The Empire of Time Read online

  31

  If Hitler would not listen, then there was only one solution – they would destroy the weapon before it could be used. A direct assault was likely to be difficult and possibly dangerous; instead they made their investigations, then went back fifteen years and killed all of the scientists involved. The weapon would never be built.

  They were celebrating when the first of their men came back from up ahead. ‘It’s still there,’ he said. ‘Unchanged.’

  Seydlitz shook his head, for the first time conscious that this might not be as simple as he’d thought. When the second man didn’t return, they went back. The scientists were dead, but the weapon still existed, as if it was anchored to the epicentre, its existence guaranteed by that vast rupture in Space-Time up ahead.

  ‘It’s hopeless,’ one of his men – Ritter – said.

  Seydlitz turned and struck him. ‘Nothing’s hopeless! Remember how we were in Four-Oh? Remember how hopeless that seemed? But we defeated them, didn’t we?’

  Ritter touched his bloodied lip and nodded. There was no more talk of hopelessness.

  There had to be a way out – some way of changing it all. For a time his mind refused to see it, and even when it did he shook his head. It was far too drastic.

  Looking at his men Seydlitz knew this was something he would have to do alone. He could not ask one of them to do it for him. He would go back and kill Hitler. Kill him before he was ever born.

  32

  It was late in the season. An icy wind blew across the Waldviertel from Poland, a north-easterly that set up a fierce howling through the trees surrounding the village. Seydlitz had been walking most of the afternoon and it was growing dark as he came to the outskirts. It was a remote, uncultivated place, even for that year, and he shivered as he stood there, looking across at it in the twilight. Two dozen houses, a church, an inn, and at the back of all the forest, dark and primeval.

  Few travellers chose to come this way.

  He had been walking to the side of the track, avoiding the deeply rutted mud at the centre. Now, as he came into the broad, central street, he had to cross and recross, avoiding the huge puddles that had formed. The houses seemed well kept: sturdy, wooden buildings that served as barn and stable as well as home. On his left as he passed, in a space between two houses, a man was unharnessing a horse. He stared at Seydlitz openly as he passed – as if he were a thief – and watched him until the wall of the house obscured him. Even then he stepped out on to the street, clearly wanting to see where Seydlitz went. So it was here. Strangers were not welcome. The people here were simple, hard-working peasant stock, Czech in origin and suspicious by nature. They spoke a mixture of Czech and German, though neither with any grace, and talked of the capital, Vienna, as though it were in another country than their own.

  Seydlitz walked on, conscious of how odd he seemed, walking in out of nowhere to this godforsaken place. The village was Dollersheim. The year was 1836, and ahead of him – only metres away now – was the inn where he hoped to meet the man he’d come to see, Johann Georg Hiedler, an itinerant miller and the supposed grandfather of Adolf Hitler.

  Three open wooden steps led up to the inn door. He climbed them and tried the door. It was locked. He knocked and waited, turning to smile at the villagers who stood there watching him. There were five of them now, just standing there, staring at him, wondering who he was and what he wanted. He knocked again. A moment later there was the sound of a bolt being drawn back. The door swung open.

  The landlord was a short, balding man with a cast in one eye. He turned his head to one side as he looked at Seydlitz, then, in rusty German, asked him what he wanted.

  ‘A room, a meal, a beer.’ Seydlitz saw how the innkeeper looked him up and down, trying to estimate what kind of man he was, then he put out his hand.

  Seydlitz smiled and took two large coins from his leather purse. ‘Here,’ he said, placing them in his palm. He watched him test them with his teeth. Silver thalers. Far more than his upkeep would cost. Satisfied, the man nodded and stepped back, letting Seydlitz pass.

  Five hours later Seydlitz was sitting in the corner of the smoky room, his feet up on a stool, a pewter tankard in hand. Across the table from him Johann Hiedler was leaning forward, Seydlitz’s sketchbook open on his knees, his steiner forgotten for the while.

  ‘These are good,’ he grunted, looking up at Seydlitz, his vividly blue eyes smiling. He wiped at his moustache and then took another swig of his beer. ‘Very good indeed. You have real talent, Herr Friedrich.’

