‘No, I’m British. On holiday. Just thought I’d … well, lend a hand.’

  ‘I must say that really is most extraordinary. You have done a very great and noble thing, sir.’

  There was a chorus of agreement at this, half a dozen grey and heavily bearded heads nodding their approval.

  ‘And how like an English gentleman,’ a female voice interjected. ‘You came to the aid of a damsel in distress.’ Rosa Luxemburg came forward and took his hands. ‘I rather think I owe you my life.’

  She was even smaller than he’d thought; the top of her head came barely up to his ribs. But for all her diminutive size there was no doubt she had stature. Her face was so strong, with deep dark eyes and a long thin nose, the bridge perfectly straight, good skin and fullish lips. She was in her early forties and there were strands of grey in her hair but she still seemed youthful. For some reason Stanton found he liked her instantly.

  ‘Just doing my duty, uhm, ma’am,’ Stanton heard himself replying. He didn’t know why he said it, although he supposed he had to say something.

  ‘Your duty? Is it your duty to rescue Socialists? We could do with a few more of you about.’

  ‘Well, you know. I think it’s everybody’s duty to come to the aid of people in trouble … besides, I was happy to do it because’ – for some reason Stanton felt obliged to offer further explanation – ‘I have a friend who admires you.’

  ‘Really? Do I know him?’

  ‘It’s a she, an Irish Suffragette, and no, you don’t know her, she just thinks you’re important, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, when you see her please thank her for sending you to me. Will you take something? Tea, perhaps, as you’re English.’

  ‘Or we have whisky,’ Liebknecht interjected eagerly. ‘I could certainly do with one.’

  ‘You could always do with a whisky,’ Luxemburg replied with a smile. Stanton thought they seemed like quite a jolly bunch, despite the ordeal they’d just gone through. Interesting. If he ever imagined International Socialists at all, he probably thought of them as pretty grim. Maybe they went sour when they got into power; that seemed to be the way things usually went.

  Stanton accepted a small whisky. He was a student of history, after all, and this was a pretty fascinating encounter: sipping Scotch right at the epicentre of radical politics at what was fast becoming its greatest crisis. It occurred to him that he might just be sharing drinks with the future rulers of Germany. Not a bad story to tell Bernadette!

  He had definitely decided he would see Bernadette again.

  The drinks were served in a small committee room. There were no servants. Liebknecht poured with enthusiasm and proposed a toast to ‘the man who saved our Rosa’.

  There was an enthusiastic ‘Prost’ and Stanton’s back was slapped many times. Luxemburg herself, however, shook her head sadly.

  ‘I’m grateful to you, Mr Stanton, of course,’ she said, ‘but I fear you may have merely provided me with a stay of execution. You won’t be there the next time.’

  ‘You think the mob will return?’ Stanton asked.

  ‘They may not be back tonight,’ she said quietly, ‘but I can assure you that they will return.’

  ‘Well, yes, I admit it’s probably going to be rough for a while and you lot will certainly need to watch your backs but surely it’ll calm down in the end, won’t it? I have a lot of respect for the German authorities. I’m sure they’ll make sure order is restored.’

  Luxemburg smiled at Stanton but it was a smile edged with fear and sadness.

  ‘They don’t want order restored, Mr Stanton,’ Luxemburg replied quietly. ‘They did this.’

  Stanton was completely taken aback.

  ‘What? Organized a mob to attack you?’ he asked. ‘I really don’t think so. I was in among them and—’

  ‘They didn’t need to organize the mob,’ she said. ‘The mob organized itself after they killed the Kaiser.’

  Stanton glanced at the circle of grim faces around him, some nodding in agreement, others with eyes cast down. He was astonished.

  ‘You can’t be serious?’ he asked.

