The back of the shop was an Aladdin’s cave of broken and part-repaired appliances, dimly lit by a random collection of low energy bulbs. It felt like Josh was entering the workshop of some mad inventor. It smelt of dead machines, of grease and metal, wires and solder.
‘So, Mr Jones, if you would be so kind as to let me inspect that lovely piece?’ Eddy asked as he put on a pair of thick leather gloves. He motioned towards a workbench with a bright desk lamp and a huge magnifying glass.
Josh unwrapped the paper bundle once more and placed it in the circle of light on the bench.
Eddy moved his spectacles onto his forehead and picked up the medal with a pair of long-nosed pliers. Josh knew Eddy was a little bit weird about germs and bacteria, but these precautions were excessive, even for him.
‘Hmm. 1944. Stauffenberg. SS long-service medal with oak cluster. Very rare, very rare indeed,’ Eddy noted as he turned the object over under the glass.
Josh congratulated himself; he’d known it had been a good one. The name still escaped him, but he was only interested in what it was worth, not what some dead German had done to earn it all those years ago — that was ancient history.
‘How much?’ Josh asked directly. He didn’t really have the time for Eddy’s Antiques Roadshow act.
‘That depends.’
Eddy placed it on some antique scales and began adjusting the weights.
‘On what?’
‘Just under four ounces of twenty-four-carat gold.’ Eddy pretended to do some maths in his head. ‘I would say it’s worth £500. But it depends on where it came from,’ said Eddy, putting the medal back on the newspaper.
‘You know better than to ask,’ Josh replied, smiling.
Eddy shrugged and placed his glasses back down on his nose.
‘Anything strange happen when you acquired it?’ he asked, fixing Josh with a piercing glare.
‘No. Why? Does it make it more valuable?’
It was Eddy’s turn to smile. ‘The thing about medals, apart from their base material value, is who they belonged to, the more notorious, the more their worth.’
‘I don’t care about its history — it’s just a lump of metal.’
‘Ah, but you should. This General Stauffenberg, for instance, was once a very important man, and he nearly killed the most evil dictator of the twentieth century.’
That was when the memory finally surfaced, like a birthday card that turns up two days late from your aunt with a tenner inside. It was a history lesson on the Second World War and the way Hitler had died in a bomb blast. Stauffenberg was the name of the officer that had taken the suitcase full of explosives into a meeting of the high council and ended the war. He was a hero, and this was his medal. Josh couldn’t believe that he had met the man that had killed Hitler.
‘So that makes it way more valuable. Yeah?’
‘Maybe, to the right people. Would be even more valuable if he had succeeded.’
That wasn’t right, Josh thought.
‘What do you mean — if? He did kill Hitler. I remember that much from school.’
Eddie looked at him strangely as if unsure of what to say next. Then he shook his head and handed him back the package.
‘No, my boy. I don’t know what they’ve been teaching you. But Hitler survived that particular attempt, and the war lasted another terrible year. It wasn’t until 1945 that the Allies took Berlin and Hitler committed suicide. The Nazi’s surrendered on the 8th of May — it’s called “Victory in Europe” or VE day.’
Josh was confused. He remembered the general in the washroom and the things that had fallen out of the suitcase. It had been a bomb, he was sure, but what kind of crazy shit was he dealing with now? It made no sense — VE day was today. The Nazis had surrendered after the death of Hitler in 1944; he could still hear his history teacher Miss Fieldhouse reading it out to the class.
‘Eddy. Stop messing around. Do you want to buy this or not?’
The bell chimed from the front door telling them that someone else had come into the shop.
‘Too specialist for my clientele, I’m afraid. The gold is worth something, but the medal would be worth £30,000 in the hands of the right dealer,’ he said, taking off the gloves as he made his way out of the workshop, ‘if it isn’t a fake, that is . . . Let yourself out.’
Before Josh could ask Eddy if he knew any dealers, he’d disappeared through the beaded curtain and begun talking to someone about the hair dryer.
Josh let himself out of the back door and stood for a moment watching the world go by. Nothing seemed any different; people looked just as dumb as they always had, the adverts on the sides of the buses pushed the same old crap — there was no sign that history had changed at all.
He decided Eddy must be pulling his leg — it was just part of a negotiation strategy to get the price down — but Josh didn’t have the time to play games. He thought about going back and threatening the old man, getting him to admit it was a wind-up, or at least give him the name of a specialist who might buy the medal from him. They could even negotiate some kind of finder’s fee for Eddy.
Except Josh knew better than to threaten Eddy, he was like an endangered species, protected by his clients, most of whom were way more dangerous than Lenin, and that was saying something. He had no choice but to find out for himself. It was Saturday so there was no community service today, and there would be a few more hours before Lenin would surface and come looking for him; time enough to do some digging of his own.
He started walking in the direction of Churchill Gardens. If the past had changed somehow, then VE day would have moved, and there would be nothing going on at the war memorial in the park today.
From a grimy upstairs window of his office, Eddy watched Josh until he disappeared from sight. Then went to his desk, unlocked the bottom drawer and took out a Bakelite telephone with a rotary dial. As the last number clicked back into place, there was burst of static in the earpiece — he took a deep breath and spoke slowly into the mouthpiece.
