by Scott Baker
She smiled. What was she thinking?!
‘I’m sorry, babe. Of course I’ll go with you. Of course I will, it’s just all a bit much to deal with. I mean, you suddenly believing all these things you were so adamantly against. And the fact that you’re here, and I’m here and that you know what’s going to happen, that means you’re right, doesn’t it? I mean, I know you’re not making it up.’
‘Why don’t I get us some more coffee?’ Tim said, rising. They both smiled and nodded.
Shaun leaned forward. ‘Please understand. Nothing scares me more than putting you in danger. Nothing except you not coming with me and there existing the chance that I might not get back to save you.’
Tim reappeared a few moments later. He set a tray down on the coffee table. On it were two cups filled with steaming coffee, and an envelope with the initials PIA on it: Pakistani International Airlines. Sitting next to them were two fresh passports. Shaun looked at the envelope, then at Tim.
‘You didn’t. How did you … I don’t get it.’
‘You don’t have to. You’ll get it, little brother. You’ll get it when you need to, but for now, I’m sorry, I can’t tell you any more. You know that Rule of Knowledge you keep talking about?’
Shaun felt sick. He suddenly felt very suspicious and very betrayed. What did his brother know? How had he known? He picked up the two airline tickets and examined them.
‘Tim, these are for tonight! From Dulles International Airport.’
‘There’s a car waiting now. I have bags packed for you.’
Lauren turned to Shaun’s brother. She had the distinct feeling that she was tangled up in some huge conspiracy she knew nothing about.
She was right.
CHAPTER 67
The flight touched down in Islamabad a little after eight the following morning. Shaun looked considerably better than he had for the past week, but his face and limbs were still bruised and swollen. Everywhere he went he attracted looks ranging from sympathy to fear.
Tim had equipped them with sturdy hiking boots and all-weather clothing. Shaun knew that the only way to find The Facility again was to locate and follow the former version of himself and David. He had no idea where they had been taken by the military, but remembered the key events and dates. It was tomorrow that they would arrive in Pakistan. That gave Lauren and him a day’s start to get to the Khyber Pass.
This time he would not go alone. He planned to hire a bodyguard, or at least get a new gun – he knew that he would never get through airport security with the Heckler & Koch he had lifted from the hospital. Initially Lauren objected to the idea, but soon after landing in the nation’s capital, she relented, feeling uneasy in the vastly different culture.
‘The area we’re heading to is a little wild,’ Shaun told her once they were on the road, travelling in a privately chartered van with a driver and an armed guard. Tim had provided the necessary papers to get them through the various checkpoints along the way.
Shaun was pleasantly surprised to find that the mysterious sum of money that had appeared in his bank account the first time around had again surfaced; he was also surprised when Tim handed over a second ATM card for Shaun’s account. He wondered about what else his brother had kept from him, but he trusted him nonetheless.
His trust, however, was not reserved for the people he was going back to confront. The Society. It was the element of the whole thing that really bothered Shaun. The Society had set him up. They had tricked him into delivering the diary right to them. But what about the map? The translation document Shaun had vomited onto Ernie’s feet in the park had said that the diary and the map would be together. Shaun had read the whole diary, but he was still no closer to knowing where Fontéyne’s disc was hidden, or if it ever made it to its final resting place.
Shaun could only assume that the map was with the bundle of documents that had been buried in the cave at Grandfather Mountain, and then abandoned by Shaun and Lauren as they had fled the Motel 6 when all of this began. It seemed strange, then, that the men in black had continued to chase them – or at least the former versions of them – after the incident at the motel. Maybe they had the map but did not know what they were looking for? Maybe there was something in the diary he had missed?
Lauren clicked her fingers in front of Shaun’s eyes. Shaun jerked his head, blinked, then stared at her.
‘Whatcha thinking?’ she asked.
‘I’m just wondering why they want the diary so bad. I mean, it’s all about finding the disc. There was supposed to be a map to the disc, that’s what the last part of the diary said. It was written in some other language.’
‘So, how would they know about the diary or the map at all?’ Lauren asked as they bounced along, getting closer to the town that marked the start of the Khyber Pass. Shaun pulled out the piece of paper containing the translation, which he had kept in his back pocket.
‘This,’ he said, ‘looks like a Vatican document. It’s a translation of the last few pages of the diary. It talks about the map and refers to the diary. I think this English version, though, is a translation of another translation. An Italian version that was translated from the original that was hidden as part of the Dead Sea scrolls.’
‘Alone, without the rest of the diary?’
‘So even that was a copy of what was written in the diary,’ Shaun realised.
‘What if there’s another copy of the diary?’ Lauren asked offhandedly. Shaun went pale. He had not even considered that.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. If there was, I find it hard to believe they’d be so desperate for this one.’
‘Well, they have it now, don’t they?’ his wife sighed.
‘No. Not yet. They don’t get it till tomorrow night blue time.’
‘Blue time? What the hell’s “blue time”?’