  He was incredulous. He’d thought that crazy conspiracies were a symptom of the internet age, an age when any paranoid lunacy could gain credibility simply through instant mass distribution. He had plenty of experience of deeply serious-looking idiots assuring him that princesses had been murdered by their exhusbands to stop them marrying Muslims, and presidents had been murdered by their own Secret Services. But he wasn’t expecting that kind of deluded paranoia from Rosa Luxemburg, one of the most celebrated and sophisticated intellects of the century.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, ‘are you seriously suggesting that the German establishment murdered its own emperor? In order to get you lot? Come on. With respect, I don’t think you’re quite that important.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Luxemburg asked. ‘I think perhaps they do. But it’s of no matter, what will be will be. One thing I can tell you, sir, is that His Imperial Majesty was not killed by a Socialist. We have been organizing in this city for thirty years. We know our people.’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t know every lunatic, do you? It was probably a lone gunman … a mad man who imagines himself a Socialist.’

  ‘With access to a printing press? Excuse me, but creating a leaflet of high quality which announces the death of the Emperor and calls for revolution is not something that one can have printed legitimately.’ She produced from her pocket one of Stanton’s own leaflets. ‘Whoever created this had access to a secret press, not an item that lone mad men tend to have cluttering up their garret rooms. Printing presses are large and noisy things, Mr Stanton.’

  Not the one that had created that leaflet, Stanton thought, while conceding to himself that Miss Luxemburg was not in a position to factor desktop laser printers into her equations.

  ‘Look,’ Luxemburg went on, ‘I know it seems an incredible and rather appalling thought, but the only two groups who could possibly print something like this in secret are the revolutionaries, which is us, and the establishment. We know that none of our presses were used, so whose was?’

  ‘Well, it might have been done abroad … or anything,’ Stanton tried to protest.

  ‘Really? Why would any foreign group of Socialists possibly want to do this? To kill the Kaiser virtually anonymously, and to leave a message that could only create a massive and brutal backlash against Socialists. Why? The people who killed the Kaiser were sophisticated enough to produce this high quality leaflet and skilled enough to carry out a single-shot assassination at long range in a crowded city. And yet they left a message so utterly purposeless and vague that it could only have been designed to stir up trouble.’

  ‘Yes, but … killing their own king?’

  ‘Like you I find the cynical brutality of it quite incredible. I have lived all my life aghast at the complete moral vacuum that exists within the so-called Christian ruling class, and I never would have credited them with this. And yet I just can’t think of a more likely explanation.’

  Stanton didn’t know what to say. Because she was right. In fact, what she was describing was exactly what had happened. A sophisticated group operating from within the elite establishment had killed the Kaiser and cynically framed the Left. The fact that the group had been formed in Cambridge in 2024 and not on the Wilhelmstrasse in 1914 was something Rosa Luxemburg could not possibly imagine. Apart from that, she was spot on.

  ‘Clearly you can see my point,’ she went on. ‘It seems we must accept that some part of the military establishment has declared war on us, and that they are ruthless enough to sacrifice their own king to the cause. The times ahead are going to be truly terrible. There will be a repression which will be medieval in its brutality. The net will be thrown wide and all but the most ultraconservative leaders and most obsequious and subservient peasantry will be considered fair game. The likes of us must go underground immediately or face arrest and disappearance. As I said, Mr Stanton, this is a war and there can be no doubt that we will lose all the early battles. But he who sows the wind may yet reap the whirlwind. They have raised the stakes. We must raise them too and fight fire with fire. Who can tell what the future may bring?’

  Stanton looked around the group. The smiles had disappeared. They were all grim-faced and in deadly earnest. They were anticipating nothing less than civil war, followed by revolution if they had their way.

  ‘And so, Mr Stanton,’ Luxemburg went on, ‘I suggest that perhaps it’s time you left us to our troubles. I don’t think you can defend us from the entire German state.’

  35

  THE STREET OUTSIDE was almost empty. All that was left were a few SPD volunteers guarding the doors of the building.

