The Empire of Time Read online

  Dr Todt, the Armaments Minister, had been on the list of traitors. This was a fabrication and ended Todt’s life ten months earlier than otherwise. In his place Hitler appointed Albert Speer. From the first Speer’s influence was marked. New factories were opened in the conquered Russian territories. Fuel dumps were established. New tracked equipment was hastily manufactured to designs Seydlitz provided. Winter clothing was stockpiled in warehouses close to the front. When the snows came this time they would find the German army well prepared.

  The fleet was moved south, from the Norwegian coast. Two divisions were spared to strengthen the Italian push on Egypt. Revolt was fermented in Iraq and in Egypt itself. The bombing of British cities stopped and all efforts returned to destroying their airfields. Each move strengthened Germany’s position and brought them one step closer to success.

  And all the while Seydlitz had his men moving back and forth through Time, reporting back to him on the progress of their machinations. Up ahead – in the time to come – things were slowly changing in their favour, but still the major thing remained the same: when the snows came the Russians would halt the German advance and throw them back. From that moment the war would be lost. Their actions – small as they were – had extended the war into the early months of 1947. Even so, defeat was inevitable.

  Early on Seydlitz had been forced to show them the ‘machine’. It was a fake, of course, primed with a few gobbets of information his men had prepared elsewhere, but its focus was real enough. Seydlitz told them there were two such machines, focusing on the future. The other was somewhere in Spain, hidden where they would never find it. That was not liked, but it was understood. Hitler even smiled when Seydlitz told him.

  ‘You are a cautious man,’ he said.

  Seydlitz nodded. More cautious than he knew.

  The big changes came in August. Instead of sending the Centre Army south, Hitler ordered General Bock to press on to Moscow. On the seventeenth there was a major engagement thirty kilometres south-west of the Russian capital, and two days later Guderian swept into the city. There followed a week of hand-to-hand and street-by-street fighting. But by 28 August Moscow had been taken. Bock dug in, then sent Guderian and Hoth, his two Panzer commanders, north to help the attack on Leningrad.

  On 30 August Seydlitz accompanied Hitler on his first visit to Moscow. There, in the Kremlin, Hitler took a march past of his triumphant army, standing where Stalin himself had stood only four months earlier.

  Stalin had fled, but he had not got far. Seydlitz’s men had traced him and found him, and in a small village eighty kilometres east of Moscow they ambushed him. On the morning of 2 September, they woke Hitler at five and presented him with the body.

  What did the future look like after this? Moscow and Stalin had both fallen. They had cut the head from the Russian bear, but would the bear fall? Up ahead they saw the counter-attack, led by Zhukov. There was still the possibility of failure. But then, in mid-September, Leningrad fell and Zhukov himself was taken.

  For Seydlitz these were heady days, and while they unfolded there was a kind of camaraderie between Hitler and himself. But in the aftermath of Leningrad, as in the north they dug in and looked to the south for further victories, a sour note slowly crept in.

  Among the small but elite group surrounding Hitler – those who knew Seydlitz’s role in events – things had changed. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, the power base had shifted. Goebbels was closest to Seydlitz, perhaps, but there were others who looked to him first and Hitler after for their lead. Goering was effusive in his praise, while Himmler, ever the follower and never an innovator, balanced precariously between obedience to the Führer and deference to Seydlitz.

  For all that he did to defuse this situation – for all his humility, self-deprecation and pampering of Hitler’s monomaniacal ego – Seydlitz could not wholly deflect Hitler’s jealousy and suspicion. Memories of what Hitler had done to Strasser and Rohm in 1934 haunted him, not because he feared for his own life, but because his death might mean the failure of the whole scheme. Seydlitz had always been a rival, and though he might claim – and rightly – that such plans were Hitler’s alone, espoused as early as 1924 in Mein Kampf, Hitler only had to look about him to see what they truly thought. Even Bormann, the most loyal of his acolytes and his private secretary, looked on Seydlitz as a saviour.

