Time Loves a Hero

by Allen Steele

  “How do I look?”

  “Like my wife.” He couldn’t help but grin.

  “Give up.” But she smiled when she said that, and it was a testament of the effectiveness of her nanosurgical treatment that her cheeks reddened slightly. “Get through this, and I might reconsider your proposal.”

  “I’ll remember that.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Ready?” he asked, and she nodded as she picked up her overcoat. “All right, then … let’s go.”

  They joined Hoffman in the passenger compartment and watched on the wallscreen as the Oberon fell toward the city. Metz brought the timeship down until it was two thousand meters directly above Rothschild Park, then paused to sweep the area with its infrared scopes. It was a drizzly Sunday night; as they anticipated, few people were on the streets, and the park was deserted.

  Only the gentle stirring of tree limbs signaled the Oberon’s silent descent upon a broad clearing in the park’s center. Its hull now matte black, the timeship was virtually invisible to the naked eye. A few seconds before touchdown, its landing flanges spread open. The negmass drive whisked dead leaves aside as the saucer settled down, then everything was still.

  As Hoffman opened the airlock hatch, Franc hastily turned off the interior lights. “Just to be on the safe side,” he murmured before he climbed down the ladder to the ground. He waited until Lea had come down the ladder, then he looked back up at Hoffman. “See you in New Jersey,” he added.

  “I’ll be waiting. Good luck.” Hoffman gave him a quick thumbs-up, then the hatch irised shut.

  Franc took Lea’s arm as they trotted away from the timeship. Once they were clear of the landing site, they turned and watched as the Oberon lifted off. The timeship was little more than an oval shadow as it silently ascended into the overcast sky; for a few moments, they heard the muted hum of its negmass drive, then even that disappeared.

  The night was cool, the crisp air redolent of pine and oak, the grass moist with dew. A short distance away, from the top of a low rise, rose an ancient stone tower, a solitary remnant of the battlements that once surrounded the city in medieval times. Beyond the trees bordering the park, lights glimmered within the windows of nearby houses. All was dark and quiet.

  “Let’s get out here.” Lea shivered within her coat, pulled it more tightly around her. “This place makes me nervous.”

  If he had time, Franc would have lingered here for a little while longer. So much space, so many trees. On the Moon, nature was a luxury deliberately cultivated within subsurface habitats. Here, on Earth at this time, it could be found everywhere, even in the largest of cities. And the night was so full of secrets …

  Yet Lea was right. The opera would be ending soon. Like the last act of any great drama, timing was everything. “Very well,” he said. His eyes now accustomed to the gloom, he spotted a nearby gravel path. “This way, I think.”

  Together, they walked out of the park, at last finding an open gate in the high stone fence surrounding the former estate. Stepping out into the mellow glow of a streetlamp, they found themselves on the sidewalk of the Bockenheimer Antge, across the street from the Alte Oper. The opera house loomed before them as a massive Gothic edifice, a grotesque wedding cake made of marble and white granite. Lights gleamed from within high-arched windows, illuminating the statues on its gabled rooftops and the classical bas-relief on its ornate walls. From somewhere deep within the building, they could hear the muted, melodic rumble of an orchestra reaching its crescendo. Wagner, perhaps …

  “It’s …” Fascinated by the sight of the Alte Oper, Lea searched for the right words. “Beautiful, but in an ugly sort of way.”

  “Something like that, yes.” Franc stepped off the curb, then hastily retreated as an automobile’s headlights caught him in their glare. Its horn bleeped a shrill protest, then a sedan swept past them. He caught a glimpse of a woman’s face stoically regarding them from the passenger side, and he quickly looked away.

  “Come on,” he murmured, taking her arm again. “We’re beginning to look like tourists.”

  Lea smiled at him. “Well, that’s what we are, aren’t we?”

  “Perhaps, but this isn’t a good time or place to be a foreigner.” He cautiously looked up and down the street. Now the music had stopped, and he could make out the staccato clatter of applause. “Come on … it’s letting out.”

