wincing when his fingers applied any pressure. He was badly bruised, there was no doubt about that, and would certainly be an ugly colour in the morning, but nothing was broken. So far his luck had held. If it changed now it didn’t matter. He’d already saved the world.

STANTON TOOK A
walk down Unter Den Linden and went for lunch in the Tiergarten. Bratwurst, mustard and a stein of beer. A typically German meal to celebrate the private knowledge that by what he had just done he had preserved a better Germany for the century to come. That Germany of contented, progressive people who were more fond of beer and sausage than conquest and murder. The Germany the previous twentieth century had corrupted.

The Tiergarten had been quiet and rather sedate when he had walked through it previously but now it was full and what would in another age be called ‘buzzing’. The news of the Kaiser’s death was crashing through the city like cannon fire, and as Stanton sat at his lunch it occurred to him that he was watching a city becoming collectively traumatized. All around him hundreds of identical conversations were occurring as the news was shared. Nannies with their charges, wide-eyed with shock, portly gentlemen waving their arms in horror, earnest students tight-lipped and grim. Each had been going about his or her business, strolling through the park, chatting to friends, pondering some private thought, only to overhear a comment or join a conversation and be suddenly transformed. Their faces turning in an instant to blank bewilderment and utter horror.

If it were possible for an entire city to go into shock, that was what was happening to Berlin.

Nobody in that city was ever going to forget what they were doing when they heard the news that the Kaiser had been assassinated.

Stanton felt a little uncomfortable, almost like a voyeur spying on someone else’s sorrows. That sensation brought to mind his own personal isolation and loneliness. He was still on the outside, still emotionally unconnected with the world in which he was living, in which he would always live now. Nonetheless that loneliness was tinged with elation. It came upon him in little waves. The world-historical task with which he had been entrusted was over and he had done his duty.

And he had done what a million British soldiers had dreamt of doing. He’d killed the Kaiser.

On that thought he decided to order another beer but discovered that he’d been lucky to get the first. On hearing the momentous news the owners had quickly concluded that serving beer and sausage wasn’t an appropriate thing to do on such an afternoon. The waiters were at that moment closing the little entrance gate to their tea garden and telling the customers that they were shutting up indefinitely out of respect for the fallen Emperor.

Stanton decided to return to his apartment.

This wasn’t his grief, his trauma. He might have caused it but he was not
of
it. His had been a clinical action, theirs was a guttural reaction. By dying the Kaiser had brought the whole city together far more completely than he had ever done in life. But Stanton wasn’t part of it.

He had a bottle of raspberry-flavoured schnapps waiting in his room and some Liebfraumilch wine, keeping cool wrapped in a wet undershirt. He had laid these in in anticipation of not quite knowing what to do with himself after the event. So he decided to go home, get a little drunk and once more consider his future. A future that was finally his to consider.

On his way back to Mitte he noticed that it wasn’t just the cafes in the Tiergarten that were closing their doors, the whole city was shutting down. Remembering that he had no food at all in his room he darted into a little grocer on a corner of the Alexanderplatz just before they closed their doors. He was lucky to get in, otherwise he would have had no supper and probably no breakfast either. He bought bread, cheese and ham, biscuits and some peaches, which would keep him going till the city opened up again. He knew the store, he’d shopped there before, and he recognized the young woman who was serving behind the till. On the previous day when he’d bought some summer fruits from her he had been rather charmed because she smiled so broadly and sang softly to herself while she measured out the strawberries. It had been a song about
Erdbeer
being sweet but not as sweet as love. Today, however, there were no smiles and no singing. The girl had been crying so hard she could barely count out his change.

‘Our Kaiser is with God now,’ she said, before adding, ‘and may God curse whoever did this.’

She was cursing
him
. It was a strange feeling.

The grocer’s girl wasn’t the only one who was weeping and cursing. Leaders are always more popular in death and there were many on the streets unable to contain their emotions. Stanton saw one old woman beating her breast in despair. He’d never imagined anybody actually did that. He thought it was just some old-fashioned phrase from the days of melodrama, but this woman was actually pummelling at her chest in a kind of paroxysm of grief while another woman tried to comfort her. Those who weren’t openly crying just looked drawn and grim as if they were forcing back tears. There wasn’t a single person who was not obviously and deeply affected by what was clearly being seen as a national tragedy of previously undreamt of proportions. Stanton had expected as much, of course, but the intensity still took him by surprise.

He made his way back to his street and let himself into his building. The outer door opened into a little vestibule and stairwell where an old concierge sat. He was a taciturn man who had never said anything to Stanton beyond a brief
Morgen
or
Abend
. On this afternoon, however, the man felt moved to speak.

‘Bastards,’ he spat as Stanton greeted him. ‘Those
swine
. Those vermin. Those
Untermensch
. We’ll hang them all.’

‘Who?’ Stanton asked. ‘Who will you hang?’

‘The Socialists, of course,’ he answered. ‘And the Anarchists with them, those revolutionary scum.’

‘Well, first the police have to catch them, don’t they?’ Stanton reminded the man.

‘We know where they are,’ the old concierge replied darkly. ‘They can’t hide.’

Stanton went up to his little room, laid out his food for later and opened his bottle of wine. He drank a glass straight down, toasting himself in the mirror above his wash bowl.

Now was the time to look again at the list he’d begun that morning.
Shackleton. Everest. Fly the Atlantic. Soldiering
…
Bernadette
.

Now at last he could move on.

But at that moment he found he couldn’t even begin to move on. For some reason he felt no sense of completion whatsoever. He was as all at sea as he’d felt in those first moments when he had found himself apparently alone in the cellar in Istanbul, the taste of the half-naked Turkish girl’s spearmint lip gloss still on his lips.

Drinking deep at his wine he tried to put this feeling of unease down to the fact that he had killed someone that day. That was a terrible thing to have to do, and any man who remained unmoved by such a thing should never be trusted with a gun. Stanton had killed before, of course, but not very often and he’d found that it never got any easier. But that was just the natural human horror at taking a life; he didn’t
regret
it. Far from it, in fact. He was absolutely confident in his mind that he’d acted for the right reasons and done the right thing. If he had it to do again he would.

So why did he feel so unsettled?

Seeking comfort, he took a book from his bag. A book he had brought with him from the future and which also, because of him, would never now be written. It was the
Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
. A favourite of Stanton’s since he was a boy.

He’d read those poems many times since arriving in the past, because he could think of no better argument for his mission than those harrowing but infinitely moving chronicles of quiet heroism, appalling carnage and pointless sacrifice. Owen’s heartfelt verse described more poignantly than any statistics ever could the nightmare that Stanton was preventing. It had given Stanton great strength to know that Owen would write different poems after his mission was complete. That instead of dying in a great and terrible war, Wilfred Owen would instead get his chance to live. And Brooke and Sassoon and millions of other brave young men whose lives were equally important, though their names had only ever been celebrated on neglected war memorials in town and village squares.