by Alex Scarrow
‘There’s Maddy!’ hissed Sal.
She emerged with the others, arms up and wrapped round her head to protect it, hunkered over like someone getting out of a helicopter. Sal pushed through the crowd now all turning and scattering from the entrance at the sound of another shot fired inside the foyer.
‘MADDY!’ she called out. ‘OVER HERE!’
The girls all but crashed into each other.
‘Maddy? I thought you were –’
‘Just GO! Gogogogogo!’
Faith picked her zigzagging target out of the retreating, stampeding crowd. She levelled the .40 Smith & Wesson. Now the thing had a fresh clip, she resolved to empty all twelve rounds in several controlled double-taps. To be absolutely certain of killing the target. As she aimed down the short barrel, she caught sight of one of the other targets: Saleena Vikram. Both girls tangled with each other for a moment, then, turning their backs to her, ran away hand in hand.
Two for the price of one. Faith nodded. Pleased with herself for producing an appropriate saying for the occasion. She was about to pull the trigger when the world went completely dark.
Chapter 25
7.42 a.m., 12 September 2001, Interstate 95, outside Branford
Five minutes later they were all back aboard the RV, on the road and running on the last quarter-tank of petrol, Bob driving north-east as instructed and Maddy rocking back and forth beside him in the passenger seat trying to get a handle on things, get a handle on her jangling nerves, a handle on the growing knot of grief in her chest, as Sal, Liam and Rashim threw questions at her over the seat.
‘He’s gone,’ she said, finally answering them as to where the hell Foster was.
‘What? Do you mean …?’ Liam struggled to say any more. So Rashim finished his question for him.
‘They … they got Foster?’
She nodded. ‘Shot him.’
‘He’s dead?’
Here it comes. Maddy felt her composure slipping. The blissful comfort of numbness was ebbing away, like the downslope of a novocaine buzz after root-canal treatment. The first hot tears trickled down her cheeks. She tasted salt on her lips and licked them away.
She nodded. ‘Yes, Foster’s dead.’ Her voice was a lifeless whisper. The flutter and tap of moth wings against a windowpane. She took her glasses off and buried her damp face in her hands and realized that now she’d finally become that typical movie girl-in-distress: all quivering, dimpled chin and smudged mascara.
Albeit minus the mascara.
Chapter 26
2055, outside Denver, Colorado
Joseph Olivera had got to know Frasier Griggs quite well. Griggs was the only other man in the world, other than Roald Waldstein, of course, who knew of the TimeRiders’ existence.
Frasier Griggs was Waldstein’s lesser-known junior partner. Where Waldstein was the source of the patents, the ideas man, the genius, Griggs was the practical other half: the software designer behind Waldstein’s prototypes, the builder; the Steve Wozniak to Waldstein’s Steve Jobs. Although most people assumed the ‘G’ in W.G. Systems was in memory of Waldstein’s dead son, Gabriel, Griggs was in fact the ‘Real G’. The company’s first stakeholder, the fledgling company’s first employee and perhaps the closest thing to a friend that Waldstein had ever had. Hell, on his desk, Griggs even had a tea mug with that printed on the side – The Real G.
The TimeRiders team established in 2001 became effectively ‘active’, and monitoring their activities began on 4 September 2054. On a day-to-day basis, Joseph and Griggs were the ‘base team’ doing that.
Only four months after the team started functioning, things began to go wrong. On 3 January 2055, they received a broad-burst tachyon signal from 2001. A malfunction with the field office’s displacement field had caused the first team to be killed. They’d received a garbled plea for help from one of them who’d managed to survive. Griggs panicked. For the first time since working for Waldstein, Joseph saw his boss’s normally ice-cool composure slip.
It wasn’t that the team had been destroyed that unsettled him; it was the fact that one of them had been careless enough to send an unencrypted, widespread tachyon signal. It was sheer blind luck for Waldstein that the message hadn’t included a mention of his name. But it might as well have, given he was quite likely the only person in the world, at that moment, with the know-how to send a traveller back in time.