  They crossed the Bockenheimer Antge just as the first members of the audience emerged from the Alte Oper’s vaulted entrance. Although a few were plainly dressed, most were decked out in formal evening attire. Franc and Lea melded with the crowd as it spilled out onto the broad plaza in front of the opera house. Deliberately maintaining a casual pace, they sauntered past the central fountain and, ignoring the taxis parked alongside the Oper Platz, headed for the Cityring.

  In the Middle Ages, Frankfurt had been surrounded by a broad moat flooded by waters diverted from the Main; within the moat were the walls which further protected the city from invading armies. During the eighteenth century, such fortifications were deemed no longer necessary, so the walls were torn down and the moat was filled. Now Frankfurt’s old city was encircled by a narrow park thick with trees, bordered on either side by motorways.

  Arm in arm, Franc and Lea strolled down the cobblestone walkways leading through the center of the mall. The park was dark and densely wooded, its paths illuminated only by the occasional lamp. Every now and then someone quickly walked past, barely acknowledging their presence with a perfunctory nod and the murmured hallo or guten Abend, but otherwise the Cityring was almost completely deserted.

  But not quite. As the path turned to the left, they came upon a couple of teenagers sitting on a stone bench beneath an old bronze water fountain, their arms wrapped around one another, their faces buried together. They could have been young lovers from any place and any time, except that the boy wore the brown uniform of Hitler Youth, and beneath her overcoat the girl wore the white blouse, blue skirt, and severe black shoes of the Jungmaedel, the Young Maidens. They looked up in alarm as Franc and Lea approached, then got up and guiltily scurried away, vanishing into the night like criminals.

  “‘In the fields and on the heath,’” Lea murmured as she watched them go, “‘I lose Strength Through Joy.’”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. A takeoff on a propaganda song.” She gazed sadly after the young couple, then at the small handful of automobiles passing along the nearby Taunusanlage. “How empty this place is. For a late-spring night, you’d think there would be more people.”

  Franc nodded. The silence was unnerving, as if an unofficial curfew had been declared. Above the trees, he could see the top floors of offices, banks, and apartment buildings across the adjacent avenues. Almost all the lights had been extinguished, giving them the appearance of cold stone hulks. There was a forlorn, almost dismal quality to the city, as if all humor and life had been drained from it.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to be here,” he said softly. “We’d better hurry.”

  A little more quickly now, they strolled down the path, following the mall as it led them closer toward the city center. Soon the path ended where a street bisected the park. A sign beneath a lamp identified the avenue as the Kaiserstrasse. To the right, a half block down the sidewalk, just past a large statue, lay the Taunusanlage, and across the intersection was the Dresdener Bank.

  Franc stopped, looked both ways in confusion. He had studied this area thoroughly, committing historical street maps to memory, yet all of a sudden he found himself disoriented. Memorizing map coordinates was one thing; being in the actual location was another.

  “Do you remember which way we turn?” he asked.

  Lea raised an eyebrow. “I thought you knew.”

  “I thought I did, but …” Everything looks different on a map, he started to add, but that would only get her started. Right now, he didn’t need to have her needling him. On impulse, he turned to the right, strode down the sidewalk t
oward the intersection. He was positive that they were only two or three blocks from the Frankfurter Hof, and that the Kaiserstrasse would take them there … but two or three blocks in which direction?

  He stopped again at the corner, turned around, looked at the statue. “Goethe,” he murmured as Lea joined him, nodding toward the twice-life-size figure of the German philosopher. “I didn’t read anything about passing this landmark, so maybe we’re …”

  “Shh!” she suddenly whispered. “Walk the other way, John.”

  John? He looked around, saw her beginning to walk away. “Lea, what …?”

  “Halten!” a voice shouted. “Wohin gehen sie?”

  Franc froze. A few steps ahead, Lea did the same. Reluctantly, he slowly turned to face the person she had spotted before Franc had become aware of his presence.

