Time and Time Again (34 page)

A couple of footsteps, a shout and he was pinned.

A smell of schnapps and beer and cigars in his nose.

Angry voices in his ear.

Sneering, youthful faces all around. Precious, neatly clipped little moustaches above snarling lips. Peaked caps on shaven heads.

There were four of them that he was aware of. Two had held him by the arms and slammed him against a wall, while the other couple had already started laying in with their fists.

Shit. He was being beaten up.

Stanton was alert enough now. Sufficiently on his mettle even to have managed to tense his abs before the first punch went in. He was gratified to hear one of his assailants cry in pain as the man’s fist made violent contact with a stomach sculpted in a twenty-first-century gym regime and rigorously maintained during his recent time in Scotland. Nobody, not even the very fit, worked out in 1914 in the way people were to work out a hundred years later – nobody had the time.

You couldn’t tense your face, though, and now a fist smashed into his, seriously rattling his jaw. They were pummelling thick and fast and if he didn’t gain release from the prone position they had him in he could easily and quickly be beaten to death.

They had his arms held tight, young strong hands gripping him fiercely. Release from that was not an option, so his best hope was his feet. Using the grip in which he was held as a convenient support, he kicked up his legs from his waist and then, pushing outwards from his shoulders, extended his body fully in mid-air, launching both feet firmly into the face of one of his attackers, breaking the man’s nose and knocking him backwards to the ground. Then he let his feet drop back to the pavement but only in order to bounce off the ground and pop up again, extending himself fully from the shoulders once more and kicking out. The trick didn’t work quite as well the second time because the other man dodged the kick, but Stanton was able to twist his body in mid-air and lock his legs around the man’s neck instead. At this point he could feel the grip that held his arms loosening. He was in danger of being dropped on his head. However, he was able in time to grab on to the arms that were holding him and with another almighty twist of his body bring the four of them down on to the pavement together.

Stanton was the first on his feet.

‘Come on, you bastards,’ he snarled in English. ‘Let’s see how well you do when you’re not attacking from behind.’

All four of the attackers got to their feet, although the one with the broken nose clearly had no intention of taking any further part in the battle. Stanton, on the other hand, was fired up. He hadn’t had a proper fight in a long time and he was confident he could dispense with the three remaining assailants now that they no longer had the advantage of surprise.

Two of them came at him at once with the third hanging back, watching for a chance. Stanton floored the first two with single blows. It was that simple. Chop. Crunch. The young attackers had come along expecting a street brawl, an easy gang-beating of a helplessly outnumbered victim, and instead had encountered a highly focused expert in unarmed combat.

The young men seemed to be getting the message. They staggered back to their feet but showed no inclination to come at Stanton again.

‘Run home, boys,’ he said in German, ‘because I warn you, if you try to jump me again, I’ll break your necks.’

He turned to walk away but found himself confronted by a fifth man, the
Junker
student whom he’d faced off earlier. Clearly the man had found his shaming at Stanton’s hands too much to bear and, having watched his tormentor disappear into the SPD headquarters, had assembled his gang and hung around waiting for a chance to get his own back.

Now the young student was at a loss. His expected punishment beating had turned into a rout. Revenge had not been served.

‘Go home, boy,’ Stanton repeated. ‘
Geh’ nach Hause, Junge
– you’ve got lectures in the morning.’

Maybe it was that that did it. The patronizing tone. The young man’s face contorted with hatred and furious spite.

He drew a pistol.

Stanton didn’t stand a chance. The student shot him in the stomach.

He collapsed to his knees, holding his abdomen.

He heard a voice from behind him, one of the other young thugs.

‘Helmut! You’ve shot a cop! Are you crazy?’

‘He’s not a cop! You saw him go in with the Polish whore. He’s one of them.’

‘That’s right – he spoke English,’ another voice said. ‘What cop talks in English?’

‘We should clear out anyway,’ the first voice from behind said. ‘You got him in the guts. He’s done for. It’s murder, Helmut. We have to run.’

