Redemption: Supernatural Time-Traveling Romance with Sci-fi and Metaphysics (31 page)

She reaches out to touch him, to
hold him, to stop him from leaving her and finds herself lying in her bed, one
arm outstretched, her body drenched in sweat.

What was that all about,
she wonders,
as she gasps for breath.
What can this
dream mean?
And then her blood runs cold as she realizes what this must
have been
—
a final message of farewell from Konstantin. She lets her head drop
back onto her pillow and, unable to get to sleep again, she lies there until
morning, her arms wrapped around her swollen belly in an attempt to comfort
herself.

~

“Not long now before takeoff.”

Helen looks up at the man who has
addressed her.
Another Gestapo offer,
she thinks, noting his black uniform with the usual insignia.
This plane must be full of them!

“I hope not,” she says, turning
back to peer out of the window at the runway. She only boarded the plane a few
minutes earlier, but already she feels much of the anxiety and pressure of her
life in Kharkov slipping away as the aircraft slowly fills up with the
passengers for its flight to Berlin. So far the extraction plan has worked
perfectly. Helen’s hair is once again its usual blond, though cut much shorter
than before, and her restaurant clothes have been replaced with the uniform of
the SS-Helferinnen
—
black coat, skirt, cap and boots. Her U.S. contacts managed to
smuggle her a set of papers to go with her disguise, and when she came to board
the plane as Liesel Schneider the guards ushered her straight on. This flight
to Berlin, however, is only the first leg. Once she has landed, she is to board
a plane to Stockholm and then another to Egypt, which is now allied territory.
From there, the United States Air Force will get her safely back home to
Phoenix, Arizona.

Helen glances back at the man who
addressed her, but he is in conversation with another officer. Looking over the
heads of those seated in front of her, she counts merely twenty people. She is
just over a third of the way down the aircraft, so she reckons there are around
fifty people in all and only a few stragglers making their way on board.
Barely half full,
she thinks.
And every one of them officers of the
Wehrmacht or the Gestapo. What a gathering!

The sound of laughter catches her
attention and she sees a group of men talking in cheerful tones, clearly
pleased to be returning to Germany and their friends and families.
I know how they feel! I can’t wait to see
mine. How long has it been since I last saw them? Two years at least.

She leans back in her seat,
gazing, unseeing, out of the window as she imagines the look on her mom and
dad’s faces when they see her again, and how wonderful it will be to talk with
her grandmother about the adventures she’s had here in the old woman’s
homeland.

They had been the only ones who
were allowed to know she was coming out here, and even they did not know the
details of her mission.
My poor mom,
she
thinks, remembering her reaction to the news.
She really didn’t want me to come. Even my dad seemed close to tears!
They’re going to be happy to have me back home again. Grandma will make one of
her famous apple pies. And no doubt mom will cook up that Korean stuffed duck
she knows I love, with dad plying me with rum and cokes, his special mix!
She
smiles at this thought, while a wave of excitement mixed with homesickness
washes over her, and pats her belly, enjoying again the thrill of how much it
has grown in the past few weeks.
Here’s
one surprise they certainly won’t be expecting! A grandson for my parents,
great grandson for my granny.
And, although she can’t explain why, Helen is
certain that the baby
is
a boy. So
certain, in fact, that she has already settled on naming him Konstantin
—
the best name in the world
—
after his
heroic father and the great Rokossovsky.
I
hope you look like your dad. Those light brown eyes, that dark hair, those soft
Slavic features, a daily reminder of the man I came to love.
Helen sighs,
saddened again at the thought of her nightmare and the death of Konstantin.
But it was just a dream,
she thinks,
hope flickering in her chest.
He may not
be dead at all. Maybe one day we will see each other again.

Feeling the tears welling up in
her eyes, Helen quickly thinks about her journey home to distract her from the
grief that threatens to overwhelm her.
Come
on, girl! This is no time to for self-pity. There’s too much at stake.
She
goes through the details of the extraction plan in her head, the agent she is
to meet in Berlin, who is taking over her role in Russia, and to whom she needs
to pass on vital information; the contact in Stockholm, who will furnish her with
a new passport and disguise.
Not long now
and this whole nightmare will be a thing of the past!

