Day of the Assassins

Gordon chimed in from his left, “Yeah, lad.” He put out his hand in a high five, “It is. Semper Fi, lad, as the marines say — ‘Always faithful.’”

Jack was surprised how quickly life got back to the usual routine. The powers that be went out of their way to try to make everything as normal as possible for them. After all, VIGIL was indebted to Jack and Angus. Tony and Gordon resumed their janitorial duties and a new history teacher replaced Pendelshape as if nothing had happened. She didn’t quite have Pendelshape’s passion for the subject and seemed to be sticking closely to the curriculum. But, on reflection, that was probably a good thing. It was said that Pendelshape had been taken quite ill and had moved to Switzerland, for ‘treatment’.

Once or twice, as autumn wore on and the last of the brown-and-orange leaves melted away, Jack found himself lying on the green lawn at Cairnfield, staring up at the sky, thinking about all the things he had seen and the people he and Angus had met on their adventure. They had all been wrapped up in their own lives, ambitions and troubles. He couldn’t stop thinking that, even though it had been nearly a hundred years ago, in a funny way, these people were the same, as, well… the same as him. Two arms and two legs, two eyes, same size of brain… they were just as clever as him, if not more so, and felt the same sort of emotions. The only real difference was that they had less history to look back on. It was only now, having seen it and smelt it, not just read it in a book, he could kind of see Pendelshape’s and Dad’s point of view. These people were real. The deaths of the professor and Dani had made that agonisingly clear. In unguarded moments like these Jack felt… well, responsible. He could understand his father’s drive — to go back and, as Pendelshape had put it, ‘make things better’. But Jack knew it was a temptation he must resist.

One day, a few weeks later, Jack and his mum were sitting at the dinner table. His mum seemed much happier these days.

She started to clear the table and noticed a small plastic bag on the side.

“Sorry Jack — I forgot — that’s the next cartridge for your puffer — from the chemist.” She nodded at the plastic bag absent-mindedly.

Jack smiled, “Thanks Mum. But I don’t think I’ll need it.”

His mum glanced round, “Oh?”

“Think I’m cured. I think they call it shock treatment. No more puffers for me…”

His mum smiled, “Good. That’s good, Jack.”

He shrugged.

There was a knock at the back door and, as usual, Angus did not wait for it to be answered, but instead came careering down the corridor to find them in the kitchen.

“It’s arrived!” he waved a thin package above his head, then suddenly remembered his manners, “Oh, sorry Mrs C.”

“What’s arrived?”

“The next Point-of-Departure of course!”

It was probably force of habit, but in an instant, both of them had left the kitchen and tumbled down to the cellar below. The hole in the wall that Angus had crashed through into the workshop had been repaired and was now a door to what was an empty room.

“Hey Jack, something else!”

“What?”

“Look at this,” Angus passed Jack an old black-and-white photograph. It was frayed at the edges. Jack peered at the image.

“Remember?”

For a moment, Jack didn’t know what Angus meant. From the photo stared a broad-shouldered man in a dress uniform. A German dress uniform. Jack studied the image closely — there was something odd about the man’s face. Then he noticed it — one of his ears had no ear lobe.

Jack suddenly understood, “Ludwig… the German soldier in the crater…”

“The very same. My great grandfather. Think about it, Jack… if your bayonet had been a few centimetres further to the right…”

“You wouldn’t be here…”

“But I am.”

“…and the rest, as they say, is history.”