TimeRiders

by Alex Scarrow

  Five… four… three… two… one…

  They emerged from their covered positions as one, laying down a withering barrage of rapid-fire high-impact shots that filled the air around the table with a blizzard of chipped fragments and marble powder.

  They ran forward, still firing, ten yards… five yards…

  Kramer followed in their wake. He found himself screaming like a banshee.

  Karl was the first to reach the overturned table, crashing heavily into it. He swiftly poked his rifle over the top and sprayed the SS guards sheltering behind it point blank with a sustained burst until his pulse rifle clacked like a woodpecker, exhausted of ammo.

  Rudy and Sven joined him, emptying their clips blindly over the top of the table into the space behind it.

  Then all of a sudden it was as silent as a graveyard.

  The smoke and dust cleared around them and Kramer, gingerly lifting his head to look over the top, saw the men dead on the floor, an unpleasant mash of flayed flesh, splintered bone and tattered black ceremonial uniforms.

  In the distance, muted through the thick stone walls of the chalet, he could hear the rapid tap of gunfire from the front of the building.

  The garrison’s here already. We’re out of time.

  Karl clambered over the table and aimed a swift, hard kick at the oakwood double doors. They rattled heavily and swung inwards.

  Karl led the way in.

  As he stepped through, a single pistol shot echoed across the grand room and a solitary shard of wood flung off the oak door beside his head.

  Rudy, stepping in beside him, swung his weapon round and emptied half a dozen shots into a portly looking Wehrmacht general with braids on his shoulders, throwing him back across a grand banqueting table covered with maps and scattered typed pages of intelligence notes and field deployments. The general rolled off the side of the table and thudded heavily on to the floor.

  Kramer stepped into the room, slowly scanning the sweat-soaked faces cowering behind armchairs and coffee tables. Generals and field marshals – so much gold braiding, so many medals pinned to their chests – and yet here they were looking very much like a class of startled children. His eyes finally rested on a trembling man in a tan-coloured tunic with a dark fringe drooping over one eye, and his distinct toothbrush moustache.

  Unmistakably… it was the very man they were after.

  Hitler was crouching on the floor holding an ineffective-looking pistol in his shaking hand. As the sound of the distant gunfight around the Berghof’s entrance grew more insistent, Kramer took a step forward.

  ‘Adolf Hitler,’ he said in fluent German, ‘your plans to attack Russia in the next few weeks will result in you losing this war.’

  Hitler’s eyes widened, his lips flickered and tensed, but he said nothing.

  ‘Now, if you want to win this war, if you want detailed intelligence of what your enemies are doing right now, if you want weapons technology that will make you invincible –’ he nodded back down the hallway, at the growing cacophony of approaching gunfire – ‘then I suggest you call off those men outside and listen very closely to what I have to tell you.’

  CHAPTER 31

  2001, New York

  Maddy walked alongside Foster as they crossed the Williamsburg Bridge back over the Hudson River to Brooklyn. In the darkness, the lights of the city danced on the water magically.

  ‘It really is a beautiful city,’ she said.

  Foster nodded. ‘Tonight is special,’ he said. ‘I always think of this evening as the last one of the “old” New York. Tomorrow, when those two planes arrive, it’ll change.’

  They walked in silence for a while, watching the others ahead. Sal and Liam seemed to be teasing Bob, laughing at the stiff, unnatural way he talked. There’s no harm in that, she supposed. Bob needed to sound a lot more like a human if he was going to blend in, particularly if he was going to be sent alongside Liam on assignments back into the past.

  She noticed the old man was looking a little frailer than he had when he’d pulled her out of that plane. He rarely seemed to sleep. Almost every night, after they’d all tucked themselves up into their cots, she heard the archway’s door creak open.

  ‘Where do you go at night?’

  He looked at her.

  She shrugged. ‘I hear you sneaking out.’

  ‘I walk around Brooklyn.’ He smiled. ‘I clear my head. The fresh air does me some good.’

  She studied him silently for a moment. ‘Are you OK, Foster?’ she asked.