With a smile once again spreading
across her face, Helen peers back out of the window just in time to see a black
car pulling up on the runway outside. As she watches, a number of men, all in
the uniform of the Gestapo, emerge from the vehicle and she glances at them
briefly without really looking. But even as she turns away, Elena’s blood seems
to freeze in her veins and her breath catches in her throat.

It can’t be,
she thinks desperately,
as she looks back at one of the men.
Hans!
He’s not supposed to be here!

The men disappear from view, but
soon reappear, making their way onto the plane. As they begin to head down the
aisle, she sees the look of despair on Hans’s face together with the angry,
purple bruise on his cheek. His hands are held behind him a curious, unnatural
fashion.
He’s been handcuffed, s
he
thinks, her panic growing. Fixing her gaze straight ahead, she works out for
few seconds what is going on. And no matter how she looks at it, she always
comes to the same conclusion:
Hans has
failed! He’s been broken… And now these men have come for me.

During their time working
together, Hans explained some of the methods the Gestapo employ to extract information
from people.

“They always break in the end,”
he had told her. “Whatever you do, don’t let yourself be caught by the Gestapo,
that’s for sure. It’s better to take your own life!”

It’s better to take your own life
.
These words keep going round and round in Elena’s head.
There’s too much at stake, too many contacts that could be exposed, too
much information that she could be forced to divulge. As could I, when the
Gestapo discover my role in Kharkov and my Russian and U.S. networks, which
they inevitably will.

She runs her hand across her
belly once again, but not feeling the bulge of the baby this time. Instead her
hand moves higher to another bulge, one that will bring death rather than life.
Ever since she was a young schoolgirl, Helen has always made sure she is
prepared for every eventuality, and though she hoped the bomb hidden beneath
her thick coat was an unnecessary precaution, she suddenly realizes that this
has just become the only option. In only a few moments the future that
stretched out before her has been snatched away, snuffed out by that one brief
glimpse of Hans’ bruised face. Her hand slips into the coat, carefully drawing
out a trigger switch. Concealing the device in her palm, she rests her hand on
her belly and takes a deep breath. Beneath her fingers, Elena feels the push of
tiny legs as her baby moves inside her. She smiles sadly and turns to peer over
her shoulder. There, several rows back, between his two Gestapo guards, Hans
looks wretched and afraid. For a moment their eyes meet. Then, knowing it is
the right thing to do, she opens her hand and presses the trigger.

Chicago, U.S.A. 2045

Chapter Twenty-nine

A
nn’s eyes snapped open. She was breathing heavily and staring at
the ceiling in confusion. Lifting her arm from the couch, she ran her hand
across her belly, feeling for the child that seemed to be there only moments
before.

“What?” She struggles to collect
her thoughts. “Where am I?”

“It’s okay, my dear,” said a
voice nearby. Ann couldn’t immediately place it, but it sounded old and somehow
familiar. “You’ll feel unsettled for a few minutes, but that’s okay. You’ve
been out for three hours now.”

“What do you mean three hours?”
She turned her head to see an old lady striking a match and holding the flame
to a strange-looking candle, which immediately began producing great plumes of
dark smoke.

The psychic smiled across at her.
“Just that, three hours. Your longest session yet… and your last. Your friend,
Nina has been waiting for you.”

“Nina?” Ann racked her brains,
trying to make sense of this and, as she breathed in the candle fumes, her mind
began to clear at last. “Nina! She’s here?”

“I certainly am, sweetie.” Ann’s
friend swept into the room on her high heels. “Gods, I’ve been waiting in that
damned room forever. I notice you ignored my advice to get in some decent
entertainment for your guests.” She cast an accusing glare at the psychic. “I’ve
spent the last thirty minutes boring myself to death with a magazine on pig
rearing. Anyway, darling,” she said, perching on the arm of Ann’s couch and
addressing her. “I just had to come and see you, so here I am.”

“How did you know I’d be here?”
asked Ann, shuffling backwards so she could sit up.

“Well, Rob told me of course. But
that’s not important. A little bird told me you’ve got another guy fighting for
your attention. A certain
Japanese
man?”

“How the hell do you…” Ann
stopped, a frown creasing her forehead as she turned to look at the psychic. “Sorry,
did you say this was our
last
session?”

“That’s right,” said the old woman.
“You have seen all that I can show you, my dear. And all that you needed to
see.”

“So that’s it? There are no more
past lives to revisit?”

