Day of the Assassins (16 page)

Inchquin got to his feet. The meeting was over. He clapped his hands and the guards re-entered the room to usher them back towards the Great Gallery and into the bowels of the palace to begin their imprisonment. Inchquin stopped by the door to acknowledge their departure. The professor and Angus were escorted away by the guards and a third guard was about to take Jack when Inchquin unexpectedly touched him on the shoulder, causing him to wait for a moment.

“Jack, one last thing. How is your mother?”

In the circumstances, Jack felt this to be the strangest of questions and did not really know what to say, “She's fine. I hope.”

Inchquin smiled. It was an odd smile – there may have even been a hint of warmth there, warmth that had been absent from the earlier conversation. But it also hid a tinge of embarrassment, perhaps guilt.
He said quietly, “That's good, Jack, that's good. She has been loyal to us and she and I, well, since Geneva and through all this turmoil, we have become good… friends.” He paused and grimaced slightly. “This is not easy. Not easy for any of us. But I want you to know that we are doing the right thing. We are not monsters. I just hope your father sees sense. I really do… Jack… I really do.”

The words lingered briefly in the air. But Jack had little time to consider their meaning before he was marched off with the others. As they made their way from the Great Gallery a small group crossed from room to room ahead of them. Their escorts suddenly halted and gestured for Jack, Angus and the professor to follow suit. In unison, they dropped their heads in a bow. In the centre of the group ahead was an old man. He was dressed a bit like Inchquin; he had the same double-breasted jacket with brass buttons, high-braided collar and gold-braided cuffs. An insignia of some high office dropped from his neck and a number of impressive medals hung from his left collar. He was balding but had a fine white moustache and white mutton-chop side burns. Although the man was old, he was tall and had the straight back of a horseman. He carried himself with an air of superiority. Suddenly Jack realised that he was gazing upon the emperor himself – Franz Joseph.

As the entourage crossed their path, the emperor glanced round and, for a split second, Jack caught his sharp blue eyes. Through those eyes, he was suddenly looking into a different era. An era where God gave power to the few, who in turn took on the responsibility of ruling. He realised that, although he and the emperor were both human, they were a whole world apart. And in a way, this pending war would be the very thing that made Jack so different to him. It was going to be the great watershed between the ‘old' and the ‘new'. The emperor turned his head away again. He had not even registered the rather odd presence of Jack and his friends, chaperoned by Inchquin and his helpers. He was not to know that in only four days' time his own nephew would be assassinated in Sarajevo, triggering a chain of events that would lead to the end of his mighty empire.

J
ack, Angus and the professor were led back into the depths of the palace. The building was endless. You could have fitted a hundred Cairnfields inside this place, and still have room for the garden.

At last they were deposited in rooms close to the servant’s quarters at the rear of the palace, on the ground floor. There was a small bedroom, with two bunk beds, and a larger living room furnished simply with a table and four wooden chairs. There were no windows, only a couple of metal grilled skylights. Two guards had been stationed outside the door. This was to be their home, until… well, until they were told otherwise. Jack took the chance to wash in the small bathroom that adjoined the bedroom. A strange array of early twentieth-century bathroom accoutrements had been supplied and although he was unsure what a number of them were for, he did identify some soap, which took an age to lather.

He peered into the mirror. Somebody stared back – but it didn’t look much like him. His eyes seemed to have turned a dullish grey and his blonde hair was greasy. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, as if tuning an old TV set, trying to improve the image before him. He remembered what Inchquin had said about his mum… they had become good friends. It hadn’t really registered at the time, but now the remarks combined uneasily with his mum’s guarded attitude towards his father and her unwillingness to trust Jack with what she had known all along. He frowned; was there something else his mum hadn’t told him? Jack felt a sudden stab of despair. He sat on the edge of the bath. Here he was stuck nearly a hundred years in the past, with
no obvious way home. He was a pawn in a battle in which he was unsure which side was right and which side was wrong. It was a battle that had torn his own family apart. It meant he had to grow up without a dad and with a mum who felt she couldn’t tell him the truth. Jack put his head in his hands. But he didn’t cry – he just bit his lip.

He emerged from the bathroom. The professor had his head propped up on two pillows on one bunk and continued to read Jack’s history book, which he had somehow managed to hold onto. Angus sat at the table fidgeting with a splinter of wood, trying to remove some dirt from under his fingernails. There had been no discussion since the meeting with Counsellor Inchquin and the naïve excitement that they had shared on the train journey from Innsbruck was long gone.

As they slowly prepared for bed, they heard muffled voices from the servant’s quarters outside their rooms. Then, the door to their living room swung open. A small posse of life guards marched in followed by Inchquin. He was holding a time phone.

“Sorry to disturb you, gentlemen,” he announced. “However, we have our time signal – much sooner than we anticipated. This is our chance to send you home, and, for us to pay that little visit I promised to your father, Jack. Come – we must get down to business immediately.”