‘This is William Edward Taunton, Antiquarian 7-382. I wish to report a temporal deviation.’
7
Caitlin
When Josh got to the park, it was full of kids; a school fête had transformed the serene green space into a bouncy-castle showroom with a sideline of stalls selling home-made cakes and offering tombola prizes. There was no sign of the Salvation Army or their band and no WW2 veterans — no poppies and not one Union Jack.
Josh circumvented the ring of parents screaming encouragement at their hobbling children in the sack race and went over to the memorial. The weather-beaten brass statue of a lone soldier stood sentinel above him with the dates of the two world wars: 1914—18 and 1939—45 etched into a brass plaque at his feet. Josh scanned down the names that were listed on each of the sides of the marble base, running his finger over those that died in 1945 as if to check they were real. The metal letters were cold and hard under his fingers, and he could feel the pitted edges where acid rain had eaten into the surface. Nothing was making sense, he thought. Was he the only one that remembered it differently? How do you go about asking someone without sounding like you’re going mad?
He felt the medal in his pocket, and knew he had to find out more about it. He needed to find a dealer, but had no idea where to start. They could never afford a PC, broadband or even a smart phone at home. It had never really bothered him that much until now; electrical stuff always used to go wrong when he came near it, which was useful for disabling car alarms but not much else. It was the same with watches — they would just stop working for no apparent reason.
A grumpy parent announced over the PA that the tae-kwon-do demonstration was about to start and a crowd of candy-floss-fuelled kids swarmed to a roped-off square of grass. Josh took one more look at the memorial and walked out of the park in the direction of the local library.
Aside from graphic novels, Josh had never been a big fan of books. At school his reading levels were way lower t
han those of the other kids. His numeracy was higher than average, and maps were his absolute favourite. So they assigned him a special teaching assistant and that worked well for a year or two, but then his mum got ill and they had to move to a poky little flat and a different school. Without the dedicated teaching, his grades dropped, as did his interest in education. At sixteen, with no real qualifications and very little in the way of job prospects, his offender manager had managed to get him onto a car-mechanics course at college, which, even though it was mostly practical, still had a heavy amount of theory — something he failed miserably at.
Libraries were alien places to Josh. To him they were just drop-in centres for the homeless and old people. He hadn’t been inside one since a school trip in year eight to the Bodleian in Oxford. That had been like something out of another century, stacks of books that nobody read, lined up in the vain hope that someone would borrow one. ‘Where books go to die,’ Mrs B had remarked when he’d told her about it afterwards.
His local library was equally as old. A wealthy merchant’s name was elegantly carved into the stone arch above the door — in case anyone ever forgot who forked out the cash to build it. If there was one thing Josh knew about the Victorians, it was that they were not shy about naming things after themselves.
He sat down in front of the PC and keyed in the code the librarian had given him; she had wanted to charge him a pound for an hour, but he had managed to charm his way around that. He had a way with women, especially older ones who apparently spent a lot of time talking to their cats and who obviously knitted their own jumpers. He wasn’t a bad-looking bloke or so he had been told, and he was never shy about pushing his luck.
He began with a search, which thanks to Google’s correction of his dyslexic spelling, served up over half a million results for ‘Assassination’ and ‘Hitler’.
Scanning down the page he picked a site that he recognised; it was a Wikipedia article about the ‘20th July plot’. The screen refreshed to display a long and wordy article. He scrolled down until he found an image of a blasted meeting room and clicked on it. The picture enlarged to show what was left of a room with most of the ceiling hanging down and a group of German officers in leather coats standing on the shattered debris. There was a footnote that described how there hadn’t been enough dynamite in the briefcase to kill Hitler outright. General Stauffenberg had gone to the washroom to prepare the bomb and then placed it under the conference table next to Hitler.
Josh went cold. Eddy had been telling the truth.
The computer made a strange clunking noise, and the screen went black. The librarian behind the desk swore out loud and began hitting random keys on her keyboard and muttering something about ‘useless technology’. Josh turned to look around at the rows of books and decided that maybe they were a better option after all.
The boy was wandering along the aisles like a lost child when she saw him. Caitlin was busy pretending to reorganise the military history section: the second most popular subject in the library, beaten only by romance novels, which, considering that her typical customers were mildly inebriated ex-service men of no fixed abode, was slightly disturbing.
The library was not frequently visited by good-looking young men. Miriam on the front desk had tipped her off as though it were going to be the high point of an otherwise dreary day. She and Miriam had an unspoken affinity for games and practical jokes to help the hours pass quickly.
He wore the universal look of someone who needed assistance, and she was only too happy to oblige.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked as he scanned the spines of a row of books.
Josh took a moment to check her out. He’d not been expecting to meet anyone under the age of forty and especially not such a pretty girl. She couldn’t have been that much older than him and although she wasn’t his type, she had all the usual trademarks of a goth: piercings, eyeliner, tattoos and a band T-shirt — he was finding it difficult not to smile.
‘Yes,’ he managed to croak. His voice tended to fail him when he was nervous. Not that he ever usually got shy around girls. He cleared his throat to make his voice deeper. ‘I’m looking for a book on the War.’
