by Bob Mayer
“As good a cover as any,” Hannah said. “Native Americans actually respected those who were considered crazy. Thought they had special powers and insight.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did someone called the Administrator ever visit Nero?”
“The ‘Administrator’ of what, ma’am?”
“That’s the point,” Hannah said. “He just goes by the Administrator.”
“Not that I recall.”
Hannah slid off the desk. She reached under her business jacket and pulled out a pistol. She pulled the slide partly back, making sure there was a round in the chamber. “Have a helicopter ready for me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Golden felt claustrophobic in the booth as it rattled along the tracks underneath the Pentagon. She had an identification tag clipped to her jacket with the highest possible access level, but it still had taken a frustratingly long time to clear all the security checkpoints to get this far.
With a lurch, the booth came to a halt, and the double doors whisked open. Golden stepped out of the booth, the doors shutting behind her, unaware she’d just tripped the IR beam that crossed the inner doors. She took in the large, square room.
The first thing she noted was the tinfoil lining the walls. She considered that, then dismissed it as a ploy. It was too obvious for a man who’d survived inside the CIA-Pentagon–Black Budget–Covert world for so long. Of course, there was the possibility Foreman was getting Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia, but the reports from New York didn’t indicate anything of the sort.
She went over to the desk and sat down. She’d always believed that literally sitting in someone’s seat gave insight into their psyche. Golden had come to the attention of the Cellar because of her studies in profiling, trying to ferret out dangerous people before they committed any acts. She’d been using the military’s extensive database to do this, and the concept of predicting behavior based on past experiences and traumas had caught Hannah’s eye.
Directly across from the desk was the world map, so that must be a priority for Foreman, but Golden shifted her attention to the desk, because objects here were closer at hand. She saw the ancient coins, and that fit in with the Time Patrol. There was a black and white photo in a simple frame. Foreman, as a very young man, was in it, standing with a man on either side. In front of him were two rows of men in white lab coats, one row seated, the other kneeling. They were in a desert somewhere in front of an old army building. Golden took a picture of the picture. She pulled open the file drawer on the right-hand side. It was stuffed full of old manila folders, papers bulging out of some of them.
Golden prioritized and wasn’t totally surprised to find exactly the three things she was looking for, each carefully labeled and in alphabetical order. She pulled out three thin folders: COYNE, RATNIK, SIN FEN.
She quickly opened them and photographed the scant contents.
Putting the folders back, Golden noted the world map next. She walked over. She took a couple of photos of it, and then read the notes.
Here There Be Monsters
Bermuda Triangle
Devil’s Sea
She knew some of the locations by reputation, but others were new to her. She’d have to brush up on her viewing of the UFO cable channel, she reflected as she leaned over and peered at the MRI image pinned to the Shakespeare quote.
“Crap,” Golden muttered as she saw the dark mass. She looked at the face of her cell phone and wasn’t surprised to see she had no signal.
She looked back up at the map and frowned. The line drawn around the area labeled Bermuda Triangle wasn’t exactly a triangle. It zigged and zagged in the Bermuda area but also had arms reaching out, one of them across Cuba and ending near the Caymans.
“Double crap,” Golden said.
She spun about as the doors slid open. A man dressed in black fatigues with a submachine gun tight to his shoulder stepped out. He was aiming it directly at Golden.
“I have authorization!” Golden yelled, holding up the pass.
The man said nothing, edging to his right, her left, the gun remaining aimed at her. When he got halfway around the room, he gestured with the barrel toward the door.
“You want me to leave?” Golden asked.
In reply, he gave a quick jerk of the muzzle toward the exit.
Golden didn’t need any further urging. She scuttled across the room and got into the booth. She breathed a sigh of relief as the doors shut behind her and she began moving. She had the photos, which was the key thing. Golden had butted heads with people inside the Pentagon throughout her career. She found the military mindset to be—
The booth jerked to a halt and the doors slid open. Two men dressed in black had their weapons trained on her, while a third stepped in, looped a zip tie over her hands before she could react, and yanked her out of the booth.
“What the—” Golden began, but one of the men hit her in the stomach with the butt of his submachine gun before she could get the third word out.
Golden doubled over, gasping for breath. The man who’d jerked her out and zip-tied her hit her across the back of the legs and she fell to her knees, her forehead coming perilously close to smashing into the floor.
One of the men stepped behind her and Golden felt the muzzle of a weapon pressed against the back of her head, in that soft spot at the top of the neck, just below the bottom of the skull. She realized she was looking at a rusty stain on the tile floor and dimly realized it was a bloodstain, so deep and so persistent it could never be washed away.
And that’s when she realized her blood would join that stain.
“No!” Golden tried to cry out, but she only made a squeal.
The tableau was frozen like that for a long second, and then was broken as the doors slid open once more.
The executioners were more surprised by that than Golden, who was still trying to process the inevitability of death.
“Not today, gentlemen.”
Golden felt a rush of relief hearing Hannah’s voice.
One of the executioners spoke for the first time. “We have authorization.”
“From a traitor,” Hannah said.