Stanton’s vision was blurring now but he could see the man in front hesitate. He wondered whether Helmut was thinking about shooting him again. But instead he just ran past. Stanton heard the clatter of their boots as they ran away up the street.

He was alone now. Looking down at the rapidly growing mess of crimson on his stomach. An abdominal, that was very bad. Only the heart, the spine or the head could be worse, although none so painful.

He tried to collect his thoughts, which were swimming now.

He wondered if he could get back to his apartment.

Not a chance – he’d be dead from loss of blood before he got halfway.

Could he maybe make it back to Rosa Luxemburg? She certainly owed him.

Maybe. But even that was a few hundred metres and he was losing a lot of blood very quickly. Any movement was going to increase the speed of that loss by a considerable margin.

Best to sit. Apply pressure to the wound and hope for help.

He heard a whistle. The gunshot must have alerted the police. Or perhaps somebody had heard it and called them.

He remembered his own gun. A Glock made in 2023. What were the laws on side arms, he wondered? Did they have to be licensed in Berlin in 1914? Either way a gun in his pocket was going to lead to questions. Particularly one of unknown make and revolutionary design.

He had another two in the larger bag in his apartment.

If he ever saw it again. If he survived the night.

There was a drain in the gutter between his feet. He pulled the Glock from his pocket and dropped it into the gridded darkness.

Then he lost consciousness.

The police found him shortly thereafter and took him to the Berliner Buch teaching hospital, where he was operated on immediately. He’d been lucky. It turned out that the bullet had not gone through his stomach but was lodged in the abdominal cavity. The student’s pistol had been a pretty measly affair, probably normally only used on rats and rabbits. No vital organs had been perforated. Nonetheless it was a serious wound and removing the bullet required delicate surgery. This was successful but Stanton had already lost a huge amount of blood and was weak. His immune system couldn’t cope. Almost inevitably for a time before antibiotics, the wound became infected.

At some point or other during the confusion of his delirious dreams Stanton heard a doctor say, ‘He’s dying.’

STANTON’S CONDITION CONTINUED
to deteriorate over the next two weeks, during which he lay in his hospital bed either unconscious or delirious and on the edge of death. There were brief moments of lucidity when he was aware of doctors and nurses nearby. He knew that he was dying and he knew that he was being drugged to help with the pain. He had an idea that this was clouding his brain. It seemed to him that there was something he needed to tell those doctors about. Something he wanted them to fetch for him but he could not remember what it was.

It was during one of these moments of tormented dream-like consciousness that he opened his eyes and saw Bernadette Burdette.

She was talking to him. Talking and talking and talking. He loved listening to her voice even if he knew he was only dreaming it.

She said that she was sure he could pull through …

Oi’m sure yez’ll pull troo.

And she said she would stay with him and keep talking to him until he did.

He felt overwhelmed with gratitude. He felt that he was weeping. Weeping in his dreams. He wondered where Cassie was. Why wasn’t she sitting beside his bed too? Why was he only dreaming of Bernadette?

Perhaps it was just because she was so much more
talkative
.

‘The whole awful thing where the mob tried to lynch Rosa Luxemburg made it into the British papers,’ he dreamt he heard her saying, ‘and of course they were particularly interested in the story that a mysterious, tall, blond and fiendishly dishy Englishman had come to her aid, who had then paid the price for his chivalry by being shot in the street. Well, Hugh darling, you can imagine that my ears pricked up at that. After all, wasn’t I thinking about my
own
mysterious Englishman in Berlin and whether I’d ever see him again? And of course it was you! They’d found your papers on you so they had your name and they even published photos. The one from your papers, and a grainy flash photo of you standing on the podium outside SDP headquarters. I couldn’t believe it! You
do
get about, don’t you?’

The story went on. He couldn’t decide whether he’d heard it all at once or in bits. He certainly felt he’d heard it often, it seemed terribly familiar.

