Johnny O'Brien - Day of the Assassins

“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.”