  Up ahead things had improved beyond recognition. The East was secure. Continental Europe was Hitler’s. Britain was a satellite. The Middle East was steadily being conquered. But in the present things were coming to a head. What if Hitler decided Seydlitz was dispensible?

  On the evening that Kiev fell – the first evening of snow, in late October – he had his first argument with Hitler. They were in a field camp outside the city. News had just come of the surrender of a Russian army of almost one and a half million men. This, even more than Moscow, was the height of their success. This was victory – the capitulation of the last Russian forces west of the Urals. As Seydlitz heard the sober words of the report he felt both joy and sadness. The Russians had been beaten – the age-old threat finally defeated – but up ahead, in 2999, Berlin, his Berlin, had, he was certain, ceased to be. His exile was complete. This now was home.

  He turned to Hitler and looked at him. Hitler was staring down at his hands, which were clenched one over the other. There was no sign of surprise, certainly nothing of the elation one might have expected him to feel at such a moment. Instead there was the merest nod of his head. Then he looked up.

  ‘So it’s done,’ he said. ‘Just as you said, Herr Seydlitz.’

  Seydlitz did not move. Hitler’s eyes seemed to hold him there, intense, his anger and hatred suddenly so raw, so naked, that Seydlitz knew he had come to a decision.

  ‘You have done it all,’ Seydlitz said, letting nothing show in his face. ‘You have done more than any man has ever done. More than Frederick. More than Napoleon. More than Alexander or Caesar.’

  But they were empty, fatuous words, for all their truth, and Hitler knew it as well as he.

  Hitler turned away. ‘I am tired, Herr Seydlitz. You will excuse me?’

  It was so odd a thing for him to say that Seydlitz knew he would need to be careful that night. Unless he acted he would be dead before morning.

  That evening he jumped forward to the world of 2999, and jumped back almost instantly.

  He had jumped on to a platform, without walls, suspended in the darkness of space. Beneath him – a hundred miles below where he stood suspended – lay a planet. Earth? A lifeless world, anyway. A smooth, iced globe surrounded by a thin, rarefied atmosphere.

  Afterwards, as he lay there on the floor of his tent, gasping for breath, his limbs trembled, remembering what he had seen. His throat was raw from the single breath he had taken, his eyes felt burned, and his skin seemed to prickle with an unnatural heat.

  What had happened? What in Urd’s name had happened?

  He had only moments to speculate. Even as he lay there two men came into the tent and stood over him. He knew them both – knew why they were there. Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Each held a pistol.

  He tried to speak, but the bitter cold had done something to his vocal chords. Instead, through stinging, watery eyes, Seydlitz looked up at them and smiled.

  Tell Hitler this, he thought. And jumped.

  28

  Hecht smiles then switches off the screen. Above him, the Tree of Worlds glows brightly in the shadowed room.

  ‘It goes well.’

  ‘But what he saw …’

  ‘Don’t worry, Otto. It isn’t finished yet. The days ahead …’ He falls silent, as if he’s said too much.

  I meet his eyes. ‘I thought it might—’

  ‘Become reality? No, Otto. Look.’

  I look. The great trunk of the World Tree glows a crystalline white, like a thick column of ice-cold water falling, perpetually falling from the dark into the dark. About that trunk, a cluster of smaller, finer threads
branch off, like tiny colourful lightning bolts, snaking out then up, bending back upon themselves until they almost reach the crown. Almost … for about the great Tree’s crown is a tiny circle of darkness. Not a single thread crosses that dark ring, nor can it, for if one did …

  I imagine it. Imagine reality becoming something other than itself.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Be patient, Otto. All will come clear.’

  He reaches over, hands me the latest report.

  I smile. Seydlitz might think us all dead, but he has not forgotten his duty. He has not neglected his reports.

  ‘He’s still there, then?’

  Hecht nods, but says no more. And so I stand and, leaving that place, return to my room, my head buzzing, wondering if, when the change finally comes, I will remember anything of this.

