Golem 7 (Meridian Series) Page 4

  “So he never reaches Alexandria,” said Maeve.

  “Quite the case,” said Robert. “And he never leads that squad of Royal Marine Commandos to lay in ambush for the Germans during the Bardia raid. In short, he never kills our Berber scout, who goes on to lead a humdrum life, excepting one small contribution to the world. He has a son, mother entirely unknown, but the son’s name is Kenan Tanzir, our fifteenth passenger on that charter flight that crashed just before Palma blew its top, undoubtedly with a little help again this time. And I think I know exactly how he did it.”

  The room was completely silent, and the professor just smiled.

  Part II

  Out To Sea

  “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

  —William Shakespeare

  Chapter 4

  Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Arch Complex – Tuesday, 6:30 PM

  “He pulled a D.B. Cooper!” said Nordhausen. “I got hold of a tape from an air traffic control tower in Tenerif North Airport on Santa Cruz. It was well inland and protected from the backwash from Palma at an elevation of at least 200 meters. Now the tape reveals that there was an incident on the plane—a possible hijacking attempt. The tape was somewhat chaotic but the words Allahu Akbar were fairly distinct. Then a passenger shouts out the words: ‘he jumped!’ They think it’s a suicide attempt… until there’s an obvious sound of something exploding. And no one on that plane thinks or says anything more. All fourteen passengers were killed in the crash. The plane overflew the airport and slammed right into the side of Cumbre Vieja. An hour later the entire mountain blows up and this little tidbit of news was fairly well lost, utterly irrelevant given the destruction that followed.”

  “He pulled a D.B. Cooper?” said Kelly. “Oh, yes, I remember now. He’s the guy that hijacked a 727 and extorted a couple hundred grand from the airline before bailing out over the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest.”

  “Exactly,” said Robert. “He bailed out. Passenger number fifteen, a man that doesn’t exist in the time line before Palma, is now the sole survivor of this plane crash, and most likely responsible for it in the first place.”

  “You’re not suggesting the plane set off the volcano,” said Maeve.

  “No, I don’t think a small plane like that would make much impression on the mountain. We all know it took a nuke to get Cumbre Vieja to blow, and indications are plain in the news we have now that this second attempt was not a natural event either. My guess is that they still managed to get a warhead in place, and that this man, Kenan Tanzir, was the man who set off the operation. Who knows, perhaps he had a suitcase nuke with him when he jumped.”

  “I doubt that,” said Maeve. “Try getting through airport security now with a bottle of shampoo. No, he was definitely not carrying a suitcase nuke.”

  “Then he must have linked up with someone on the ground,” Kelly suggested.

  “The plot thickens,” said Maeve. “Yes, a man shouting Allahu Akbar and jumping off a plane an hour before Palma is certainly suspicious, but there’s a lot of haze here still.”

  “I knew you would object,” said Robert. “I’ve got more—records of equipment purchased two weeks earlier, including a small emergency parachute, a compass, a map. The Arion system was amazing in its ability to ferret out these details.”

  “Well,” said Kelly, “if it stinks it must be fish. This guy Kasim is pissed at the Brits when they killed his wife and kid. He joins the other side and was supposed to get killed in 1942, but the man who kills him never arrives in theater, and so he goes on to have a little bastard who ends up blowing up Cumbre Vieja. Man, are we ever having fits with illegitimate sons these days. Three days ago it was Charles Martel, now this.”

  Paul was the only one who had not spoken, and the professor could see he seemed deep in thought about something. “Paul?” he said, the question obvious in his voice.

  Paul folded his arms. “Just one thing,” he began. “This convoy you mention that is attacked on August 11, 1941…That was the date, correct?”

  “Right you are,” said Robert.

  “Well there were no German surface raiders operating in the Atlantic in August of 1941. They were all holed up at the port of Brest on the French coast. The battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were both there undergoing repairs, as well as the cruiser Prince Eugen and a number of U-boats. The British were bombing them constantly, without much success, but they managed to keep them bottled up there until the spring of 1942 when they made what was called ‘the channel dash’ and high tailed it through the English Channel back to German waters.”

  “That they did,” said Nordhausen, “In the history you are obviously so very familiar with. But the Arion system now says the Germans mounted a sortie with a single raider on August 9, 1941 and this ship caught Convoy OS-85 two days later, sinking four vessels. I realize it’s been a very chaotic time these last days. We’ve run two major missions to try and unhinge the Assassin operations, and we’ve stopped the worst of them. That business aimed at the Battle of Tours was the right cross, as you said Paul. But we have only just managed to get our wits about us, and a little food, fuel and sleep. Who’s had time to have a look at the history these days after Palma? We’ve all been so damn busy—well I had a look. I wanted to see what the bastards were up to and I found something, by God.”

  “Then the altered history has one of the German ships in Brest at sea as early as August, 1941?” Paul was still not convinced. “How would Palma have changed that? For that matter, how would the Assassins manage to influence that history? Trying to accelerate the repairs on those ships in dry dock would be like trying to herd cats. Which ship was it, Scharnhorst or Gneisenau? I find it hard to believe they could have had either vessel ready for operations that quickly.”

