Their rendezvous was with only two of the gang — Princip and Ilic. It took place in the rundown Cafe Miljacka in a dusty back street. Jack had not known quite what to expect from his first encounter with the assassins, particularly Princip, about whom he had heard and read so much. Here was a man who was unknown to the world now, but within twenty-four hours would become a household name. The meeting was inauspicious. Princip was skinny and somewhat dishevelled with dark eyes and a thin moustache. He was furtive and nervous. Communication was difficult. A package was handed over at the meeting. Inside was one of the few pistols that had been smuggled into Bosnia with the gang. It wasn’t clear from the meeting what Jack and Angus’s role was to be… but it was obviously assumed that, because of their association with Pendelshape, if all else failed, they would intervene in a way that would ensure that the Black Hand would succeed. After only twenty minutes, the meeting ended.
Now, standing behind a growing crowd of people on the Appel Quay, Jack thought it incredible that he knew precisely the course of events that was about to unfold. He was already aware of every detail of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s visit — he had seen it all in Point-of-Departure. In just a few minutes Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, would die.
Suddenly, in the distance, they heard a muted explosion. A ripple of consternation ran through the crowd. Voices were raised; there was confusion. A car drove rapidly down the road, then a second. There were a few muted cheers as a third car passed. Jack caught a fleeting glance of hat feathers and finery over the heads in front of him… then the Archduke and Sophie and their pursuing entourage were gone. There was a rumour in the crowd that a bomb had been thrown at the Archduke, but the would-be assassin had been mobbed by the crowd, and the Archduke was bravely continuing with the tour…
After a while, out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the unmistakable figure of Princip furtively cross the Appel Quay and disappear into Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen. The entourage had passed on its way to the presentation at the Town Hall and Princip thought that he had missed his opportunity. Bizarrely, he had decided to get some early lunch. Jack followed Princip and took up position next to the shop, just back from the road. Angus followed a few paces behind. Jack scanned the crowd. If VIGIL guards were in Sarajevo, they were well hidden.
“Jack, we must do something!” the urgent voice startled Jack.
It was Anna. She had left her position by the Cumurja Bridge. She was out of breath. Her face was flushed and her dark hair dishevelled.
“Our bomb missed, Cabrinovic is captured, the others have fled. It is only us and Gavrilo left…” She was distraught.
Jack reassured her, “It will be OK.”
She looked pleadingly into his eyes with the same desperate expression on her face that she had had as she held her brother’s lifeless head.
The mayor’s car rumbled round the corner and passed them as it turned into Franz Joseph Street. It was leading the procession back from the presentation at the Town Hall. A second car followed carrying the Archduke and Sophie. The big headlamps and fender of the Graf und Stift lumbered round the corner from the Appel Quay. It was slowing down — the driver had taken a wrong turn and was not following the route straight out of Sarajevo, which had been hastily rearranged following the earlier bomb assault. They could clearly see all the occupants, including, in the rear, perched up high, the Archduke and, to his left, Sophie. A man was leaning over to the driver telling him something.
Gavrilo Princip emerged from the delicatessen, a sandwich in one hand. There was a look of astonishment on his face as the Archduke’s car ground to a halt, delivering Princip’s target to within a couple of metres. He dropped his sandwich and reached into his coat pocket. He quickly looked around, and as he did so, just for a split second, his dark, wild eyes caught those of Jack only feet away. Jack felt a sudden twinge of doubt. He could stop Princip right there and now. His mind flashed back to the family holiday when he was small — the visit to the war graves. He remembered the endless sea of white crosses and in his head the image fused with the pictures of the war from his father’s history book — all the horror and suffering laid out in black and white. He could feel the pistol that had been given to him the day before nestling next to his chest. He could shoot Princip now. He slipped one hand into his inside pocket and felt the cold metal. His fingers closed round the weapon…
Suddenly, from across the road, two burly police officers broke from the crowd and advanced towards Jack. They had spotted the suspicious movement of his hand to his inside pocket and, taking no chances, they were now moving menacingly towards him. Jack spotted them and quickly snatched back his hand, leaving the gun snugly in place. But Princip had ignored Jack and had already turned towards the Archduke’s car. He levelled his pistol, then he fired — two shots in quick succession.
Sophie slumped onto the knee of the Archduke. For a moment, the Archduke remained upright, but then blood from his neck wound started to spurt from his mouth and he listed into unconsciousness.
Chaos. The crowd quickly realised what had happened and turned on Princip. Jack, Angus and Anna were engulfed by the angry crowd and Jack felt himself being jostled and harried. The officers were wading into the melee to make sure no one escaped.
“Run!” Angus shouted.
He lowered his head and barrelled through the crowd. Jack and Anna followed in his wake. The crowd thinned, and in an instant they broke free into the open street. For a moment Angus hesitated, not knowing which way to turn. Anna took up the lead. Jack stole a glance behind him and saw that two officers were hot on their heels.
“Down here!”