Inchquin took a step over to the table, gesturing for them all to gather round. But one step was as far as he got.

There was a deafening explosion and a powerful shockwave hit them like an express train. Jack was propelled backwards and landed awkwardly on the stone floor, a cloud of dust and plaster fragments spraying over him. He spluttered uncontrollably and raised his head, trying to peer through the swirling dust. The brick wall on the far side of their room had collapsed. It was now just a smoking heap of bricks and masonry. Jack pulled himself shakily to his feet. Angus and the professor were in front of him, shouting and pointing. But all Jack could hear was a loud ringing in his ears. He tried to shout back, ‘I can’t hear you!’ but his words came out as a muffled booming in his own head. They pointed again and Jack could see the shadow of two
figures appear in the large hole that had been created in the wall by the explosion. Beyond the figures, Jack could make out the palace grounds and the vague shape of trees in the moonlight. The two figures were gesturing wildly at them. They were being rescued!

He rushed forward, following closely behind Angus and the professor who had already made it out into the garden. As he moved through the living room he spotted Inchquin. He had caught the full force of the blast and was lying on the floor, moaning. He was hurt – hit by a piece of flying mortar – and his face was white with dust and plaster. Dark blood, oozing from a wound on his forehead, was starting to mix into it. Lying next to Inchquin, seemingly untouched and still open and glinting on the stone floor, Jack spotted Angus’s time phone. He snatched it up, then rushed onwards clambering over the debris that was strewn across the floor and through the ragged hole created by the explosion. From out of the shadows, two more rescuers dashed forward. One was a man – large and stocky. As they approached, Jack could see they were both carrying rifles. The second figure was smaller, slimmer – a young woman. In the moonlight, he could just see her smile and she put out her hand to greet him.

“Nice to meet you again, Jack Christie. Sorry about our bomb. We want little bang – but we make big bang. This is my brother, Dani… and friends – Vaso and Goran. We thought you need help… So we come. ”

The big brown eyes and wide face were unmistakable.

“Anna? But how did you…?”

But as he spoke, she stopped smiling. There was shouting as the guards regrouped in the room behind them. A shot rang out and whistled past Jack’s temple. Then, in one fluid motion, Anna raised her rifle and, aiming over Jack’s shoulder into the room, closed one eye and squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked violently in her slender hands and the gunshot exploded right beside Jack’s ear. Instantly, she slipped back the bolt, released the used cartridge and smoothly refilled it with a fresh round from her belt. She fired again, without hesitation. The life guards dived for cover.

Having halted the guards, Anna and Dani hurried the three of them onwards.

“Quick – this way!”

Jack’s head was ringing like a fire alarm – first from the crude bomb that their rescuers had used to blow a hole in the wall and now from Anna’s rifle that had just discharged right next to his ear. Another shot rang out and whistled over his head. One thing was certain, if they hung around, in all this confusion, one of them was going to get killed. Anna and Dani dashed off into the palace gardens. They had no choice but to follow. There was a flash of white light and, close in front of them a VIGIL guard appeared. There was another flash, and another VIGIL guard appeared.

Jack groaned – he couldn’t believe it – Tony and Gordon.

Tony leered at them through the gloom. “Evening all,” he said and readied his APR. “Let’s just all hold our horses, calm down and not try anything silly.”

Tony and Gordon were not alone. Soon the garden outside the palace was alight with blinding flashes as guard after guard appeared – each armed and each dressed in VIGIL’s telltale flak jackets. There must have been at least ten guards fanned out in front of them. Inchquin must have planned for reinforcements to travel from the Taurus, each using their own time phones, as soon as there was an available signal to secure and protect Jack once and for all, before executing the raid on his father’s base.

Inchquin had dragged himself to his feet and was issuing orders. The life guards in their bright uniforms and plumed hats emerged from the hole in the wall and approached them from behind. With Tony, Gordon and the other VIGIL guards in front, they were now trapped. Jack looked round at his friends. Angus was standing there – his fists clenched defiantly by his sides. The professor, yellow hair messy as ever, was following the proceedings with a detached curiosity as if he were observing a strange experiment. Anna was grim faced; the reckless confidence she had shown a moment before had vanished. She lowered her rifle, realising the hopelessness of their situation. Her lower lip was trembling in fear. She knew what the Austro-Hungarian Empire did to traitors. Jack suddenly felt a pang of sorrow for her, and as they stood there, he did something that
surprised him. He took her hand and gently clasped it in his own. She looked at him a little oddly and opened her mouth to say something.

But his tender gesture of solidarity was short lived. A single gun shot rang out from the group of guards behind them and, at almost exactly the same time, Jack felt some sort of warm substance splatter the side of his face. Beside him, the professor’s legs just seemed to give way and he collapsed on to the ground in a heap. They heard Inchquin scream an order, “No shooting!!!”

