Part 1 London, 1987
(3)
Bodie parted Doyle's hair and peered down at his skull. "No blood, but a nasty big lump. You're in for a headache. Good thing you got a hard nut."
Doyle grunted and touched the tender spot on the back of his head gingerly. During the few minutes he'd been out of it Murphy and a team of half a dozen agents had arrived at the scene to prevent the Germans from entering the building. The result was two CI5 agents dead and one wounded, while four of the Germans had been killed. Emmert and one other had escaped into a backstreet and been picked up by a waiting car, which had slipped away in heavy traffic.
Cowley looked at the chaos of burned and broken doors, furniture and wounded and dead men with a snort. "Damned messy. I'll take the KGB over the SS any day - at least the Russians have a healthy self-preservation instinct."
He turned to eye Doyle, who set himself for a blast about carelessness, but his unpredictable boss fooled him again. "Get that looked at by a doctor, Doyle. I want you fit for tomorrow. And I want both of you to spend the night at the back up Safe House. If this is what I think it is, we can expect follow-up action. Possibly against CI5 as well as here."
Bodie groaned. "Not another night in that bloody Soho bedsitter. A man can get carried off by cockroaches if he isn't careful."
If Emmert and his men find you, insects will be the least of your worries. Take Doyle to the hospital for a checkup, then go straight to the flat. I'll see you both at 8 tomorrow morning."
On their way out they passed Murphy doing a body check on the German agents, while the police kept the curious crowds at bay. He was shaking his head as he eyed the carnage. "We timed it well, by the look of it. You lads are very unpopular in all the wrong places. What'd you do to get an SD Strike Team mad at you?"
Bodie unlocked the passenger door of his car to let Doyle in. "Don't mention time, old boy. It's a very sore point at the moment." And he tapped Doyle gently on the top of the head as he fell into the car. "In more ways than one."
Doyle's head proved to be no more than bruised and they spent an uneventful night in the small Soho flat. Bodie sat back to watch tele with a pizza while Doyle nursed a grinding headache and tried to read. But the memories kept intruding - the ones he'd started the day with and the new ones given to him during his brief contact with the fourth dimension.
His sleep was disturbed and dream-ridden with snatches of voice, with people he both knew and didn't know, with odd shifting images of memory like the picture on a ghosting TV screen. And the realisation finally hit him, in the dark at some hour of the cold morning, that he'd been robbed of his rightful past, his proper present...him and everyone, everywhere. It was a crime beyond imagining. When he woke the next morning, headachy and still tired, he'd decided that if he didn't resolve the problems somehow he'd be burdened with the images of a lost world all his life.
The first thing they noticed when they arrived at their HQ that morning was the beefed-up security. A couple of dozen suspicious pairs of eyes were watching the building the surrounding streets from various vantage points. They were all a touch nervous, and an unsuspecting driver had his backfiring car targeted by weaponry ranging from handguns to mortars. CI5 was like a hedgehog with its quills out; suspicious, edgy and ready to lash out. Doyle watched, amused, as Bodie had to show his ID to a draftee from the SAS, a capable young man quite unimpressed by Bodie's annoyed glare.
Dr Potter was with Cowley in his office, looking as if he'd slept on a couch somewhere, in the suit he was wearing. The old man gave the two agents a weary good morning and yawned, almost dislocating his jaw.
Dressed in shirtsleeves and looking uncharacteristically scruffy, Cowley was running an electric shaver over his face when the two men entered his office. He eyed them in the mirror and kept shaving. When he finally spoke, his tone was surprisingly cordial.
"You two broken your fast yet?"
Bodie reached over to grab a piece of toast from the desk. "One lousy cup o' tea."
"Mm, good," Cowley answered absently, and finished his shaving. Seeing his chief's state of mind, Doyle took the opportunity to pour himself a cup from Cowley's silver tea pot before settling back down next to Bodie. When Cowley had finished and tidied himself up to his satisfaction, he slumped into his chair and looked at them both from a pair of weary eyes. He had a lousy night too, Doyle thought, but his voice was typically crisp.
"Well, you've both had time to think. What conclusions have you come to? I suppose you can now believe Jimmy's little invention isn't a fable, at least, after yesterday's German visit."
Bodie wiped the crumbs from his mouth with his sleeve. "Not bloody wrong. I've never heard of that big a strike, at least not in years. They wanted to get in that lab very badly. I assume the guard that attacked you was a plant?"
