What happened next was a strange twist in the history, which never would have happened were it not for the presence of Thomas Byrne there that hour. Hearing that knock, and Byrne’s voice on the other side of the door, Volkov had forced the very edgy proprietor to unlock the door, seizing upon Byrne as a suspicious character. The pulse of history itself quickened in those moments, for Volkov thought he had found a hidden passage in the inn, and he forced Byrne back down those steps and back into the dining room, where his suspicions were confirmed by the sudden appearance of three men with guns.
These were the NKVD Colonel and another henchman, with Lieutenant Surinov, the officer Fedorov had berated for the poor treatment of prisoners heading east to one of Stalin’s gulags in 1942. Seeing Volkov and Byrne, they immediately apprehended them at gunpoint, and Surinov was asked if this was the man that had caused all his trouble. The uniform was similar, but Surinov was not certain. The violence that followed that interrogation stunned Byrne, with Volkov gunning down all three of his captors and then seizing Byrne again, determined that he was behind some nefarious plot here.
“You!” Volkov pointed his weapon at Byrne. “Come with me.”
The Captain prodded him, goading him up the main stairway to the second floor this time, until they reached the upper landing.
“Where is the room you were staying in?”
“There, sir… The second door on the right, I think.” Byrne was very confused, frightened, and could not imagine who this man was, though his garb looked much like the uniform worn by that other man they had encountered, the man named Fedorov.
His captor forced open the door to his room, easing in carefully before he pushed Byrne inside. “Russian Naval Intelligence!” he shouted, leaping in behind him, but the room was dark and silent. Byrne was very surprised to see that none of his things were there, and he immediately thought that he had pointed out the wrong room in his haste and fear. The bed was facing the wrong direction, the bed clothing all different, the curtains on the window gone, the oil lamp on the night stand missing. He was, in fact, standing in the correct room, number 214, but it would never enter his head that it was the year 1942 at that moment.
His captor’s eyes narrowed as he methodically scanned the nightstand, made up bed, and then he walked to inspect the closet and restroom to make certain no one was concealed there.
“Well it doesn’t seem that anyone has stayed in this room for some time.” The suspicion was obvious in his tone. “Very well, come with me. Let’s find that old proprietor and see what he has to say about things. What was your name again?”
“Thomas Byrne, sir. I’m a Reporter for the London Times—just here to cover the great race, sir.”
“Well, Mister Byrne, your name should be on the register of this inn, yes? You had better hope I find it there. Now move!”
They were out into the hall, very near the back stairwell, and the hard hand of the man on his shoulder steered Byrne towards the entrance.
“So you say you were meeting with friends in the dining hall, eh? Some associates? I trust you saw what happened to them when they presumed to trifle with me. Bear that in mind. Now get down those stairs!”
And so down they went, the first downward movement by Byrne, the second for Volkov. As Fedorov had theorized, Byrne would get unerringly right back to the year and time where he started, 1908, and all the while, Volkov’s hand was tight on his shoulder, his pistol jabbed in the hollow of his back. And so he would take Volkov back, right along with him, each of those 17 steps down marking off the years, 34 in all. That was how Volkov got back to 1908, not because Fedorov had whispered anything to Mironov, but because an enterprising Newspaper man named Harmsworth had sent Thomas Byrne to far off Siberia, to look for news that might boost his circulation.
If Thomas Byrne had not been there at the railway inn that day to cover the arrival of the German race team, Volkov would have never reached that fateful year. But how far back did the line of causality go? Where was the real Pushpoint on that event? Was it Byrne’s decision to hasten up those stairs to fetch his belongings, or should the fault be laid on the desk of Harmsworth? Then again, the history of that man’s life led even further back, into the lives of the parents that had given birth to Harmsworth. Was the Pushpoint there, hidden in the romance that had given birth to Harmsworth? Or was it the school master he encountered later in life, one J. V. Milne, where Harmsworth was educated at Henley House School in Kilburn, London? It was he who had encouraged the young Harmsworth to start the school newspaper, setting him on a career track that would later see him found the Times, and send Thomas Byrne off to Siberia.
Strangely, one of Harmsworth’s teachers there at that very same school was someone who would later do a good deal of speculating and writing on the arcane possibility of traveling through time—a man named H. G. Wells….
One thing or another led Byrne to that railway inn, and it was he who led Volkov back to 1908. The dining room they found themselves in when they made that final descent was obviously the same room he had been in before. Byrne could tell by the shattered windows from that terrible blast, and the amber glow that was still illuminating the room. Yet his assailant seemed very confused and surprised. The bodies of the three men Volkov had murdered so violently were nowhere to be found.
Byrne could feel his captor’s hand tighten painfully on his shoulder. They moved to the front desk, and the stranger looked over everything very carefully. No one was there, but he saw the guest register open on the desk, a pen there as if it had been dropped at a moment’s notice, and squinted at the scrawled handwriting. Byrne knew his story would be vindicated, for he could see where he had signed his own name there, right along with the names of the German race team when they had arrived.
“Koeppen,” said the stranger. “The thirtieth of June, oh eight? The year is obviously wrong. 2008?”
“One of the contestants,” said Byrne, glomming on to the information as if to buttress his story with this strange and dangerous looking man with a gun.
“Contestants?”
“In the Great Auto Race, sir. The race I am here to report on.”
“What are you talking about, you fool?”
The stranger gave him an odd look, then scanned the front desk area, seeming more confused with each passing moment.
“Where is everyone?” he said, his eyes dark and dangerous.
“Probably out near the tracks, sir, where I should be. The Protos is leaving this morning. That’s the German team’s car. I was just running upstairs to fetch my notebook when I found the door locked on the upper landing and began knocking to see if I could gain access. Then you appeared with that other older man, and… well, I’m very confused, sir. Are you with Mironov?”
“What? Mironov? I am with the Russian Naval Intelligence, and I have had more than enough of this nonsense. Is this Mironov the associate you spoke of earlier?”
Byrne followed what the man said as best he could, in spite of the fact that his Russian was limited. Yet he heard enough to realize this man was an intelligence officer, and Mironov’s warning about the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, rose as a caution in his mind now. “He was just another boarder,” he said, not knowing what else to tell this dangerous man. “I had breakfast with him. I thought perhaps that you were with his party.”