  Foster took his time replying. ‘You’ve noticed, then?’ he said eventually.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘That I’m dying,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What?’

  He looked at her. ‘I figured you would’ve worked it out soon enough.’

  ‘Actually, I was just thinking you weren’t looking too well… that’s all.’

  He smiled again. ‘That’s kind of you. But, in fact, I’m dying… very quickly as it happens.’

  ‘What’s… what’s wrong? Do you need a doctor?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t help,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘This is something you need to know, Maddy,’ he said, grasping her forearm. ‘You can’t tell the others right now. Particularly not Liam.’

  ‘What?’

  Foster took a deep breath. ‘It kills you, eventually.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Timeriding,’ he replied, ‘going into the past. It only has a gradual effect at first – so gradual he won’t notice to begin with. But the more he does it, the further back he goes, the greater the harm he’ll be doing to his body. The process will gradually corrupt the cells in his body, prematurely ageing him.’

  She looked at him, alarmed.

  ‘Yes… ageing him. At first it won’t be apparent. But towards the end, when the corruption has reached a certain level, he will suddenly age fast.’

  A thought occurred to her – a question she didn’t want to ask, but knew she had to. ‘So, Foster, could I ask you –?’

  ‘You want to know how old I really am?’

  She nodded.

  He shook his head sadly and she thought she saw the glisten of a tear nestling in the deep wrinkled fold beneath one eye.

  ‘I was pretty young when I made my first trip.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘If I add up all the Mondays and Tuesdays I’ve served in that field office,’ he said, running a hand through his fine snow-white hair, ‘I suppose I’d be about twenty-seven now.’

  Maddy covered her gasp with a hand. ‘Oh God…’

  He managed a wry smile. ‘About ten years older than you. Although inside I still feel young, I’ve become an old man,’ he said, his voice tapering off with the sound of regret, even bitterness in there somewhere. ‘He can’t know, Maddy,’ he added. ‘Not yet… He’s not ready.’

  ‘But it’s unfair that he doesn’t know what this is doing to his body!’

  Foster raised a finger to his lips. Even above the noise of traffic rumbling past them over the busy bridge, her voice might just carry enough for him to hear.

  ‘He has no choice, Madelaine. Either he does this or he has to return to the Titanic. At least this way he gets another seven or eight years of life.’

  ‘What if he left? What if he decided to walk away right now, and never came back?’

  ‘He can’t do that. It would cause problems.’

  ‘This seems…’ She felt her voice thicken. ‘This seems so unfair.’

  He shrugged sadly. ‘Life is unfair. You make the best of what life deals you, Maddy. In Liam’s case, he’s been given a few more years of life that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. And think of all the incredible things he’s going to see in those years. What about all the incredible things he’s seen already? He’s a young man who was born in 1896, and yet just now he’s enjoyed a cheeseburger, fries and an ice-cold soda whilst gazing out on twenty-first century New York. What do you think Jules
Verne or H. G. Wells would have given to trade places with Liam? Just for five minutes? Just for a glimpse of this world?’

  ‘But it’s not right that he isn’t allowed to know,’ she replied.

  ‘Perhaps the kinder thing would be to keep this truth from him as long as you possibly can,’ said Foster. He looked at her. ‘That’ll be your call, Madelaine, when I eventually go and leave you in charge as the team leader. It’ll be your decision how and when you break this to Liam.’

  She bit her lip unhappily and looked at the others again, still giggling and goofing about at Bob’s expense.

  Oh, Liam… poor Liam.

  ‘I mean you both sound so… wrong,’ said Sal, pulling her hood up over her head. ‘Real freak show. Like characters out of an old black and white movie.’

  Liam scowled. ‘What do you mean? Do I not sound enough like everyone else around here?’

  She shook her head and laughed. ‘No. That funny Irish way you talk –’

  ‘I’m from Cork – that’s how we talk there,’ he replied defensively. ‘Anyway your Indian accent sounds funny to me too. Sort of like Welsh.’

  She laughed. ‘Bob,’ she said, jabbing the support unit lightly in the ribs, ‘do your impersonation of Liam.’

