Maybe take a Triumph round Ireland and drop in on …
But he couldn’t think about that now. Bernadette must wait. There was a new woman in his life. A time traveller from the future.
He’d come to 1914 imagining that with the death of the Kaiser his business with Chronos would be over. But with the arrival of a second agent of Chronos and the realization that perhaps he hadn’t ‘fixed’ the century after all, he knew that he could not retire from active service yet.
He was still a soldier and he was still on duty.
Stanton drove his Mercedes through Berlin. A map on his knee, searching out a medical supply store that he’d located from the phone book at the hotel. He found that he was smiling. Just the sensation of driving a car made him feel better, like he was finally back in control and getting on with things. Playing with the clunky, chunky controls and feeling the throaty thunder of the hand-made engine as it vibrated under the huge shining bonnet gave Stanton his first moments of pleasure since he’d fallen asleep in Bernadette’s arms.
And once again she was on his mind. It seemed to happen every few minutes.
He wondered if he had sought her out in the century that had now disappeared from time, the one where the death of the Kaiser truly had signalled the end of his mission. He felt sure he must have done. Never mind Shackleton and Everest and all the bloody cars in Birmingham. He wanted Bernadette. He wanted her now and he knew that he’d have wanted her the last time the world had passed this way. Perhaps he had won her back, somehow getting her to Cambridge and showing her Newton’s box, which even now must lie in the attic of the Master’s Lodge. That would convince her, surely. It was perhaps the only proof that would, and it was currently in the care of the Master of Trinity … He’d have only to break in and …
Had he done that once already? In that now lost century and life? Had he tracked her down, taken her to Cambridge and produced in triumph the evidence that would make her love him once again? Make her make love to him again? It was a confusing and extremely frustrating thought.
He bought a surgeon’s gown and mask at the medical supply store and then drove on to Leipziger Platz, across which his epoch-changing bullet had sped on its journey into the Emperor’s brain. He parked directly outside Wertheim’s. The place had been teeming with shoppers and jammed with traffic the last time he had been there but it was almost empty now. Two uniformed doormen leapt forward eagerly and guided him in to a parking place. Their help wasn’t needed; there were no other cars trying to park.
This previously bustling monument to Berlin’s economic miracle was a very different place to when last he’d exited it, scattering forged Socialist pamphlets behind him. It was sombre and quiet now. The great female statue in the centre of the atrium had been draped in black as if in penance for the store’s unwitting role in the national tragedy. Black banners hung where previously there had been coloured silks and chandeliers. Every member of staff had on a wide black armband. But no amount of ostentatious mourning was going to turn round the fortunes of Wertheim’s department store now. It was a ghost shop, forever tainted by its grim association with the Empire’s darkest day. The massive deductions and almost desperate promotions being offered were shunned by even the most committed bargain-hunters. Stanton reckoned he was one of only half a dozen shoppers in a store that had previously served thousands by the hour.
Three members of staff approached him at once.
‘I need a lady’s nightdress and cap. Loose, plain and simple – my wife is an invalid. Also a day dress and items of undergarment.’
He was led to the second floor where the ladies’ clothing department was located, the centre of a small crowd of overly attentive staff. He was at once asked the most obvious question.
‘And what size is Madam?’
Stanton cast his mind back to the footprints in the cellar … those working boots would have been perhaps a UK size six. Glancing at the female staff lined up in front of him, he selected one on shoe size.
‘Perhaps like you, miss,’ he said.
After making his purchases he drove back to the Kempinski and hung the lady’s day dress in the closet of the spare room, placing the underwear in a chest of drawers. Then he put the surgeon’s mask and gown and the nightdress and cap into his bag and slipped some sedatives and his gun into his pocket.
On his way out of the hotel he approached reception.
‘I hope to be bringing my sister from hospital this afternoon,’ he explained brusquely. ‘You will oblige me by having a wheelchair waiting at my disposal.’
He drove his hired car to the Berliner Buch hospital, the place where Bernadette had sat her vigil over his unconscious and poisoned body. There were some parking places available in an area reserved for senior staff and ambulances and Stanton took one. Towing and clamping were blights of the future. He’d be happy to pay a fine.
He walked up the great stone steps of the building, through the colonnaded entrance and into the hospital. Once inside he ducked into the first lavatory he found and put on his surgeon’s gown. Then, unchallenged, he wandered further into the hospital and found a porter. He enquired about the whereabouts of the female police prisoner, explaining that he’d heard she was something of a circus freak and he wanted to get a peek.
The porter was happy to oblige, giving directions and saying that he didn’t think the Herr Doktor would be disappointed.
Stanton made his way to the correct floor, picking up a wheelchair on the way. He left the chair at the entrance to the lift and sought out the correct room. The door was guarded by two uniformed men whom Stanton approached without breaking his stride.
‘I must check the patient’s pupil dilation for signs of diaspora,’ he said, making up a condition as he spoke. ‘The process will take only a few seconds. Kindly accompany me into the room so you may witness that the inspection has been performed and that the patient remained secure in your care at all times.’
There was hesitation on the faces of the officers. Stanton pressed on before they could articulate it.
‘If you allow me to be in the presence of your charge unsupervised I shall be forced to report you to your superiors,’ he snapped. ‘The police have entrusted this hospital with this woman’s care and I shall not allow myself to be placed in a position which compromises your own security protocol. I insist that you secure your charge while I am required to lay my hands upon her.’
The bullshit worked. Once more the prevailing German predisposition to obey authority stood him in good stead. The two guards dutifully followed Stanton into the room, where he swiftly immobilized them, spinning round and hitting the first man in the temple with his left, followed by a right upper cut to the second man’s jaw. Both went down and Stanton administered the same sedative he’d been forced to give Bernadette a week earlier.
Then he turned to the figure lying on the bed, feeling quite suddenly almost overcome by the momentous nature of the meeting.
Two time travellers from different versions of the universe meeting in a third.
She was unconscious, as he’d expected her to be. Her wounded arm and shoulder were heavily bandaged and looked badly swollen. Her blood was poisoned just as his had been and without twenty-first-century medicine she would surely slowly die.
He put his hands on the coverlet.
There was no time to dwell any further on the incredible nature of the encounter. That he was about to touch the skin of a being from another age. After all, he was just such a being himself.
He pulled back the coverlet. She was dressed in the usual hospital standard open-backed nightshirt. He produced his pocket multi-tool, cut the straps and pulled the garment off her.