Cowley nodded. "Employed for almost a year, beyond suspicion. The SD have been planning this for a long time - hardly surprising, since they had more than 40 years notice."
"Well, we've got time, too" Bodie said, "why can't we just go back a couple of days and stop the fella from doing his trip?"
"Think about it, Bodie." Cowley tapped the table top irritably. "The sabotage took place in the original timeline. Two days ago on this timeline the lad wasn't even here. Jimmy tells me that the actual alteration took place in 1942 - any correction that has to be done must take place there, at the source of the corruption."
The realisation hit Doyle a moment before it hit Bodie. His jaw dropped and he stared at his boss in horror. "Jesus...you want us to go back there. Back to 1942!"
Calmly, George Cowley nodded. "I do. A man should have died, and because he didn't, we live in this constant state of political chaos, and most of Europe exists in slavery."
Doyle felt the chill of forewarning. "Who?"
"I need you to see to the death of Reinhard Heydrich. In Prague, in May, 1942."
Ray Doyle looked at the face of his enemy. It was an old photograph, taken of a younger Heydrich during the summer of 1943. The face, the name, were quite familiar to him, as to most human beings living. Along with Hitler and Stalin, he was one of the boogie men of the twentieth century. In that altered timeline he had organised the toppling and murder of Hitler, taken over the Reich and gone on to put Germany into an unbeatable position by the end of 1943. He had died only ten years previously, handing over control of the Greater German Reich to his son, Karl. And Karl had a son called Tristan - the cause of all their problems.
Cowley had taken them all to one of the smaller conference rooms, setup with projectors, screens and maps, and was giving them an encapsulated history lesson, linking it through the two timelines. The image on the screen changed to the face of a younger man, with similar features.
"....and it didn't take us long to figure out who was the cause of our problems. In Jimmy's original timeline the name on his passport is Erwin Eugen, legally changed by deed poll in his home city of Pottsdam. He'd changed his name from Tristan Heydrich because, in that line, being Heydrich's grandson was no particular benefit; in the Nazi-hating post war Europe it was a distinct disadvantage. He'd come over to study at Oxford, being a bright lad, and then got a job at Jimmy's lab. Somehow he'd found out about the experiment. The rest is, unfortunately, history."
Bodie wasn't taking notes, but was obviously still struggling with all the paradoxes of time. "But how...what happened to the grandson from the original timeline? Is he still alive?"
Potter shook his head. "According to my theories, that isn't possible. When I first tested the sphere's abilities, I tried going back just a few days, but was unable to do so - the sphere simply bounced back to the present. I believe there is some law of physics that will not allow the same organic material to exist in the Universe twice. And I don't believe young Heydrich could have been present when he, himself, was born - if a human cannot exist twice, then conception cannot take place, and they would cease to exist immediately - because they'd never been conceived or born."
Bodie groaned. "Now, c'mon Professor! How can they go back to be at their own conception if they've never been born!"
Potter laughed. "Confusing, isn't it! It's a matter of timelines, you see. You have to bear in mind that...
Bodie cut him off. "Don't bother trying to explain. But you didn't answer my question - if Tristan Heydrich went back in time - what happened to him?"
"I don't know. There is no sign of him in the histories, and he can't have been present when he, himself, was conceived, or he wouldn't have been.." he smiled quickly at Bodie's frown, "....if you see what I mean."
Cowley cut in. "A minor consideration at this point. The fact is that he did go back. We can't know how long he stayed there or how much information he passed onto Heydrich, but however much it was, it was enough to cause dramatic changes to the outcome of the war."
"So you want us to go back and knock him off?" Bodie leant back and stretched his legs out. "No problem. Be a pleasure."
"Not that simple, Bodie," Cowley continued. "There's already enough interference with time - it's essential that the timeflow be restored as close as possible to the original. And since the Germans know about Jimmy's work and would probably have reached a similar conclusion, I suspect we don't have a lot of time. I wouldn't put it past them to go all out to stop us - up to and including a nuclear attack on London itself."
That got a reaction. Doyle shook his head in shock. "You must be kidding! They'd start a war!"
James Potter wiped his glasses with a sigh. "Young man - the Germans have been at war with the world for almost a century. Scientific and economic predictions are that they will almost certainly go on the offensive again within the next decade - and will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons. To prevent our tinkering with their past, I don't believe there's anything they wouldn't do."