  ‘You wish me to replicate Liam O’Connor’s speech patterns?’

  ‘Go on.’

  Bob’s eyelids momentarily fluttered and ticked as he retrieved data stored somewhere in his tiny computer mind.

  ‘Oi’m Liam O’Connor, so Oi am… and Oi come from Cork in Oireland, so Oi do,’ uttered Bob with an expressionless face.

  Sal giggled. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Argghh! Don’t be taking the mickey like that, Sal. Hang on…’ Liam’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘You’ve not been training him to do that, have you?’

  She nodded, clamping her lips tightly.

  ‘Affirmative,’ said Bob dryly. ‘Sal Vikram assisted me in replicating your speech pattern, Liam O’Connor.’

  Liam shook his head with a show of good-natured disgust. ‘Well, at least I don’t dress like some sort of carnival street beggar, all ripped clothes and messy orange paint splashed over me front.’

  ‘Uh?’ Sal looked down at the neon logo on her hoodie. ‘Oh, that… It’s the logo for a rock band. Ess-Zed.’

  ‘Rock band?’

  ‘Bangra rock… my parents really hate it. Think it’s too western, too American.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Liam, nodding politely but not really understanding what she was talking about.

  ‘But it’s ten times better than American stuff… much darker, with, like, hip-hop dance loops and scream-rap.’

  Liam frowned. Hip-hop dance loops?

  He looked at her. ‘Dance… ahhh! So is it a kind of music we’re talking about?’

  Sal looked at him, her face half smile, half bemusement.

  He shrugged and grinned. ‘Hey, I like music too. I like the brass bands. Marching bands as well. I tell you, you can skip merrily along to that, so you can. And then there’s the folk tunes where I come from. Would you have heard of “The Galway Races”? “Molly Malone”?… “The Jolly Beggarman”?’

  She stared at him in silence.

  ‘No? I guess not.’ Liam shrugged. ‘Ah well… those are ditties you can really dance a sweat to. And then there’s…’

  Sal listened to him chattering on about the dance halls back in Cork, secretly delighting in the fact that he sounded like a walking antique – an old-fashioned young gentleman from another century, all manners and quaint charm – and so unlike the boys from her time. She loved the curious sound of his accent, despite teasing him.

  Sal smiled. What a strange little group we make.

  Like some kind of odd family.

  For the first time since she’d ‘died’, since she’d been plucked away from the life she knew, she felt almost… almost happy. In a strange way, this felt like it could be a new home to her, a new life she could get used to.

  She looked out at the glittering lights of Manhattan, pleased that their field office was here… and now in this time, pleased that she was privileged enough to be seeing New York City at its prime before the world started to change – the global crash, the depression – before it all began the long slide downhill.

  The night sky above her was thick with churning clouds, bathed in amber light from the city below.

  Red sky at night… shepherd’s delight.

  It looked like it was going to rain this evening.

  A gentle breeze tossed hair into her eyes and touched the bare skin of her forearms, a murmuring breeze that seemed to quietly whisper in her ear a promise of more than just a little rain.

  A storm’s coming, Sal… Can you feel it yet?

  CHAPTER 32

  2001, New York

  Tuesday 12 or 13 (I’m losing count)

  It’s a Tuesday morning. The Tuesdays I think of as the ‘sad’ days. The Mondays are the ‘happy’ days. I hate the Tuesdays, full of grief, those smoking Twin Towers, the crying and fear… that terrifying rumbling as they come down, and the air full of dust and scraps of paper.

  I’d prefer not to go out into them, prefer to stay in the arch. But Foster says it’s important I’m equally familiar with both versions of New York, the ‘before’ and the ‘after’.

  It’s early right now, 7 a.m. I always seem to be the first to wake. The others are all fast asleep. Maddy snores in the bunk below. Liam whimpers like a puppy.

  Sal looked up. All was still in the archway. Foster was asleep on an old sofa beside the kitchen alcove, stirring restlessly beneath a quilt. And Bob… Bob rested in one of the birthing tubes in the back room. She wondered what he dreamed about, if anything.

