Anachronist

by Andrew Hastie

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The medal,’ the colonel growled.

  Josh stopped and produced the newspaper bundle from his pocket.

  ‘Ah!’ The colonel shook his finger and lowered his voice once more. ‘On second thoughts — maybe not out in the open. Wait until we are inside the house.’ His head flicked nervously in all directions as if they were being followed. ‘You never know who might be watching.’

  A minute later they were standing in the hall of the house, which still smelt as badly as it had before. The colonel took off his greatcoat and pulled out a notebook from one of the pockets. He checked his fob watch, which hung from a dirty, dark green waistcoat. ‘Eleven fifteen on the dot,’ he said, closing the book. ‘Now the medal, if you please.’

  Josh unwrapped the parcel and offered the open package to the old man who produced a single, garish pink, rubber glove and proceeded to put it on while staring at the medal.

  ‘The Stauffenberg incident. Well, you’re nothing if not predictable. How much did Eddy tell you it was worth?’

  ‘Thirty grand.’

  ‘Ha. I don’t know who is the bigger thief!’ he muttered, picking up the golden cross by the ribbon. ‘I take it you checked with an expert?’

  The colonel rummaged through one of the drawers in the Welsh dresser and took out an unusual magnifying glass that seemed to have numbers running over the glass.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Someone bought one for £200,000 a couple of years ago.’

  The colonel nodded. ‘Good. You’re not as stupid as you look. Now, let me see, which variation does this hail from? Hmm. Fourth or maybe fifteenth variant.’

  He muttered a stream of random numbers and probabilities as he consulted his notebook. Page after page of nonsensical symbols flickered in front of Josh’s nose, symbols that looked a lot like the ones on his hand. He pulled his sleeve down a little further.

  ‘Yes. Stauffenberg. Tried to kill Hitler in 11.944, sorry 1944. I sometimes forget the temporal context.’ He closed the notebook and placed the medal on the side, taking off his pink glove with a thwack.

  ‘He succeeded.’ Josh blurted. The colonel obviously knew his history so he thought that maybe the man might be able to help solve the mystery.

  ‘What?’ The colonel’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘The past has changed somehow. I was taught that Stauffenberg killed Hitler. The Second World War finished in 1944. But no one seems to remember that any more!’ Josh blurted it out quickly before he changed his mind, but it still sounded completely mental.

  This disturbed the old man, who became very flustered and went off to rummage through a set of drawers, mumbling to himself about remembering where he put something.

  He returned to Josh and held out a handful of old dice.

  ‘Throw these,’ he demanded, closing his fist and shaking them.

  Josh took the dice and threw them onto the floor. They all came up sixes.

  ‘Six sixes,’ the colonel said as he gathered them back up. ‘One in 46,656.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Josh.

  ‘Highly unlikely,’ the colonel mumbled as he pulled out an old pack of playing cards. ‘Pick four cards at random.’

  Josh did as he was told. They were all aces.

  ‘What are the chances of that?’ said Josh.

  ‘One in 265,825,’ replied the colonel. ‘You’re right — something is very definitely out of kilter.’

  He consulted something in his notebook and then went to the large stacks of newspapers and began to rifle through them. They appeared to be in chronological order as the old man worked his way over the years, calling them out as he checked a random date from each.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there! Look for 1944,’ he barked at Josh as he pulled the papers out.

  Josh chose a yellowing edition of The Times dated 1812. Its headline read ‘American Attack on Kingston Harbour’.

  ‘American War of Independence. Wrong end. Wrong century. You need to start over there.’ The colonel, who was halfway up a small ladder, was pointing to a spot a few stacks to his left.

  Josh put the newspaper back carefully and moved past the colonel. He climbed the stairs and began searching the upper parts of the stacks.

  ‘What exactly am I looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘A date. And, if possible, a time and a bloody location.’

  Josh had more luck on his third attempt. It was from the right year. 1944. But too early: the news was mostly of battles and propaganda about the war.