(3)
Bodie parted Doyle's hair and peered down at his skull. "No blood, but a nasty big lump. You're in for a headache. Good thing you got a hard nut."
Doyle grunted and touched the tender spot on the back of his head gingerly. During the few minutes he'd been out of it Murphy and a team of half a dozen agents had arrived at the scene to prevent the Germans from entering the building. The result was two CI5 agents dead and one wounded, while four of the Germans had been killed. Emmert and one other had escaped into a backstreet and been picked up by a waiting car, which had slipped away in heavy traffic.
Cowley looked at the chaos of burned and broken doors, furniture and wounded and dead men with a snort. "Damned messy. I'll take the KGB over the SS any day - at least the Russians have a healthy self-preservation instinct."
He turned to eye Doyle, who set himself for a blast about carelessness, but his unpredictable boss fooled him again. "Get that looked at by a doctor, Doyle. I want you fit for tomorrow. And I want both of you to spend the night at the back up Safe House. If this is what I think it is, we can expect follow-up action. Possibly against CI5 as well as here."
Bodie groaned. "Not another night in that bloody Soho bedsitter. A man can get carried off by cockroaches if he isn't careful."
If Emmert and his men find you, insects will be the least of your worries. Take Doyle to the hospital for a checkup, then go straight to the flat. I'll see you both at 8 tomorrow morning."
On their way out they passed Murphy doing a body check on the German agents, while the police kept the curious crowds at bay. He was shaking his head as he eyed the carnage. "We timed it well, by the look of it. You lads are very unpopular in all the wrong places. What'd you do to get an SD Strike Team mad at you?"
Bodie unlocked the passenger door of his car to let Doyle in. "Don't mention time, old boy. It's a very sore point at the moment." And he tapped Doyle gently on the top of the head as he fell into the car. "In more ways than one."
Doyle's head proved to be no more than bruised and they spent an uneventful night in the small Soho flat. Bodie sat back to watch tele with a pizza while Doyle nursed a grinding headache and tried to read. But the memories kept intruding - the ones he'd started the day with and the new ones given to him during his brief contact with the fourth dimension.
His sleep was disturbed and dream-ridden with snatches of voice, with people he both knew and didn't know, with odd shifting images of memory like the picture on a ghosting TV screen. And the realisation finally hit him, in the dark at some hour of the cold morning, that he'd been robbed of his rightful past, his proper present...him and everyone, everywhere. It was a crime beyond imagining. When he woke the next morning, headachy and still tired, he'd decided that if he didn't resolve the problems somehow he'd be burdened with the images of a lost world all his life.
The first thing they noticed when they arrived at their HQ that morning was the beefed-up security. A couple of dozen suspicious pairs of eyes were watching the building the surrounding streets from various vantage points. They were all a touch nervous, and an unsuspecting driver had his backfiring car targeted by weaponry ranging from handguns to mortars. CI5 was like a hedgehog with its quills out; suspicious, edgy and ready to lash out. Doyle watched, amused, as Bodie had to show his ID to a draftee from the SAS, a capable young man quite unimpressed by Bodie's annoyed glare.
Dr Potter was with Cowley in his office, looking as if he'd slept on a couch somewhere, in the suit he was wearing. The old man gave the two agents a weary good morning and yawned, almost dislocating his jaw.
Dressed in shirtsleeves and looking uncharacteristically scruffy, Cowley was running an electric shaver over his face when the two men entered his office. He eyed them in the mirror and kept shaving. When he finally spoke, his tone was surprisingly cordial.
"You two broken your fast yet?"
Bodie reached over to grab a piece of toast from the desk. "One lousy cup o' tea."
"Mm, good," Cowley answered absently, and finished his shaving. Seeing his chief's state of mind, Doyle took the opportunity to pour himself a cup from Cowley's silver tea pot before settling back down next to Bodie. When Cowley had finished and tidied himself up to his satisfaction, he slumped into his chair and looked at them both from a pair of weary eyes. He had a lousy night too, Doyle thought, but his voice was typically crisp.
"Well, you've both had time to think. What conclusions have you come to? I suppose you can now believe Jimmy's little invention isn't a fable, at least, after yesterday's German visit."
Bodie wiped the crumbs from his mouth with his sleeve. "Not bloody wrong. I've never heard of that big a strike, at least not in years. They wanted to get in that lab very badly. I assume the guard that attacked you was a plant?"
