26. THE WAR ROOMS

The United Nations Security Council Frontline Base in the War against the repercussions of the Route 1066 time travel firm were located in the South of Bristol on a site reserved for Government Buildings. As Kai drove through a wide bar gate a sign affixed to the wall that formed its anchor warned in red letters: ‘This Is A Security Controlled Area’.

After parking the two men headed towards a soulless two-storey, reinforced concrete building deprived of windows and covered in ivy. Its only means of ventilation derived from three shafts that penetrated the roof.

‘What’s this Hell forsaken place?’ Glen Mower asked anxiously as Diamonde announced their arrival via the clunky intercom. In the meanwhile the white doored entrance automatically opened accompanied by a clattering buzz that did little to assuage his worries. He further observed upon admittance that the walls were about a yard and a half thick. ‘This isn’t a torture chamber is it?’ he pondered. ‘I bet I could holler through a megaphone in this dungeon and nobody would hear me?’

‘Don’t worry, Matey,’ his colleague sought to reassure him. ‘The walls are that thick to withstand a nuclear blast.’

Everything about the place screamed Cold War to Mower as they were escorted through a labyrinth of unpainted, musty corridors. A barren landscape painted from an expressionless, purely functional palette. It resonated of a previous period when the world was under threat and the fact it had been recommissioned, it seemed, to orchestrate the fight against the looming menace of the future time travellers was significant.

It was summer, but the bleak encompassing walls made Glen shudder. It wasn’t only a nuclear blast it appeared designed to repel but all warmth from the outside world too. Mower just hoped that whatever went on inside was so compelling that one wouldn’t dwell upon the discomfort and thus wouldn’t be affected.

A dozen or so equally barren small rooms led off from the main corridor. Inside each their appeared to be a Kafkaesque person working among a combination of grey filing cabinets and aluminium shelving stacked with files. As their footsteps echoed on the concrete floor Mower couldn’t help but notice that his heartbeat was out of kilter with his steps and he terrifyingly thought for a moment that his brain must also be suffering a misalignment from the remainder of his body for allowing himself to become embroiled in all this, whatever, exactly it happened to be.

‘This, Matey, is the War Room,’ Kai declared as they entered a large, square, central room from which all the corridors sprang like arteries from its heart. Instead of being one storey high it reached up to the top of the building and the air was dense with a creative, yet desperate fugue.

On the walls were maps of the world and other information and charts of strategic importance, including, he was told, a contingency map of a square world with edges to fall off in case Christopher Columbus was ever persuaded by a Route 1066 traveller to deviate from discovering the New World by sprucing up the Old World instead.

In the centre of the room was a very long oak table with all the chairs, bar one, occupied by what seemed important people. Then, to one side, Mower’s attention was grasped by a  shorter but wider table, its top a hive of activity as women with paddles were stretching across moving models of historical figures on blocks along paths and maps filled with dates and all sorts. One of the models Glen recognised as Florence Nightingale but devoid of her famous lamp. Another seemed to be Issac Newton. That he might soon not be discovering the theory of gravity was denoted by the fact his model hovered over his terrain like an astronaut in space. As he paused to absorb it all he had an eerie feeling he was about to be shown the light as to why, exactly, he was there. A cold shudder engulfed him, which took some doing in sub- zeroville.

  ‘Park your arse on a seat while you still can,’ hollered an American in military uniform that provided a canvas for his array of awards and accomplishments.

  ‘That’s General Colman P Willington III,’ Diamonde advised him in hushed tones. ‘Head of the Hologram Defense Program. He thinks you’re not wise enough to have a seat at this table, so for now, to paraphrase Abe Lincoln, best to keep quiet and let him think you’re an idiot than say something and confirm it.’

  ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ a very impressive gentleman said at the head of the table as he stood and extended his hand to grip Mower’s firmly. ‘I am Professor Delphi the Chief of Staff. And you are,’ he added, beckoning his guest to occupy the one vacant seat, ‘the man entrusted to save the world.’