Doppelganger

by John Schettler

  “Fukushima?”

  “Exactly. Then we’ve had all these big volcanic eruptions, the Bardarbunga rift event on Iceland that eventually went ballistic, then the Demon Volcano in the Kuriles. That was worse than Pinatubo—even worse than Krakatoa. And we all know Cumbre Vieja is very unstable. We’ve tamped down that nightmare twice, but it could go on its own, even with no help from the Assassin Cult.”

  “So what are you getting at?” Maeve was tapping her finger on the desk as she listened, her eye taking note of a small imperfection in the grain of the wood.

  “These fissures had to begin somewhere,” said Paul. “They had to be caused by a natural event. Assuming the Russians were on to something, and large explosive events can rupture spacetime, then what could have been the cause of these time fissures?”

  “We have no knowledge of them,” said Nordhausen, so how can we determine their cause?”

  “Fairchild knew about them,” said Paul. “This came right from her.”

  “How did she learn about them?” asked Maeve. “In fact, how did she come by that key herself? Who gave it to her?”

  “That’s just one reason I have to go back,” said Paul. “Assuming these keys were engineered in the future, then that is where they had to come from. Someone either brought them to the past, or sent them here. She also said she believed the keys were used to secure these fissures in time—or to grant access to them! She used those exact words.”

  “Alright,” said Maeve. “If these fissures or time rifts exist, even though we know nothing of them now, they would likely be discovered in the future. Of course they would be an obvious threat to the integrity of the continuum, festering like an open wound. Anyone who wandered into one could shift in time and cause profound changes. So if they discovered these rifts, it makes sense they would have made every effort to secure them.”

  “You mean put them under lock and key?” Nordhausen smiled. “So what was this Fairchild lady up to? How did she get back in 1941 to look for the key in the Selene Horse?”

  “She said she had instructions,” said Paul. “Suppose the location of one of the time rifts was revealed to her. Hell, suppose its somewhere off the coast of Greece, and she was given the exact coordinates.”

  “By who?”

  “That’s the mystery, but my bet, particularly given our experience, is that it is some operative from a future time.”

  “Well if she wanted that key, she sure went about it in a sloppy manner,” said Maeve. “The Selene Horse was in the British Museum.”

  “No, it was moved to the London subway system with some of the other Marbles during the Blitz,” said Nordhausen. “That, and the invasion buzz, prompted the British to transport some of them to the United States.”

  “Yes, said Paul, “but did they even know what they had? I discovered that key by chance when that packing crate shifted and the sculpture was chipped.”

  “Interesting,” said Nordhausen, rubbing the back of his balding head. “Then that damn key could have been embedded in the Selene Horse for ages. Hell, perhaps Phidias put it there!”

  “Phidias?” Paul gave him a questioning look.

  “He’s the famous Greek sculptor that work was attributed to. He also carved the image of Zeus at Olympia, regarded as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and his sculpture appears all throughout that era, particularly in the Parthenon. His work surpassed all the rest. Hell, suppose the old boy wasn’t who he seemed. Suppose he was from the future?”

  “An interesting thought,” said Paul. “Look, we’ve already discovered that someone has been meddling with time. We thought we were the first, but it now appears that is not the case. I’ve suspected that someone has already altered our own history, and it may be that these keys have something to do with that as well. If that key turned up in this ancient Greek sculpture, then somebody put it there deliberately.”

  “That would have been quite a trick,” said Nordhausen. “The Selene Horse was a solid piece of marble. It was placed high up on the east pediment of the Parthenon. I think it had to be placed there while it was being carved, either by Phidias, or one of his assistants.”

  “It does sound suspicious,” said Paul. “If the keys are associated with these time fissures, does this mean one extends all the way back to ancient Greece?”

  “That would be a logical assumption,” Maeve reasoned.

  “How could we not know about it?”

  “Well, suppose these rifts formed very recently. In that case, no one prior to our time would have known about them—yet someone from the future would. We know they extend to the past, and if they were discovered, they may have been navigated by future time travelers, and then well hidden and secured. Why they did this is really no mystery—the rifts are very dangerous. They could allow anyone to slip through and alter the continuum. So assuming they were natural, and not manmade fissures, they would have to first locate the source or cause of each rift in order to secure them. Who knows how far back they extend into time? The fact that this key was seeded in an artifact carved in the past is a fairly strong clue. They may have followed the rift back to its end point, and put some security in place there.”

  “Sounds logical. We already know that the Assassins established secret archives and bases in the past, and had agents in place posted all along key meridians in the history they were targeting. Can we be certain this isn’t the work of the Assassins?”

  “I’d think it was more like the Order to fashion these keys,” said Paul, but we don’t know that. Neither side could be involved. It could be a player we have yet to uncover. So I have to get back there and talk with this Fairchild woman again. We need to know more about the key she possesses.”

