Stanton continued to wait, checking his watch again as the seconds of the twentieth century progressed.
And then came the time to move. The Archduke’s car was one minute away. Stanton could hear it approaching.
He walked off the bridge, up the tiny street and into Schiller’s. His plan was simply to distract Princip’s attention, place himself between the window of the shop and Princip, and play the bewildered foreigner, lost and waving a large and distracting map, speaking loudly in English and German, neither of which the young Serbian would understand. Hopefully this should be enough to prevent Princip even seeing the Archduke. After all, the sound of a car stalling in the street wasn’t that uncommon even in 1914, and the driver would quickly restart his engine. If the distraction failed and Princip tried to leave the shop, then Stanton planned simply to physically restrain him.
That was the plan.
But when Stanton entered Schiller’s Delicatessen to put his plan into practice, the plan changed.
Because history had changed. Gavrilo Princip wasn’t there.
Stanton looked at his watch. There could be no mistake. Quartz timing didn’t lie. Besides which, he could hear the Archduke’s car turning into the street where it would stall outside the shop. It was just fifteen seconds away. At this point, if history were repeating itself, Princip would be leaving the shop, heading for his fateful encounter. But history wasn’t repeating itself because Princip wasn’t there. Something had changed history.
And the only person on the planet who could have done that was Stanton.
He heard the sound of the car stalling outside and rushed out of the shop. In the car just a metre and a half away from him sat the Archduke and his wife. Stanton was standing exactly where Princip should have been standing. Where Princip had stood the last time the universe passed this way.
So where was Princip?
Then Stanton saw him. And in that moment understood his own stupidity. Princip was across the street from him. On the other side of the car.
And he was with the flower girl.
Stanton had changed history. The indulgent tip he had given had altered the course of the girl’s day. She had given up her work and gone instead to treat herself with her unexpected windfall. A windfall she had not received in the previous twentieth century.
Of course! What else would a hungry street girl given a little extra money for which she would not be liable to account do but make her way straight to the nearest food? The nearest food was Schiller’s, and there she’d met Princip, whom she was not supposed to meet. And Princip was a teenage boy and she was a teenage girl. They had left the shop together, or perhaps he had followed her and approached her after she had made her purchases. Stanton could see that she had a paper bag in her hand.
All of this Stanton took in and understood in an instant. Just as he took in and understood that Princip wasn’t looking at the girl any more. He was looking at the Archduke and realizing that, after all, his chance had come. Just as he had done in the previous near identical moment in time, except now he was on the other side of the car.
Because Stanton had put him there.
The girl was in front of Princip, between him and the Archduke, between him and Stanton. She was turning to look where Princip was looking, at the car and its illustrious occupants. And as she did so Stanton could see that behind her Princip’s hand was moving towards his pocket. Stanton knew exactly what he had in that pocket.
Stanton’s hand was also moving, down towards his own pocket where he had his Glock.
Princip’s hand was emerging from his pocket now, holding something hard and grey which Stanton recognized from the many photos he’d seen of it. The gun that fired the first shot of the Great War and which, because of his carelessness, might be about to do so again.
Scarcely a second had passed but Stanton’s own gun was in his hand now and he was assuming the firing position, levelling his weapon, straight-armed in front of his eye. But the girl was still between Princip and him. Only Princip’s firing arm and part of his head were visible behind her. And that arm was also coming up to fire. The last time Princip had fired at the Archduke and his wife, he’d killed them both with just two shots. When studying the assassination, Stanton had been struck by how remarkable that was. Killing a person with a single shot is by no means a certainty even at point blank range. Certainly not with a 1910 Browning. Managing it twice in quick succession is even more unlikely. In their discussions on the murder both Stanton and Davies had wondered whether Princip had just been lucky or whether he had happened to be a natural shot. If it was the latter, then what he’d done in the previous dimension he could do again. Stanton couldn’t take the risk that he could. He had to make absolutely sure of the Archduke’s safety and he had to do it within the next half second before Princip had his own chance to fire. Stanton was a crack shot himself but Princip just wasn’t presenting enough of a target from behind the girl for Stanton to be sure of taking him out singly.
There was only one way to be sure of hitting him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered, looking into the girl’s big shocked eyes.
The Glock fired a bullet that could pierce armour plate. Passing through two bodies would scarcely even reduce its velocity. Princip was a small man, not much taller than the flower girl. His heart was directly behind hers.
One bullet passed through two hearts.
The girl died instantly. A micro second later Princip died instantly.
The Archduke and his beloved duchess scarcely knew what had happened.
There were policemen and soldiers running towards them. The same policemen and soldiers whom Stanton had studied in the famous photograph of Princip being arrested.
But this time Princip wasn’t being arrested. He was dead and the Archduke was alive. Stanton had performed the first part of the mission tasked to him by the Companions of Chronos. He had saved Franz Ferdinand.
And he’d killed an innocent young girl.
23
STANTON RAN. NOT back towards the river, which was where the police and soldiers were coming from, but up the lane towards Franz-Josef-Strasse, one of Sarajevo’s main thoroughfares.
He had the advantage of the confusion behind him and only heard the first cry to halt as he reached the street. Fortunately it was busy, much easier to hide in a crowd than open country. He presumed he was being pursued but he didn’t look back.
He’d killed the girl.
He’d caused her to change the course that fate had planned for her and when she crossed his path a second time he’d shot her.
He’d had to do it. He knew that. The mission counted more. The mission would save millions of innocent girls. The flower girl was just another unit of ‘collateral damage’. Collateral that had got damaged because of him.
Because he was a stupid bastard.
What part of leave no trace did he not understand?
How did over-tipping hungry girls near crucial cafes only seconds before zero hour fit into it?
There was a tram ahead, stopped to take on passengers. He leapt on board and only when it pulled away did he allow himself to look back. There they were. The figures from the photographs, the ones who had been present in the immediate aftermath of the assassination. Stanton had their pictures in his computer. Pictures that had never been taken of an event that had never happened. Soldiers and police, some in Turkish uniform with pantaloons and fez, others Austrian-style with peaked cap and cutaway jacket. They were no longer leading away a teenage assassin, whitegloved hands clutching at the hilts of their swords to stop themselves tripping over them in their haste. Scurrying along in those famous images that had been flashed around a world that never was on a morning that had never been.