  He was stouter than his grandson, but the eyes, the mouth were the same. Not only that, but those gestures – which had grown so familiar to Seydlitz from those morning conferences at the Wolfensschanze – were here in embryo, as it were. The same movement of the hands above the paper, the same abrupt and yet sweeping motions that had so infuriated General Halder more than a century on. But this was a slovenly, complacent man – his whole posture spoke of a certain weakness and inattention. There was no sharpness to him, no intensity. Like a poor copy he sat there, bloated, double-chinned, more like a man of sixty than one of forty-four. Yet here was the man whose seed contained the destiny of Europe. Seydlitz looked at him and almost laughed.

  ‘They are all right,’ Seydlitz said, non-commitally. ‘In my studio in Dresden is my real work. Oil paintings. Landscapes mainly.’

  Hiedler nodded, watching Seydlitz carefully, impressed by his lies. The sketches had been done by one of Seydlitz’s men – copied directly from the notebooks of the German romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich. For his cover he had stolen the details of Friedrich’s life, but the man and his work were of no real interest. Like Wagner it was a tool – a means of getting what he wanted. It was enough for Seydlitz that they did their work: put Hiedler at his ease and explained Seydlitz’s clothes, his accent and his presence there in that remote place.

  ‘I drew when I was a younger man.’

  Hiedler closed the pad and sat back, his loose, fleshy lips forming a smile. ‘I believe I too could have been a painter, if circumstances had been different.’

  Seydlitz smiled and bowed his head slightly. In this too Hiedler was like his grandson, boastful and vain. But there the similarity ended, for his ambitions – his dreams – were small and uninspired.

  A woman came to their table, bringing a jug of ale. Seydlitz put his hand over the mouth of his cup.

  ‘No more for me, thanks. I must be up early tomorrow.’

  But Hiedler had no such qualms. He thrust his glass at the woman and waited while she poured.

  Seydlitz had not looked at her – was conscious of her only as a dull brown shape beside him – but then Hiedler spoke to her.

  ‘Will you be staying here tonight, Maria?’

  Seydlitz looked up. She had a plain, almost severe face, the nose small but sharp, the lips thin and pinched. Her long auburn hair had strands of grey in it and was tied back in a single plait. He knew at once who she was.

  She looked at Seydlitz before she answered Hiedler. ‘I am.’

  For a moment longer her eyes rested on him, and then, with a brief glance at Hiedler, she backed away. There was a faint colour in her cheeks.

  Hiedler leaned forward. ‘A good woman that Maria. Her father was an ogre. He beat her.’ Then, lowering his voice, ‘And maybe other things too, eh?’

  Seydlitz joined his laughter, liking him even less, but glad that it was so. It would make it so much easier to kill him.

  Later, as he climbed the stairs, he thought of the woman. It would be best if he killed her too, just to be sure. But now that he’d seen Hiedler he was certain in his mind that he was the father of her child. Or would have been. Kill him and it ended. There would be no reason for Roosevelt to use his weapon.

  33

  The bed was lumpy and uncomfortable, but Seydlitz slept soundly and woke with the dawn. For a while he lay beneath the rough blanket, thinking about the day ahead, then he smiled and sat up, drawing back the heavy
curtain.

  Outside it was bright but cold. Ice rimed the edges of the puddles and filled the rutted tracks. Faint flakes of snow drifted slowly from the sky. The first snow of winter.

  He dressed, then sat on the bed and checked his weapon thoroughly. It was a nice job, a Honig. Its eight, needle-fine chambers would fire a tightly focused beam. He placed it carefully in his shoulder holster, then buttoned his jacket.

  He greeted Hiedler, who was waiting for him in the room below, like an old friend. He found him at the table they had shared the evening before, an empty bowl in front of him. Seydlitz had arranged with him that he would take him to the sight of an old ruin in the woods. Hiedler had seen such a ruin sketched in his pad and had mentioned that there was one only a few miles from the village. Seeing his opportunity Seydlitz had asked him if he would take him there. Hiedler had agreed at once.

  ‘Did you sleep well, Herr Friedrich?’

