The Empire of Time Read online

  I stare at Freisler a moment, trying to understand him; wondering if I’ve got him wrong. Then, with a small dismissive shrug, he goes over and takes a book down from the shelf. As he turns back, he glances at me. ‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘All I’ve got to say.’

  ‘Ah. Only I thought …’

  But it doesn’t matter what I was thinking. Freisler has said his piece and – in a manner reminiscent of Hecht – he has dismissed me. But maybe that too is part of his game: to remind me that he’s closer to the centre of things than I am, however it might seem.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, as if he’s suddenly remembered. ‘Your friend Ernst was asking after you. Wanted to know if you had an answer.’

  Do I imagine the cold smile that flickers across his lips, or is he really such a bastard as to know already and enjoy making a taunt of it?

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, emphasising the word. ‘And thanks for the warning. I’ll sleep on it.’

  17

  Ernst is in my room when I get back, but one glance at me tells him more than he wants to know.

  ‘Hecht said no, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. He feels you aren’t ready yet.’

  Ernst slumps down into the chair. ‘Shit!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know. Only it’s so unfair.’

  I don’t want to argue, so I change the subject. ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve just been speaking to.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Freisler.’

  ‘Freisler? That bastard!’

  ‘Oh come. He’s not the friendliest of men, but—’

  ‘But what? Those eyes of his, the heavy lids, it’s like he’s shielding his soul. Preventing you from looking in and seeing what a vacuous bastard he truly is. They say he does all of Hecht’s dirty work.’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘Sure. But he doesn’t have to like it so much, and it doesn’t mean I have to like him.’ Ernst stands, agitated now. ‘So what did the Jagdhund say?’

  I smile at my old friend’s relentlessness. ‘He says he has a feeling – an instinct – about Seydlitz. He thinks we should watch him carefully. Oh, and he thinks that maybe the Russians have singled him out. They were very interested, it seems.’

  Ernst nods thoughtfully. He knows what it’s like to have the Russians single you out.

  ‘You should keep an eye.’

  ‘I shall.’

  ‘But right now …’ Ernst grins. ‘Right now I could do with a drink.’

  18

  Ernst stares at me, his eyes gleaming. ‘So … when will the first report come back?’

  ‘Within the hour. That is, if Hecht isn’t studying it right now.’

  ‘Ah.’ Ernst looks thoughtful. He strokes his close-shaven chin, then shakes his dark unruly mop of hair. I know him so well that I can tell there’s something he wants to say – something he maybe wants to ask – but he doesn’t quite know how.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s … nothing.’

  ‘No?’ But I leave it. Ernst is like that. He takes his time coming to the point. There’s nothing rash about him, nothing ill-considered.

  We’re in the North Bar. Not that it’s north. Direction is arbitrary here in the Nichtraum. Yet we need a sense of it, and so where we sit, on a balcony overlooking the pool, is deemed the polar north.

  ‘I hear Klaus is back,’ I say, filling the sudden silence. ‘How’s he getting on? And how’s our old friend Nevsky?’

  Klaus Kubhart is Ernst’s replacement back in thirteenth-century Russia, his protégé. Ernst trained him up, taught him everything he knew about the era, then sent him back.

  ‘Klaus is fine,’ Ernst answers, wiping froth from his upper lip. ‘He’s doing well. As for Nevsky … he’s just as foul-mouthed and gargantuanly conceited as when you last met him.’

  I take a long sip of my beer. So it is with heroes. Theirs and ours. Some are genuine, others painted so to suit the purposes of history. But Nevsky is one of the worst I’ve come across. To the Russians he’s a demi-god, the saviour of their nation from the Swedes and the Teuton Knights, but then they’ve never met the man in person, were never forced to spend an evening in his odious company.

  Of such men and women is the Chain of Time compounded. If there’s a human type, then that type has been a king, their faults, like their virtues, exaggerated by the power they wield. I have seen them all: priests and sadists, pedants and visionaries, the lazy and the psychotic, adventurers, hedonists and nihilists, the corrupt and the cynical, the feeble-minded and the iron-willed, gluttons and simpletons, schemers and cowards and oh so many more.