  29

  When the snows came they were ready. From the safety of a room in Heidelberg, Seydlitz read the reports in the newspapers. The counter-offensive by the Siberian divisions was turned back and routed at Kolomna, ninety kilometres south-east of Moscow. Hitler’s armies – warmly clothed, well-fed and housed, their tracked vehicles coping with the heavy snows – held the line and in many places extended it. Saratov, on the Volga, fell in the last week of December, Stalingrad a month later. When Gorki fell in the second week of February the war in the East was finally and irrevocably decided. The Russian generals capitulated at Kazan, ceding all of the land west of the Volga to Germany. Hitler was pictured on the newsreels, standing on the banks of the Volga, looking outwards and smiling. Behind him Goering and the generals looked on, smug, knowing they had achieved what Napoleon had only dreamed of doing.

  That was the public face of things. Other events were already in motion. Garrisons were being built all along the Volga and throughout the conquered territory. Himmler’s extermination of the Slav intelligentsia and the Jews was under way. Already many divisions were heading back west, preparing for a new campaign.

  Seydlitz’s small dream of ruling Russian Europe was dead. Nonetheless, he rejoiced that the bigger Dream lived on, applauding each triumph of the Reich. When Japan finally attacked the USA at Pearl Harbor on the last day of February 1942, he held his breath, but Hitler, true to his plan, held back from a declaration of war and surprised Roosevelt with an open letter of sympathy and friendship – a letter much quoted in the American press, who played down its hypocritical condemnation of his former allies. Audaciously, Hitler offered the Americans five of his best divisions to wage war against the Japanese. It was his own touch, and played cleverly upon the racial antagonisms newly awakened in the American nation. Roosevelt refused, but his refusal won him few friends, except in Britain.

  For Seydlitz the winter was a hard one, not because he was materially uncomfortable – he had stashed clothes, papers, and sufficient money in a wood near Mosbach – but because of that glimpse he’d had of the world to come. Settling in Heidelberg, he quickly re-established contact with his men, meeting them at the buried focus – effectively a miniaturised platform – just outside the town. In the months that followed, while the Reich grew and prospered, they began their tentative exploration of the years ahead.

  In the short term, all seemed well. The policy of pacifying America worked beautifully. While they trounced the Japanese in the Pacific arena, Hitler invaded Britain, and, after a bitter, frustrating campaign, finally took it. By the end of 1943, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Sweden had all been assimilated peacefully into the Reich. Then, in the summer of 1944, Hitler attacked and conquered Spain in eight short weeks. Turkey followed before the year was out.

  Europe was his. The Middle East was next. Then Africa. On 20 April 1949 – his sixtieth birthday – he proclaimed himself Emperor of Greater Germany, holding the coronation ceremony in his new capital of Linz, amid Wagnerian pageantry that made the old Nuremberg rallies look tame.

  Then, somewhere in the middle of 1952, there was a hole in Space-Time itself. A vast, unfathomable maelstrom in the fabric of reality. And after? – nothing but darkness, ice, the falling snow.

  They lost three men tracing the edges of the flaw, but estimated its epicentre at or around the middle of June 1952. Somewhere there it had happened, whatever it was, and its effects had distorted Time both on and back. There was no way to tell what had happened: no way to anticipate the immediate cause. Even so, something had caused it, and Seydlitz knew that if they looked hard enough they would find it.

  At first he suspected treachery. Irrationally, Seydlitz believed it was the Russians, pre-empting them, outguessing them maybe in a game through Time. But when he calmed down, he realised how ridiculous that was. They had seen ahead – seen the total, irreversible defeat of Russia, even before Seydlitz’s experience at Kiev. It had to be Hitler.

  They began their search at the end of 1944, gathering information from throughout the Reich. Slowly, painstakingly, they combed through 1945, looking for something that might provide an insight into what had happened in ’52. Seydlitz was looking particularly for developments in weaponry – for something big enough and advanced enough to cause what they had seen up ahead. Only later, when it grew clearer what it was, did he realise that he had been looking in the wrong direction.