  “You think she knows the answer to all of this?”

  “She clearly knows something about it. She said she had instructions. I need to find out who gave them to her. There’s more to this, and she’s involved. So I arranged a meeting on the Azores. Kelly is programming the numbers now. Fairchild wants this key, so let’s see if we can find it.”

  “You said it went down with Rodney,” said Maeve. “How will you manage that?”

  “Oh, if I do go back to August of 1941, we won’t find it there. But we can look for it somewhere else.”

  Those words held far more than Maeve was prepared to entertain at that moment, for clearly Paul had another time shift in mind.

  “Somewhere else?” she said, an edge of suspicion creeping into her voice.

  Chapter 15

  “Where?” Maeve folded her arms, a determined look on her face. She could sense that there was another time mission in the offing here, and not just a friendly jaunt to the Azores to chat with this Fairchild lady.

  “Anywhere,” said Paul. “You said yourself the key was just sitting there in the Selene Horse, in the British Museum. If we target a time before the Blitz it should still be there.”

  “So you think you can just waltz into the British Museum with a rock hammer, chip a piece off the Selene Horse and say thank you very much?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Oh, be realistic, Paul. There will be security there. Alarms, guards. The risk of apprehension would be very great.”

  “Well then how about we target the time they were being moved into the subway system?”

  “I can help on that,” said Nordhausen. “I’ve been looking into the Elgin Marbles while you were gone, Paul, and I found out where they were stored during the war—at the Aldwych branch of the Tube. The entrance was on the Strand. In fact, it was once called Strand Station before they renamed it, and it’s Charing Cross today. Stephan Walter mapped it all out, including all sorts of historical oddities found beneath London. Did you know they found old Viking weapons, and a helmet dated to the battle of Waterloo, in that vicinity? It was also known as the suicide hotspot of the Thames.”

  “And they stored the marbles near there?”

  “Right beneath New Oxford Street, just up King
sway from the Strand. The British Museum station was very close. Well, they suspended passenger service for that line on September 21st, 1940, and then made them available as wartime shelters. It’s a lucky thing they were moved there, because the Duveen Gallery where they had been displayed was badly damaged by German bombing. So they had it all planned out, and even called the whole thing “Operation Elgin.” Most of the Marbles remained there in the Tube until the 25th of November, 1948. Only a few were eventually moved in that shipment on Rodney. I’ve got the whole thing wired.”

  “How did they move them?” asked Paul.

  “They were all crated up, about 100 tons, and then transported using what was called a low-loader lorry. They went to the London Transport Depot at Lillie Bridge, Kensington, and then they were moved over the rail line to the Aldwych Station. A bit of a roundabout way to get them there, but I suppose they knew what they were doing back then. When the Blitz started, and the Germans used 1000 pound bombs, they started to think the Tube was not safe enough. That’s probably when they got the idea to ship them over to Boston, though I know of no planned shipment other than the one on Rodney.”

  “Interesting that the Selene Horse was moved,” said Paul. “Could they have known about the key?”

  “I hardly think so,” said Nordhausen. “It wasn’t chipped at the base and exposed until you were there aboard Rodney.”

  “Well, that whole chain of custody there gives us ample means for intervention. I could pose as a truck driver, lorryman, loader.”

  “You?” Maeve protested. “I hardly think you look the part.”

  “I would do much better,” said Nordhausen. “I can manage a fairly good British accent, and pose as an official from the museum wanting to fret over the shipment somewhere en-route. It will have likely happened anyway, and to the workers involved I would just seem another bothersome official wanting to stick my nose in it. Just tell me how to find the key, Paul. I’ll fetch it double quick!”

  “Still risky,” said Maeve. “And your assignment to the mission is a large part of that.”

  “What? Me? Look here, I’ve made a firm resolution not to muck about in the history. Lord knows we’ve seen the damage it can cause.”

  “Yet they’ll be crated,” said Paul. “A hundred tons of them. You would have to go through the crates to find the one housing the Selene Horse.”

  “Well, they also used part of that Tube as a air raid shelter. That’s another angle to get us close during an air raid.”

  “A lot of people crowded into one place,” said Maeve, “and most likely well segregated from the artwork storage areas. No. What we need is to find a way to get at them without all these human obstacles, drivers, laborers, museum officials, guards, and crowds of frightened people. It’s not the sort of environment you can go crate hunting in, let alone breaking into the crate and willfully damaging a priceless piece of artwork.”

  “There is one other idea that came to mind,” said Paul. “We could try getting to the Marbles before they got shipped into London.”

  “When was that?”