  To find the weakest among them is our task, for through such men might history be changed.

  Yet history is not just the tales of individual men; there are tides and currents, and while the strong man might swim and the weak man flounder, it is usually to men of little consequence – your average swimmer – that Chance hands the poisoned chalice of kingship.

  Of this and other things Ernst and I converse, as we so often do. It’s nothing new, yet it’s good simply to be there with him. Silence would suit as well, for we have been through much together, Ernst and I. We owe each other lives.

  ‘So when is Klaus going back?’

  Ernst looks away, embarrassed by the question. Yet he must have known it would come. ‘Later,’ he says quietly. ‘He came back to pick something up.’

  ‘Ah.’ But I don’t press him. He knows why I asked. Knows why I want to go there with him, only …

  Only there are some things we simply cannot talk about.

  ‘How’s Frederick?’ he asks, and I laugh. It’s been some while since I’ve been back in ‘my era’.

  ‘Did I tell you? I had to stop some bastard taking a pot-shot at him.’

  Ernst grins. ‘A Russian?’

  ‘No. An Austrian, damn it!’

  We both laugh. Time is the strangest thing: just when you think it’s set, so it flows and alters. Small, subtle alterations.

  Ernst finishes his drink, then stands. ‘I’d better go. I have to see Klaus before he returns.’

  I look up, overeager. ‘You want me to tag along?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No, Otto.’ Then, smiling: ‘I’d best go now.’

  ‘Then take care. And when you need me …’

  ‘I know.’ And he turns and leaves, quickly, before he can change his mind.

  19

  I’m in my room, alone, lying on my pallet bed, reading Lermentov’s A Hero of Our Time when a messenger comes from Hecht.

  It’s Leni, one of the younger couriers.

  She hands me an envelope, then leaves.

  I peel it open.

  Inside is a wafer-thin file and a handwritten note.

  Normally Hecht would have sent a typescript – it’s not his practice to let us see our fellow agents reporting to camera – but this time he clearly wants me to. Which implies that he wants me to observe Seydlitz himself, not just what he says.

  I walk over to my desk and switch on the lamp, then pour myself a drink and settle to the report, slipping the tiny slither of plastic into the viewing slot.

  At once Seydlitz appears on screen. His is sitting in a chalet-style room, sparsely furnished, with a view of forest through the open window behind him. He’s wearing evening dress, a high white collar and a black bow-tie, loosened now, so that he looks very much of that time. Indeed, with his ash-blond hair and grey eyes, his square jaw and perfect bone structure, he looks the perfect Aryan – a regular young god – but has he fooled them? Have they accepted him at face value?

  One last detail. On the table, to the left of the picture, is a packet of cigarettes, a blue packet with the name prominently displayed. Beside them is a small cream-covered flip-book of matches – the kind restaurants give to their customers. I smile. Whether it’s stress, or just part of the disguise, Seydlitz has become a smoker.

  But before he’s had a chance to say a word – even as he
takes a breath, ready to launch in – I freeze the image.

  You see, for a moment I think I must have glimpsed something – a shadow, maybe, or the hint of someone else in the room with him – yet tracking back I find nothing. Seydlitz is alone.

  I let it run.

  Seydlitz speaks in a hushed yet awed voice:

  ‘Time hangs in the balance. I know that. Earlier, as I walked down the corridor, guards in dress black saluted me. Perhaps they sensed the urgency of my mission. If I failed to convince the Führer … But I could not think of failure. I had to succeed.’

  He glances aside, as if getting things clear in his head, then resumes:

  ‘When I entered the room, Hitler was standing with his back to me, still mulling things over. He’d read all the reports and knew now that what I told him at our last meeting had come about. Despite which, well, finally he turned. His vividly blue eyes searched my face for some final sign that this was all a trick, some elaborate form of treachery.’

  Seydlitz shakes his head.

  ‘It’s so intense, that gaze of his, so … penetrating. Yet I don’t think he saw anything. “It is true, then, Herr Seydlitz,” he said. “Does it all come to nothing?”

  ‘“Yes,” I said.