  Stanton set off to walk back to his rented apartment. After his conversation with Luxemburg and Liebknecht he was feeling more uneasy than ever. He wanted a cigarette. Whisky always did that to him. Scotch and a fag just went together so damn well. Perhaps he could have one now?

  Did he really have to keep his promise to Cassie? After all, he’d never actually had the chance to make that promise. And even if he had, there really was no chance of her catching him out.

  Cassie and cigarettes led his mind on to Bernadette: the name at the bottom of the list he’d made about his future. He decided that very soon he’d go to Ireland. She wouldn’t be hard to find. The whole country was owned by a handful of families. He’d track down the Burdettes of County Wicklow in an hour. Perhaps he’d become a gentleman farmer in the lush pastures of the Emerald Isle. He could certainly afford a decent spread.

  For a moment he pictured himself with her, together in a big old country house, dogs, horses, cows, corn … children?

  He felt a pang in his heart. What was he thinking? He could never replace Tessa and Bill. Besides which, he’d only known the woman a night.

  Perhaps it was the whisky that made him careless. Or the fact that he’d recently faced down an angry mob and the adrenalin was still pumping in his veins. Or else that there were two women competing for space in his head. But for whatever reason, Stanton’s usually finely tuned survival instincts were a little dulled and he did not recognize he was in danger almost until the threat was upon him.

  A couple of footsteps, a shout and he was pinned.

  A smell of schnapps and beer and cigars in his nose.

  Angry voices in his ear.

  Sneering, youthful faces all around. Precious, neatly clipped little moustaches above snarling lips. Peaked caps on shaven heads.

  There were four of them that he was aware of. Two had held him by the arms and slammed him against a wall, while the other couple had already started laying in with their fists.

  Shit. He was being beaten up.

  Stanton was alert enough now. Sufficiently on his mettle even to have managed to tense his abs before the first punch went in. He was gratified to hear one of his assailants cry in pain as the man’s fist made violent contact with a stomach sculpted in a twenty-first-century gym regime and rigorously maintained during his recent time in Scotland. Nobody, not even the very fit, worked out in 1914 in the way people were to work out a hundred years later – nobody had the time.

  You couldn’t tense your face, though, and now a fist smashed into his, seriously rattling his jaw. They were pummelling thick and fast and if he didn’t gain release from the prone position they had him in he could easily and quickly be beaten to death.

  They had his arms held tight, young strong hands gripping him fiercely. Release from that was not an option, so his best hope was his feet. Using the grip in which he was held as a convenient support, he kicked up his legs from his waist and then, pushing outwards from his shoulders, extended his body fully in mid-air, launching both feet firmly into the face of one of his attackers, breaking the man’s nose and knocking him backwards to the ground. Then he let his feet drop back to the pavement but only in order to bounce off the ground and pop up again, extending himself fully from the shoulders once more and kicking out. The trick didn’t work quite as well the second time because the other man dodged the kick, but Stanton was able to twist his body in mid-air and lock his legs around the man’s neck instead. At this point he could feel the grip that held his arms loosening. He was in danger of being dropped on his head. However, he was able in time to grab on to the arms that were holding him and with another almighty twist of his body bring the four of them down on to the pavement together.

  Stanton was the first on his feet.

  ‘Come on, you bastards,’ he snarled in English. ‘Let’s see how well you do when you’re not attacking from behind.’

  All four of the attackers got to their feet, although the one with the broken nose clearly had no intention of taking any further part in the battle. Stanton, on the other hand, was fired up. He hadn’t had a proper fight in a long time and he was confident he could dispense with the three remaining assailants now that they no longer had the advantage of surprise.

  Two of them came at him at once with the third hanging back, watching for a chance. Stanton floored the first two with single blows. It was that simple. Chop. Crunch. The young attackers had come along expecting a street brawl, an easy gang-beating of a helplessly outnumbered victim, and instead had encountered a highly focused expert in unarmed combat.

  The young men seemed to be getting the message. They staggered back to their feet but showed no inclination to come at Stanton again.

