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  ‘So,’ Wallace continued, ‘there were rumours that Hitler had plans to invade Russia next. He was certainly preparing something. I saw intelligence reports coming in for the president that the Germans were massing tanks and infantry in the east. Then, all of a sudden, it’s like Hitler had a complete change of heart.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, he decided not to invade Russia. In the early summer of 1941 the Germans and Russians, out of the blue, signed a peace treaty. And that was the very same year that Paul Kramer came to public attention as Hitler’s deputy. That was an incredible and very sudden change of heart. Because it was well known that Hitler despised the Russians, Stalin, communists. We all thought they were the next on his hit list.’

  ‘Do you think it was Kramer who changed his mind?’

  Wallace nodded. ‘Yes… yes, absolutely. I think Kramer had Hitler’s complete attention from the very first moment they met; he became his closest adviser, his deputy. And then three years later that sly dog Kramer kicked that crazy old lunatic Hitler out of power.’

  Liam looked at Wallace. ‘See, where I’ve come from – the future, the story I was told is different. This Hitler fella stayed in power and he went and lost that world war. Died in a bunker, if I recall correctly. Took his own life, I think. No mention of a Kramer.’

  Wallace looked at him incredulously. ‘And you’re saying in your history books there’s no Paul Kramer?’

  Liam nodded. ‘As far as I know.’

  Wallace stared at him, struggling to believe such craziness. ‘Good God, if only that were so,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘The world has watched that man with bated breath. He’s never put a foot wrong. He’s a genius and a madman. We’ve watched his empire grow stronger and stronger, his military technology become so much better than ours. An ever-increasing threat to America over the last fifteen years.’

  Wallace puffed air into his cold hands. ‘But we thought – we hoped – he’d leave us alone over here. There was a hope that Kramer was finally ready to sign a truce between the Greater Reich and America. That the cold war between us was over.’ Wallace sighed. ‘Turns out we were fooled.’

  Liam watched a couple of armed guards patrol the outside of the perimeter fence nearby, their black uniforms and death’s-head insignia covered by thick winter capes.

  Kramer? Is it him? Is he from the future?

  Liam shivered inside his blanket. ‘Listen, it’s just possible this Kramer is someone like me… another time traveller.’

  Wallace laughed. ‘Look, your story is getting too far-fetched, kid. Even for me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m quite serious.’

  Wallace made a face. ‘Back there in the White House, I thought you and your buddy were maybe Secret Service guys. That maybe there was something special or secret about you two. Now –’ he shook his head – ‘now… I’m sorry, I’m just thinking you’re some crazy kid with a little too much imagination.’

  ‘I’m telling you, time travel is possible.’

  ‘Then, you know what? Why don’t you go make a time machine and kill Kramer all by yourself?’ Wallace scoffed. He looked like he’d finally had enough of Liam’s crazy story.

  Liam sighed. ‘I’m just a dumb ship’s steward. Or at least I was. Anyway, even if I had the brains to actually make a time machine, I’d need to know where and when to go… to the very first moment Kramer entered your history.’

  Wallace shook his head. ‘Well, everyone knows that – except you, I suppose.’

  ‘Uh? What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s an account of Hitler’s very first encounter with him. It’s in Hitler’s second autobiography, Mein Sieg… My Victory, the one he published in 1944, just before Kramer ousted him.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was April 1941. It’s a well-known encounter. He describes Kramer as a messenger from God, an angel. Divine intervention, he called it. In his book he tells how Kramer arrived in the dark of a wintry night at the notorious Eagle’s Nest. The night of the fifteenth of April, if my memory serves me well.’

  Liam felt his heart pounding.

  Oh my… that could be it. The time and place we should have gone to.

  Wallace turned to go, then stopped. His gaunt face smiled, teeth showing through his dark beard. ‘I guess I’d like to believe in your story, kid, that there’s a better history out there somewhere.’

  ‘There is!’

  He laughed, puffing a cloud of breath before him. ‘Well, let me know when you find it, eh?’

  Liam watched the man turn and go, feet crunching across the snow, huddled in his own grey blanket. A bleak figure. As Wallace merged with the other prisoners, huddling for warmth, Liam’s mind turned to a possibility, a ray of hope. If he could only get that information to Foster and Maddy… that particular place and date.

  Perhaps they’d also stumbled across this information somehow – this supposed inspirational meeting of Kramer and Hitler. Perhaps Bob had made it back through the scheduled portal and right now he and Foster were on their way back to put things right. Back to 1941 to find this Kramer.

  And to kill him.

  It was a hope, wasn’t it? Something for him to hang on to.

  CHAPTER 55

  1956, command ship above Washington DC

  Karl Haas smartly saluted the two SS Leibstandarte standing guard either side of the doors to the Führer’s observation deck. They snapped crisply to attention, and then swung open the double doors for him.

  He proceeded down the oak-panelled passageway towards the second, inner, doors leading on to Kramer’s extravagantly decorated quarters, the heels of his black leather jackboots no longer clacking noisily on metal plating, but softly thudding against the luxuriously thick carpet.

  What is wrong with Paul?