  The stocky figure approaching them wore a brown uniform shirt with a red swastika armband, dark brown jodhpurs tucked into knee-high leather jackboots; suspended from his belt was a ceremonial dagger. The short bill of his uniform cap, emblazoned with the Nazi eagle, shadowed a broad, beefy face. Most menacing of all, in his right hand he held a long, black-painted wooden baton, its handle wrapped with strips of leather. The baton’s surface was faintly scarred, as if it had recently seen heavy use.

  One of the Sturmabteilung, the so-called brown shirts with whom the Nazi Party had effectively taken control over all of Germany. Street brawlers and thugs from the beer gardens where they had been recruited, they roamed the streets at will, a paramilitary force whose authority superseded that of the local Polizei. This one looked as if he had just come from a nearby tavern; his red tie was loosened and slightly askew, his shirttails wadded around his belt.

  “Wohin gehen sie?” he repeated. As he came closer, Franc could smell the schnapps on his breath. He thrust out his hand. “Wo sind sie Urkunde?” he demanded, looking past Franc at Lea as he impatiently snapped his fingers at her. “Geben sie mir Urkunde! Schnell!”

  The subcutaneous translator beneath Franc’s left ear interpreted his demands—Where are you going? Where are your documents? Give them to me, quickly!—but there was no point in pretending to be a German native. “Wie bitte,” he said, a little more hesitantly than necessary, pretending not to speak the language as well as he actually did. “Ich sprech kaum Deutsch … sphrechen sie Englisch?”

  The brown shirt’s eyebrows raised a little. “Amerikaner?” he asked, and smirked with contempt when Franc nodded. “Amerikan Juden?”

  “Nein, mein Herr,” Lea said stiffly, then she resorted to English. “We’re not Jews. We’re tourists. We’ve just come from the opera.”

  “Ja. Der Oper, ja.” The Nazi regarded them stoically for a few moments, his hand still thrust forward. “I speak some English,” he said at last, slowly and carefully. “Show me your papers, please.”

  Franc dug into the pocket of his covercoat, pulled out his American passport and German visa. Lea did the same, but the brown shirt ignored her while he opened Franc’s passport and unfolded his visa. He stared at the passport photo, then held it up against Franc’s face. Franc waited patiently. Both were immaculate forgeries, courtesy of the Artifacts Division; they could easily pass close inspection by German customs officials and Schutzstaffel, let alone the bleary-eyed scrutiny of a drunk barbarian. Yet this oaf was clearly looking for trouble, and Franc was aware that the S.A needed no reason to arrest or detain them; they were foreigners, and therefore deemed worthy of suspicion.

  “Wo ist …” he started, then belched sourly and began again. “Where are you staying, Herr Pannes?”

  “The Frankfurter Hof.” Franc shrugged sheepishly. “I’m afraid we got a little lost …”

  “Lost?” The brown shirt looked up sharply. “Was bedeutet das?”

  “We don’t know where we are,” Franc said. Yes, the Nazi spoke English, but not very much, nor very well. “Can you tell us how to get to the Frankfurter Hof?”

  “Ah! Lost. Ja.” He closed John’s passport and visa, but didn’t return them immediately. “It is down the street. A short distance.” He nodded past them, in the direction they had been taking on Kaiserstrasse before he stopped them. “You should be more careful, Herr Pannes. Frankfurt is a large city. Easy to get lost.”

  “I understand, yes. Thank you for your assistance.”

  The brown shirt nodded, then almost reluctantly he handed back Franc’s papers. “You may go. Auf wiedersehen.”

  “Danke schön. Auf wiedersehen.”

  “Heil Hitler,” the brown shirt muttered, almost as an afterthought, as he turned around and began staggering back the way he came.

  Lea slowly let out her breath. “He didn’t even bother to check my papers,” she murmured, tucking her visa and passport back in her coat. “Not much regard for women, I see.”

  Franc shook his head. “He wasn’t interested in you. He only wanted to harass me. Maybe I reminded him of someone he dislikes.” He smiled at her. “Nice move, speaking to him in English. They’re still giving Americans a wide berth, I think.”

  “Not for very much longer.”

