Twenty-three agonizing minutes later, the Mark XII and several pelican cases of advanced surveillance gear sat in Hiram’s pod. Hiram closed the portal to the Mossad pod and stored Jacob’s C2ID2 in a storage cabinet. He climbed out of the pod as quickly as he could, his cup of coffee forgotten.
The warm air hit him hard. He fell to his knees and expelled the contents of his stomach onto a patch of grass. Specks of red dotted the mess. The pain in his head screamed and the world around him spun. When he tried to stand, the ground seemed to fall out from under him.
0715 hours, Sunday, July 26, 1942, Catalonia, Francoist Spain
Hiram stumbled into Team Two’s campsite, deep in the hills north of Canyet de Mar. His soldiers prepared breakfast in a small clearing among the tall oaks, the smell turning his stomach. Most had not slept that night. Red eyes and worn, sullen faces disclosed evidence of tears shed for family and friends. He wanted to get back to Danette and to Deborah. He wanted to hold Deborah in his arms, to feel her warmth as he explained what his meddling had done to the timeline. For a moment, he imagined running away from all of it with Deborah and Danette running alongside. Saving three lives seemed so much simpler than thirty. He shook his head in an attempt to lose such thoughts.
He found Sarah sitting next to Ester, holding the older woman’s hands. When Hiram approached, Sarah patted the other woman’s hands and then got up. She rushed to him. He felt her arm slide around him.
“I think I have a way to end this war quickly,” he said as he leaned into her. “Walk with me.”
“You aren’t going anywhere. What happened?” She said.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I need to talk to you.” He looked around at the others now standing, ready to help. “Tell them I’m fine.”
Sarah said something to the others. They hesitated but seemed to fall back into their previous positions. She helped him sit down on one of the fallen logs.
“Have you ever heard of the strong nuclear force?”
“Of course,” she said as she sat down beside him. “It’s the force that holds the nucleus of an atom together.”
“Right. And in a few years the Americans will discover a way to release that force. They will develop something called an atomic bomb, which will end the war. One bomb with the explosive power of 20,000 tons of TNT.”
“That’s enough to level a city!” Sarah said.
“It is,” Hiram said.
Vera brought Hiram a cup of water. She said a few words to Sarah, who seemed to reassure her that Hiram was, in fact, fine.
“But how can you know this? Surely your friend the journalist wouldn’t be privy to such things.”
The cool water helped. “No, it’s one of the few secrets the Americans actually manage to keep during this war.” He held up the cup. Vera came back, refilled it. The others watched the conversation.
“So how do you know?”
“Because I lied about coming from America. I came from Israel, by way of Pakistan and India.”
“Israel?” Sarah let out an awkward laugh. “Israel hasn’t existed as a nation for two thousand years.”
“Israel will become an independent nation again in 1948. I was born there, in the town of Nazareth, in the year 2020.”
She shook her head. “Impossible.” Her eyes moved back and forth across his face, searching for truth. “You’re telling me you’ve travelled back in time? I-I don’t believe it.”
“I’m a soldier in the Israeli Defense Force, or at least I was,” Hiram said. “I don’t know how it happened, but six weeks ago I was on a mission to the city of Wah in India. I went into my pod on May 15, 2050 and came out on May 15, 1942.”
“Impossible,” she said again. “Time travel is impossible.”
“And yet here I am. With technology from a hundred years in the future.” Hiram pointed to the small cache of M22s leaning against a fallen tree trunk a few feet away. “Including the pod and all it holds.”
“You mean your magic tinderbox of death and destruction. Tell me exactly what happened to you.”
He sat up straighter, the pain in his head easing. “As I said, I was on a mission to destroy a weapons facility in Wah, Pakistan”
“I’ve never heard of Pakistan,” Sarah said.
“After the war, the British will grant independence to India, however the Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims won’t be able to live in peace. After a civil war, India will split into three pieces, with Muslim Pakistan in the west, Hindu and Sikh India in the middle, and Muslim Bangladesh in the east. Pakistan and India will become bitter enemies. In my time, Pakistan falls under the control of a bunch of radical extremists called the Taliban who swear to use Pakistan’s atomic weapons to destroy Israel. So, we sent a small team with our own atomic weapon to destroy their main production and storage facility.”
“And you were on that team?”
Hiram nodded. “We ran into more resistance than expected, and the rest of the team was killed. I barely made it back into the pod before our bomb went off.”
“And then the portal was open during detonation, when all that energy was released?”
“It makes sense. Give me a moment.” Hiram checked his C2ID2, which had recorded both the countdown for the bomb, and all openings and closings of the portals in the pod. “According to my C2ID2, the portal closed within a second of the detonation.” He used the display unit to show Sarah data from the two countdowns, one ticking down to the detonation, and one ticking up to record Hiram’s dwell time in the pod.
“What happened next?” Sarah said.
“I tried to leave the pod through a portal that should have taken me back to Israel, but it kept returning ‘destination not found’. Eventually I had to leave the pod. You can only stay in one for a few hours. So, I went back out the way I entered, only to find myself in British India, in the year 1942.”
Sarah stared down at the ground. Hiram sipped some water. After a few minutes, she shifted her gaze back to him.
“Before the war, Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen published a paper about something called ‘worm holes’, shortcuts through space-time. All of the scientific speculation since has been about travelling through space or between universes, but what if they can also be used to travel through time, particularly when hit with a healthy dose of nuclear radiation?”
“I’m just a soldier,” Hiram said. “I know how to use the thing, but I’m no expert on how it works. If it helps, I can give you a copy of the pod’s manual.” He handed her the C2ID2 and told her how to pull up a copy of the document.
Sarah scanned the information on the screen. “For the moment, let’s say I believe you. If you’re from the future, then you know what is going to happen.”
“Not anymore. The timeline is changing. According to the history I know, the Jewish prisoners in F and J Blocks were shipped to the camp at Drancy in late August, not mid-July. I believe rescuing you and the others accelerated the timeline.”
“Why did you rescue us? I assume the story about Danette’s cousin is also a lie.”
“My name is Hiram Jonah Halphen.” Hiram looked down at his hands. “Danette is my great-great-grandmother.”
“I thought I noticed some resemblance.”
“My father told me Danette’s story. She is the spitting image of my sister Rachel. After ending up in this time and with no way to get back, I figured I might be able to do some good. I decided I wasn’t going to let her die in one of the camps. Getting the others◦– you included◦– out of there was the right thing to do.”