Anna sprinted down a dusty side street where a market was in progress, Jack and Angus still following closely behind. Quite unexpectedly, a cloaked figure stepped from the shadow of a doorway, into their path. They clattered straight into him. Without hesitation, the man somehow bundled them each through the doorway and into a small storeroom. The man checked each way up the street, and, satisfied that the pursuers had been temporarily shaken off, stepped back into the room and closed the door behind him. His hair was ruffled, his face was a little dirty and his clothes creased and in places were torn. But the face was unmistakable. Dr Pendelshape.
Anna was breathing hard but she was also smiling and had a tear in her eye. But this time it was a tear of happiness. She rushed over to hug Pendelshape.
“We did it,” she said.
Anna, of course, had no idea what horrors her friends, the assassins of Sarajevo, had unleashed. She only knew that some sort of justice had finally been done for the crimes against her family.
Pendelshape smiled, “So it would seem, my dear, but I’m afraid I arrived a little late for all the action.” He looked across at the boys, who were dusting themselves down, “Well, I am glad to see that you have all become acquainted — it was just as I hoped.” He gestured to some crates in one corner of the storeroom, “There, take a seat. We will be safe in here for a short while — but not for long. The police will be here soon, I’m sure. But first things first.” He removed his cloak and turned to Anna, “Now my dear, I fear that the authorities will be quickly upon you and your friends. You must flee Sarajevo immediately. Now I am here, I will take care of the boys. Don’t worry about us.”
Anna opened her mouth to speak, but Pendelshape put up his hand to silence her.
“There is no time, my dear. Trust me Anna — you are in great danger. Look here, I have brought you some money,” he presented her with a leather wallet, “please — take it. You will need to start a new life… away from all of this. I’m sorry this is so sudden, but it is the only way. You must go. Now.”
Anna looked at the wallet and then at Pendelshape, not knowing what to do.
Pendelshape chided her, “Please Anna… you must go. You are in danger. They will be searching all the cafes and houses. You have done what you came here to do.”
She nodded and reluctantly took the wallet, “I understand. Than
k you.” She smiled, turned and without looking back slipped through the door into the dust and heat of Sarajevo. Anna was gone.
“How did you get here?” Jack asked.
“Probably like you. With difficulty,” Dr Pendelshape replied.
“We didn’t stop the assassination, you know… as you wanted.” Angus said.
“I know. It was perhaps too much to expect. I’m afraid I arrived too late from Vienna to help.” Pendelshape reached into his jacket, pulled out his time phone and flipped the device open, “The good news is that we have a time signal. Now we are together, we can finally travel back to your father’s base, get you safely away from VIGIL and then think about how we can complete our objective. We will be coming back to 1914 — as soon as we have dealt with VIGIL once and for all.”
Jack felt numb. He could hear Pendelshape’s words but they did not register. He could only think about the murder he had just witnessed. The wild look in Princip’s eyes before he turned his gun on the Archduke, the flashes from the muzzle of the pistol, the muffled cracks as the shots rang out, Sophie slumping forward and the blood from the Archduke’s neck… The sequence repeated itself again and again in his head.
Pendelshape had no idea what they had been through these last few days. The deaths that Jack had seen on their journey — the professor, Dani, Zadok and now, finally, the Archduke and his wife… it was too much. Jack glanced over at Angus. He sat on the dusty crate, just staring into the gloom of the musty storeroom. He looked pale and drawn. This wasn’t like playing some sort of super bonus round of Point-of-Departure, where you had to get three gold stars on every level. This was real.
Pendelshape sensed Jack’s unease, “Look — I understand — I know you have endured a lot. We all have.” Jack stared back at him blankly. Pendelshape sighed, “In truth we don’t have much time, but it might help if I tell you our side of the story… perhaps then you might understand a little better.”
Jack shrugged.
“I was always on your father’s side. Taurus gives us the chance to change the world for the better. We must be careful, but used with precision, we now have the tools to do infinite good. But Inchquin and the Rector poisoned the rest of the team against your father. They thought that it was wrong to meddle with history — even though our computer technology is highly effective at modelling the consequences of interventions. They still thought it was too risky. So as soon as we knew that the Taurus at the school worked, they closed the whole thing down. Put in place rules, protocols, all codified in the VIGIL Imperative. But they still remained suspicious of your father — they knew he wouldn’t come over to their point of view. He remained a risk. So eventually…” he paused.
“Eventually, what?” Angus asked.
“They tried to get rid of him for good.”
“What — kill Dad?” Jack said.
“Yes, Jack. And they nearly succeeded. So he disappeared when you were just eight and became a fugitive. I remained at the school, I had pretended to side with VIGIL, but I was secretly loyal to him. That is why your father had to leave you and your mum, Jack. I’m afraid that’s why you have had to grow up without him. It’s not what he wanted. Not at all.”
“In exile, it took your father a long time to recreate the Taurus… the machine that sent first Angus back to rescue you and then me, in that wretched tank. I took risks to help your father by channelling information to him. The work took many years. But from our earlier research we had already pinpointed a moment in time where we knew we could make a massive beneficial change in the course of world history.”
