Refuge in Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  Michael gave a moment’s thought to his bespoke suit, which was probably part silk, and then put aside his vanity—and all the years of living pay packet to pay packet—to focus on Chad, who stood under a large black umbrella next to his limousine some hundred feet away. Emergency vehicles clogged the path around the warehouse, most too large to fit into parking spaces in the car park, which in any case were taken up with vehicles belonging to the people who’d attended David’s interview. Michael would have thought Chad should have already been interviewed by the authorities, but at the moment, none were within fifty feet of him.

  Rain was usually something Michael ignored. He had an umbrella stashed in the back of his own vehicle, but more often than not he threw an overcoat over his shoulders and kept his head down, and that was sufficient to withstand the more usual constant mist that was rain in the UK. He actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d opened his umbrella.

  Tonight, however, there was no help for it but to dash across the car park, which he and Livia did, matching stride for stride. It was impossible to avoid the puddles, and every step slopped water into shoes and soaked his socks and the hem of his trousers.

  “Whatever you do next, please don’t do it without me.” Livia looked into Michael’s face, showing genuine concern he might ditch her.

  “I won’t. I wouldn’t.” And he meant it.

  Chad saw them coming and he, Amelia, and Reg met them before they reached the limousine. Reg handed Michael a black raincoat and held another large umbrella over his head so he could shrug into the coat, which fell to his knees. One of Chad’s other agents had an oversized rubber rain jacket for Livia, this in an astoundingly bright hot pink color.

  “I’m pulling you off what’s happening here, now that WECTU has taken over and—” Chad snorted in disgust, his voice just loud enough to be heard about the pounding of the rain, “—sidelined us.” As he talked, a black SUV backed out of its space four cars down and came towards them. “I want you in Llanberis five minutes ago.” Chad pronounced the name of the town the English way, as if it was spelled with only one ‘l’.

  Michael’s heart speeded up more than it already was. “What exactly do we know?”

  “Not enough. At the same moment David left, there was an additional flash near the village of Llanberis, about twenty-five miles from here.”

  The SUV stopped beside them and Joe got out, though he left the engine idling.

  “David came and returned this quickly?” Michael said. “That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

  “We don’t know if it is David,” Amelia said.

  “We don’t know what happened. When someone arrives or departs, the only thing our sensors pick up is a flash.” Chad urged Michael towards the driver’s side door, and then indicated Livia should go around to the passenger seat. It looked like he didn’t think Michael should ditch her either.

  As she went, she spoke over her shoulder, “That’s Five’s take on it too.”

  Despite the urgency of the moment, as Michael sat in the seat, he sighed. It was a relief to be out of the rain.

  Once inside the vehicle, Livia leaned across the gearbox to speak to Chad, who stood in the driver’s side doorway next to Michael, the umbrella still over his head. “When Anna appeared two weeks ago, we had no idea it was she who’d arrived, only that someone had. Could there have been an anomaly such that somehow the flash for David and William’s departure was misplaced to Llanberis? With the storm, the sensors could be off.”

  Up ahead, one of the emergency vehicles backed directly into the drive, blocking the way out of the car park, and Michael eyed the space to the right of it, wondering if he could squeeze the SUV past. Seeing his glance, Chad waved a hand to Joe, who loped towards the front of the vehicle, presumably to ask if the driver would move it.

  “Yeah, we thought of that too,” Chad said. “It isn’t a bad idea, except we have the flash indicating David and William’s departure as expected, right here, but the techs report this second flash occurred at essentially the same moment. It took them this long to notify us because the circuits were busy.” He glowered a bit in a very un-Chad-like way. “The cell network in North Wales needs an upgrade.”

  Michael buckled his seatbelt. “Two simultaneous flashes in two different places has never happened before?”

  “No, or at least not that we know about,” Chad amended. “Our data doesn’t show it. Certainly Mark never reported it.” He looked hard at Livia. “Does MI-5 know about Llanberis?”