  She closed her diary, sat up and pulled on some clothes under her blanket and then climbed down quietly. She grabbed a bin bag full of dirty clothes lying beside the bottom bunk and walked across to the breakfast table.

  One duty – collectively agreed – was that every other Tuesday would be a good day to take their meagre supply of clothes down to the laundromat in the morning to collect in the evening.

  She checked their small fridge.

  No milk.

  She sighed. One of the others had finished the last of it without saying. She shook her head and clucked like a mother hen.

  They’d starve if it wasn’t for me.

  She decided to stop off at the 24/7 store on the way back to pick up some half-fat milk, some bagels and some more Rice Krispies since Liam had discovered a passion for them and seemed to devour bowl after bowl of the stuff.

  She punched the red button and the shutter whirred up, quietly rattling and letting in the cool morning air of the city. She breathed in deep and looked up at the clear blue sky. It was going to start out as a lovely sunny day today… as always.

  Sal dropped off the laundry with the sweet old Chinese lady who worked at the laundromat. She was a chatty old thing whom Sal was beginning to get to know well, always talking proudly – sometimes in broken English, sometimes in Cantonese – about her nephew whom she announced with pleasure ‘alway wear ’spensive smart soo’ to go for his work’. Of course, it was exactly the same greeting every time she stepped into the shop, as if she was setting eyes on Sal for the very first time.

  Which, of course, she was. But Sal decided to politely steer their brief chit-chatty conversation in different directions with every visit… gradually learning a little bit more about her and her family each time.

  She headed across the bridge into Manhattan, enjoying the warm sun and watching the city streets grow steadily busier. The air was thick with smells both pleasant and not so, but nothing quite as bad as she remembered in downtown Mumbai – particularly on the smog-heavy days. Entering Manhattan’s lower east side, her nose picked out the acrid smell of exhaust fumes mixed with the delightful odour of freshly brewed coffee and oven-baked bagels billowing from the various coffee shops and fast-food restaurants she passed on the way across to Broadway and up to Ti
mes Square.

  Tuesday starts so well, she noted sadly. Right now, in the early morning, it was as fine a day as one could ask for. She looked at her watch.

  8.32 a.m.

  The day would continue to be lovely for another thirteen minutes. She sighed sadly. Then it would turn into the nightmare of nine-eleven. She entered the busy nexus of Times Square and took a seat on a bench – her regular bench – beside a litter bin. She watched the stop-start traffic at a busy intersection and the pavements filled with people on their way to work: men already hot with their jackets over one arm and their ties loosened, women in smart summer blouses and light linen trouser suits.

  8.34 a.m. Eleven minutes to go.

  The large green face of Shrek, looking equally bemused and irritated by Donkey, hung above the square – as always. She studied the movie billboard and the others dotted around, beginning to find them all very familiar, like bedroom posters long past their time to be taken down and replaced with something else.

  8.37 a.m. Eight minutes to go.

  A homeless man approached the bench – as he always did at 8.37 a.m. – pushing a shopping trolley in front of him, piled high with cardboard boxes and an old tarpaulin. He smiled politely at her – as he always did – before rummaging through the litter bin and finding a half-eaten sausage McMuffin.

  He sat down beside her, his lined and pockmarked face creased with quite possibly the last smile New York would see today and opened his mouth to say the same thing he always said.

  ‘Hey, lucky me… it’s still warm!’ He eagerly tucked into his rescued sandwich.

  Sal politely returned his smile.

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said. And she genuinely was. She was familiar enough with the next few hours to know this was the last fleeting moment of contentment left in the day, a homeless tramp, chewing gratefully on a discarded sausage in a bun.

  8.43 a.m. Two minutes to go.

  She looked up at the skyline, seeing in the distance the very tops of the two World Trade Center towers, glistening like polished silver in the morning light. Proud structures that confidently seemed to reach up to the blue sky and actually touch it. And inside… so many thousands of people, sitting down to start a regular day at work, opening their email in-boxes, peeling the lid off their Starbucks coffee, unwrapping their salt-beef and mustard bagels.