  They continued down Kaiserstrasse, leaving the Cityring behind as they entered a long, narrow stretch of closed storefronts. Here and there, they spotted Nazi posters plastered to walls: recruitment propaganda for Nazi Youth, slogans for Strength Through Joy, heroic pictures of Adolf Hitler gazing down upon happy, industrious German workers. They came upon a tailor shop whose windows had been painted with a Star of David and the word Juden. Lea paused to regard it disdainfully; she was about to say something when Franc spotted someone walking down the opposite side of the street. He prodded her elbow, and she wisely kept her mouth shut as they hurried away.

  Two blocks later, the Kaiserstrasse ended in a large plaza, and there they found the Frankfurter Hof. The city’s largest grand hotel, it sprawled across a city block on one side of the Kaiserplatz, its name inscribed above the Romanesque-columned archway between the five-story wings surrounding a central courtyard. Crossing the plaza, Franc and Lea strode through the archway and entered the courtyard; glancing up, he noticed the four carved Titans between the balconies of the fourth-floor rooms, their backs bowed as they held up the roof.

  The uniformed doorman bowed gracefully as they walked through the front entrance, then helped Lea remove her coat. Taking off his own overcoat, Franc took a moment to glance around. The lobby was warm after the unseasonable coolness of the night, and it looked much the same as it did from the historical photos he had studied: velvet-upholstered chairs and sofas, with a grand piano in one corner and framed prints of country scenes on the papered walls. If his research was correct, then the registration desk would be through that archway to the left, with the elevators located only a short way from …

  “Pannes! Hey, John!”

  The voice was English-accented, and it came from the direction of the bar at the far end of the lobby. Looking around, Franc spotted several men seated around a low table. One, a ruddy-faced man in his mid-sixties, had raised his arm to gesture to him. “Come over here, man, and have a drink with us.”

  “Be right there,” he called back, then he glanced at Lea. She gave him a wary smile; apparently his disguise was working. “I think some of the chaps want to see me,” he said. “Be a good girl, will you, and get our key from the front desk?”

  “I’d be delighted to,” she said formally. She understood the protocol; in this age, proper ladies were not invited to share a nightcap with the gentlemen. “I’ll be up in the room.”

  “Thank you, dear. I’ll come up soon.” He gave her a good-night kiss, then he folded his coat over his arm and marched across the lobby and up a short flight of polished oak steps to the hotel bar.

  The bar was small and dimly lit, serenely masculine in the old European style: glass-fronted bookcases along dark oak-paneled walls, blue leather-backed chairs surrounding low tables, a long bar in front of mirror-backed shelves holding rows of liquor bottles. This time of night, it was nearl
y empty, save for the handful of men seated around a table beneath a classical painting. The barkeep, a stoical young man wearing a service tuxedo, studied Franc as he washed glasses in the sink behind the counter.

  “John. Come over and sit down.” The oldest gentleman at the table, an Englishman about the same age as John Pannes, motioned to a vacant chair. “How was the opera?”

  “It was … very German,” Franc said drily as he took a seat, and the other men chuckled knowingly. “It’s really much more Emma’s sort of thing. I only went along because she insisted.”

  The other man smiled as he reached for a pack of Dunhills next to his drink. Franc recognized him immediately: George Grant, an assistant manager for the London office of the Hamburg American Line. Since John Pannes worked for the same company, they knew each other as business associates. “I’ve never followed it myself,” he admitted as he shuffled a cigarette from the pack. “By the way, have you met these fellows? They’re sharing our flight with us tomorrow … well, most of them, at any rate.”

  Two of the others introduced themselves with cordial handshakes. Franc pretended not to know them, although he was all too familiar with them. Edward Douglas, in his late thirties, was an advertising executive from New Jersey. Although it was now a secret, history would later record that, while in Germany doing marketing research on behalf of his company’s chief client, General Motors, Douglas had also been covertly gathering information for the U.S. Navy on German manufacturing capability. Yet the Gestapo had recently become aware of his espionage activities, and now he was fleeing Germany before he could be arrested as a spy. Dolan Curtis, on the other hand, was nothing more nor less than the president of a perfume-importing company in Chicago; like Pannes himself, he had been visiting Germany on business, and now was heading home to America.