John Schettler - Golem 7

“Le Méridien?” said Paul. “How ironic.”

“Yes, I found that amusing as well,” said Robert. “It’s a fairly new property, an elegant hotel and convention center owned by the Starwood group. Well he booked a room there, suite 911—another little twist in the gut, eh? I worked backward from that point—meals, phone calls, the works. It seems he was telephoned by a Mr. Kasim al Khafi that very night, and his data trail also had no corresponding information in our RAM Bank for the time period in question. It was as if he was a ghost.”

“You’re suggesting he was an operative from the future?” asked Maeve.

“I had my suspicions,” said Robert. “No one lives and moves through the world these days without leaving some kind of data trail. And there was nothing whatsoever on the man in the data stream the last six months or so. I thought he might be an Agent in Place, but I kept digging and that did not turn out to be the case.”

“So we apparently have two conspirators here,” said Maeve, “and neither man existed in the Meridian prior to Palma?”

“Not exactly,” said Robert. “The man who called Kenan did have a history in our RAM Bank, only it ended in November of the year 1942—with an obituary.” He let that sink in, folding his arms with some satisfaction, pleased that he finally had the undivided attention of everyone present.

“Well don’t leave us hanging,” said Paul. “You’re saying this Kasim fellow died during the war?”

“Precisely,” said Robert. “In the Meridian we come from, he dies. And the interesting thing is that he’s alive and well in the altered Meridian, and then I discover that these two men are connected by much more than apparent conspiracy. Kenan Tanzir is his son . Yes, the name was altered, probably to try and foil this sort of research, but with enough computing power it’s amazing what you can find. I’ve got a certificate of birth on this Kenan, in the city of Oran, some twenty two years ago.”

“Then he was born well after his father died!” Kelly objected. “How is that possible?”

“Yes, I immediately asked myself the same thing, and so I focused all my attention on the father after that, Kasim al Khafi, and I discovered some very interesting facts. He was an Algerian Berber, living in Oran as a younger man during the second world war. I said he had a bone to pick earlier, and this is what I meant… In July of 1940, just after France capitulated and signed an armistice with Germany, there was a question of what would happen to the powerful French fleet. It was scattered over several North African ports, but it’s nucleus under Admiral Gensoul was at the harbor of Mers-el-Kabir at Oran.

“The British commander, Admiral Somerville, received instructions to deliver an ultimatum to the French fleet to either join Britain and fight on or pursue any of a number of options to demilitarize the ships. Somerville was forced to take reluctant action, and he ordered his battle fleet, Force H, to bombard the French ships at anchor in the harbor. Needless to say it precipitated a lot of bad blood between France and England for a time, but it prevented the Germans from eventually capturing those ships.”

“So what does this have to do with this Kasim fellow?” asked Paul.

“Well he was there,” said Nordhausen quietly. “Yes, he owned a small shop near the harbor, and his home was just a few blocks away when Force H opened fire on the French fleet—and the harbor area as well. There were shore batteries there that responded to the British attack. To sum up, the man’s wife and daughter were killed in their home when a fifteen inch shell obliterated the place. And there you have it.”

“Have what?” asked Kelly. “The guy lost his wife and kid, but I don’t see the connection to Palma.”

“Patience, my good man. There’s more. You read mystery novels, do you? What we have here is motive. Kasim was justifiably embittered over the loss of his family, and he left Oran and became an Axis sympathizer. More than that, he went so far as to sign on with Rommel’s Afrika Korps as a Berber scout the following year. I dug up everything I could find on the man, and it seems he was killed in action at Bardia when Royal Navy commandos launched a raid there during Operation Crusader in November, 1942. You’ll be familiar with this history, Paul. Well, to put a fine point on it all, I did exhaustive research on that incident in our RAM Bank data. I traced down every man from officers to enlisted ranks, and again found that one man assigned to the Royal Navy Commandos was a replacement who shipped in on a steamer the previous year, in August of 1941.”

“What were you looking for?” asked Paul.

“Why, the man who killed Kasim, of course, as least as our history records it. And it seems that a squad leader by the name of William Thomason was responsible. Kasim was with a detachment of German light armored cars who were responding to the raid, and he was gunned down. The narrative indicated three German vehicles, seven men and a Berber scout were KIAs in that action. The Royal Navy Commandos ambushed the lot of them.”

“So our data shows this man Kasim dies in 1942,” said Maeve, “but the data from the altered Meridian has him telephoning his son at a hotel in Oran on the eve of the Palma attack? You’re sure it is the same man?”

“I knew you would tip toe into that,” said Robert. “I can show you at least twenty data points on that. I’ve got passports, photos, fingerprints, bank records, deposit trails—even a DNA record from his blood. It’s the same man, my good lady. Yes. That’s about the size of it. But the point is, how did he survive to make that telephone call?”

“Do go on, my friend,” said Paul.

“I thought this would interest you. Yes… If Kasim al Khafi is alive and well then it practically seals it that there was some deliberate intervention to spare his life. So I kept looking, and it gets even better.” The professor rubbed his hands together.

“Suffice it to say I wanted to immediately know something more about this Lieutenant Thomason and his background. He was late to the party, as I say, shipping out from Britain on a steamer in August of 1941. In our history his convoy makes the journey to Alexandria uneventfully. But in the altered Meridian, the world we’re living in now after Palma, the data shows that his convoy was attacked by a German surface raider, and this ship, the Prospector of Convoy OS-85, was one of four ships sunk on August 11, 1941. The raid occurred in the Atlantic, just two days sailing time from Gibraltar. There were twenty-seven survivors, but Thomason went down with the ship.”

“So he never reaches Alexandria,” said Maeve.

“Quite the case,” said Robert. “And he never leads that squad of Royal Marine Commandos to lay in ambush for the Germans during the Bardia raid. In short, he never kills our Berber scout, who goes on to lead a humdrum life, excepting one small contribution to the world. He has a son, mother entirely unknown, but the son’s name is Kenan Tanzir, our fifteenth passenger on that charter flight that crashed just before Palma blew its top, undoubtedly with a little help again this time. And I think I know exactly how he did it.”

The room was completely silent, and the professor just smiled.