He lay on pine needles, heart knocking wildly against his breastbone while German soldiers shouted to each other.
The beam of a flashlight probed a clump of scrub, bounced away like a will-o’-the-wisp. They were quartering the area, methodically searching the rugged terrain.
The boy pressed a hand to his torn cheek to staunch the flow of blood, knowing he had to get sulfa drugs into the wound before it became infected.
Uncle Karl. Mischa. Mr. Lempke. Anya.
He pressed his forehead to the cold earth. All his friends dead—ambushed by a German hunter-killer squadron lying in wait along the rail line. To catch and liquidate the resistance cell plaguing the supply trains shuttling troops and matériel to the Eastern Front.
The boy shoved the pistol into his waistband and drew a hunting knife from his fur-lined boot.
Uncle Karl. Mischa. Mr. Lempke. Anya.
Think, if you want to live. The Carpathian Mountains are behind me. I can hide from the patrols, using ravines and deep gorges.
Gripping the knife, ignoring the fierce pain in his face, the boy swore he would return from the mountains one day and drench the steel blade with Nazi blood. To avenge his family, his people.
“I vow,” he whispered. The knife reflected a shard of moonlight into his brown eyes. “I vow.”
He backed out of his hiding place, thanking God the Germans didn’t have dogs with them.
Crouching low, he kept the bouncing light behind him. He struggled up a steep grade, slipping on the loose spall. Just before dawn he evaded the last of the search team on a wooded mountain slope. Finally, completely exhausted, his face swollen and crusted over, he crumpled at the base of a tree and wept for the memory of his dead family and friends.
* * * *
2.
I’ve seen every way a man can die. When I was finally captured in late 1943 I saw a group of kapos hacksaw an old Jew and his son to death in a quarry. There is nothing I haven’t seen.
—Paul Brome, The Last Jew
“I’m telling you, it can be done,” Joseph Gibli insisted. “The Americans have already opened swing-gates into alternate timelines. It’s not a hoax.”
Colonel Paul Brome sipped his ouzo. “What’s a swing-gate?”
“That’s what they’re calling the interdimensional doorway.”
“What did you say this lunatic’s name was?”
“Dr. Hannah Zachal. And she’s not a lunatic. The Americans have pumped billions of dollars into their project. The Russians and Euros are only a step behind. But now we’ve got the jump on them—Dr. Zachal is the only person to solve the space-time equations we need to accomplish our task.”
Only half-listening, Brome let the hot sun beat pleasantly on his face. Loose paper and dust blew through the narrow street and into the sidewalk cafe where he and Gibli sat. Tourists ambled through the Propylaea, snapping holographic images of one of the few ancient structures to survive the chaotic Mad Times that had dominated The Twen. On the horizon, the white columns of the Parthenon stood like mute sentinels.
Gibli shielded his face from the wind-blown grit. “What will it take to convince you, Paul?”
Brome solemnly regarded Gibli’s cataract-clouded eyes set in a face scaled and pitted with age. He had known and trusted Gibli ever since their days together in the Mossad, and before that, in Dachau. He liked the man, respected his intuition. But this time….
“Joseph, what you’re saying is too fantastic to be believed.” He shook his head with bemusement. “You can’t violate causality. Hell, even I know that and I’m only a soldier.”
“This isn’t a go-back-in-time-to-kill-your-grandfather sort of thing,” Gibli said. “That’s impossible because we can’t reach the past of our own timeline. This is a separate timeline that includes an historical event-chain echoing ours. It doesn’t affect our time stream at all.”
“You make it sound awfully easy.”
“The main problem is energy expenditure. The year, the night we need is just far enough away. Wait any longer, and it’ll slide out of reach. Forever.”
Brome rolled the now empty ouzo glass between his hands. “Joseph, when you called out of the blue I didn’t even know you were still alive. I haven’t seen any of the old gang since I left Mossad. Now, suddenly, you show up in Athens while I’m on vacation. Why?”
“This project is important to me, Paul.”
“So I gather. But why do you need me, when anyone else would do?”