  Livia pulled her mobile out of her pocket and looked at the screen before flipping it around to show Chad she had no calls. “Maybe they can’t get through to me either.”

  “I don’t like it.” Chad pressed his lips together. “They could have gotten a message to you through WECTU.”

  Livia looked pensive. “I tried to reach my boss earlier and couldn’t.”

  “Try again,” Chad urged. “In the spirit of cooperation, if they know about this, they should be telling us.”

  As Livia started dialing, Michael turned back to Chad. “And if they don’t?”

  “Tell us or know about it?” Chad said.

  “Either. Both.” He flashed a smile, remembering his conversation with Amelia at the hospital. She had returned to the limousine to get out of the rain.

  “Depending on what Livia reports, we’ll know if Director Philips meant what he said about wanting to work with David.” Chad tapped his fingers rhythmically on the frame of the door. They were all anxious to get moving, and if Chad himself had started throwing his weight around, maybe the fire engine would already be out of the way. But that would have called attention to their urgency—which would have prompted questions from WECTU, questions Chad had no interest in answering. “At the time, I thought he and I had an agreement as well.”

  This was the first Michael had heard of it. He wouldn’t have said David had known of it either. “What agreement?”

  Chad’s expression indicated his thoughts were far away, but then his eyes snapped back to Michael. “That he would keep the lines of communication open with me too. We both knew David would be leaving, and the hole that would leave in both our organizations could be shared. Our knowledge could be shared.” Chad pressed his lips together in dissatisfaction. “I thought I did my part by giving him access to David’s blood work and Livia access to David.”

  To Michael’s mind, it was David who’d done that, but he didn’t see the need to argue.

  “Did David think Philips was sincere?” Chad asked.

  “Sincere enough for him to keep Livia close. As far as I know, he hadn’t yet promised them anything.”

  Chad grunted his acknowledgment of the difference. “Nobody has called my hotline number either, but it’s early yet. Who knows what they’ve fallen into and even if they could get through if they had a phone.”

  “It could be the same problem everywhere,” Michael said.

  Chad looked past Michael to Livia, who had turned in her seat to face them, the phone still to her ear. She appeared to be attempting to listen to it and their conversation at the same time. “It looks to me like MI-5 doesn’t have this information yet, or if they do, they’re not sharing with Livia.”

  “Does that mean we’re not going to share with them?” Michael said.

  “Maybe.” Chad waggled his head. “I’ll give it a little time. It’s MI-5 that’s the government agency. Who’s to say what I have is real? We’ll see what you find in Llanberis before we bother Philips with a potential false alarm.” Chad’s tone could have been sour too, but he merely sounded matter-of-fact. “Hopefully, by the time you get there, whoever has come will have called in to tell us where they are.”

  Joe had finally convinced someone to move the fire engine, and it was making its slow way towards the car park exit. “Let’s hope they tell us first, not Five.” Michael found himself falling into speaking of the Security Service the same way Livia did.

  “I’m not worried about
who’s calling MI-5. The last information anyone from Earth Two would have is that MI-5 chased my plane into Snowdon,” Chad said. “David just left.”

  “Unless it’s he who’s returned,” Michael said. “That did happen once when Lee shot him as he fell off the battlement at Dover Castle.”

  “You’ve been reading up.” Chad’s expression turned pensive. “He trusts me now, right? I hope I’ve earned at least a little trust.”

  Michael didn’t feel he could answer that. “Did you get the sense from him that he didn’t?”

  “He was wary, as always. I thought several times during the interview, he looked at me hard, especially for a second there at the end.” He paused. “He can’t think I had anything to do with the shooting, can he?”

  “Did you?” The question came out without conscious intent on Michael’s part, but he’d read somewhere that if you suspected someone of something, the best thing you could do was ask them outright. How they responded would tell you most of what you wanted to know. Unless they were a fantastic liar.