‘Ah, sorry. It’s just a way I use to think of things. This whole time-shift thing is making it hard to sort out past and future tense in my head, so I’m using this method to get it straight. Light coming towards you has a blue colour shift, and light moving away has a red colour shift. I kind of think of time like that. As we travel forward in time, the past is moving away from us – it’s red time. The future is coming toward us – it’s blue time.’
‘Sorry I asked,’ she smiled.
Shaun continued, ‘They don’t get the diary till tomorrow night from our perspective, our blue time, and now that I know that, I can stop it.’
‘But you didn’t want to change anything!’ Lauren protested, holding Shaun to his logic.
‘No, not change it. Not stop me taking it there, but stop them getting it. I know that I have the diary on me when the machine activates, when they trap me on that platform and send me back, but I don’t know what happens after that. I mean, thinking back, I was naked when I came through. I didn’t have it on me. I didn’t have any clothes on me.’
‘I like the sound of that,’ Lauren curled her lip.
‘Yeah, well, I don’t think you would have liked it at the time. You probably wouldn’t have recognised me,’ he teased her.
‘That’s not fair. I like your new toothless look. And anyway, I still don’t quite get what you’re getting at. You think it didn’t come through with you, is that it?’
Shaun thought a moment. Yeah, that was exactly it.
‘I think they knew I would get sent back. I don’t know who or how, but they led us there, tricked me into taking the diary there. They had people chasing us but the whole time they knew I would end up there. So, now I know something about them. I know how to find that cave, and I know where the diary will be. I can get it before they can.’
‘But didn’t you say that there were all those men with guns who surrounded your friend?’
‘Yeah, well, I’ll have to work out the details, but I’m sure that’s why we were there, to get the book back. I’m still confused about why it’s so important, though. I mean, obviously it has some cool stuff in it, but it doesn’t say
where the disc is.’
‘But it does say what’s on the disc, doesn’t it? I mean, you said that this guy videotaped the whole execution thing.’
‘Crucifixion. Jesus was crucified,’ Shaun corrected. Lauren studied him for a moment, then let it pass.
‘Maybe they want to know what they’re looking for, what’s on the disc.’
‘Maybe. I still think maybe I missed something. This says that the disc and the map would be together. They got everything except the diary when they raided the motel.’ Furrowing his brow, Shaun thought for a moment.
Then Lauren said what he was thinking. ‘What if the map is in the diary, hidden somehow? Like in a code or something, you know, like every second word on every fourth page tells you exactly where it is?’ she said, as if reading his mind.
He smiled, starting to feel excited at the theory.
‘Maybe …’ Lauren made to continue, but her attention was drawn to the city they were entering. Shaun leaned forward and asked their driver to take them to the best hotel. He was paying these two enough that he had little doubt of their loyalty.
‘I take you,’ the driver said. ‘I take you Pearl Continental! Very good hotel.’
‘And have you tried to track down The Society you keep talking about?’ Lauren asked Shaun.
‘I Googled them when we were at Tim’s. No luck.’
‘What about this priest? How did he contact The Society?’ Lauren asked, trying to fit it all together.
Shaun froze. Lauren had used the past tense about Giovanni contacting The Society, but suddenly it hit Shaun: that was not the case. In Shaun’s reality, Giovanni was already dead. The event had happened in Shaun’s red time. But not now. Now the event was blue. Shaun had come back in time far enough that Vincenso Giovanni was still alive. By Shaun’s reckoning, he and David would meet with the Jesuit priest tomorrow. That meant—
‘Stop the car!’ he called. The driver spun, sensing the alarm in Shaun’s voice. ‘No, I mean, a phone. Take me to a telephone.’
‘Telephone?’ the driver repeated. Shaun nodded. The driver pulled a cell from his pocket and handed it to Shaun, who was suddenly bursting with excitement.
‘Add it to my bill,’ Shaun said as he rapidly dialled the international assistance operator.
‘Yes, the Vatican. No. Yes, the one in Rome. The real one. Not the country club in Vegas. Thank you.’ He waited. Lauren looked at him questioningly, but he shook his head in a gesture for her to wait.
‘Yes, bon journo. Do you speak English?’ Another pause. ‘Yes, hello! I would like to speak to Father Vincenso Giovanni. I have … what? No, listen to me, I know you have to say that, but tell him it’s about The Facility and it’s an emergency. Tell him—’
The line went dead.
‘Shit!’
‘What?’
‘They hung up.’
‘They did? Why are you calling the Vatican? You want to ask Giovanni if—’
The cell phone rang. Traced.
Scary.
‘Hello?’ Shaun answered without even thinking that the call might have been for the driver. It wasn’t.
‘Who is this?’ a voice with a thick Italian accent asked.
‘Who this is, is not important, what I can offer you is.’
‘What is it that you want?’ Giovanni asked, getting to the point.
‘I want your contact at The Society.’
‘No.’
‘Then you will not get the player.’ There was a pause.
‘You have a player?’ he asked.
‘I have a player.’
‘Where is it you want to meet?’
‘You have a meeting tomorrow, with Mr Black. He will take you back to the hotel he is staying at. You will be shown something in the room. If it is something you desire, then you will excuse yourself and meet me downstairs in the hotel lobby saying that you have a meeting with the Holy Father.’