  ‘Very well indeed, Herr Hiedler.’

  He waved aside the offer of breakfast. ‘I would as soon get going. If it’s as you say, then I would like to get a full day’s work.’

  Hiedler nodded. ‘I have prepared everything. Maria has packed us lunch.’

  ‘Good. Then I’ll get my coat and we’ll be off.’

  On the way Seydlitz talked to him, sounding him about his life, getting a good idea of the kind of man he was, but offering little about himself. Hiedler’s was a dull, uneventful life, lacking in even those small things that give a life its quality. Even so, he seemed content, even self-satisfied. If he had only been born into a better family …

  Seydlitz smiled and nodded, detesting him. Then, at last, he brought the talk round to Maria.

  ‘The woman at the inn. Is she the innkeeper’s wife?’

  Hiedler laughed and stopped, turning to face him. ‘Maria?’

  They were on a steep hillside, a dense wood to their right, pastures falling away to their left. It was darker now and the snow was falling heavier. Flakes rested in Hiedler’s dark, fine hair. ‘Kurth is a fool. And not just a fool.’ He laughed again, his wet mouth falling open as he tipped his head back. ‘He can’t get it up. You know?’ Again he laughed. ‘He had a wife, but she ran off. Maria helps him out now and then, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh?’ Seydlitz looked surprised ‘She’s not married, then?’

  Hiedler’s eyes narrowed. For a moment he seemed to glare at Seydlitz, then he relented, and turned his head to one side. A strange, lecherous light came into his eyes. ‘You want to know the truth?’

  Seydlitz frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  In answer Hiedler pulled off his right glove and thrust it in Seydlitz’s face. ‘That’s her,’ he said. ‘Her smell.’ It stank of her – was ripe with her most intimate scent. ‘All last night I had her. In the room next to Kurth’s.’ He grinned ferociously. ‘He lies there listening to us, unable to sleep for the sounds coming through his wall.’

  He laughed ferociously, then pulled his glove back on.

  Seydlitz had gone cold. This changed things. He had hoped to spare the woman, but now – now she too would have to die.

  ‘Isn’t that risky? I mean, what if she falls pregnant?’

  Hiedler shook his head. ‘There’s no danger of that. She’s much older than she seems. Thirty-nine, would you believe?’ He laughed. ‘No, I could fuck her until the seas froze over and there’d be no chance of her swelling out!’

  They walked on. Where the land dipped they went down, to the right, following an old path that was now grassed over. Through the trees Seydlitz could see the dark outline of a ruined building. Tall arches and soaring buttresses, the stone black against the snow that now lay over everything.

  Coming out from the trees, he stopped on a ledge of rock, looking down into the clearing. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, for the first time meaning what he said. ‘But what happened? Why did it fall?’

  Hiedler clambered down and then looked up at him. Behind him fallen stone littered the snow.

  ‘Impudence,’ he said. ‘They meant it to last a thousand years.’ Seydlitz shivered and turned his head slightly. The irony was discomfiting. So why did it fall? The thought returned more strongly. He began to climb down, feeling a sudden wrongness to things.

  He was halfway down when he heard the noise above him. He turned, one hand holding on to the outjutting slate, and looked up. Above him stood the woman. She was looking down at him and smiling. In her hand was a gun, a large-mouthed Spica.

  She had appeared from nowhere.

  He put his hand to his chest and jumped. Or tried to. Nothing at all. He was still standing there, the rocky outcrop cold through his glove, the woman above him.

  She laughed. ‘Poor boy,’ she said. ‘You poor, poor boy.’

  Behind him Hiedler also laughed, but it was not the foolish, self-complacent laughter of before. It was sharper now, more wicked.

  Seydlitz clambered down and faced him. The slackness had gone from Hiedler’s face now. With one hand he beckoned Seydlitz on, while in the other he held a Spica similar to the woman’s.

  Russians.

  ‘What have you done to me?’

  The Russian smiled. ‘We borrowed you for a time. While you were sleeping. Maria drugged you.’

  ‘And this?’ he indicated the ruins, the woods on all sides.