  Karl was becoming concerned with his leader. In the last couple of months, since their final assault on Washington and the taking of the White House, Kramer had become very distracted. It was becoming increasingly difficult to convince him to attend the weekly situation briefings with the regional Gauleiters and invasion fleet’s senior commanders. And when he did turn up he appeared not to be listening.

  It was even getting harder for Karl to see his old friend alone. With increasing regularity it seemed, Kramer insisted he was far too busy to see anyone.

  What is wrong with him? Surely not that body?

  The worst it could possibly mean is that some future agent had tried and failed to get to Kramer. A failed assassination attempt, nothing more.

  And the rest of the news was all good. Back home in Europe the people of Greater Germany were ecstatic with the newsreels they were watching in their cinemas. Footage of their invasion forces marching proudly through the streets of New York, Washington, Boston. Some of that good cheer was evident even among the provinces of Britain and France… who, despite being conquered over a decade ago, had come to realize the Führer was a good man, intent on uniting all people, not enslaving them.

  The announcement of Unity Day, a day to celebrate the end of war and a uniting of the western nations, had been met with rapturous approval by the citizens of the Greater Reich. Karl was certain future Unity Days would be celebrated with street parties everywhere, people in every city in every country of Kramer’s empire happy to draw a line under two thousand years of bloody history. Wars, crusades, religious intolerance, inquisitions, torture, ethnic cleansing, holocausts – all of those dark things in the past now.

  He rapped his knuckles against the thick wooden doors, waiting until he heard Kramer beckon him in. He pushed them open, stepped inside and saluted his leader.

  Kramer was sitting in the window alcove, looking down at a misty morning. He could just make out the dome at the top of the White House poking through the pale blanket covering Washington, the orange glow of street lamps along Pennsylvania Avenue and the pinprick headlights of slow-moving cars making their way sluggishly to work.

  Presently, he turned to look at
Karl and offered him a warm smile. ‘Good morning, Karl. How are you?’

  Karl relaxed his posture, dropping his stiff salute and stepping towards his leader, his friend. ‘I’m well.’

  Kramer shook his head. ‘It’s amazing how quickly normality returns, isn’t it? Out there… people go to work, go to school, visit their friends, their loved ones, just as they always have. They have a new leader, a new flag… but life simply goes on for them.’

  ‘Yes… Paul.’

  ‘The American people, it seems,’ continued Kramer, ‘have already accepted the way of things.’

  Karl stirred uncomfortably. Except, of course, those troublesome people attacking the prison camps.

  ‘So,’ said Kramer, ‘shall we get on with this morning’s briefing? I have other matters to attend to.’

  ‘Of course. I have the usual stack of papers for you to sign; most of them are approvals for regional state governors – sympathetic politicians mostly.’ Karl leaned over and placed the papers on the desk. Kramer got up from the window seat and sat down at the desk, flicking wearily through the forms and signing them absent-mindedly.

  ‘So much paperwork these days,’ he sighed.

  ‘The remaining US military forces regrouped in Texas have agreed informal terms for surrender. I believe it’s General MacArthur who’s in charge there.’

  ‘Good… good. Silly their fighting on needlessly.’

  ‘He’s hoping that we’ll grant clemency for the senior officers, allow them to return to their families.’

  Kramer continued scribbling his name as he talked. ‘To be honest, it’s the senior officers I don’t trust. Tell MacArthur his troops will be disarmed and allowed to disband, to go home. But I’m afraid he and his high command will be interned along with all our other political prisoners,’ uttered Kramer, leafing impatiently through the papers. ‘Until, that is, I’m satisfied they won’t be tempted to lead any troublesome uprisings.’

  Karl shuffled uncomfortably. ‘On that subject… we are having a few problems in the Washington area.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Raids. Some insurgents attacking our prison camps.’

  Kramer looked up at him, his pen poised.

  ‘Five camps have been raided so far,’ Karl continued. ‘The garrisons were over-powered and quite a few detainees managed to escape on each occasion.’

  ‘I presume these insurgents are some rogue US army unit? How many of them are we talking about?’

  ‘Well, there’s some confusion there, sir,’ said Karl awkwardly. ‘Eyewitness reports on the earlier raids indicated a very small raiding party.’

  ‘How small?’

  ‘Well, actually, just one man.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Clearly it can’t be just one man. That would be madness. But among some of the prisoners that we’ve managed to recapture there’s a spreading rumour that some sort of… of a superman… has come to their aid. They describe a large figure off which bullets bounce –’

  ‘A superman?’

  Karl smiled. ‘Clearly it’s wishful thinking, a fantasy. The Americans have always liked their comic-books, their heroic figures in silly costumes. It’s not unreasonable that their hopes and prayers have taken the form of this kind of mythical figure.’

  Karl was unsettled by the sudden look of distraction on his Führer’s face, as if half his attention was elsewhere, listening to a faintly heard tune, or a conversation coming from the room next door.

  ‘In all likelihood, sir, the insurgents may well be a small group of well-trained soldiers, US marines… US airborne, highly motivated and well equipped and so far they’ve just managed to be very lucky.’

  Kramer nodded. ‘Yes… yes. Perhaps you’re right.’