‘They had all that information and yet it seemed no record could be found of you either in Berlin or in Britain! Well, there wouldn’t be, would there? Bearing in mind your, ahem, what shall I say?
Profession
. The papers were appealing for anyone who knew you to come forward. Of course I don’t really
know
you … except, well, only in a rather
intimate
manner that couldn’t possibly be of any help in identifying you. And anyway I thought that perhaps they
wouldn’t
identify you because, let’s face it, you are a’ – she dipped her voice to a hoarse whisper – ‘
spy
. And so I felt the best thing to do was to come to you and see if I could help. Maybe even get you home. But I’m afraid you’re pretty ill, Hugh, and, well … they don’t really think you should be moved. Oh dear, I’ve told you this story twenty times and now I suppose I shall have to tell you again because I feel sure that talking might help …’

Stanton didn’t mind. He loved hearing her voice and hoped that she would keep talking until he died, when he could go to Cassie and tell her about his Irish friend, although of course he wouldn’t tell her everything … And yet there was that
thing
he needed to tell
someone
… something that needed fetching … but he couldn’t remember.

Once more his consciousness reconnected with Bernadette’s voice; she was holding his hand now, telling him about Rosa Luxemburg.

‘She came again this morning to see how you were,’ Bernadette was saying. ‘So brave of her, the streets really aren’t safe for her just now. She has a gang of bodyguards who never leave her side. Hugh, I can’t believe you told her about me! I nearly died when she said that you’d mentioned an Irish Suffragette who admired her! That was so sweet that you remembered. And telling her you saved her because of
me
. She actually thanked
me
for sending you to her in her hour of greatest need.
Rosa Luxemburg!
You can’t believe what that means to a girl like me, Hugh. Rosa is the most important woman in politics, even more than Mrs P. She’s overcome so much and inspired us all …’

Bernadette was squeezing his hand, probably too hard considering his rapidly fading strength, but somehow the firm touch of her skin on his seemed to give him a moment’s clarity. He opened his eyes and saw her mouth moving, that small mouth that had fascinated him so … and the strands of strawberry hair framing her bright green eyes.

For a second he was back on the train to Zagreb, the first time he saw her. Should he offer her a Manhattan?

No. Get back. Get back to the present. With a huge effort he struggled to return his mind to the hospital. Something was telling him this wasn’t a hallucination, that she really was beside him. If only he could remember what he wanted to tell her. Remember that thing he needed. There was
something
he needed.

‘Bernie,’ he whispered. ‘Bernie!’

‘Hugh!’ she gasped. ‘You’re here!’

‘No! No. Dying,’ he whispered, struggling to master his fevered thoughts, ‘dying. Listen to me, Bernie. You have to do
exactly
what I say because I shan’t be able to say it again because I’m going to die. Go to my apartment. The key is in my jacket. Find my bags … remember my bags?’

For a moment he lost his focus as a vision rose before his eyes of Bernadette, her face illuminated by the ghostly luminosity of a computer screen, levelling his pistol at him in a Vienna hotel room. He struggled to push away the memory and stay on message but now he couldn’t recall what he’d been saying.

‘Yes, yes, Hugh, your bags,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you want from your bag.’

Her voice brought him back. That was it. He remembered what he needed.

‘The smaller one. Open it. Again, key in jacket,’ he said, struggling to form the words. ‘In the bag there’s a pouch marked with a red cross. In that pouch are boxes of little plastic needles.’

‘Plastic? Sorry, what?’

‘Like glass … clear tubes with needles … for injections … get them. Stick one in my guts and push the plunger every twelve hours. Hide it, don’t show them … just do it, Bernie, do it.’

There he’d done it. He’d remembered … he could sleep now.

But she was still squeezing his hand.

‘Hugh! Hugh!’

He heard her voice speaking urgently. Was it over? Was she back?

‘Have you done it?’ he asked, drifting away.

‘No! No! Hugh … where is your apartment? You didn’t say. Where is your damned apartment?’

‘Mitte …’ he whispered. ‘Mitte.’

Then he was gone. Deep down into an unconsciousness where Bernadette could not follow. He left her far behind him in the light. He was in the dark now.

In a tunnel.
A bloody tunnel.
Who would have thought the old cliché was true? A dark tunnel with light ahead … and, yes, inevitably there was someone standing in the light at the end of it.