Time Leap (11 page)

“
Intent to
commit a crime is also a crime, Miss.”

“
Okay, then
just do nothing – let World War Two take its course. There were
only… let me see… sixty million people killed between 1939 and 1945
– not to mention those who suffered in the Holocaust…”

“
The holo
what?”

Niki sat back and sighed.
“It doesn’t matter. I hope you can sleep at night in ten years’
time.”

The detective looked at
her quizzically. Then there was a knock at the door. “Come.” A
neatly dressed policewoman with tied back black hair entered. “Yes
– what is it Sally?” he was clearly irritated. The policewoman
whispered into his ear.

The Detective
nodded and turned to the other policeman. “Don’t let her go
anywhere!
”

*

I was waiting with Bill
when the detective and policewoman came out of a nearby room. By
the look of the detective, it was not going to be easy to convince
him that we weren’t raving nutcases – but we did have Bill on our
side now. He had put me in handcuffs to show his boss he was in
control (though he’d given me the key as a gesture of trust). The
detective ushered Bill through a door off the main corridor by the
detective (for debriefing, presumably), whilst I was taken into the
same room as Niki. It was a relief to see her alive and well – even
though I couldn’t touch her.

“
Joe!”

“
Yep, it’s
me.”

“
You shouldn’t
have come back – I can handle this…”

“
Zhongwen,
” I said, thinking it was
better to speak in a language they are very unlikely to understand,
and my Chinese was good enough to explain what had happened that
morning.

“
You shou ji
ma?”
she asked.

I quickly confirmed that
I did have my mobile, and told her about going to the year 1700
with Bill, and how I had convinced him that war with Germany was
going to happen, even though he would never really understand how
we had been able to travel back and forward in time. That was all I
had time to say before the officer stopped us talking. From the
next room, we could hear shouting. After a while, it went quiet,
and a few minutes later, Bill entered with the
Detective.

“
Right you
two. Constable Briggs has put his job on the line for you both. I
don’t know what happened when he was away with Mr Cooper here, but
he’d convinced me to give you the benefit of doubt and pass on your
case to someone in the government. I really should get the army
boys to just blow up that case; but I’ve worked with Bill for a
long time now, and I trust him. So we’ve got to keep you here until
they’ve had a look inside your case, all right?” We both nodded.
“Right then. Constable Briggs will get you some food and drink –
you must be hungry.”

*

We must have spent three
hours waiting in the police station for something to happen. We had
to stay in handcuffs, and were continually being watched, so there
was no way I could use the key Bill had given me to free myself and
get my phone. Which meant that all we could do was sit and wait it
out.

Suddenly, the door opened
and Detective Thompson was back with another man. He was dressed in
a grey suit, blue striped school tie, and a serious but warm look.
He reminded me of an actor from old war movies my dad used to
watch.

“
Are those
really necessary?” the man in the suit asked, pointing towards our
handcuffs. The constable looked at the detective, who nodded his
agreement, and we were released from the cuffs.

We were then taken to a
black car parked outside the Police station by the man in the suit,
who sat in the front next to a police driver. After a couple of
minutes, the man turned and smiled at us.

“
My name is
Johnson,” he said. “I work for the Government. The police brought
your suitcase to us, and we’ve been looking at your, er,
‘documents’. I work with Mr Eden.”

“
Anthony
Eden?” I asked.

“
Yes. You will
appreciate that these, er, documents have taken us rather aback.
Normally, we would verify the authenticity of such information
before going any further with something like this. Well, actually,
there’s never been anything like this. Anyway, Mr Eden has a lot of
questions, as you can imagine.”

Traffic in 1935 paled
into insignificance compared with our own time period. Cars were
slower, of course, and there were horse driven vehicles on the
roads intermingled with the cars and buses. It wasn’t long before
we arrived at the Home Office buildings. Both Niki and I were so
interested in meeting Anthony Eden and answering his questions that
we totally forgot our original idea; we had intended to merely
leave the information with the government – and avoid any difficult
questions regarding their source. But now we were actually looking
forward to talking about World War Two. This was surely a lot
better than just leaving the documents and hoping they would be
examined. So I didn’t even think about using the phone to get us
out of there.

Anthony Eden was almost
exactly how I imagined him, having read so much about the British
government and the Second World War whilst we collected all the
relevant documentary evidence we could find. He had been educated
at Eton and Oxford, and his accent and manner was what you would
expect after such an education. He was certainly gregarious and
welcoming, quite different from our reception at the police
station.

“
Ah, you must
be Joe and Niki,” he said, and proceeded to talk to Niki in Chinese
(Eden studied Oriental languages at Oxford). She smiled and laughed
as he spoke.

“
You’ve caused
quite a stir Joe,” he said to me. He used my first name in a very
familiar way. (He later told me that his first son was named
Joe).

“
That was our
intention,” I replied.

“
Good – I’m
glad to hear that. But the thing is now… how do we square
your
‘documents’ with the
real world? I mean, you have presented us with an idea of what
could happen if we go along our current path – a path that I have
to tell you I am now completely and utterly against. It would be
very wrong to enter another war with Germany, so soon after the
last war. And although I have to say, to my regret, I was at one
time all for appeasing the Germans, I now realise that this is the
very last thing we should do, and I am going to do everything
within my power to turn the government away from this insane
direction – including using your information, if I may?”

“
Yes, of
course,” I said. “That’s why we brought it.”

