Day of the Assassins (21 page)

J
ack looked up at the massive dinosaur. Two eye sockets, way above, leered down at him from a large white skull. If the creature had still been in possession of its prehistoric eyes, maybe it would have winked at him, knowingly. Instead the vast skull and the huge skeleton, to which it was attached, hung there lifelessly – a monument to past glory. Normally, Jack liked this place. Particularly the dinosaur exhibit. The Royal Edinburgh Museum. He liked its open spaces and polished floors and the hushed voices that would echo through the exhibition halls. You could happily wander around for hours, lost to the world. But today, he knew there would be no time for that.

“So why did we end up here?” Angus asked for about the fifth time.

“I told you – no idea. Just be grateful that the grenade didn’t get us before we escaped and we got back to approximately the right time and location.”

“Close one. Do you think Pendelshape made it?”

“I should think so. He pressed at the same time as us.”

“Wonder if we’ll see him again,” Angus said ruefully.

Jack sniffed, “Wonder if I’ll ever see my dad again.”

“Sorry Jack – you know what I mean.”

“Sure. No matter.”

The clock at the end of the large entrance hall struck seven p.m. In thirty minutes the museum would close for the evening.

“Where are they? They should be here by now.”

The Taurus had dumped Jack and Angus in the toilets of the Royal Edinburgh Museum – thoughtfully the Gents and not the Ladies. It took them a little while to work out where, and when, they were.
Finally, they made it to the large marble-floored reception area. The calendar indicated 14th October. Only the day after he had made his original fateful decision to use the Taurus to escape the Rector back at the school.

The receptionist did not quite know what to think of the two mud-caked teenagers, but she allowed them to use the phone. Jack called his mum. He could tell that she was immensely relieved to hear from him, and now she and VIGIL were on their way. They waited patiently in the hall, trying, with difficulty, to look inconspicuous.

Jack spotted his mum first. She was running towards him, arms outstretched and soon he was in her arms. Close behind followed the Rector who was smiling broadly and then his two old friends, Tony and Gordon, who stood back at a respectful distance. Thankfully, they were in their janitor’s uniforms and unarmed – assault rifles weren’t generally permitted inside the Royal Edinburgh Museum.

Soon they were aboard the school minibus speeding back home. It seemed a rather modest form of transport, compared to what they had been used to. And now their lives would be one long secret – to keep the mystery of the school, the extraordinary technology within it and the powerful people entrusted with its control – carefully hidden from the rest of the world.

In the back seat, Jack and Angus were wedged between the large frames of Tony and Gordon. Angus had dropped off to sleep. As they sped along, Tony punched Jack in the upper arm, with, Jack thought, rather more force than was necessary. In fact, it hurt. He looked up at Tony and his glare was returned with a wide, yellow-toothed grin.

“Gotta tell you, son,” Tony said.

“What’s that, Mr Smith?” Jack replied.

“You were the best mission we ever ’ad.”

Jack smiled, reluctantly, “I guess that’s a compliment, is it?”

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.”

Five members of the Black Hand group in court following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Princip is seated in the centre.

What was the Austro-Hungarian Empire?

The Austro-Hungarian Empire, also known as Austria-Hungary, was a large, powerful state in central and south-east Europe that was broken up at the end of World War I. It was the second largest state in Europe after the Russian Empire.

What was the alliance system?

By 1914, the great powers of Europe were inter-connected by a system of alliances. The Dual Alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary was created in 1879 and Italy later joined them in the Triple Alliance. Otto von Bismarck, the architect of the German Empire, created the alliances as a defensive system. This was largely against France, whom he regarded as the main enemy following defeat in the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 and their loss of the French territories of Alsace and Lorraine to the newly created Germany.

In 1891, for a variety of reasons, Russia cooled relations with Germany, and formed the Dual Entente with France. In the early twentieth century, Britain moved closer to her traditional enemies (France and Russia) – partly fearing Germany’s rapid build-up of an ocean-going navy that might challenge Britain’s naval supremacy.
In 1904, Britain settled her differences with France in Africa, establishing the Entente Cordiale, and in 1907, following defeat by Japan, Russia was eager to settle her differences with Britain in Persia and Afghanistan. This led to the Triple Entente between Britain, France and Russia.