That short signal could have been picked up by labs right across the world, and it could only mean one thing for everyone who might have detected it: that somebody was already up and running with viable displacement technology.
Joseph remembered Griggs and Waldstein having a blazing row that morning. One held behind closed doors, not meant for Joseph to hear, but the one word he did pick out from their heated exchange was the word ‘Pandora’.
Waldstein had little choice. Either he had to go back to 2001 and set things up all over again, or he had to send a message to the survivor, instructing him on how to set things up for himself.
Waldstein wanted to go back, but Griggs insisted that another trip back to 2001 was pushing their luck too far. If this was it, if this meant the premature end of their project, then so be it. Better than the three of them facing a lethal injection.
Joseph soon learned who’d sent the message, who the sole survivor was. It was Liam O’Connor. A second message arrived after the first, this time via the safe method: the personal advert. A field malfunction, that’s what he’d said. Equipment failure. The Liam unit had been aged chronically by a sudden blast of tachyon radiation that had bathed the entire archway with a lethal dose. The other two units hadn’t stood a chance. They’d died in their sleep.
Waldstein replied with a detailed packet of instructions. And not a single word of support or comfort. But then that was it, wasn’t it? The Liam unit was merely a piece of equipment to Waldstein: a disposable asset. Joseph had wondered how the man could be so cold; in a way, the Liam unit was as much a part of Waldstein as he was a part of Joseph’s programming.
Poor Liam. He’d be alone back there. Alone, and suddenly aware now of what he was. Joseph felt for him. The boy was so young and yet now so old and quite clearly entirely on his own. The ‘base team’ was offering him instructions from afar and that was pretty much all the support the poor man had.
That was the first thing. The second misfortune happened not long after.
A contamination event had occurred in 1941. It appeared the event had been corrected by the re-established team but one of the team had been killed. The observer unit: Saleena Vikram. They needed to grow a new one with an adjusted memory: one that would allow her to be inserted into the existing team. Some tricky synaptic programming there for Joseph to do.
There was no avoiding it; they were going to need to carry out the ‘edit job’ on the Saleena unit here in 2055, then send it back.
That was it for Griggs. Too much. He wanted out. There was another blazing row between him and Waldstein behind closed glass doors. This time Joseph picked out one word several times over. Pandora. And Griggs screaming at Waldstein, ‘Why? Why do you want that to happen?’
The third thing was Griggs’s death a few days later. It was sudden, unexpected and left Joseph feeling distinctly uncertain about this whole project.
The night before he died, Griggs had been on edge. He’d also been drinking. Joseph didn’t get much sense out of Frasier other than he’d told Waldstein he’d finally decided he was going to leave this project, that he didn’t want to have anything more to do with ‘this madness’.
The next day Frasier Griggs was found dead several miles outside W.G. Systems’ Pinedale, Wyoming campus. The official verdict was that some ‘flood migrants’ must have ambushed him. There were plenty of them out here now – the displaced, the desperate, the hungry – millions of them from the various east-coast states partially or completely submerged by the advancing Atlantic Ocean. The lucky rich lived in fortified urbanizations. The rest in large displace
ment camps. That’s how it was. The haves and the have-nots separated by coils of razor wire and private security firms.
It could have occurred as the official verdict stated: that poor Frasier had just set his Auto-Drive to take him home along the wrong road at the wrong time and the hastily erected roadblock, the subsequent murder and vehicle theft were just another sad sign of these dark times.
But then Joseph discovered something that made him suddenly very frightened of Waldstein. Griggs’s personal digi-pen – a very expensive one modelled to look like an old-fashioned fountain pen – was sitting in Griggs’s Real G mug like some carelessly discarded biro. Something he never did. He had a brass holder for his digi-pen and it always nestled there when not in use – one of his obsessive-compulsive habits. He’d never leave it like that, poking out of his mug.