Golden felt a hand around her arm, and she was lifted to her feet. Hannah looked calm and businesslike, but she held a gun in her other hand, not aimed at anyone, but more as a leveling of the playing field.
“I’m Hannah.”
The three men took a step back. Glances were exchanged. “The Cellar?” one of them asked.
“The same.” Hannah pointed at Golden. “She works for me. Please cut her hands free.”
One of the men whipped out a knife and expertly severed the zip tie with a single slash. He slid the knife back into the sheath without missing a beat.
“Foreman is rogue,” Hannah said. “Correct, Doctor Golden?”
Golden could only manage to shake her head in the affirmative.
“Have a good day, gentlemen.” Hannah took Golden’s elbow and led her into the booth. It was slightly crowded, but Golden didn’t notice. The doors slid shut and they began moving.
“They were going to kill me,” Golden finally managed to say.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Foreman had his office rigged with an IR alert if it was compromised. You compromised it. He had a standing order with those who rule that place to terminate anyone who made unauthorized entry.”
“How did you know that?” Golden asked.
“I didn’t. I’m surmising that based on the evidence.”
“But then why did you come?”
“Because there’s something wrong about Foreman,” Hannah said. “What did you discover?”
“There is something wrong about Foreman.”
“Let’s go to New York,” Hannah said.
“He stayed at that hotel,” the Asset said, pointing out the window of the car. “He would order room service. Drink at the bar in the evenings. That was pretty much it.”
>
The Asset was sweating, which might be due to the high temperature on Grand Cayman but more likely because of Neeley sitting in the passenger seat. She was dressed all in black: slacks and a collarless, armless shirt, which displayed the long, toned muscles in her arms. She wore wraparound sunglasses and had a daypack resting on her lap. She’d flown in on an unmarked Learjet and bypassed customs, not an unusual thing in the Caymans.
Neeley said nothing, letting the silence drag out.
“It’s all in the report,” the Asset insisted, as he had when Neeley met him planeside. He was an old man, face flushed red from sun and alcohol. A stringer, not a Cellar Asset. A big difference. He worked for whatever various US government agency tapped him with a request. He was well past what Gant had called ROAD: Retired on Active Duty.
“All?” Neeley finally said. “Every second of his time accounted for?”
“I’ve got a small team here,” the Asset protested, which answered the question.
Coyne had not come here just to lie in his room and eat room service and drink in the bar in the evening. Gant, who’d never read Conan Doyle, had a rule that Sherlock Holmes’s inventor would have loved: The obvious answer is usually the answer.
Gant had had a lot of rules. They’d kept him alive for a long time until the cancer took him. Neeley had appropriated his rules as her inheritance and she was still alive, thanks in large part to them and the training he’d imposed on her.
She felt a trickle of sweat slide down her back and get absorbed into her shirt. A long way from the rain and deep forest of Whidbey Island, but the target was the same. What had Coyne been here for?
Neeley felt it, a sensation that had occurred several times in her life. She’d first felt it on that plane in Berlin with a gift-wrapped bomb in her lap. She’d honored the feeling, getting off the plane, and that was when she first met Gant. He’d told her to always trust the instinct.
“Get out of the car,” Neeley said. “Leave the keys in the ignition. Walk away and don’t look back.”
The Asset’s mouth opened to say something, but snapped shut. He might be ROAD, but he’d been places before he’d punched out. He got out of the car and walked away.
Neeley had her finger on the trigger of the pistol, which was hidden underneath the daypack. It had been there ever since she got in the car, which is where a pistol in a car should be: in the hand in the lap, not in a holster or under the seat. If people could hold cell phones in a car, an operative could certainly hold her weapon.
She caressed the tiny sliver of metal, knowing exactly how much pressure she had to exert in order to fire the gun as the driver’s door opened and a woman got in. A rather striking woman. Tall, a tad taller than Neeley, with exotic features. The woman started the engine and drove away from the hotel without saying a word.
Neeley also didn’t speak.
The drive didn’t take long, not that it could on such a small island. They were near the airport when the woman drove them into a warehouse.
“I don’t like ambushes,” Neeley said, lifting the pack up and showing the muzzle of the pistol.
“Few do,” the woman said. “My people are around only for security. One across the alley on the second floor. One behind the warehouse out of sight, pulling rear security and maintaining our emergency exfiltration path. And two in the beams above us,” she added as she stopped the car. “They protect you as well as me.”
“From?”
“Those you seek.”
“I’m tracking Carl Coyne. I need to know who he met with here and why.”
“He’s not here.” The woman turned off the ignition.
“I know. We killed him.”
“We?” the woman asked, but then answered her own question. “The Cellar. Very good.” She looked at her watch. “You made better time than I expected.”
“Who else were you expecting?” Neeley asked.
“May I get out?” the woman asked, gesturing toward a desk and a couple of chairs.
“Sure.”
Neeley left the pack in the car, carrying the pistol openly, but not pointing it at anyone or anywhere particular.
The woman halted at the desk and turned to face Neeley, extending her hand. “My name is Sin Fen.”