  ‘He stared at me a moment longer, then, abruptly, he looked away, smashing his right fist into his left palm.

  ‘“There must be something!” he said. “Some way of changing it.” He turned back to me, his eyes wide, filled with a strange, unfathomable pain. “There has to be!”’

  Seydlitz moves back slightly, the momentary intensity draining from him. There is the faintest smile, quickly gone. He is enjoying this.

  ‘We were not alone, you understand. I mean, I’d scarcely been aware of the others, but they were there, standing against the walls to either side, like shadows, listening and looking on, saying nothing. Himmler and Rosenberg. Ribbentrop and Ley, Goebbels, Bormann, Speer, Goering and Funk. Hess, of course, had fled a month back, just as I’d said he would.’

  He reaches up and removes his tie, then undoes the top two buttons of his shirt. He’s sweating now.

  ‘Hitler was still watching me, the same intensity in his eyes, his head slightly lowered. I could see that this frightened him, perhaps more than death itself. Yes, and he’d changed since our last encounter. He looked at me now as if he saw the figure of Fate itself come down the years to reveal to him the futility of his endeavours.’

  And with good reason, I think, noting the date of the report. It was the evening of 21 June 1941. In the morning German troops would cross the border and invade Russia. Operation Barbarossa would begin.

  Seydlitz clears his throat.

  ‘I told him: “Already things are changing. Today, for instance, you, my Führer, wrote a letter to Mussolini. In it you said to him: ‘Whatever may come now, Duce, our situation cannot become worse as a result of this step. It can only improve.’”

  ‘I saw the effect that had on him. He blanched and his mouth fell open. Every tiny little thing was adding to my authority; each tiny revelation undermining his certainty. In time he would be mine entirely – dependent on me.’

  I smile. Seydlitz is a big man, broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, yet sharp, like a figure from the Nibelungen. I could imagine the scene, Seydlitz’s strong, resonant, orator’s voice filling the low, raftered room of the Wolfensschanze, while outside the summer day was dying and the gloom of the East Prussian forest pressed closer, making the room seem cold despite the fire.

  In my mind’s eye I could picture Hitler there, in the dead of winter, alone in that room, studying the maps. They would tell a different story then.

  Seydlitz smiles.

  ‘I was hard, unrelenting. “But it will not improve,” I said. “Though you come to the gates of Moscow itself, you shall not enter them, for when the snows come, they will find you naked.”

  ‘As I said, it was harsh. But Hitler responded in kind. He faced me squarely, his chin raised, defiant yet in the face of Fate. “What do you want?”

  ‘“For myself,” I said, “nothing, but for my people … I want everything. For them I want the future.”

  ‘Hitler laughed sharply. “The future?” Even so, I saw it had touched a chord. “And who are your people?” he asked.’

  Again Seydlitz pauses. That last word – Volk in the tongue he would have been speaking in the ancient German of that time – was heavily, almost ironically emphasised. This was clearly important to Hitler. He was alluding, of course, to his concept of the Herrenvolk, the chosen race not of God but of the evolutionary universe itself.

  Seydlitz reaches out and takes a cigarette from the pack and, striking a match, lights up. He takes a long draw on it, exhaling the smoke in a long, satisfied breath before continuing.

  ‘“The Germans,” I said. “The Volk.”

  ‘It was clearly what he wanted to hear. He stared once more, searching my eyes, and then he nodded. His hand made a small gesture of acceptance. I had him.’

  Seydlitz’s hand makes the gesture. He looks away, grinning now, clearly pleased with himself, then faces the camera again. Smoke from the cigarette trails up between his fingers.

  ‘“On the evening of October sixth,” I said, “the first snows will fall. General Guderian will see it and notify you. But long before then conditions will have made your advance difficult, and by the second of December, the advance will falter outside Moscow. Some of the Fifty-Eighth Division will reach the outskirts, but they will fall back.”

  ‘I looked from Hitler to Goering. This much was reiteration, but I could see how much it impressed them.

  ‘“Then,” I said, “on the sixth of December the Russians will counter-attack. On the seventh the Japanese will attack the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. These two events will determine the whole course of the war.”’