  Then he found it: 21 July 1944 edition. It came quickly out of the pile — as if it were waiting to be discovered. Although the edges were a little tattered, the paper itself was still crisp and white, as if it had just been delivered that morning. It was strange to think that it was nearly seventy years old, that it had been printed before his grandparents had been born.

  ‘Got it,’ Josh shouted, holding up the paper. The colonel jumped down off the ladder and snatched it out of his hands.

  ‘Good. Now where is it?’ he muttered, flicking through the pages without any respect for the age of the document. ‘Ah. Richardson. Now he was a real war correspondent. Got to the heart of the matter. None of this celebrity blather we have to put up with these days.’

  The colonel folded the paper over so that Josh could see the page. There was a blurry photo, taken from a distance, and some copy about the location. ‘Wolf’s Lair . . . rings a bell. Think that’s in Poland somewhere . . .10.20am. 20 July 1944. So that would be sometime along the lines of 71.3219.’

  ‘71.3219 of what exactly?’

  ‘Years — approximately. I could wait for the clackers at HQ to send me the exact details.’ He pointed at the notebook. ‘But they’re getting awfully slow these days, and we don’t need to be to the exact second.’

  Josh would have thought the man a complete nutter if it hadn’t been for the memory of the washroom.

  ‘I think — I think I’ve been there.’

  ‘Really? And how do you think you did that?’

  ‘It happened when I touched that,’ Josh said, pointing at the medal.

  The colonel’s face hardened. ‘Tell me exactly what you saw.’

  So Josh did exactly that. He recounted everything he could remember: the sound, the feel of the cold tiles under his feet, the look on the officer’s face when he dropped the suitcase. The colonel listened intently, showing no emotion until Josh stopped talking. Then he shivered as if there had suddenly been a cold draught.

  ‘So it appears you may have changed history,’ he said, walking off down the hallway towards the back of the house. He stopped at a door that had been slightly obscured by a stack of papers. ‘We’ll have to go back and check,’ he added nonchalantly, pushing the piles aside and opening the old door. ‘Not one of my favourite decades that one.’

  Inside the room, there were rows of costumes on rails, like a theatrical wardrobe department. The rails were on rotating racks that stretched up to the ceiling and further back into the room than should have been possible. Each contained a selection of the most authentic-looking pieces of fancy dress Josh had ever seen.

  The colonel turned a series of wheels using a large brass crank and the racks reorganised themselves until one with the numbers 11940 appeared at the front. He then began to search through the garments like a Paris couture designer, ‘No. No. Hmm, maybe. No. Wrong side.’ And then, ‘Yes, of course. SS. Who would question a member of the Gestapo?’ He handed Josh a black uniform and took one for himself.

  ‘Put this on. I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, making for the door.

  ‘What’s this for?’ asked Josh, holding up the uniform.

  ‘Well, you don’t want to turn up naked again, do you?’ He smirked and left.

  Josh stood staring at the elaborate collection of vintage clothes. There were so many incredibly realistic costumes hanging around him that he felt like a child in a toy shop — except this
wasn’t kids’ stuff — this was like cosplay or re-enactment. Josh had no real idea what the old lunatic was up to, but dressing up like a Nazi was not something he thought he would be doing when he woke up this morning.

  He tried the door but it was locked. The mad bugger had bolted the door on the way out. He had little choice but to play along and part of him wanted to see whether he could go back there again. The colonel seemed to think he’d changed history, which meant maybe he could help him change it back again, or at least explain what the hell was going on.

  He undressed and put on the uniform. It was a bit big for him, and heavy, the cut of the jacket spoke of fine tailoring, the stitching was so small as to be nearly invisible and he was pretty sure the buttons were made of silver. His knowledge of the SS was patchy, but from what he could remember they were the top dogs in the Third Reich, the badasses that everyone else was scared of.