‘Well, you’ve come to the right place!’ she replied chirpily. ‘Which one?’
‘Which book? I was hoping you could tell me,’ he replied with a cheeky glint in his eye.
She laughed, and it was a clear, pure sound that made her eyes light up. ‘No, dummy, which war: First, Second, Boer, Gulf?’
‘Didn’t realise there were so many,’ he admitted as he scratched his two-day-old beard and wished he had remembered to shave.
She gave him a stern look; he could tell she liked a bit of banter.
‘Second — anything about Hitler’s assassination on July 20th, 1944,’ he added.
She nodded and walked off along the stacks. He couldn’t help but admire the way her arse swayed under her skirt as she glided down the aisle, and he only just managed to look away before she caught him. She’d stopped at a sign that clearly read World War II, and pulled a rather large book from the shelf.
‘So what exactly do you want to know about the July 20th attempt?’ she asked, flicking through the book.
They sat down at a reading desk. She was so close that he kept catching the scent of her hair. It smelt of flowers and something more exotic. On her wrist she had a small tattoo; it looked like a snake eating its tail.
‘I’m looking for an officer, Stauffenberg,’ Josh said, trying not to stare at her breasts.
‘General Stauffenberg,’ she corrected, turning the book towards him to show a full-page photograph of the officer. Stauffenberg looked different in the picture, younger, and he didn’t have the eye patch or the gloved hand. There was an air of nobility about him, and a sense of hope in his eyes. Seeing the picture of him sent a chill through Josh’s spine, as if having it in print made it more real, but he still couldn’t believe he’d actually met him. There was no way he could have changed history . . . There was no such thing as time travel.
‘What happened to him?’ Josh asked, realising she was waiting for some kind of reaction.
‘Oh, he was shot for trying to kill the Führer, along with a hundred and eighty other conspirators,’ she replied, scanning the text on the opposite page. ‘He would have been a hero if there had been more explosives in the case.’
‘It wasn’t his fault. He only had one good hand, he couldn’t hold it properly.’
‘Ah,’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘I didn’t realise you were an expert.’
Josh knew he might have said too much. She was looking at him differently. He needed to think of something fast, or he would have a load of explaining to do.
‘Yeah, you know. In the movie, he was injured, wasn’t he?’
She was staring directly at him. ‘The film, of course. What’s so important about him anyway?’
‘My grandad left me a medal and it’s got his name on it,’ he said, tapping on the picture of Stauffenberg.
‘You mean your great-grandfather?’ she said with air quotes. ‘Wouldn’t your grandfather have had to be a hundred and twenty to have fought in the Second World War?’
Josh didn’t usually screw up so badly. There was something about her that was putting him off his game.
‘Oh, he wasn’t in the war. He was a detectorist. You know metal detectors?’ Josh mimed someone sweeping the floor and listening to imaginary headphones. ‘Every Sunday he’d be out in some field or other. Even went on holiday to France just to scope the battlefields.’
‘So he just happened to find a medal that was awarded to the German general who tried to kill Hitler?’ She was obviously not convinced.
‘No. Swapped it for something — a rare Roman coin I think.’
The trouble with a lie was that it had a tendency to take on a life of its own; once you started it was very hard to stop. He would have to stay on his guard — she was very sharp.
‘So do you think the war
would have ended that day if he had succeeded?’
‘Who knows? Maybe. Doesn’t matter now, though, does it? The past is the past. You can’t change it.’
She unconsciously stroked an old pendant she wore round her neck. It looked like a dragon. ‘Twentieth century isn’t really my cup of tea.’ There was a tinge of sadness in her voice.
‘So what is?’ he asked, relieved to move away from the subject of the medal.
‘Ancient history. The library of Alexandria — the greatest centre of learning the ancient world had ever seen. I’m studying it at Uni.’ There was a light in her eyes as she spoke. He liked the way her whole face glowed when she talked about something she was interested in.
‘I’m currently writing a dissertation on Sun Tzu, the Chinese general that wrote the Art of War.’
There had been girls like her at school: smart, geeky girls, who didn’t bother too much with the way they looked and tended to prefer books to boys. He hadn’t paid too much attention to them; they were too hard to get to first base with and generally made him feel stupid. This one, however, was unusual to the point of making him forget what he was supposed to be doing.
‘So, Caitlin . . .’ he said, spending too much time looking at her name badge, and it was obvious he was more interested in what was rising and falling beneath, ‘do you have anything on ... medals?’
‘Do you want to see them?’ she asked as he continued to stare.
‘What?’ he coughed, trying not to blush.
‘The band. They’re playing tonight in Highgate. They’re kind of a fusion of indie and hiphop.’ She pointed straight at her breasts. The word INFINITUM was emblazoned across her T-shirt in an old-fashioned script that wound through the gears of a clockwork device.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ he said, trying not to sound too keen.
‘As for the medals. That’s known as numismatics — you’ll want the coin and medal collectors directory.’ She pulled down a thick book from the top shelf and leafed through the pages, turning it towards him and pointing to a section entitled ‘Coin & Medal Dealers — W.W.2’.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 4