“
Have you seen
the DVDs?” Niki asked.

“
D–V–Ds?” Eden
queried, and turned to Johnson.

“
Ah, I think
the young lady is referring to the small discs in the suitcase,
sir.”

“
Then can we
see them Harry?”

“
I’m sorry, we
don’t know what to do with them, sir.”

Eden turned back to Niki
and smiled. “I wonder if you would be so kind as to show us how
they work.” He pointed to one of the discs lying in the open case
on the table in front of us. Niki smiled back and removed the DVD
player from the case.

“
We need to
plug this into the mains power,” she said.

“
Oh, I see!”
said Johnson. He looked carefully at the plug on the device. In our
hurry to jump back to 1935, we had forgotten to change the electric
plug on the player. No doubt it would have been difficult to get
one the same as 1930s Britain, though maybe not impossible. “I
think we need to change this,” he said to Eden, holding up the
plug. “It shouldn’t take long.”

Eden turned
back to us. “Now, how about a drink – tea perhaps? We have
some
Lapsang Souchong,
if that is suitable?”

Whilst we sat drinking
tea with Anthony Eden, he told us how concerned he was about Hitler
and the Nazi party, particularly the recent transgression of the
Treaty of Versailles. Having seen our documents he now firmly
believed the government should stamp out Hitler and the party
before they could rearm themselves. If not, he feared the worse.
After about twenty minutes, Johnson reappeared with the DVD player,
fitting with a ‘new’ plug.

“
Voila!” he
said.

“
Plug it in
then Harry, there’s a good chap, and let’s enjoy the
show.”

There were gasps of
amazement from both men when Niki began playing the first disc (the
History of the Second World War, Part 1). When we were putting this
information package together, we had only thought of the impact of
the content of the discs – we gave little thought to the quality of
digital technology and the realism of the video.

At the end of it, there
was silence. Then tears formed in Eden’s eyes.

“
Thank you,”
he said. “I don’t know how you did this, or where it is from, but
it’s just…” he was lost for words.

“
We just want
to prevent the war,” Niki said. “We want you to stop it happening.”
We had both realised that Eden would never accept the information
as something that had actually occurred – how could he? To do that,
he would have to accept that time–travel was possible, and that
wasn’t going to happen.

“
I’ve never
seen anything like this…” he said. I don’t know where this device
is from, but it’s miles ahead of what the Americans have
now.”

“
It’s very new
technology… from China,” I said.

“
It’s
unbelievable,” said Johnson. “The realism…”

“
It’s
what
could
happen,” added Niki.

“
Well, I’m
going to make sure it doesn’t!” exclaimed Eden. “Thank you – thank
you so much, both of you. You must leave me your details… address
and telephone number – if that’s acceptable to you?”

I nodded, and wrote down
my family’s address and phone number in London, adding that I
travelled to China with Niki quite a lot, so it might not be easy
to find us.

As we’d said our
goodbyes, and were about to leave, Eden turned to the
suitcase.

“
What about
the material – the player, discs… everything?”

“
Please keep
them,” I said. “Show them to whoever you need to.”

“
Thank you
once again,” he said, “and safe journey. My driver will take you
wherever you need to go.”

“
Thank you,”
replied Niki, “but we have our own transport.”

*

We left the building, and
as soon as we could find a quiet spot, we set the date back to our
present time. Just before I hit confirm, I turned to Niki and
looked into her eyes.

“
Well, baby,
let’s see what we’ve done to the future.”

Seventeen

“
What
nothing
?” I looked at
Niki in disbelief as she studied the screen of her iPad. “Are you
saying that after all our hard work, getting arrested and talking
to a key player in the British government – nothing has changed?
World War two still happened – exactly as before?”

She nodded. “I can’t find
anything different,” she replied.

We had just finished
breakfast, and I sat back in disbelief. “Then I guess Eden did sod
all,” I said at last. “His concern was just pretence...”

“
Or no–one
listened to him,” she said.

“…
what a waste
of time! All that for nothing.”

“
Maybe not
totally wasted….” Niki said after a minute. She drew me over to her
iPad and the Wikipedia webpage she was reading. It talked about
Eden’s vehement attack on Hitler and the Nazi party at a meeting of
the League of Nations (a predecessor to the United Nations). He
urged the League to take the strongest measures to prevent Hitler’s
advance into neighbouring countries. And when Hitler occupied the
Rhineland, Eden also supported the French with British military
backup. This was a bit of a u–turn from his previous appeasement of
Hitler, but it was far too little too late, and had no real effect
on the outcome of the war. That was all we could find.

“
We’re not
always going to be able to make a difference, Joe… some things just
have to be.”

I turned away from the
screen, and slumped on the sofa. I should agree with Niki, but I
couldn’t help feeling that we’d failed. What did we do wrong? How
could we have done things differently? Why didn’t Eden go to the
Americans with the information we gave him? This ‘failure’, as I
saw it, put me in a very depressed mood for the rest of the
afternoon. But I snapped out of it that evening with an unexpected
visit.

“
Dad?” The man
standing at the door certainly looked like my father… but I was in
for a shock.

“
No, it’s me,
Joe. Or should I say, it’s you Joe.” I stood opened–mouthed at the
door. “Can we come in?” I moved out of the way, and he entered –
followed by what turned out to be his Niki.”

“
Oh–my–god!” I
gasped. “I’d better warn Nik. Take a seat – make yourself at
home... is this still your home?”