“Sarajevo, 28th June, 1914,” Jack said. “Today.”
“Exactly. The twentieth century was mankind’s bloodiest and that date — today’s date — was the trigger. It needn’t have happened. We conducted three short expeditions — using the Taurus at the school during the testing phase — just before your father left. That’s how I infiltrated the Black Hand and the assassins, met Anna and Dani and set up the second cell, led by Zadok. We were going to return, having laid the groundwork, and then disrupt the assassination to prevent the war. Of course, before we finalised the plan, we created many detailed computer simulations of the various interventions in time that we might make and how they might affect the future.”
“Timeline Simulations.”
“Yes. I remember when we cracked it…”
“Don’t tell me — Simulation 0107. The wallchart that was missing from Dad’s workshop at Cairnfield?”
“Yes. This was the scenario that optimised the future most effectively. It started with stopping the Sarajevo assassination.”
“Then your plan failed because Dad had to escape from VIGIL.”
“But when your father told me that he had perfected his own Taurus, he asked me to bring you to him so you would be safe. There was little time. So I decided to use the school Taurus once more to hide us in history — in 1914 in fact. The school Taurus was already configured for that period — from the earlier tests.”
“You knew you had to take me with you because if VIGIL had me captive — they could threaten Dad.”
“Yes. But we would escape from the school and you would be safe. Before leaving I would invoke a programme that would wipe all the Taurus’s control discs after we’d gone — remove all the software, documentation and design, and wipe all the back-up devices. Without the software or documentation, Taurus is just a useless lump of metal. At that point your father and I would have the only working Taurus and VIGIL would be impotent. I had passed our time phone codes to your father — so once we had escaped he would be able to track us and pick us up with his Taurus. Nothing could stop us then. We had it all worked out.”
“But then the Rector found out. He intercepted Dad’s message.”
“In our excitement, we made a stupid mistake. Once they knew that your father had built his own time machine they were very concerned. They thought he had disappeared. Over the years VIGIL had ceased to be worried about him — and they certainly never suspected me.”
“So they moved in — just as you were about to tell us your plan in the Taurus control room at school.”
“But you escaped, not surprisingly, scared to death by the Rector and the VIGIL thugs, and we were in a completely new situation. It was unplanned.”
“Then you and Angus were rescued by Dad…”
“Your father knew we might need back up. Over the years he has recruited a few very loyal supporters,” Pendelshape nodded proudly at Angus, “And Angus kindly agreed to rescue you from the castle.”
Angus looked down sheepishly, not sure whether to be proud of his actions or not.
“Why did you send Angus alone?” Jack asked.
“We didn’t! Angus was included because we knew you would trust him. He wanted to come. But the signal failed as we were sending the rest of the team. The time phone signals are intermittent. It has always been a problem. The next signal was at Schonbrunn and when we got a fix on Angus’s time phone we had a second chance.”
“The tank?”
Pendelshape smiled, “A German Tiger tank from the Second World War. Your father has got a little collection of historical artefacts. And it did the job — or at least it diverted VIGIL sufficiently for you to escape.” For a moment, doubt flashed across his face, “Near thing though…” He leaned over so the boys could see the top of his bald head. “See… burned off the remains of my hair.”
Pendelshape chortled — he seemed to think that it was quite funny — but Jack didn’t, “I don’t think you understand. There are people we have met here… who helped us, who were good to us. Real people…”
“Right, sir, and three of them are dead now,” Angus added bluntly.
Pendelshape replied dismissively, “Yes, yes. I am not saying any of this is easy…”
This was too much for Jack. He felt anger welling up inside him. “You can’t just say that. The professor, he was our friend, he saved my life.” Jack shivered at the memory of the profess
or’s death. “Don’t you get it?” Jack was finding it difficult to control himself… “And Anna… she rescued us from Inchquin… her brother was murdered… right before our eyes…”
“With a lance,” Angus added.
“And Zadok — who blindly trusted you — if he hadn’t been there, the bullet that killed him would have hit me!”
Pendelshape snapped back, waving his time phone, “I’m afraid this time signal won’t wait for us to complete this philosophical debate.” Angus and Jack glared at him and Pendelshape sighed impatiently, “Sorry — look — I understand that you have witnessed some bad things… I’m sorry… and I know your father is as well. This is not how either of us had intended the mission to work out. But there is so much more at stake than one or two deaths…” Pendelshape turned to Jack, “I can see that this is difficult for you. But your father wants you to follow him. Our desire is that you join us willingly. You can help us achieve a great deal. You can help us change the world.” The boys continued to look unimpressed. Pendelshape rubbed his chin. “Maybe I need to show you how much is at stake here.” He was mulling something over in his head. “Indeed. To convince you, perhaps I need to show you the consequences of today’s events — give you a real history lesson, if you will.”
He peered into the time phone and started to tap away.
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