Cowley nodded. "Employed for almost a year, beyond suspicion. The SD have been planning this for a long time - hardly surprising, since they had more than 40 years notice."
"Well, we've got time, too" Bodie said, "why can't we just go back a couple of days and stop the fella from doing his trip?"
"Think about it, Bodie." Cowley tapped the table top irritably. "The sabotage took place in the original timeline. Two days ago on this timeline the lad wasn't even here. Jimmy tells me that the actual alteration took place in 1942 - any correction that has to be done must take place there, at the source of the corruption."
The realisation hit Doyle a moment before it hit Bodie. His jaw dropped and he stared at his boss in horror. "Jesus...you want us to go back there. Back to 1942!"
Calmly, George Cowley nodded. "I do. A man should have died, and because he didn't, we live in this constant state of political chaos, and most of Europe exists in slavery."
Doyle felt the chill of forewarning. "Who?"
"I need you to see to the death of Reinhard Heydrich. In Prague, in May, 1942."
Ray Doyle looked at the face of his enemy. It was an old photograph, taken of a younger Heydrich during the summer of 1943. The face, the name, were quite familiar to him, as to most human beings living. Along with Hitler and Stalin, he was one of the boogie men of the twentieth century. In that altered timeline he had organised the toppling and murder of Hitler, taken over the Reich and gone on to put Germany into an unbeatable position by the end of 1943. He had died only ten years previously, handing over control of the Greater German Reich to his son, Karl. And Karl had a son called Tristan - the cause of all their problems.
Cowley had taken them all to one of the smaller conference rooms, setup with projectors, screens and maps, and was giving them an encapsulated history lesson, linking it through the two timelines. The image on the screen changed to the face of a younger man, with similar features.
"....and it didn't take us long to figure out who was the cause of our problems. In Jimmy's original timeline the name on his passport is Erwin Eugen, legally changed by deed poll in his home city of Pottsdam. He'd changed his name from Tristan Heydrich because, in that line, being Heydrich's grandson was no particular benefit; in the Nazi-hating post war Europe it was a distinct disadvantage. He'd come over to study at Oxford, being a bright lad, and then got a job at Jimmy's lab. Somehow he'd found out about the experiment. The rest is, unfortunately, history."
Bodie wasn't taking notes, but was obviously still struggling with all the paradoxes of time. "But how...what happened to the grandson from the original timeline? Is he still alive?"
Potter shook his head. "According to my theories, that isn't possible. When I first tested the sphere's abilities, I tried going back just a few days, but was unable to do so - the sphere simply bounced back to the present. I believe there is some law of physics that will not allow the same organic material to exist in the Universe twice. And I don't believe young Heydrich could have been present when he, himself, was born - if a human cannot exist twice, then conception cannot take place, and they would cease to exist immediately - because they'd never been conceived or born."
Bodie groaned. "Now, c'mon Professor! How can they go back to be at their own conception if they've never been born!"
Potter laughed. "Confusing, isn't it! It's a matter of timelines, you see. You have to bear in mind that...
Bodie cut him off. "Don't bother trying to explain. But you didn't answer my question - if Tristan Heydrich went back in time - what happened to him?"
"I don't know. There is no sign of him in the histories, and he can't have been present when he, himself, was conceived, or he wouldn't have been.." he smiled quickly at Bodie's frown, "....if you see what I mean."
Cowley cut in. "A minor consideration at this point. The fact is that he did go back. We can't know how long he stayed there or how much information he passed onto Heydrich, but however much it was, it was enough to cause dramatic changes to the outcome of the war."
"So you want us to go back and knock him off?" Bodie leant back and stretched his legs out. "No problem. Be a pleasure."
"Not that simple, Bodie," Cowley continued. "There's already enough interference with time - it's essential that the timeflow be restored as close as possible to the original. And since the Germans know about Jimmy's work and would probably have reached a similar conclusion, I suspect we don't have a lot of time. I wouldn't put it past them to go all out to stop us - up to and including a nuclear attack on London itself."
That got a reaction. Doyle shook his head in shock. "You must be kidding! They'd start a war!"
James Potter wiped his glasses with a sigh. "Young man - the Germans have been at war with the world for almost a century. Scientific and economic predictions are that they will almost certainly go on the offensive again within the next decade - and will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons. To prevent our tinkering with their past, I don't believe there's anything they wouldn't do."