All of his equipment was, of course, the very best that twenty-first-century military technology could provide. Stanton knew the armour well; he’d worn similar kit many times. It consisted of a Gore-tex vest and groin flap fitted with polyethylene ballistic plates; these plates were capable of stopping the kind of armourpiercing ammunition which would not be developed for ninety years, and therefore offered 100 per cent protection from the small-arms technology of 1914.
Stanton was hopeful that he would need neither gun nor bullet-proof vest but it didn’t hurt to be sure. He could remember his first staff sergeant in the Regiment pointing out that ‘Better Safe Than Sorry’ would have been a much more sensible motto for the SAS than ‘Who Dares Wins’. Stanton smiled at the memory as he put on his protective vest. The staff sergeant had hated that motto.
‘Who dares without proper preparation and training does not fucking win,’ he used to say. ‘He gets shot dead, and what’s more the idiot probably takes good men with him.’
Stanton put on a shirt and tie over the vest and his Norfolk jacket over that.
Then, having prepared, he hoped, for any eventuality, he sat down to have one last study of the royal route, which he had up on his computer screen. On it he’d marked the places where all the assassins would be, the location of the first attempt and, of course, the last point, that infamous place where Princip was destined to murder the Archduke unless Stanton prevented him from doing so. Having satisfied himself that he could walk this route and find his marks without any map, he went downstairs and drank a cup of tea in the hotel dining room. Then when he judged the time right he set out to walk the short way to Sarajevo station. It was there that the royal party were scheduled to arrive and where this most important day of the century would really begin.
Guts versus the Black Hand.
‘This is it, Cassie,’ he found himself whispering under his breath as his fingers closed around the gun in his pocket. ‘I’m going in.’
The crowd at the station was being kept at a good distance from the arrivals barrier by lines of police and soldiers but Stanton was tall and it was still possible for him to get a view. There were flags and bunting but not what Stanton would have called a festive spirit. The twenty-eighth of June was a Serbian holiday, the anniversary of a famous historic victory over the Turks. The decision to stage a royal visit on this day by a man who to many represented an occupying power was significant and provocative. Stanton sensed a great deal of anger in the deeply divided crowd.
The royal train arrived exactly as Stanton had known it would. Exactly as it had arrived in the previous loop in space–time. He had the timings and people present from the records of the subsequent trials and he was relieved to note that every detail was as it once had been.
He saw the six-car motorcade draw up. Just as he had known it would.
The local governor was standing stiffly with his entourage, as Stanton had seen him in those grainy photographs from another universe. He saw the mayor of Sarajevo and the police chief speaking together, heads bowed towards each other. He saw the flash powder pop as a photographer took a photo of them, a photo that Stanton had seen pinned to the wall of the Incident Room in the History faculty in Cambridge at Easter in 2025. The same photo that was contained in digital form in his computer at the hotel.
Stanton saw the Archduke’s security detail standing slightly apart. Looking at the little team he felt a genuine sense of professional sympathy because he knew that those three serious-looking men in bowler hats were about to face the protection officer’s worst nightmare: losing contact with their charge. And right at the start of the day too. Stanton knew that through a ridiculous mix-up those officers would not ride with the royal couple to their first engagement, which was a military inspection at the local barracks, because three local officers had already placed themselves in the seats reserved for them in the front car. The protection squad would realize too late that there was no room left for them, and the Archduke and his wife would be driven off without their specialist team.
It would be the first little farce of a ridiculously farcical day.
The royal train arrived and Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess Sophie descended from it on to the red carpet laid out on the platform. They were a rather ordinary-looking couple who but for the splendour of their dress would have turned no heads. Stanton knew from surprisingly good photographs that Sophie had been a beauty in her day but her looks were rather faded now by childbearing, care and worry. This was a very special day for her and one she’d been looking forward to. It was one of the few public occasions in her life when it was possible for her to be at her husband’s side and get the respect she craved and which her husband considered her due. The problem was that Sophie was a Czech, a noble one for sure but still a Czech, and so not considered a good enough match for the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Franz Ferdinand had married for love. His uncle, the Emperor, had been furious and had made it clear that Sophie would remain a commoner and would never be allowed an official rank at the Austrian court. What was even more wounding was that the bitter old man had made his nephew swear an oath that any children he had with Sophie could never inherit the throne.
Stanton studied the woman’s face, the face of a woman who lived at the heart of one of richest and most powerful families in Europe, but who every day experienced nothing but snobbery and insult. The wife of the Crown Prince, the chosen consort of the heir to a vast and ancient empire, who had less official status than the very lowliest Austrian lady at court. She was only with him on this day because he was visiting Sarajevo in a military capacity to inspect Imperial troops. Sophie, therefore, accompanied him not as a princess but as wife of the commander-in-chief and could therefore enjoy the rare treat of riding side-by-side with him through a crowd: a treat which in the previous loop of time had been her death warrant. Had the Black Hand chosen to strike at the Archduke on the majority of his public outings, Sophie would not have been present at all. At best she would have attended at a distance, kept in the background, sitting with a single maid in an antechamber and only allowed to see her husband when the grandeur and the pomp were over.
Stanton knew that both she and the Archduke had been aware that Sarajevo was a dangerous town for an Austrian royal to parade, but they preferred to accept that danger in order to get the chance to be publicly and proudly together.
They were prepared to risk their lives for love.
Watching her smiling shyly as she accepted the bows of the assembled officials, Stanton felt he understood the Duchess Sophie. She was on the outside. A loner. The victim of a bunch of upper-class snobs who had no better reason for their arrogance and pride than an accident of their over-privileged birth. Stanton knew a bit about that, and he was glad that because of him the much belittled Duchess would not die in agony in a few hours’ time with a bullet in her stomach.
In fact, world wars aside, he was glad that he would save them both. They were in love; it was obvious even on this official occasion. Still in love despite enduring a life that consisted only of stifling formality and painful slights. He knew from history that their happiness and their sanctuary was contained entirely in their private love and the love of their children. After they had been shot on that same 28 June in another universe, both of them had continued to sit upright in their car, a single bullet lodged in each, dying together as they had lived. The Archduke had been heard begging his wife to live. ‘Sophie, Sophie! Don’t die!’ he was recorded as saying. ‘Live for our children.’