Gibli dodged the question. “Look,” he spread his gnarled hands apart, trying to relate some measure of the scale involved. “You can’t go back more than about 130 years. Beyond that, the amount of energy required becomes too prohibitive. In fact, you’ll only have twenty minutes to complete your mission.”
Brome’s eyebrows arched. “Only twenty minutes?”
“Maximum. Your presence will cause the timelines to radically diverge. If they separate too far we’ll never be able to retrieve you.”
A waiter brought a second round of drinks. Brome absently fingered the thin white scar along his jaw. In the distance, burnt-orange tiled roofs, whitewashed walls, and dark green olive groves blanketed a shimmering horizon. The Acropolis shone like a crown jewel in the midst of it all.
Gibli’s outrageous proposition whirled through Brome’s mind like a maelstrom. Gibli was obviously unable to live with the bitter winds and ghosts haunting his past. Brome, on the other hand, had long ago buried his dead—and fully intended them to remain that way.
Going into the past, or opening an event-chain or whatever, was pure fantasy. Let the dead rest their rest. Besides, nobody gave a damn anymore and Brome was tired of trying to make them care; he had burnt out his anger long ago. People didn’t want to be reminded of those days. They lived for today, no longer wanting to be defined by their cruel history. Frankly, who could blame them? Dredge that nightmare out of its grave? To what end?
He reached across the table for Gibli’s hand, a withered bag of dried walnuts and brittle rods. Brome’s own, by contrast, was supple and strong. The elasticity of his skin belied his eighty-odd years. Although Gibli had had the best medical care Mossad could provide, he had never accepted the idea of rejuv nodules at the base of his spine. Now, he was too old for the cutting-edge biotechnology to do him any good.
Years ago, Brome asked why he had made that decision. “Because someday I want to die,” came the unexpected reply. “I’m not afraid of dying, Paul, that’s the difference between us. You keep trying to understand what we experienced in the death camps. That’s why you fail: no one can philosophically describe an illogical event.”
Uncle Karl. Mischa. Mr. Lempke. Anya. Millions of others, nameless and faceless, but important. Always important. Why shouldn’t I be able to understand the Why? Brome thought.
He shook himself and looked again into Gibli’s leather-tanned face.
“Joseph, listen to me. Those bad years, and what they meant, are over now. Dr. Zachal’s idea is moonshine. Even if it were true, what’s the point? Because if we don’t it’ll fall beyond our reach and be lost forever?”
“That should be reason enough.”
Brome shook his head. “And what about shattering the world we know? How will people react when word gets out? An operation of this magnitude can’t be kept secret forever.”
“Our security is first-rate.”
Brome leaned forward. “Joseph, I beg you: don’t let the past destroy us. Anyway, it’s not our world; you’re worried about people who probably don’t even exist.”
Gibli was unswayed. “You’re the only man who can do it, Paul. The only one who can set right what, surely, was never meant to happen. You won’t be shattering the world. You’ll be healing an open wound in the history of our species. For the first and only time, Humanity has a chance to do something right. If we deny this responsibility to ourselves then we’re ignoring what it may ultimately mean to be human.”
“Ask anything else of me, but not this. My life as a soldier is behind me. I’ve moved on because I’m sick of killing. I’m sorry.”
Rising abruptly, Gibli groped for his eyecane. His words lashed out. “Paul, you have a chance to return to the beginning and set things right for everyone. Your act will have a ripple effect—”
“Joseph, for God’s sake, think what you’re asking me to do!”
“For me, Paul. Please? We only have two weeks before the timeline moves beyond our reach.”
Brome stared at a napkin fluttering in the breeze.
A vein in Gibli’s temple throbbed like a black worm. “I thought I could count on you.” Stubborn silence. “Then there’s nothing more to say, except goodbye.” He waved his eyecane in an arc, letting the digital bulb on its ferrule locate and warn him of landmarks. He hobbled down the crowded sidewalk, his thin frame and loose-fitting clothes soon lost in the crowds of tourists browsing the open-air stalls.