“Neeley.” They shook, and Neeley spoke again as Sin Fen went around the desk and sat down. “I’ve heard your name. Secondhand. Coyne mentioned it just before he departed this mortal coil.”
“I assume he was desperate,” Sin Fen said, “facing a Cellar operative.”
“He was.”
Sin Fen smiled. “Did he speak well of me?”
“He just mentioned you.”
“What else?”
Neeley countered. “Who exactly are you?”
“The person you seek. What else did Coyne say before he departed from this world?”
“He said he had powerful friends. He mentioned your name. Ratnik. The Patrol. Red Wings.”
“You killed him,” Sin Fen said. “And what did you do with the body?”
“That’s part of why I’m here,” Neeley said. “His body simply disappeared.”
“Really?” Sin Fen considered that. “Most interesting. An aberration of the timeline. That could be good if it’s a reboot.”
“Right,” Neeley said, for lack of anything else.
Sin Fen gestured for Neeley to sit. Sin Fen settled down behind the battered, old desk. Neeley sat down, resting the pistol in her lap.
“What is going on?” Neeley asked.
“One thing at a time,” Sin Fen said. “Have the Nightstalkers been alerted?”
“Yes,” Neeley said. “They’re in New York City at a top secret facility that Coyne once guarded. We’re assuming he gave up the location of the facility because it was compromised.”
“The Time Patrol,” Sin Fen said.
“Yes. Who did he give up the location to?”
“The Ratnik,” Sin Fen said. “That’s why he came here.”
“And who or what is the Ratnik?”
“Former Russian Spetsnaz,” Sin Fen said. “They call themselves that, which is ironic because you might actually consider them rats in the walls of time.”
“Did they compromise the Time Patrol?” Neeley asked.
Sin Fen hesitated answering for the first time. “It’s complicated.”
“Uncomplicate it for me,” Neeley said. “The Nightstalkers are on a clock. They’ve got just over six hours.”
“To do what exactly?” Sin Fen asked.
“That’s a good question,” Neeley said. “They’re working on answering it right now. My job is to learn what Coyne did. So where are these Ratnik?”
“Not here,” Sin Fen said. “It’s not easy to get to them, and it is very dangerous.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them. “The gate to them is still open, but not for much longer.”
“Can you lead me to them?” Neeley asked.
Sin Fen considered her for a long second. “I’m not sure you understand what you are asking or what is happening.”
“No, I don’t,” Neeley agreed. “But I know I have to do my job.”
“Everything from here on out,” Sin Fen said, “is about choice. You do not have to do your job as you say. You have a choice.”
“Do I?” Neeley asked. “Do any of us?”
“Let’s not get philosophical,” Sin Fen said. “You have a practical choice now, whether to go into danger or not.”
“Then I choose to do it,” Neeley said.
“Even having little idea what you’re getting into except that it’s dangerous and beyond your conception?”
“Yes.”
Sin Fen abruptly stood. “Then let us go.”
Six Hours
The team, with additions, followed Edith out of the Met. They went along the path that wrapped around the back of the museum, through the tunnel under Central Park’s East Drive, and then north to Cleopatra’s Needle.
It was still there.
And so was Foreman, waiting for them. He was leaning on his cane, looking up at the towering monument. “I believe there is something up there for you, Ms. Frobish.”
They gathered round the monument and peered up.
“A message!” Edith Frobish was up on her toes, peering at the west side of the obelisk.
“How do you know?” Scout asked.
“Different markings,” Edith said. “About twenty feet up. Trust me, I know what this is supposed to look like.”
“Wait a second,” Nada said. “I don’t understand this. We were just talking about how only those who have been near Rifts are being affected first. How can you see a change?”
“Because,” Edith said, “there is an actual change on the Needle. An agent in the past actually changed it. This isn’t a timeline distortion but a real change. We use this needle, the one in Rome and the one in Paris, as markers. And there are others. Always stone, that an agent can send a message through. It’s in hieroglyphics and then in code.”
“Have messages been sent on it before?” Moms asked.
“Yes,” Edith replied.
“Then it must be covered with them,” Moms said.
Edith shook her head. “No. We get the message, we go back and fix the problem. Then there’s no need for the message to be written and it’s reset.”
“I’m with Roland,” Nada said. “I’ve got a headache.”
“Hieroglyphics?” Moms asked. “You can read them?”
“Oh, yes,” Edith said. “I had to study the writing after joining the Patrol. There are many variations and our messaging system mixes several in a way that anyone not understanding the code can’t break it.”
“Right,” Scout muttered.
“How are you—” Moms began, but fell silent as a truck with a cherry picker rolled up to the obelisk.
“I took the initiative,” Foreman said, indicating the truck.
“How did you know to take the initiative?” Moms asked.
“I’ve been here before,” Foreman said. “Apparently, Ms. Frobish just remembered, but the obelisk is an excellent field-expedient way for agents to communicate, and it’s been used before under unusual circumstances when an agent can’t travel back via the HUB. The Administrator took me here once to show me.”