“No more that you
need
to revisit, no.”

“So, what am I supposed to do
now?” said Ann, still looking confused. “I still don’t have any concrete answer
about what I’m doing or where I’m going!”

“Ah.” The psychic smiled at her,
showing off her lack of teeth. “That, my dear, is the beauty of life!”

“She’s a funny old stick, isn’t
she?” said Nina, as she and Ann made their way along the alleyway towards their
cars. “So what were you this time? An astronaut? Or the guy who discovered
America?”

“You mean Christopher Columbus?”

“That’s the guy, yeah.”

“I wasn’t him. I was a young
woman in Russia during the Second World War. In the end I blew myself up and
destroyed a plane full of Nazis.”

“Wow!” Nina raised her eyebrows
in astonishment and flicked her hair out of her face. “You sure get plenty of
excitement, don’t you!”

“But it’s all so sad,” said Ann,
stopping as she reached her car and turning to look at her friend. “In every
one of these past lives I’ve died young, in my prime. Have you heard of Natasha
Rostova?”

“No. It sounds Russian, though.
Is that who you were in the Second World War?”

Ann shakes her head. “Hardly. She’s
the heroine in
War and Peace
, my
favorite novel back when I was… in that life. Why couldn’t I be more like her?
She was thin and beautiful in her youth, attracting the greatest men in Russian
high society. But she wasn’t cut off in her prime. She went on to have a family
of four children, though she also ended up losing her figure, becoming fat and
a bit of a whiny old hen.”

“That’s the way of the world,
darling. We all have to sacrifice for our dreams in the end.”

“But I sacrificed myself when I
was still young. I never had the chance to grow old and have my own happy
family life.”

“So you had no kids in that past
life?”

“Oh, Nina,” she said, her face
mirroring her misery and the tears welling up in her eyes. “I… I was going to
have a child. A boy. But I was still pregnant when I died. I never even got to
hold him in my arms.”

“Ann, my love,” said Nina,
throwing her arms around her friend. “There’s still time in
this
life. You have years ahead of you!
You can have a child if you want to.”

Ann pulled away slightly. “I
don’t know, Nina. Who with?”

“Well, by the sound of it, you’ve
got a choice. There’s Michael, your glacier-like archaeologist, or Tomo, your
Japanese admirer. I’m sure either of them would leap at the chance to do their
part in the whole baby-making process!”

“I don’t know,” said Ann, still
looking dejected. “Maybe I have to figure out what’s going on with Michael.”

Nina stepped back, placing her
hands on Ann’s shoulders and looking into her eyes. “Yes, that’s right,
sweetie. You’ve got men fighting over you. And there’s plenty more when they
came from. If you want to get what you want, all you have to do is make the
right choice. It’s all in your hands, darling!”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is.” Nina let go of
Ann and glanced down at her watch. “Anyway, I’ve got to dash off and see Roger
now, but I just wanted to catch you and ask if you’d like to meet up later for
a drink at the Tower. Just me and you, and we can forget about all our cares
for the evening. Eight o’clock work for you, sweetie?”

“Sure,” said Ann, opening the car
door and stepping inside. “Sounds good. Thank you, Nina.”

“Where to, my lady?” asked Rob,
his face appearing on the E-A device, a blue flower tucked behind one ear.
“It’s not too late to get to the shops if you still want to.”

Ann looked at him a moment as she
pulled away from the sidewalk. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s go shopping. Doing
something normal might help clear my head.”

“Are you okay?”

“I think so,” said Ann, a wistful
note in her voice. “Or at least I’m trying to be. You know what really bugs me,
though, having experienced life on the front line?

“What’s that, my lady?”

“How come monsters like Stalin
and Hitler appear throughout history, when fate is controlled by our Creator?
What’s that all about?”

“It’s a fair question, my lady,
and one that has plagued many over the years. And it’s a difficult one to
answer. Do you remember what happened to the two monsters you mentioned?”

“They ended up tearing each other
apart.”

“Exactly! And in the end one evil
destroyed the other.”

Ann considered this as she turned
the car round, heading back into the city. “That’s true,” she said. “But they
weren’t the only ones caught up in that fight. Thousands upon thousands of
people were killed in that war, not just soldiers, but civilians too, even
children! Over and over again, monsters rise up and innocent people die.”