  “It was neither,” said the professor. “In point of fact, if we can call anything a fact these days with all this Time travel business mucking up the history, both those ships were actually run off to the port at La Pallice, to make room for another ship.”

  “Prince Eugen?” said Paul. “She limped into port with engine problems around that time, but that’s just a cruiser. They would have had no trouble berthing her there with the other two battlecruisers.”

  “Prince Eugen arrives in early June of 1941,” said Robert looking at his notes. “But there was another guest already there before her. The ship I am speaking of was called the Bismarck.”

  Paul couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Bismarck? That ship was sunk by the Royal Navy in late May of 1941! I’ve studied that battle many times. Hell, I grew up reading Shirer’s and Forester’s books on the battle and watching the movie ‘Sink the Bismarck’ over and over. I’ve war gamed it many times as well.”

  “Well they did sink the Bismarck, eventually,” said Robert. “But not on her first sortie—not in the famous sea chase you are referring to in May. I’m afraid she made it safely into Brest and took up a berth there to make minor repairs before launching another attack on British shipping in August. They covered her with camo-nets and the RAF missed her during several bombing raids. She put to sea a few weeks later and hit Convoy OS-85, then sped out to the Atlantic. In fact, she was spotted briefly by British coast watchers on the Island of Palma as she made good her escape. Gave the Royal Navy fits for a time, but they eventually brought her to heel when she tried to reverse her course and head back to Germany via the Denmark Strait. There was another big battle there, and this time Bismarck was finally sunk.”

  “Wow!” It was all Paul could say for the moment. He shook his head, feeling a strange unease. The professor was correct. Nothing was safe now. Even the old war stories he had cherished as a boy were all on the chopping block. “Do you realize what this means?” he said at last.

  “It means
we’ve got work to do here,” said Robert. “Which is why I rushed over here the moment these thoughts began to coalesce to some conclusion in my mind. I was afraid of that certainty factor you talked about on the last mission, that tunnel thing.”

  “You mean Absolute Certainty?”

  “That was it,” said Robert. “Yes, I was afraid that once I figured out who the perpetrator was this time around, the other side would get wind of it, because I was damn well determined to do something about it, so I wanted to get inside a safe Nexus Point before I brought you all in on this research and firmed this up.”

  “Good man,” said Maeve.

  “Yes,” Paul agreed. “Forget the fuel situation, you did exactly the right thing, Robert. But you realize that fingering this Kenan Tanzir is just one end of the stick. Now we have to find out how they could possibly have constructed this scenario, because if what you are saying holds water, then the Pushpoint lies somewhere in that initial sortie by the Bismarck. For the life of me I can’t see how they would be able to determine that saving Bismarck in May would mean she would attack this particular convoy in August and end up killing this otherwise insignificant Berber scout who fathers our newest terrorist, Kenan. It’s mind boggling! Why not just go back and kill this Thomason instead?”

  The professor said nothing to that, and they sat with it for a time, each realizing that they were all probably locked into another dangerous and confounding mission here. They knew the operation to try and reverse Palma again was definitely on the radar screen but, coming on the heels of that last daunting journey to the 8th century, the prospect of yet another perplexing Time jump weighed heavily on them now.

  “Well,” Maeve said quietly. “It certainly has all the hallmarks of a typical intervention. I understand what you are saying, Paul, but we don’t have to uncover the whole of their operation to reverse this again. Bottom line, all we have to do is make sure this Lieutenant Thomason gets to Alexandria safely.”

  “Which means we have to make sure the Bismarck never reaches Brest safely first,” said Paul. “That’s a tall order, particularly given the complexities of the interventions we’ve already uncovered.”

  “Why do we have to mess with the battleship?” asked Maeve. “Can’t we just divert the convoy somehow—move it safely out of harm’s way?”

  “We could try that,” said Paul, “but we have no guarantee that Bismarck would not still find it and sink this ship. It would be a throw of the dice. Removing Bismarck is definitely more decisive. And remember, Bismarck is not supposed to even be afloat, so it’s clear their operations focused on that campaign if she is. We also have to consider a possible counter operation.”

  Maeve wasn’t convinced. “We could arrange for Thomason to receive new orders and go by some other route then. It won’t matter what the Bismarck does in that event.”

  “You’re telling me that we’ve got this blatant deviation in the history and you want to ignore it? Thomason wasn’t the only man who dies when that convoy gets attacked. There’s a string of lives cut short. What was it? Four ships are sunk, and none of the ancestors of the men who went down on them were born either. That might cause damage that could go exponential in just a few generations, and who knows what kind of havoc it wreaks on the continuum in future years, even if we can see no ill effects now.”

  “Other than Palma,” Robert put in. “That’s one hell of an ill effect, eh?

  “These people are a devious bunch, I’ll give you that,” said Maeve. “They ran this right under our noses while Robert and I were off to find the Rosetta Stone. In fact, I think they were working this up even as far back as that little fishing expedition you and Robert took to recover the Ammonite fossil. That’s when Robert first discovered they were using the scroll rubbings and the hieroglyphics to send messages through Time. We get back from our trek to Egypt and find all hell has broken loose, and that it was all part of this major operation—the Rosetta Stone, Palma, and Tours—all a unified plan.”