So that’s why Joseph picked it up and thumbed the control nub.
A memo. It wasn’t even password-locked. It was the last entry recorded on Griggs’s digi-pen. He must have recorded it not long after he’d rowed with Waldstein. He sounded angry still. Perhaps even frightened.
‘He’s insane. The man’s completely insane, Joseph.’ Griggs’s words were badly slurred. He must have carried on drinking after Joseph had bid him goodnight.
‘I think he wants the whole world to die, Joseph. That’s what Pandora is. It’s the end of the world. Roald knows all about it. When it happens, how it happens. And you and I … and those poor clones back in 2001 … we’re here to make sure it happens that way.’
A pause. Joseph heard the slosh of liquid, the clink of a glass. The sound of a gulp.
‘You know … that first time he used a time machine? Back in ’44. I don’t think he went back in time to see his wife, his son, like he always claimed. No. I think he went forward. I think he discovered how mankind finally kills itself off. And all this … everything … his campaign against time travel, this little project, those poor lab rats back there in New York in that archway, you and me … it’s all been to make for certain it damn well happens that way. We’ve been played for fools, you and me, Joseph. Fools!’
Another pause.
‘You can stop this, Joseph. I … can’t. He won’t let me back in after what I said. He won’t trust me anywhere near this project. I should’ve shut my mouth. I shouldn’t have confronted him. But it’s done. I’m out of the circle of trust … and that’s how it is. But you can do something. You’re all he has now. He trusts you. You could derail this thing! Sabotage it!’
The sound of heavy breathing, rustling across the mic.
‘Joseph. History has to be changed. Do you understand? Not preserved … but changed. You have to do it! You’ve got to steer us all away from wiping ourselves out!’
Another pause.
‘God forgive me for my part in all of this …’
Chapter 27
12 September 2001, North Haven Plaza, Branford, Connecticut
‘We’re going to have to pull in a lot of favours to keep the lid on this, Agent Cooper.’
‘That’s what favours are for, aren’t they? Rainy days like this.’ Cooper looked around the entrance foyer of the shopping mall. It looked like a thousand other malls, all pastel plastic fascias and plastic plants. Faux Greco-Roman columns and Doric archways. Only this one was decorated with icing-sugar granules of glass scattered across the fake marble floor, shopping bags discarded in the stampede to exit. Several drops and smears of dried blood dotted here and there.
‘What cover story are we putting out?’
‘Armed robbery that went wrong.’
‘Good.’ Cooper nodded. Keeping it simple. If there’d been a whiff of ‘terrorist’ to it, the press would be all over this story. That had been his first instinct, a ‘terrorist’ cover story that some conspirators involved with the Twin Towers incident – some of the press were calling it 9/11 now … a catchy term for it – had been identified and put under surveillance: the men had been a terrorist cell attempting to lie low for a while, until things settled down and vigilance levels dropped once more and they could have a go at slipping past immigration and out of the country, but they’d been followed and caught as they headed upstate from New York.
If Cooper had gone with that cover story, this car park would have been crawling with news-station broadcast vans and reporters doing pieces to camera. Instead, a simple ‘armed robbery gone wrong’ story didn’t have the same pulling power right now. They had the mall to themselves for a day or two. A crime scene: every entrance taped off and guarded by a uniformed officer.
‘We got CCTV coverage of most of the incident.’
‘That’s all been confiscated?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Cooper had already seen some of it. Digitally copied and enhanced to make it a little clearer. There was no mistaking the fact that the two armed people, one man and one woman, had been hit several times in the opening crossfire. And yet they’d walked on as if nothing had happened, leaving an easy-to-follow trail of blood droplets in their wake.
Cooper looked up at the escalator, one glass side of it shattered. Then at the railing running round the horseshoe-shaped balcony of the floor above. A twenty-foot drop down to where they were now standing.
Incredible.
‘The female really jumped down from up there?’
‘That’s what the eyewitnesses said.’