“Innocent?” said Rob, raising an
eyebrow at this claim. “But it’s these so-called innocent people who create
these monsters. They only rose to power because people allowed them to, because
people raised them up and gave them that authority!”

“I suppose so. But it seems such
a waste of life. What possible purpose could such tragedy serve?”

Rob shrugged in his screen and
said, “We can only hope that it will provide a lesson for humanity and stop
people from giving power to such monsters.”

“Huh,” said Ann, unconvinced. “We’re
not so good at learning from history!”

“What about you, my lady? Can
you
learn from history?”

“Well, sure, I guess,” said Ann,
taken aback by the directness of the question. “But I’m only one person, Rob.
What difference can I make?”

“What difference can anyone make?
Every choice, every action, every decision, no matter how small, makes a
difference for better or for worse. It’s true of monsters. It’s true of saints.
And it’s true of you, my dear Ann.”

“I guess. Though I’m still not
sure
every
choice makes a difference.”

“Well, here’s an opportunity to
put it to the test,” said Rob, smiling once again. “You’ve just got a message
from Michael asking you to meet him in the Japanese Botanical Gardens.”

Ann blinked in surprise. “Oh!
When?”

“Now. He says he’ll be waiting in
the Japanese garden.” Rob paused, allowing this to sink in, the blue flower
behind his eye slowly morphing into the pink blossom of a cherry tree. “So
what’s it going to be? The choice is yours.”

Why does Michael want to meet me suddenly?
Ann wondered.
He’s lovely,
charming and everything, but I still have no idea what this guy actually wants
from me. Could he really be from a
competitor company looking to steal our ideas? Or does he want to buy
me out for his own business? Or… something else?

“If only it was easier to know
which choice is the right one,” she said. “But I must see him, if only to try
and find out what’s going on between us. Plot me a route to the Botanical
Gardens, Rob. I’ll never get my shopping done at this rate!”

~

The parking lot was almost
deserted as Ann pulled into a space next to Michael’s distinctive car. She
switched off her E-A device and slipped it into her bag, hurrying off to get
into the Japanese Garden. After several minutes, much of which was spent
wandering in completely the wrong direction, she found it and, sure enough,
there, sitting on a bench beneath a maple tree, was Michael. Dressed in a white
shirt with rolled up sleeves and casual dark blue pants, his tanned face a
picture of peace, he didn’t look at all dangerous. He turned to gaze at her as
she approached, a smile spreading easily across his face.

“Ann,” he said, getting to his
feet and holding out his hands to her. “Thank you for coming to see me. You
made the right choice.”

She stopped, her eyes widening in
surprise at this mention of choice.
Does
he know what I’ve been talking about?
she wondered.
Has he been spying on me this whole time?

“Come,” he said, stepping forward
to take her hand. “I have some people I want you to meet.”

People? What people?
A shiver of
anxiety shot through her as Michael began to lead her away through the trees.
Who could he want me to meet? His parents?
His work colleagues?
She looked around, but couldn’t make out any other
figures in the garden. “Where are they?” she asked.

“They’re not right here, exactly,
Ann,” said Michael, turning to give her a reassuring smile. “We have to travel
a little to meet them, but it will be short trip. Trust me.”

Trust you? How can I trust you, when I don’t really know who you
are? If this is some attempt to get me to sell out A.I.I.’s innovations or
something, I can’t get involved. I can’t betray my team, my guys, and
everything we’ve worked for
. These thoughts
flashed through Ann’s mind, but she kept on walking and all she said was, “A
short trip where?”

“You’ll see,” said Michael,
stopping outside what appeared to be a small cabin, which Ann assumed was used
by the gardeners. He turned the handle and opened the door, gesturing for her
to enter. “Everything will be fine, my dear.”

Finding herself unable to refuse
him, Ann forced a smile as she stepped nervously into the darkness of the
cabin. Michael followed her and pulled the door closed behind him.

“What’s going on?” asked Ann,
feeling her panic rising. “What is this place?”

“Hush,” said Michael and, in the
dim glow from the cabin’s one window, Ann watched him reach out his hand and
placed his palm gently onto her forehead. Her eyelids grew suddenly heavy and
she felt for a moment as if she was falling, falling into a void that would
swallow her up, yet somehow she felt as though that was okay, as though that
really was the right thing to be doing and she embraced the darkness.