In the Course of Time

Stan Mason

Description

Gus is twenty years old and his life was just beginning even though he had a long start by reason of experience and there was also the remote possibility of the crown of Sweden in his sights! This is the second book in the series from exciting author Stan Mason.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 29 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785380280
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
IN THE COURSE OF TIME
BOOK TWO
by
Stan Mason



Publisher Information
Published in 2014 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of Stan Mason to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2014 Stan Mason
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.



Chapter One
Before the great calm, bells rang out from every church steeple, people cheered and made merry, then came the calm... and God said: ‘Live On!’ At the end of the Second World War, a new era emerged in the history of mankind. The world had been a closed flower in the gloom of attrition for six years. Now the petals started to open slowly and gradually on their exposure to the sunlight of peace. Everything had changed; it was all different, but such is the nature of war! Conflict tended to shift economies from depression... it altered the standing of nations... changed the status of the people and traditions... and left smaller populations behind to perpetuate the human race. War was an ever-turning wheel which always heralded violent change. It opened the floodgates to reconnection and redevelopment and it never failed. As time moves on, modern technology increases the pace and the intensity forcing civilisation to move on to the next stage. The termination of war always provided a fresh start. It usually began with a flourish which attracted the thrill of excitement, the fragrant smell of Spring, and the advent of new ideas, progress, great hope and even greater ambitions.
By mid-1946, World War Two was past history for most people who came through the conflict unscathed. There was no option but to get on with their lives. After all, what was the point of dwelling on hindsight or reflecting on the follow of War. Man always claimed that he learned from history but wars continued to flourish without end. The fighting troops had returned home in their tens of thousands. Husbands were reunited with their wives, parents and grandparents with children, lovers with sweethearts, brothers and sisters with their siblings, relatives with each other, and friends with their dearest colleagues and acquaintances. It was a time for people to renew their relationships after the horrors of separation, the hostility and the holocaust. However some families were less fortunate for their loved ones failed to return. Their relatives and friends waited for them in vain while, in many cases, they knew of the bodies of their loved ones rotting beneath the soil in a corner of some foreign land. Those who waited and were denied did so with bitterness in their heart and a monument of sorrow. However despite such sadness and misery suffered by some, and the overwhelming joy and jubilation of others, one thing was undeniably certain... the conflict had ended and, for a time at least, the world was at peace!
Gus Ekland could hardly wait to be demobilised from the army. There was so much he need to do in his personal life that waiting around for papers to be processed became tiresome and frustrating. As an unmarried individual, the army authorities had relegated him to the lowest level of priority for release. The rules were extremely clear for all soldiers. Those who were married and had children were demobilised at the earliest possible moment to enable them to return to their families and restart their lives. As a result, patience became a virtue. Eventually, when his name reached the top of the list and his release papers came through, he arranged to depart without delay. Stuffing his spare military clothes into a kit-bag at the Aldershot barracks, he looked around the room in which he had worked for the very last time. The war had been kind to him... very kind... but in return he had given good service to the army. As a junior defender in the legal division, he had taken on nearly eighty cases and lost practically every one of them... but that had been his role. He had learned the lesson well that if a soldier was caught perpetrating a military crime, the arrested man was automatically found guilty under military law. The army provided no serious defence mechanism, no element of equity, no mitigating circumstances similar to the pleas allowed to defendants in the civil courts. Gus had been employed to defend hopeless cases to the best of his ability. Nonetheless he had enjoyed the involvement, learning specific techniques in argument even though his excellent rhetoric had made no impression on the Commanding Officers or those presiding at Courts-Marshal. As a junior defender, he was expected to lose every case and, except for two occasions, he never failed to disappoint his superiors. However, unlike other legal defenders in the army, he put up a tremendous fight each time and always went down fighting fiercely. Some of the legal staff chided him regularly because of his attempt to defeat the process and they laughed at his bold efforts. Yet he was so devoted to his task that beneath the surface they were forced to respect him.
Brigadier Watson, his Commanding Officer, entered the room before Gus had finished packing. The senior officer had already tried to urge him to consider enlisting for a full-time career in the legal division of the army. He held out the carrot of a promotion to the rank of Captain if the young sergeant agreed but Gus had declined graciously. He no longer wished to practice military law. Criminal and matrimonial cases beckoned him and they were clearly more interesting and much more remunerative. He sought the flexibility of the civil courts and he had already agreed to set up in partnership with Captain Jeremy Banks, his superior at Aldershot barracks.
‘I’m sorry to lose you, Sergeant Ekland,’ declared the Brigadier sadly. ‘Really sorry. Of one thing I’m certain. I’ll never forget the Bassett case as long as I live. You took on a dead case and turned it on its head. Without you, Basset would definitely have had to face a Court-Martial. In the end, he was acquitted and went on to be a good soldier by all accounts.’
‘Well you know how it is, Brigadier,’ returned Gus wearing a sad expression on his face. ‘My first priority is to find my family before I do anything else in life. It may take weeks, months or even longer.
And then there’s civil law. It has a lot of attraction.’
‘Can’t blame you,’ muttered the senior officer. ‘You can make good money in Civvy Street. Good money. But if you ever change your mind, don’t hesitate to contact me. There’ll always be an appointment for you in the army. I mean you have youth on your side. You have a lifetime ahead of you. How old are you?’
‘Twenty. Sir.’ Gus had deceived the army about his age for some years but now that he was leaving he felt that he could reveal the truth.
‘Twenty?’ The Brigadier stared at him in astonishment. ‘But surely that can’t be right! It means that you were only sixteen years old when you defended Bassett!’
‘That’s right, sir. I’m afraid I had to bend the truth a little when I went to the recruitment centre. I told the sergeant there that I was two years older than I really was.’
The Brigadier began to laugh loudly. ‘Well I’ll be damned! Sixteen... and you had the whole of Aldershot at your feet. Officers and men! You little Devil. Had I known that you were that age, I’d have thrown you out on your ear.’
‘I think you would have, sir, but when all’s said and done, justice prevailed at the time. Did you know I’m setting up a law practice with Captain Banks in London?’
‘I did hear about it. I wish you the best of luck.’
Gus finished his packing, swung the kit-bag over his shoulder, and stuck out his hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure working with you, sir,’ he said finally. ‘I wish you the best of luck in the future as well.’
They shook hands and Gus went outside where another soldier was waiting in a vehicle to take him to the railway station. His army career was over at last. He was free to do anything he wished... free to go anywhere he wanted! Yet despite his liberation, time proved to be his real enemy. There were so many things he had to do, so many priorities to handle. His first task was to search for his family... a family that he had never seen or met before. Finding them was to be the first priority although he hardly knew where to start on the quest. The second matter related to an invitation from King Gustav the Fifth of Sweden, his grandfather, to stay at the Royal Palace in Stockholm. He recognised that he was the illegitimate son of the Crown Prince of Sweden who had seduced his mother. Inge Ekland had been a chambermaid at the high house of Tesser, a place at which the Crown Prince visited occasionally. Gus had met the King many years earlier when Harold Ekland had taken him to Sweden to attempt to blackmail the monarch and an affinity had grown between them. He felt obliged to see the old man again. After all, the monarch had arranged to pay for his schooling at a grammar school in London as well as for his lodgings in Whitechapel for a number of years. It matter little whether a person was illegitimate or not... blood was thicker than water! His third priority was Hannah Greenberg, his first love. Yes... he certainly had a lot of catching up to do! However th pat