  ‘Nonetheless, sir, I suggest it would be wise to double the garrison strengths on the other camps in the region. Too many successful raids like these might just encourage other insurgents to join in.’

  Kramer was silent, his face clouded, his brows locked in a frown of concentration as if he was trying to listen to someone else. Karl noticed he’d not shaved this morning, a faint blur of silver-grey bristles on his chin, and he spotted the slightest sporadic tremble in the man’s jaw. Small things that only a close friend would notice.

  Small things that worried him.

  He’s having some kind of a breakdown?

  ‘Paul? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes… yes, of course,’ said Kramer absently. His gaze returned from where it had been and focused back on to Karl. ‘Take what action you think is necessary with these raids.’

  Kramer hastily scribbled his signature on the last few sheets of paper, handed them back and offered him a flickering smile. ‘Thank you, Karl. You may leave now.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He offered a clipped salute, turned on his heel and departed the observation lounge.

  Kramer waited until he heard the footsteps recede down the hallway outside.

  To work.

  ‘To work,’ he agreed, stepping quickly across the polished floor towards his study door. He turned the brass handle and stepped through into his sanctum sanctorum: book-lined walls, several leather armchairs and a work table littered with drafting materials. It was very much a replica of his private study back in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, a place to think, to tinker with his weapons designs, to ruminate on empire-wide policy.

  From his desk drawer he pulled out a little black notebook, the corners curled and scuffed, the pages of handwritten notes beginning to yellow with the years now. A precious book of thoughts and ideas, theories and secrets. His younger handwriting so scribbled and impatient.

  In the year 2056, he’d been barely twenty years of age and such a devout fan of the mysterious inventor Roald Waldstein. His reputation as an elusive genius, the one and only man to mathematically formulate a displacement field that could fold a gap through space-time. The only man to have actually tested the theory with a working prototype. An honorary director of the International Institute of Quantum Research, and the American Museum of Natural History, a wealthy entrepreneur, a scientific adviser to presidents… a complete enigma.

  Kramer’s hard work and promising talent had earned him an internship at Waldstein’s prestigious New Jersey research centre, several months in the company of the great old man himself. Waldstein liked to be in the company of keen young minds. He’d taken warmly to Kramer. The other keen young minds, jealous fellow interns, suggested that Paul Kramer reminded the sentimental old man of the son he’d lost many years before.

  Kramer smiled at the pleasant memories, those weeks with that great mind, earning his confidence, listening to his theories about how the unseen dimensions of the metaverse held everything together in a way beyond the comprehension of most human minds. Struggling to keep up with him, yet understanding just enough, parts of it fitted together in his young head.

  The old man’s over-riding passion, though, what kept him awake late at nights and fired him up with a preacher’s zeal, was to bury the technology he alone had pioneered – the potential for time travel. To ensure absolutely no one followed in his footsteps. For Kramer, it had been frustrating to be discussing with this great man his most advanced theoretical work and then for Waldstein to suddenly grow cautious on the subject of displacement theory.

  An old man. He must have been about sixty then, but he seemed so much older and frailer than that, with hands that shook and trembled constantly, and watery eyes that always seemed to dart towards dark corners. And his bizarre rituals – every morning after breakfast, Kramer watched him shuffle towards a curious sheet of yellowing newsprint, framed behind glass and hung on his wall. Waldstein stared at it for several minutes every day with eyes that leaked tears down his sunken cheeks.

  Kramer had glanced at it once, nothing more than a page of personal ads from some old newspaper, lonely men seeking lonely women.

  Waldstein was losing his mind… and in the quiet moments, sitting with young Kram
er beside the warming fire, he let slip perhaps a little too much. Old enough and perhaps trusting enough of Kramer to let him know a little more than he should have.

  Kramer fingered his tatty old notebook now. Pages of mathematical characters and equations, the parts of the old man’s puzzle that he’d carelessly let go, interspersed with pages and pages of angrily crossed-out formulae that Kramer himself had worked on over the years. Pieces of equation that he’d tried to squeeze into the spaces, to make right with Waldstein’s elegant work… and that always seemed to not quite fit.

  He smiled at the notes scrawled across the draftsman’s sheet on the desk.

  It fits together now, though, Paul. Doesn’t it?

  Some of it did – the ‘Waldstein displacement field’. It had taken Kramer fifteen years on and off, thinking the problem over in his private moments. A personal hobby, an affliction, perhaps.

  The field – the Waldstein field – in theory, on paper, was merely a method to crack open the tiniest gap in space-time. That alone didn’t make a time machine, just a way to open a peek-hole into the very fabric of space-time. Kramer needed computing power at his fingertips to make a time machine. Computing power to precisely navigate through the swirling chaos of a dimension that mankind had no business entering. There were no Apple Macs here in 1956, no PCs, no palmtops or organizers that could be cannibalized, adapted.

  The schematic sketched out on the sheet of paper in front of him was for a device he could construct merely allowing him to open a tiny window and tap infinite energy from the swirling chaos beyond.

  There’d been something Waldstein had once said to him: ‘To open time-space is to open a door into Hell itself.’