German military strategists were required to devise a plan (which became known as the ‘Schlieffen Plan’) to deal with a war on two fronts – Russia to their east and France to their west. This aimed to defeat France rapidly, before Russia had mobilised her large army.

Although this alliance system was defensive in nature, when coupled with the military problem that Germany potentially faced war on two fronts, it became an important reason why a conflict, essentially between Austria-Hungary and Russia, over their spheres of influence in the Balkans (or south-east Europe), turned into a European war and then, with the entry of the United States in 1917, a world war.

What was the general mood within the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire in the lead up to the assassination?

A key problem for the Austro-Hungarian Empire was that it was composed largely of minorities – Slovaks, Romanians, Croats, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenes, Slovenes, Serbs and others.

The administration of neighbouring country, Bosnia-Herzegovina, was placed under Austrian control following the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. In response, the Balkan state of Serbia created a liberation movement for Bosnian Serbs with a terrorist wing called the ‘Black Hand’. With Russian encouragement, Serbia also created a Balkan league with Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro, which aimed to exclude Turks from south-east Europe. Two Balkan wars were fought in 1912 and 1913, and as a result, Serbia’s territory and
population doubled and she became more ambitious. This generated fear in Austria and also gave encouragement to the Serbs living within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Tension finally boiled over on 28th June 1914 when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir to the Habsburg throne) was assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, trained and armed by the Black Hand.

Why did the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand lead to full-scale war?

Following the assassination, determined to crush Serbia for good, Austria issued an ultimatum to Serbia that would effectively have made Serbia into a client state of Austria-Hungary. Serbia rejected the ultimatum and Austria declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914. On 30th July, the Russians started mobilising their armed forces. The next day, Germany (Austria’s ally) issued an ultimatum to the Russians to stop mobilisation, and when they failed to do so, Germany declared war upon them.

On 1st August, the French began to mobilise and by 3rd August, Germany had declared war upon them and advanced into Belgium – following the logic of the Schlieffen Plan. This violation of Belgian neutrality caused England to declare war on Germany on 4th August. Austria declared war on Russia on 6th August.

What had started as a conflict between Austria and Serbia in the Balkans rapidly escalated into a war that involved all the great European powers. Germany and Austria-Hungary were joined by The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria to complete the Central Powers.

Countries such as Australia, India and South Africa, were involved in the Allied Forces as part of their allegiance to the British Empire. In 1915, Italy also joined the Allies, and in 1917, the United States entered the war on the allied side.

Who was really involved in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand?

There were many people who assisted the assassins, but the group in Sarajevo on the day were Gavrilo Princip (who fired the shots to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand and his wife), Nedjelko Čabrinović, Vaso Čubrilović, Trifun Grabež, Mehmed Mehmedbašić, Cvijetko Popović and Danilo Ilić. A key architect of the plot was the Chief of Serbian Military Intelligence Dragutin Dimitrijević (known as Apis – ‘the bee’). Dani and Anna Matronovic and Zadok are fictional characters.

Is the Schönbrunn Palace real? 

Yes – Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna is one of the most important cultural monuments in Austria and is a major tourist attraction. ‘Schönbrunn’ means ‘beautiful well’. The palace and gardens were home to successive Habsburg monarchs. At the age of six, Mozart performed in the Hall of Mirrors before Maria Theresa and her court. Marie Antoinette grew up there, Napoleon lived there and Kennedy and Khrushchev met there in 1961. The ‘Schönbrunn raid’ is fictional.

What is CERN?

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory and is situated near Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. Nearly
8,000 scientists and engineers (including around half of the world’s particle physics community), work on experiments conducted at CERN – using CERN’s particle accelerators. CERN also has a large computer centre containing very powerful data-processing facilities.