  ‘A game,’ the Russian said. ‘An entertainment. We’re filming all of this, you know. It will be a great success back home when we show it. The last stand of the Third Reich. Its final defeat.’ He chuckled, enjoying himself. ‘The look on your face was wonderful.’

  Seydlitz stared at him, not understanding.

  ‘I’ve seen this already. Heard myself say all this many times before. It’s an odd feeling, you know, being here, doing these things and saying these words after having seen them so many times.’

  Seydlitz was silent, trying to understand. They must have cut the focus from his chest. Cut it and healed it. Which meant that they had had him in their charge for months, maybe even years. And all the while he’d slept – or thought he’d slept – in Herr Kurth’s room. There was a sour taste in his mouth, a tightness in his stomach, but he wasn’t beaten yet.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said.

  ‘Have it your way.’

  Seydlitz circled him, watching the Spica, afraid that he would fire it before he had a chance to use his own weapon.

  ‘You gave yourself away,’ the Russian said. ‘Time after time you skimped. Only did half your work. Enough to get you by and no more. And you thought it would do.’ He sniffed his disgust. ‘You amateur, Seydlitz.’

  The Russian was silent a moment. Then, surprisingly, he sat down on one of the piles of stone and lowered his gun. ‘Like this,’ he said. ‘You didn’t stop to think why there should be a ruin here, in Austria. All the ruins are north, in Puritan Germany. Here the Reformation never happened. The Catholic monasteries were never sacked, never fell into ruin.’

  ‘So where are we?’

  He laughed. ‘Russia. And this – like the village – is all a sham. Convincing, but a sham for all that.’

  Seydlitz looked across at the woman. She still stood there on the ledge, but her gun was out of sight now. Seydlitz moved slowly to his right, closer to a low wall, keeping both of them in sight.

  ‘It was amusing, watching what you did. We learned much from you. That business in ’52, for instance. A bugger of a thing to happen, eh?’ The Russian slapped his thigh and laughed. ‘There you were, all the while warning Hitler against the dangers of provoking America, against a war on two fronts, quoting Mein Kampf at him, and all the time forgetting that there are no fronts in Time. No fronts at all.’

  Seydlitz drew the Honig. The Russian looked at it and smiled, while the woman actually laughed. He threw it down.

  ‘You understand, then, Herr Seydlitz?’

  Seydlitz nodded. ‘So what now? You know what happens. What do I do?’

  ‘You came here to kill me, didn’t you? Then, w
hen you’d done that, you were going to go back for the woman.’

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘Speak up!’

  Seydlitz took a deep breath, then wiped snow from his hair and brow. ‘Yes. So what is this? A trial?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  The woman was climbing down. She came across and stood there at the Russian’s side. She seemed tense suddenly, awkward.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  They went round past the towering, half-ruined chancel of the ersatz monastery, picking their way between vast chunks of fallen masonry. There, against the massive wall, stood a cottage. Light shone from its single window. Smoke rose from a hole in its roof.

  ‘There,’ the Russian said, pointing towards it. ‘Inside. The woman will join you in a while.’

  Seydlitz turned to look at him, but he had turned away and was talking to the woman now in Russian. Seydlitz hesitated, then did as he was told.

  Inside was a single large room, sparsely furnished. A peasant’s dwelling. A fire burned in a brick grate, but the walls were wood and wattle. It was a Slavic dwelling, primitive, inferior. He looked about it, feeling an aversion for its crudeness.

  As he stood there the woman entered. She glanced at him once, then closed the door and crossed the room. With her back to him she began to undress. When she was naked she slipped between the sheets of the bed and called to him.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because you must. Eventually. Oh, we’ve played this out thirty times and more, but you will. I know you will, because I’ve seen it.’

  Seydlitz shook his head. He understood none of this. What was it? One final humiliation? Did they think that he couldn’t get it up?

  She laughed softly. ‘You, Seydlitz, are dead. But in me you’ll live on. In my child.’

  ‘You’ve seen this?’ Seydlitz laughed. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘He’s tall, like you. A strong man. A leader like no other.’

  Seydlitz shivered. It was as if they knew his deepest, most treasured dream. He stared at her, his mouth open, shaking his head slowly.