  The colonel came back into the room wearing the uniform of an SS officer. His beard had gone, and his hair was shaved down to a grade two. It had taken years off him; he looked more like a man of forty, and the uniform made him look respectable — even if you could still see the remnants of the shaving foam on his collar. The man had been out of the room for less than five minutes. Josh was amazed by how he could have got a shave and a haircut so quickly.

  ‘So.’ He put on his cap and straightened it. ‘Are you ready, boy?’

  Josh nodded, placing his hat on his head and looking at himself in the full-length mirror. It was amazing how the uniform changed him. The person who stared back at him looked every bit the officer. He could see why some people got a kick out of the whole role-play thing.

  The colonel produced the medal and held it out in his palm.

  ‘Place your finger upon the vestige,’ he said, opening his notebook with his free hand. ‘Now, nothing you are about to see will make any sense, but, trust me, no matter what you think you know it is very important that you don’t change anything.’

  Josh wanted to ask about how this worked, but suddenly he heard the music again, and then tendrils of light began to unfurl from the medal.

  The colonel began to play with the air around the medal, manipulating the lines of light in a way that made the burns on Josh’s arm itch. It was as though he were looking for something specific in a knotted ball of twine.

  ‘There,’ he whispered as the room vibrated around them and went dark.

  15

  Wolf's Lair

  [Wolf’s Lair, Eastern Prussia. Date: 11.944-20-07]

  When Josh stopped retching, he realised he was kneeling in a thick carpet of pine needles in the middle of a forest. It was dark, and the treacle scent of pine sap filled the air. The moon was half hidden by cloud, but in the weak light he could see that the trees went off for miles in all directions. The colonel stood a few metres away, checking something on his watch. As Josh went to take a step towards him, the ground seemed to shift, and he stumbled.

  The colonel helped him back on his feet. ‘Takes a bit of getting used to. Time displacement does strange things to the inner ear. Drink this.’ He handed him a small hip flask — it tasted like a brandy.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Josh, taking a sip. It was good stuff. The nausea dissipated as he handed it back to the colonel, who took a long draught himself.

  ‘Prussia. No . . . Poland. Used to be called “Masuria” once upon a time. It’s had a rather tumultuous history. Anyway, we’re half a mile south of the Wolfsschanze,’ he said, pointing towards a twinkling array of lights in the distance.

  Josh stared blankly at him.

  ‘The Wolf’s Lair. Hitler’s eastern front headquarters — although the accurate translation should be Wolf’s Fortress.’

  ‘This is not where I came before.’

  ‘No, well, we didn’t want to jump right back into that. The aim of the mission is to stay in the shadows. To observe, not blunder in like an uninvited guest at a banquet. Just follow me.’

  The colonel headed off up the hill. Josh tried to keep up, but the big man’s strides meant he was nearly running to stay with him. It was then he realised that the heavy holster bouncing off his hip must actually contain a gun.

  ‘How come these clothes didn’t disappear when we landed?’

  ‘Actualised,’ corrected the colonel, breathing heavily. ‘When we actualised.’ Josh could see sweat beads glinting on his forehead.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The correct term for the completion of a displacement is actualisation.’

  Josh preferred his version, but continued anyway. ‘So the clothes?’ His voice echoed across the forest.

  The colonel stopped for a moment to catch his breath. ‘I don’t suppose you get to go on many secret missions, so I will forgive this constant barrage of questions, but just so you appreciate the seriousness of the situation: there are approximately two thousand Nazi soldiers over the next ridge with excellent eyesight and incredibly powerful weapons. The basic plan is that we don’t give them any reason to exercise one with the other. So keep your voice down. Agreed?’

  Josh nodded.

  ‘Good. Now, to your point: clothes are complicated. It really depends on when the materials were invented, but, more importantly, it’s about not looking out of place. Blending in with the era is not always as easy as it looks.’

  Josh thought back to the way people would stare at the colonel’s greatcoat and wild hair, but decided this probably wasn’t the appropriate time to bring it up.