‘They’ll need to be informed they were mistaken, or that the woman shattered her legs and spine on impact.’
‘They saw her get up and take several steps.’
Cooper looked at Agent Mallard, one of the few FBI agents his limited budget allowed him to deputize into The Department. Mallard was young, eager to impress. Ready to do as he was told. ‘That’s what they thought they saw, Mallard. Do you understand? What they thought they saw in the heat of the moment. The mind plays tricks on what you think you’ve seen in a situation like this.’
‘Right, yes … sir.’
‘The male one?’
‘Preliminary autopsy’s already been done.’
‘And?’
Mallard hesitated. ‘The report says he sustained thirty-seven separate gunshot wounds.’
‘Thirty-seven?’
‘Yes, sir. The police officers who were interviewed said they only managed to bring him down after four or five successful head shots.’
Cooper kept his face impassive, his response measured. This wasn’t the place for outbursts of incredulity. He also needed to be sure his new recruit fully understood the situation. ‘Mallard?’
‘Sir?’
‘You’re going to see some things, learn things that – I’ll be frank with you – most Presidents don’t even get to know about. You understand, once you’re in The Department, you’re in it for good?’
‘That was made clear to me, sir.’
‘Good. Now … take me to where they’re holding the other one, the female. I want to talk with her directly.’
Chapter 28
12 September 2001, Interstate 90, Newton, Massachusetts
The rest of the drive up to Boston had been quiet. Liam, Maddy and Sal all silent with their own thoughts. The two support units sat perfectly still; Bob was busy as he drove, sorting through packets of code and prioritizing the most useful bits to upload to Becks. She sat in the back, still as a shop mannequin, as she digested the code floating back to her. Rashim gazed out of the window at more of a world he’d only ever seen in video-film files, while SpongeBubba chirped exclamations full of childlike wonder every now and then.
So very much like a child with that squeaky voice and slight lisp …
Look, skippa! A RED car!
Hey! That man’s re-eally fat!
Maddy wondered why Rashim would deliberately choose to hack his robot’s code to be so grating. But that was it, wasn’t it? The faults, the irritating traits and annoying behavioural ticks, the imperfections and phobias … it’s those things that make us human. That’s why he made his lab unit so irritati
ng. Less of a soulless machine.
Perfection on the other hand …? Cool, detached, emotionless perfection. Like those two killer meatbots relentlessly pursuing them. That’s what sociopaths were, weren’t they? At least in their own minds – without weakness, without imperfections.
Just after midday they checked into another motel; it was as generic and nondescript as the last one had been. But at least this was one in her hometown. Boston. Maddy felt a little more secure. The suburb Arlington, where her folks lived, was actually only about five or six miles away as the crow flies.
She was so nearly home.
‘Isn’t this a bit dangerous?’ said Liam, flicking through the channels on the room’s TV set. ‘I mean … well, might they not guess you’ll come here?’
He’d said ‘they’ like They. Them: the sort of language a tinfoil-hat-wearing, paranoid conspiracy nut would use.
‘We’re nearly out of money, Liam. And, even if the account had more money in it, what if someone’s tracking the card when we use an ATM?’ It could be done, a bank account flagged and used to track a person’s movements. ‘We need some help. In case you haven’t noticed, our little organization isn’t doing so good.’
‘But come on, going to your parents’ house?’
‘They can help us out! My mom and dad, once I’ve explained who I am, they’ll help us out.’
‘Once you’ve explained who you are?’ He cocked a brow. ‘Listen to yourself. That’ll take some explaining, so it will, Maddy.’
She could already imagine the expression on her mom’s face. A squint of suspicion at the strange teenage girl on her doorstep gabbling about time travel. Then probably fear. Perhaps Mom would try slamming the front door on her and calling the police. But then Maddy could tell her and Dad some things that were about to happen. She could tell them that President Bush was soon to make his infamous ‘Axis of Evil’ speech. That very soon they were going to start pointing the finger of blame at Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Or aim for something closer to home.