  Instead of getting defensive, which could have been a natural response, whether or not he was guilty, Chad laughed. “No! I would never risk David! Kill the goose that lays the golden egg? Why would I do that?”

  “To prove on worldwide television that David is who he says he is.”

  “Hmm.” Chad pursed his lips, still not taking offense. “I suppose that’s a possible motive. I wasn’t thinking about that. We have enough video by now, what with the plane leaving and David’s arrival, that the naysayers don’t have a leg to stand on. If they weren’t going to believe before, they aren’t going to believe now. Besides, would I risk it not working? Either the shooter really believed David is who he says he is, or he wanted David dead. Damn it!” He slapped his thigh. “It could be years before he comes back, and I wouldn’t blame him if he never came again.”

  “He could be back now,” Michael said.

  “He might, but he won’t have my seeds,” Chad said.

  David had told Michael about Chad’s request for heirloom seeds to replace those that had been destroyed. The famines that had swept through some countries hadn’t affected Michael’s ability to eat all the fish and chips he wanted. So far, there hadn’t been another potato famine, but he too had read the stories about the breeding of fruits and vegetables for appearance rather than nutrition. If it didn’t stop, the planet’s food would consist of starch and nothing else. Everybody would be at the same time fat and starving.

  And without the heirloom seeds to rewind the genetics to an earlier time, they might never get that natural nutrition back. Or that was what Chad feared. It was a slow, mostly unseen apocalypse, rather than the kind that made headlines. Disrupting the time-space continuum with time travel was much sexier.

  Livia finally put down her phone. “I can’t get through to Jack Stine. I’ve left three messages, but I was ordered not to talk to anyone else. The director was very specific.”

  What Michael didn’t say was that Five, for all that Director Philips’ meeting with David had been amicable, had its own agenda—as usual—and still didn’t have David’s best interests at heart, but he kept that thought to himself. If Livia was coming to her own conclusions about the agency she worked for, he didn’t want to get in the way.

  He didn’t know exactly what Chad’s motives were either, but his explanation for the shooting had rung true. Chad was trusting Michael with going to get the person or people who’d just arrived, and Michael certainly had David’s best interests at heart. He couldn’t help feeling Livia did too. Likely they were both being used, but even if that turned out to be the case, at the moment, they were exactly where they needed to be.

  Chapter Ten

  3 April 2022

  Livia

  Chad pursed his lips, looking from one to the other before settling his eyes on Livia. “I’m not sorry MI-5 is momentarily behind the curve. If they were on top of things, they would have run roughshod over everyone.”

  “I do know that,” Livia said. “They’ll take over, of course, eventually, and be more secretive than WECTU, and that’s saying something.”

  Chad’s eyes narrowed as he returned his attention to Michael. “You work for me. Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t. We’ll go right now, while nobody is paying attention to us.” He indicated the vehicles in front of him. “The firefighter moved his vehicle, but are those WECTU officers going to let us out?”

  “I can make sure we get out.” Livia had a touch of grimness in her voice.

  Chad suddenly grinned. “Okay. Keep in touch.”

  “We will.” Michael didn’t smile back, and Livia realized belatedly that Chad’s words were typical American understatement. “I’ll call as soon as we know anything at all.” He shifted the vehicle into drive and rolled forward.

  Livia still held her phone in her hand. She was happy to be included in Chad’s plans, but that didn’t make the overall radio silence from her own office any better. “I wish I knew where my men were. They’re not answering their mobiles either, and I can’t track their GPS signals. It’s like they’ve dropped off the face of the earth.”

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t do anything about them right now,” Michael said. “Chad will let us know if he hears anything.”

  The rain continued to pound on the roof of the car. At times, the wind had been blowing so hard the water had swept across the pavement in waves. It was a relief to be out of the wet, though her breath started steaming up the inside of the windscreen. She took off her cap, shook the water off it, and then shoved it into the otherwise empty glove box.

  Michael adjusted the wipers so they were running full tilt. “I don’t remember seeing anything about a hurricane in the forecast.”