  For the next ten minutes, he followed behind him in silence as they skirted the high, razor-wired perimeter fence. There were various death’s head signs about mines, and searchlights that intermittently swept the ground behind the fence. He could hear dogs barking somewhere off in the distance and shuddered at the memory of Billy getting his backside bitten; he guessed these hounds were more likely to tear your throat out. They stopped where the ground rose up and gave them a good view of the compound.

  The colonel took out his watch. Josh could see it was no ordinary clock face — there was a complex set of dials and symbols whirring across the front of it, and it shone with a strange blue glow that illuminated the colonel’s face.

  ‘So the Allied forces landed on the beaches at Normandy over a month ago.’

  ‘You can see that in there?’ asked Josh, pointing at the timepiece.

  The colonel snapped the watch lid back and dropped it into his pocket. ‘Not really. I read up on the subject while you were getting changed. Wanted to have a better appreciation of the challenge.’

  Josh was still mystified as to how he could have done the research, had a shave and a haircut and got changed into his uniform in the time he was out of the room.

  ‘There have been four other assassination attempts in the last two years. Himmler and the Gestapo have been on high alert ever since. They suspect someone within the German High Command.’

  The colonel took out some antique-looking binoculars and studied the compound for a few minutes.

  ‘Three rings of defence, each more secure than the previous. The outermost is defended by land mines and the Führer Begleit Brigade, a special armoured security unit, which mans the guard houses, watchtowers and checkpoints.’ He took out his notebook and Josh could see a 3D map of the base rotating around on the page. Lines and data appeared and disappeared at various locations on it as if someone was trying to plot the best chance way in — but kept changing their minds.

  ‘Inside this is where the barracks are located as well as the quarters of the Reich’s ministers.’ A smaller shape was drawn inside the first. ‘And inside that is a Führer’s bunker made from two-metre-thick steel-reinforced concrete and guarded by the Reich Security Service, an elite group of SS officers handpicked to be Hitler’s bodyguards.’

  ‘So not much chance of us just busting in, then?’ joked Josh.

  ‘None,’ the colonel replied gravely before going back to his surveillance, ‘but that’s not what we’re here to do.’

&n
bsp; ‘You’re not going to change it back?’

  ‘I haven’t been instructed to do so. No.’

  ‘Instructed by who exactly?’

  ‘Whom.’

  Josh ignored the correction. ‘Whom do you work for?’

  There was a noise, the dry crack of a boot snapping a twig. It resonated through the quiet of the forest like a bullet.

  The colonel lifted one finger to his lips, his eyes scanning the woods in the direction of the sound. ‘Save the questions for later.’

  He took out the medal once more. It immediately lit up in his palm, throwing the craggy features of his face into sharp contrast. Josh felt him take his hand, and the world around them began to vibrate, the trees shimmered in and out of phase, then he felt the ground fall away.

  It felt like less than a heartbeat before they appeared inside the camp. It was light now and, judging by the position of the sun, close to midday. The inner compound was busy. There were German soldiers and officers going about their usual business, none of whom seemed to notice the sudden appearance of two high-ranking SS officers from behind Bunker 5. Josh assumed that, even if they had, they knew better than to question them — he could see from the fear on the guards’ eyes that the insignia on his uniform carried a lot of authority, and he kind of liked it.

  The colonel was talking fluently to one of the sentries at the door of a large green bunker. He took a letter out of his notebook and shoved it into the man’s hand. Josh strode over to the colonel and nodded at the guard. The hard-faced man finished reading the letter, snapped his heels to attention and handed back the document. The colonel folded it carefully and placed it in the notebook. He saluted the other officer with a ‘Heil Hitler’ and turned to Josh with an expression that said: ‘Follow me and don’t say a word.’ Then he walked straight into the bunker.

  Inside they found themselves in a corridor that tunnelled deep into the rock. It was lit by a small line of electrical lights that illuminated gold-framed oil paintings — some of which Josh recognised.