Too late. Jack looked down at the professor uncertainly. Dani dropped to his knees and held the professor so his face was turned upwards, his open eyes staring unblinking at the moon. The side of his head, where once there had been that distinctive, curly yellow hair, was just a dark mess.

Jack had read about death, seen it on TV and experienced it a million times on a hundred different computer games. This was horrifically, gut-wrenchingly different.

Next, they heard Inchquin commanding them to put their weapons down and their hands up. They had no choice. One by one, Dani, Anna and their two companions placed their weapons on the ground and reluctantly raised their hands. Jack was about to raise his own when he realised that he was still clutching Angus’s time phone in one hand. Through the dark mist of his despair, a pinprick of light suddenly appeared. Of course! Jack peered down at the time phone and flipped it open. Sure enough, the bar was still lit up in an intense yellow light. In his hand he had a time travel device. It had a signal and it was linked to his father’s Taurus. Maybe, just maybe, he could use it, somehow, to bring the professor back. With one finger he started to tap out a message. Behind them, Inchquin and the guards were now cautiously approaching their little huddle. Jack hurried.

He pressed a button and the message was gone. Inchquin was nearly upon them and he continued to bark orders to the VIGIL guards beyond and to the palace life guards. He was furious that a lack of discipline had resulted in the professor’s unseemly death… More mess in the space-time continuum that they would have to clear up later.

There was a sudden ‘bleep’. Dad had replied! 

“Yes!” Jack hissed. As Inchquin approached, he flipped the time phone shut and slipped it back into his pocket. He didn’t have long to consider what form his father’s rescue attempt would take, because off to their right, there was another flash of light. For some reason, this flash was brighter than those that had signalled the arrival of the VIGIL guards. Everyone turned to see what had caused it, but they could only make out the outline of the bushes and trees of a large thicket, some way off, silhouetted by the moon. For a moment everything was still. Then, they heard a loud mechanical grinding. The earth shook. The grinding got louder and soon they could hear the roar of an engine. A very large engine.

Suddenly, the bushes at the front of the thicket collapsed and a huge dark object emerged, crawled half way across the moonlit lawn in front of them… and stopped. The distinctive shape of the metal behemoth was so clear in the moonlight, Jack knew at once what it was, and understood exactly how his father proposed to expedite their escape. Their little party at Schönbrunn Palace had a gatecrasher. But this was not any old gatecrasher. It was a Mark II Tiger tank of the German Wehrmacht. The biggest, heaviest and deadliest tank from World War Two. And it wasn’t there for the lemonade and cream buns.

All hell broke loose. The 7.92 millimetre forward machine gun on the Tiger opened up and bullets ripped across the lawn and into the band of massed life guards, who leaped for cover. At the same time the muzzle of the Tiger’s massive 88 millimetre main gun flashed and a shell whistled over their heads, narrowly missing the VIGIL guards and embedding itself in the nearby wing of Schönbrunn, which promptly collapsed in a pile of rubble as the high explosive
shell discharged.

The VIGIL guards returned fire, but their APRs were useless against the armour of the seventy-tonne Tiger. Its machine gun continued to rattle away as the main gun found its range. The muzzle flashed again and a second shell pumped straight into the melee of VIGIL guards.

Jack’s father had been one step ahead. Inchquin had been about to use the time signal to send them home and then to carry out some sort of assault on his father’s base using the assembled VIGIL guards and the location codes on Angus’s time phone. But Christie had got there first. Even before Jack’s message, he must have anticipated that help would be needed and, when the moment had come, had taken advantage of the available signal to send help in the form of a tank. But now this wasn’t looking like the best of plans. Jack, Angus and Anna were caught in the middle – they had Inchquin and the Schönbrunn life guards behind them, Tony and Gordon and the VIGIL guards in front of them, and a Second World War tank off to one side. The professor already lay by their feet – dead. It wasn’t looking good.

Next Jack spotted two of the VIGIL guards fiddling with a large device – some sort of bazooka. One of them hoisted it onto his shoulder. The weapon bucked and its shell fizzed like a firework as it shot across the lawn. It smacked plumb into the side of the Tiger and there was an ear-splitting explosion. The 180 millimetre frontal armour of the Tiger was holed and the machine gun abruptly stopped. Yet someone in the tank had survived. The gun turret swivelled towards the two VIGIL guards who were desperately reloading the bazooka. The massive gun aimed downwards across the lawn towards them, but just as the muzzle flashed and recoiled, releasing a third shell, a second round fizzed from the bazooka towards the Tiger. It was too late for the VIGIL bazooka crew who were vaporised as the shell exploded just in front of them. But almost instantaneously the second bazooka’s round ripped open the Tiger’s armour and buried itself in the engine compartment. The rear of the Tiger erupted in a huge orange fireball. In a moment, the turret hatch swung open and a figure emerged, briefly silhouetted against the fierce flames rising
from the Tiger. Even at a distance, the portly figure was immediately recognisable to Jack and Angus.