  “Wales,” Livia said.

  He laughed, as she meant him to, and as she had known he would. The last hour had deepened their knowledge of each other considerably. One could learn a great deal about someone by going through adversity with them—and that’s certainly what they’d experienced tonight. The only blessing remained that nobody had died.

  “I hope David is doing okay wherever he’s ended up.” Michael had two hands on the wheel as they passed Chad’s limousine. With their departure, Chad had chosen to sit inside his vehicle, and Livia could see his trousered leg through the half-open rear door.

  Amelia wasn’t outside anymore either, and Livia presumed she was sitting beside him, if not on her mobile talking a mile a minute, then talking to Chad.

  Livia glanced at Michael. “David ends up where he’s supposed to, right? That’s what he said.”

  “Up until now, sure. But he doesn’t really know the rules, and neither do we. They could be subject to change without notice.” Michael navigated carefully past the vehicles parked helter-skelter between him and the entrance to the car park.

  Once there, Livia’s badge did its job as promised, and the WECTU officer guarding the entrance waved them through. The lane fronting the warehouse was also filled with vehicles, and the first news people were beginning to arrive. Chad—with Owain Williams’ cooperation—had worked hard to keep the location of the interview a secret, even requiring all audience members, staff, and the reporters who attended to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and it seemed he’d succeeded well enough for it to have taken this long for the news vans to arrive.

  Livia gazed out the side window, watching the lights of the police cars and the newscaster vehicles. “They were bound to find us eventually.”

  “The BBC executives always knew where we were, as did Chad’s people,” Michael said. “All the reporters in the audience knew too. All anyone had to do was scramble a team.”

  “From where, though? Manchester is the closest studio, and it’s still two hours away by car. To get here this quickly, news teams must have already been in the area, probably since David’s arrival. Maybe even since Anna’s. They’re the story of the year.” Livia wrinkled her nose. “I bet the team that was filmi
ng the interview wishes WECTU hadn’t forced them to abandon their cameras in the warehouse.”

  “And that the mobile phone network was working so they could call in their stories.”

  Then Livia turned to look at him. That was enough small talk, which wasn’t really her thing anyway. “I’m sorry, Michael.”

  “For what?” Michael glanced at her as they went through their first roundabout, heading for the A55.

  Livia’s expression softened further. “For your loss. David was your friend as well as your principal.”

  She could tell that at first Michael hadn’t realized she was apologizing in the way she often did, not because she had anything to do with David’s disappearance, but out of sympathy. Then he nodded. “Thanks. I didn’t know him that well, but he’s leaving a pretty big hole in the future I thought I had.”

  Her expression turned contrite. “Mine too, in a way.”

  “How worried should we be that you haven’t been able to reach your men or your boss?”

  “Pretty worried, actually. If the data output in North Wales wasn’t so poor, I’d log into my MI-5 account and see what I could learn.”

  “It doesn’t sound like they’re deliberately keeping you out,” Michael said.

  Livia still held her phone in her hand and now tapped the corner of it on her lip. “It feels like they are. They know where I am.” She looked at the screen and said, in a burst of frustration, “Why won’t you ring?”

  “Shouting at it probably isn’t going to help,” Michael said dryly.

  “You never know! Stranger things have happened.”

  Michael laughed again. “No kidding.” Then he sobered. “I find it impossible to believe that you and I—through Chad—could know something Five doesn’t. Chad owns one of the largest corporations in the world, but he isn’t his own country. This isn’t a Bond movie.”

  Livia snorted under her breath. “James Bond is MI-6.”

  The car was an automatic, and it shifted to a higher gear as they pulled onto the A55, a motorway that would take them west to the turnoff to Llanberis. Their headlights pierced the night, illuminating raindrops and the cars ahead. The road was crowded, even this late at night. Either not as many people had been watching the interview as she’d expected, or they’d put off whatever travel they’d had to do until after it was over, dramatic fashion or not.