  Seydlitz draws on the cigarette. His eyes slip to the side as he remembers.

  ‘Hitler was watching me very closely by this stage, glaring at me, his whole will opposed to what I was saying. I could see from the tension in his body that he would have liked to have struck me or flown into a rage. Only he believed me. It was frustration that made him clench his fists. What I’d shown him could not be disbelieved. There was no way of knowing – of anticipating – such things.

  ‘“Your machine,” Hitler said, stepping closer. “What it sees … is it fixed?”

  ‘“No,” I said. “It can be altered.”

  ‘With that, his whole expression changed. A smile came to his lips. It transformed the intensity of his stare into something almost demonic.

  ‘He fixed me with that stare. “And you can change it?”’

  Seydlitz looks down at the cigarette thoughtfully.

  ‘“I know how to act,” I said. “How to influence the outcome of events.”

  ‘Hitler seemed pleased. “You’ve done this?” he asked.

  ‘“Yes,” I said.’

  Only it’s a lie. Seydlitz doesn’t know for certain how to change events. None of us do, when it comes right down to it. But he can try. He is there to try.

  He leans in closer, relishing his role as narrator:

  ‘“We have made plans,” I told him. “Changes of emphasis. Innovations. Tactical variations. Things that will have their effect.”

  ‘Hitler stared back at me, his suspicion momentarily naked. Then he smiled. “And what is your role in this, Herr Seydlitz?”

  ‘I laughed. The time for modesty was past. They understand few things, these early men, but they understand them well. Greed. Power. The survival of the strong.

  ‘“I want to govern Russia,” I said. “I want the German Ukraine. In return I will help bring you victory. I will advise you …”’

  Seydlitz pauses, remembering something:

  ‘I saw how Goering looked at me, then away. That’s one man I’ll have to deal with in the not-so-distant future. But Hitler …

  ‘He stood there, looking at me pensively, and then he smiled –
a smile of recognition and understanding. “And when the snows come?”

  ‘I met his eyes. “This time we shall be ready for them.”’

  20

  ‘Well?’ Hecht asks. ‘You’ve seen his body language. What do you think?’

  I tear my gaze away from the shining image of the Tree and meet Hecht’s eyes.

  ‘I think he’s enjoying himself. He seemed relaxed. Confident. Why? Do you still have doubts?’

  ‘No …’

  But Freisler does, I finish for him in my head.

  ‘He’s doing well,’ I say. ‘Much better than I thought, if you want the truth.’

  Hecht smiles. ‘He’s very capable.’

  ‘Yes …’

  There’s a moment’s silence, then Hecht nods. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You can go now.’

  I stand.

  ‘But Otto …’

  ‘Yes, Meister?’

  ‘Keep an eye. I’ll send you the summaries.’

  21

  Seydlitz had gone back further to hatch his scheme, back beyond the beginning of that century. Officials had been bribed with freshly minted gold, and perfectly forged documents were entered into the records of the US government: nationalisation papers; certificates of marriage and birth. All this to establish his team’s credentials – the ‘reality’ of their existence. In the Twenties they obtained passports, travelled, met those who, later, they would need to meet again. And so on through the Thirties, stretching their group existence thin – sufficient to create the fiction; enough to satisfy the prying eyes of Himmler’s agents when, eventually, they came to look.

  And so Seydlitz was twice-born in the records of this world; once in the Indiana of 1896, and again in the Berlin of 2963. What vast gulfs separated those times. Otto, studying the files, knew how it felt. When Seydlitz walked the streets of Columbus, Indiana, back in those distant days of his first birth, he no doubt found it exhilarating simply to stroll beneath an open sky on a spring day, the sun on his bare arms. Like heaven.

  He entered Germany through neutral Sweden in the autumn of 1940. France had fallen by then. Hitler was in the ascendant. Russia and the United States had yet to enter the arena. Great Britain was alone in holding out against the Führer. In such circumstances his mission seemed possessed of little attraction. Why should Hitler listen? What could Seydlitz offer that destiny – in Hitler’s mind – had not already granted him?