  “Right,” said Paul. “We had to make all those shifts into Egypt, then three time shifts to counter the consequences of their intervention at the Battle of Tours, but it seems the job is still not done. I’m starting to feel like I’m plugging leaks in a dike here. Yet now we see the true breadth and scope of what they actually planned. They hit the Rosetta stone, replacing it with a stela containing instructions concerning the battle of Tours. That may have been happenstance, but it sure rubbed our nose in it, yes?”

  “And thankfully so,” said Robert. “They didn’t count on my ability to read the hieroglyphics!”

  “Thank god for that,” said Paul. “Well that was just a cover operation. The real one-two punch was reversing Palma to knock the Order back on its heels in the future, so they could then launch the attack on Charles Martel. They may have underestimated our capabilities here. But let’s face it, we were fortunate to stop the worst of this so far, and now we have to finish the job.”

  “At least we don’t have to save all of Christendom and Columbus again, as you worried when you first came in here,” said Robert. “But we must do something about Palma. Otherwise we’re all living on proverbial borrowed Time here. We’ve only just managed to lay in a small store of food and fuel, and get some much needed rest. But how long do you think the city is going to remain stable here? Supplies are already scarce as hen’s teeth. The next time we go out for petrol we may very well come back empty handed. And the power is going to go down, one day or another. Then we’re pretty much off line—useless—and the other side has free rein to do whatever they please. In fact, I think they are counting on exactly that happening to us. They don’t see us as a threat now after Palma. Founding Fathers or not they’ll make short work of us, mark my words. So it’s now or never. Yes, we’ve got to finish the job here.”

  Paul nodded his head. “Look who’s rallying the troops this time!” he said. “Yet everything you say is true.”

  “Golem time!” said Kelly. “You’ve been on that station for an hour now, Robert. What do our little friends say about it?”

  “Paul was correct about the amazing scope of their plan,” said the professor. “I was worried we would have multiple interventions to cope with here as well, but the variations don’t start to crop up until the spring of 1941. Everything before that is clean—no variations at all since we beat them at Tours. That helped me hone in on important events in the history, and the Arion system did a lot of work for me. Everything led me back along the breadcrumb trail from Kenan Tanzir at the Le Méridien Hotel in Oran. You pull on a string and you never quite know where it will lead you. In this case I pulled on a thread in this man’s suit and I end up in the North Atlantic ocean, in May of 1941! This is where they’re operating, Maeve.””

  “With the battleship Bismarck,” Paul said with a smile, the light of battle glimmering in his eyes now. “Oh, my. This mission is going to be fun. Let’s get started, people!”

  Chapter 5

  Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Arch Complex – Tuesday, 7:00 PM

  “It was a campaign literally rife with Pushpoints,” said Paul. “In fact, my studies of the second world war uncovered many similar incidents—little moments, quirks of fate we call them, that ended up having major ramifications on the outcome of events. It led me to my whole theory of Pushpoints being these small things, utterly insignificant if taken on their own, but with enormous power to lever events that were massing all around them with this huge buildup of temporal kinetic energy. Well, this campaign has a number of moments like that. Happenstance, errors of judgment, mistakes, and just plain sheer luck as well. Bismarck should have made it safely back to a French port in my opinion, and I can tell you why she didn’t.”

  “Wasn’t there a big naval battle in this campaign?” asked Kelly.

  “Two of them,” said Paul. “Bismarck had completed trials and was ready to attempt a breakout into the North Atlantic. She teamed up with a smaller ship, the cruiser Prince Eugen, and they made a run through th
e Denmark Strait between Iceland and the U.K. The British were stretched pretty thin, but they managed to post some screening forces on all possible routes the Bismarck might take. In this case they had a pair of cruisers with radar in the Denmark Strait, Norfolk and Suffolk. These two ships spotted the Germans and began shadowing them at a respectful distance, for even taken together they would be no match for the larger German battleship. The fact that Prince Eugen was along made the German task force an even more potent threat.”

  “So where are these Pushpoints you mentioned? asked Robert.

  “All over the place. It was as if this was a seismic fracture zone in the Meridian held together by these smaller events. The first was a decision by the German Admiral Lütjens concerning his fuel situation. Bismarck was already some 200 tons light due to a faulty fuel hose. Prince Eugen also needed to refuel, so they stopped at Bergen, though Lütjens elected not to refuel Bismarck, and further, not to rendezvous with an oiler as planned to take on auxiliary fuel later. That choice was to have an important bearing on the outcome of the mission. The refueling stop itself also put the British on to them when they were spotted there at Bergen, so it was a bad move on two counts.

  “Next up we get an odd failure with Bismarck’s main radar. There were a few instances where the Germans tried to shake off the shadowing British cruisers, so they would turn and engage them. During one of these instances, concussion from Bismarck’s main fifteen inch guns damaged her radar, and because of this the two ships reversed their sailing order, with Prince Eugen in the lead.”