  ‘Run home, boys,’ he said in German, ‘because I warn you, if you try to jump me again, I’ll break your necks.’

  He turned to walk away but found himself confronted by a fifth man, the Junker student whom he’d faced off earlier. Clearly the man had found his shaming at Stanton’s hands too much to bear and, having watched his tormentor disappear into the SPD headquarters, had assembled his gang and hung around waiting for a chance to get his own back.

  Now the young student was at a loss. His expected punishment beating had turned into a rout. Revenge had not been served.

  ‘Go home, boy,’ Stanton repeated. ‘Geh’ nach Hause, Junge – you’ve got lectures in the morning.’

  Maybe it was that that did it. The patronizing tone. The young man’s face contorted with hatred and furious spite.

  He drew a pistol.

  Stanton didn’t stand a chance. The student shot him in the stomach.

  He collapsed to his knees, holding his abdomen.

  He heard a voice from behind him, one of the other young thugs.

  ‘Helmut! You’ve shot a cop! Are you crazy?’

  ‘He’s not a cop! You saw him go in with the Polish whore. He’s one of them.’

  ‘That’s right – he spoke English,’ another voice said. ‘What cop talks in English?’

  ‘We should clear out anyway,’ the first voice from behind said. ‘You got him in the guts. He’s done for. It’s murder, Helmut. We have to run.’

  Stanton’s vision was blurring now but he could see the man in front hesitate. He wondered whether Helmut was thinking about shooting him again. But instead he just ran past. Stanton heard the clatter of their boots as they ran away up the street.

  He was alone now. Looking down at the rapidly growing mess of crimson on his stomach. An abdominal, that was very bad. Only the heart, the spine or the head could be worse, although none so painful.

  He tried to collect his thoughts, which were swimming now.

  He wondered if he could get back to his apartment.

  Not a chance – he’d be dead from loss of blood before he got halfway.

  Could he maybe make it back to Rosa Luxemburg? She certainly owed him.

  Maybe. But even that was a few hundred metres and he was losing a lot of blood very quickly. Any movement was going to increase the speed of that loss by a considerable margin.

  Best to sit. Apply pressure to the wound and hope for help.

  He heard a whistle. The gunshot must have alerted the police. Or perhaps somebody had heard it and called them.

  He remembered his own gun. A Glock made in 2023. What were the laws on side arms, he wondered? Did they have to be licensed in Berlin in 1914? Either way a gun in his pocket was going to lead to questions. Particularly one of unknown make and revolutionary design.

  He had another two in the larger bag in his apartment.

  If he ever saw it again. If he survived the night.

  There was a drain in the gutter between his feet. He pulled the Glock from his pocket and dropped it into the gridded darkness.

  Then he lost consciousness.

  The police found him shortly thereafter and took him to the Berliner Buch teaching hospital, where he was operated on immediately. He’d been lucky. It turned out that the bullet had not gone through his stomach but was lodged in the abdominal cavity. The student’s pistol had been a pretty measly affair, probably normally only used on rats and rabbits. No vital organs had been perforated. Nonetheless it was a serious wound and removing the bullet required delicate surgery. This was successful but Stanton had already lost a huge amount of blood and was weak. His immune system couldn’t cope. Almost inevitably for a time before antibiotics, the wound became infected.

  At some point or other during the confusion of his delirious dreams Stanton heard a doctor say, ‘He’s dying.’

  36

  STANTON’S CONDITION CONTINUED to deteriorate over the next two weeks, during which he lay in his hospital bed either unconscious or delirious and on the edge of death. There were brief moments of lucidity when he was aware of doctors and nurses nearby. He knew that he was dying and he knew that he was being drugged to help with the pain. He had an idea that this was clouding his brain. It seemed to him that there was something he needed to tell those doctors about. Something he wanted them to fetch for him but he could not remember what it was.

  It was during one of these moments of tormented dream-like consciousness that he opened his eyes and saw Bernadette Burdette.