  It wasn’t Hitler after all. It was Roosevelt.

  30

  It was early morning – sometime after two – and Paul Joseph Goebbels was alone in his bedroom, seated before the dressing-table mirror, removing his tie. His evening jacket lay on the bed behind him and as his fingers reached to unfasten the stud at the back of his neck, he yawned.

  Seydlitz appeared silently, into the shadows at the back of the long, high-ceilinged room. He stood there a while, out of sight, watching Goebbels, then stepped out into the light, and stood there directly behind Goebbels, where he could see him in the mirror.

  Seydlitz watched his face, saw him start, his eyes widening further as he recognised who it was. That moment’s naked fear turned into something more complex, more calculated. Goebbels turned and faced Seydlitz, looking down at his hands, finding them empty.

  ‘Max?’

  ‘How are you, Paul?’

  Goebbels lowered his eyes a moment, then looked back at him ‘Things go well enough, Max.’

  He could sense Goebbels’ suspicion, his uncertainty. They were almost tangible. But behind them was something else. A warmth, a degree of respect that remained intact. Slowly he smiled. ‘Where did you go, Max? Where have you been?’

  ‘Here and there. Is the Führer well?’

  The smile tightened. ‘In good health.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘I have orders to kill you if I see you. We all have.’

  Seydlitz nodded. ‘I understand. There is only one Führer, eh?’

  Goebbels looked at him sadly. ‘I liked you, Max. I suppose I still like you, but …’ He shrugged.

  Goebbels was unarmed, but there were guards outside the door. He had only to call out. Even so, he waited, knowing that Seydlitz must have a good reason for coming to him.

  ‘You must warn the Führer. Tell him not to antagonise the Americans. He must wait before he presses them on the Jewish question.’

  ‘Why?’

  The tie still hung loose about Goebbels’ neck. His dark hair, slicked back from the forehead, shone in the lamplight.

  ‘They have a secret weapon. Unimaginably powerful. Something we cannot fight. So powerful, in fact, that they do not know how harmful it is themselves.’

  Seydlitz shuddered, thinking of the hole in Space-Time only three years in the future.

  Goebbels looked away, then shook his head. ‘It may be so, Max, but I can’t help you.’

  ‘What do you mean? This is important, Paul. If they use it – and they will – it will mean the end not just of the Reich, but of mankind!’

  Goebbels laughed. ‘Tell that to Hitler, Max. Germany is mankind, remember?’

  There was a sourness in him Seydlitz had never seen before.

  ‘What’s happened, P
aul?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he answered, but his expression said the opposite. ‘Just that Hitler wouldn’t listen even if I told him. He hears nothing I say these days. He—’ Goebbels looked away, as if in sudden pain at the thought of it, then continued. ‘He remains loyal. I am still, outwardly, Minister of Propaganda. But I have no influence with him. You understand, Max?’

  ‘Why?’

  Goebbels looked at him and smiled sadly. ‘Because I liked you, Max. And because I was the one who brought you to him.’

  Seydlitz went cold, understanding suddenly what he should have known before. He had been the great rival to Hitler, and all those that liked him were therefore traitors.

  ‘I’m only alive, I think, because he saw that film of me. At least, of my corpse. The thought that I had stayed with him when all the others were gone. That I was willing to die with him and for him.’

  ‘Then there’s no hope.’

  Goebbels was silent for a time, staring down at his hands, then he looked up again. ‘You’ve seen this weapon used?’

  ‘Yes,’ he lied.

  Strangely, Goebbels laughed. ‘You know, when we took Spain, Hitler had them scour the country for the other machine. The one we had – your one – never worked again after Kiev.’

  ‘It never worked anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean? The documents. The films – they were all false?’

  ‘No. They were real enough. But they didn’t come from the machine.’

  Goebbels was looking at Seydlitz oddly now.

  ‘You see, I’ve not been looking at the future at all. I’ve been studying the past …’ And, putting his hand to his chest, Seydlitz disappeared.