‘At what time?’
‘Three exactly.’ Another silence.
‘Three pm. How will I know you?’
‘I guarantee you will know me.’ Shaun hung up.
The driver pulled into the hotel.
‘You want to fly to Rome, arriving tomorrow? Are you insane? We’d have to leave now! We’d have to drive back and—’
‘Not yet. There’s something unfortunate I have to arrange first,’ Shaun said. The earlier version of himself and David had to be delayed here long enough to allow the trip back to Rome.
‘Something unfortunate? Shaun—’
‘We’re in this now, Lauren. We can’t just walk away and hope they’ll leave us alone. We have to fulfil what’s already happened. There are things that need to be done. If I can track down who’s behind this Society and why we’ve been dragged into this, then I might be able to find a way out. A way we can be free of it. A way to get out of this crazy time loop.’
‘Listen to yourself: “fulfil what’s already happened”? I don’t understand this.’ She sighed. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘How are your make-up skills these days?’ he asked.
She cocked her head slightly. ‘Fine. Why?’
CHAPTER 68
Sitting in the hotel lobby, Shaun did not feel good about what he had done. He knew, though, that he had had no choice; he needed to make sure of two things. One: that he could secure the player he knew would be left on the back seat of the journalist’s car when the militants kidnapped he and David. And two: that his past version was delayed long enough to allow Lauren and him enough time to get back on their trail to The Facility. He touched his forehead and felt the healing wound. He hated the fact that he was responsible for the kidnapping, and by extension the death of the CNN journalist Craig Schwartz. The thought sickened him, but how could he change that?
He had paid his driver a significant sum of money to arrange for the militants and to secure the briefcase after the passengers were taken. He knew the consequences, for both the journalist and the captives; he knew that he and David would be beaten badly, and he knew that Schwartz would die, but he also knew that the delay was necessary so that he and Lauren could get back to Rome and have the meeting they were about to have now.
He looked at his watch. Five minutes to three. Lauren was set up in the lobby bathroom. Since their arrival that morning they had managed to acquire the necessary tools: latex, castor oil, food colouring and paint. They had also found clothing that resembled what Shaun recalled Giovanni wearing that day. Then, they had burned it. Shaun had been a little disturbed by how much Lauren seemed to enjoy that part of the process, burning and slashing and slicing the clothing, to make it resemble what it would look like if it had been in an explosion. Shaun was encouraged by the knowledge that the ruse had worked, even before they had enacted it. Who were they trying to fool now? They were trying to fool … him. And he had been fooled. Not for a second had Shaun guessed that the explosion, or Giovanni’s injuries, had been a hoax. He had not paid attention to the clothes the man had worn; he had been transfixed and horrified at the bubbling, bleeding burns on the priest’s body. He knew the plan would work, simply because it already had.
He hoped.
The thing Shaun did not know, was the bomb. He had neither the time nor the know-how to source a car bomb, so he had to trust that the bomb was real. Someone really did want Giovanni dead. The plan meant that they would not only save Giovanni’s life, but they had to make whoever wanted him dead believe they had been successful. It had to look real.
The alarm on Shaun’s watch sounded. He looked up and saw the broad-shouldered priest descend the last step. Shaun sat, trying to look calm, trying to look collected, but he was as nervous as hell.
Giovanni politely weaved his way through the hotel lobby crowd and scanned the scene without giving the slightest hint he was doing so. He was a professional. He was on a high; he had just seen something he never thought he would witness in his lifetime: someone had cracked the codec, and more than that, they had developed a me
thod that was capable of giving its user an experience never before attainable. That boy was a genius.
This meeting was unusual. The man had said the hotel lobby at three, but he had given no signal, no call phrase, no designated approach pattern, just, ‘I guarantee you will know me.’
And he did. Giovanni did a double take as his eyes told him something that could not be possible. He turned and walked directly over to the man.
‘You were right,’ he said, taking a seat across from a battered version of the face he had just left upstairs.
‘There isn’t much time, so you must do exactly what I say. Do you understand?’ Shaun asked seriously.
‘I do exactly as I decide, and nothing else. Do you understand? Don’t waste my time.’ Giovanni rose and began to move off.
Damn, he was good. Not for a second would he accept a weakened position at the bargaining table.
‘You’re going to be killed,’ Shaun said, a little too quickly. Giovanni stopped, turned and re-took his seat.
‘How am I killed?’ he asked, as if it were a foregone conclusion.
‘Car bomb. In about fifteen minutes’ time, the two men you have just met with will come racing down to an explosion in the car park, to find you lying on the ground, gasping your last breath.’
‘Let us be … frank, Mr Strickland. It is you upstairs, is it not?’
Shaun moved his head slightly by way of response.
‘And if you are also here now, then I have to assume that you have indeed been to The Facility, and somehow been sent back. I therefore have no doubt that the knowledge you have is accurate, but why come and tell me this? If it has happened, it cannot be changed. It is, how you call it, The Rule of Knowledge.’