  “Early eighteen hundreds,” said Nordhausen. “The 7th Earl of Elgin actually wanted them for a home he was planning to build, and he was using one of his own ships after he finagled a way to get at them in the Parthenon. It was called the Mentor, and it suffered a little mishap on the route home.”

  “That’s what I was thinking of,” said Paul. “The ship went down in a storm.”

  “Correct,” said Nordhausen. “Sea transport of heavy items is always chancy. I’m amazed the British tried it in World War Two. Just two days out of port, the Mentor encountered rising winds and seas, and the Captain, a man named Hegland, found the ship was taking on water. He advised they run for the nearest port, which was Avlemonas on San Nikolo Bay, on the Island of Kythira. As they approached the port both of their anchors failed to secure to the seabed, and the ship was in very heavy waters. They tried to maneuver, but ran afoul of some rocks, and the whole thing went down, marbles and all. They eventually hired seven divers and mounted a salvage operation, but it took a full two years to get everything up.”

  “I like that,” said Paul. “If we could get to them first, then we could get the key before it ever reached London.”

  Maeve shook her head. “You propose doing a little scuba diving yourself? Didn’t you hear? It took them two years to recover everything.”

  “I won’t do the diving, but I know someone who can—that ship, the Argos Fire. They’ll have well trained divers, even a submersible.”

  Maeve rolled her eyes. “And just how do you propose to commandeer their ship, then move it in time to the desired point for this little salvage operation?”

  “Alright, forget the submersible. Perhaps we could just borrow their divers.”

  “And how do you get them there? When did this happen, Robert?”

  “17th September, 1802. I did a good bit of research on this since Paul told us how he found that key. But she has a good point there, Paul. We can move you about easily enough, but divers?”

  “Never mind that for now,” said Paul. “First I have to keep my appointment in the Azores. I’ll meet with them, propose these operations, and see what they say. That ship moved in time, and we still don’t really know how for sure. If they had some other means of pulling that off, I’d like to know about it, wouldn’t you, Maeve? After all, here we are trying to salvage this operation, and we’ve got these ships shifting into WWII! We need to get to the bottom of this, and if need be, to find a way to get to the bottom of San Nikolo Bay on a quiet night in 1802. It’s perfect! No one will see us, because it will all happen underwater. We find the Marbles using hand held radar gizmos, or night optics. Then we locate the Selene Horse and get that damn key. If it does secure another time rift, then I think I can tell you where it is. I copied those numbers I found on the shaft of the key, and I’ve done some checking. They’re map coordinates!” He smiled, a mischievous light in his eye.

  * * *

  The longer they looked at the readings the more precarious the situation became. The Golem Module had clearly identified the initial Point of Divergence as emanating from the accident on July 28th, 2021, and involving both the Russian submarine Orel and the battlecruiser Kirov. While Orel was destroyed, Kirov was displaced in time by almost exactly 80 years. Yet the data stream now showed the ship’s position in time did not remain stable, and the damage it was causing to the integrity of the continuum was considerable every time it moved.

  “I don’t understand how the ship is moving in each case,” said Paul. “A few of the displacements seem to be the obvious result of these massive explosive events, but there are others where that is not the case. Their second shift was also catalyzed by the use of nuclear weapons, and they end up moving slightly forward in time, into 1942. That’s when they wreak havoc with the British Operation Pedestal.”

  “Some real oddities crop up there,” said Nordhausen, his eyes running over the Golem reports. “This one didn’t end with a bang, but a whisper. You’ll want to read these reports I’ve managed to pull out of the data stream. It seems they cut a deal with the British and were ready to accept internment at St. Helena, but they vanished.”

  “That had to be another time shift,” said Paul. ‘This is what I mean. What catalyzed that shift? There was no reported explosion, not natural or manmade. Yet they turn up in the Timor Sea a day later, and there is no way they could have sailed from St. Helena to the Australian coast in that time.”

  “Alright,” said Nordhausen, “they raise hell with the Japanese, yet the data shows a marked difference from the history when they arrive.”

  “Yes, Yamamoto forsake the Midway operation in favor of a plan aimed at isolating Australia. The Japanese operation in the data was to strike at Darwin, and push further south from the Solomons. But the actions of this ship end up causing so much disruption to the Japanese plan that they fail to coordinate. The Americans produce another miracle victory north of
the Solomons, and the Japanese carriers are busted up almost as badly as they would have been at Midway.”

  “At least they did something right,” said Maeve, cringing at all these deviations in the history.

  ‘Well it seemed to set the war back on a normal course in the Pacific,” said Paul. “Then the ship moved forward again, and without any explosive event. Correct Robert?”

  “Correct. I find nothing indicating they used nukes on the Japanese, and no natural event of any consequence near the action.”

  “Goddammit,” Paul swore. “How are they moving?”

  “The Russians clearly have something up their sleeve Paul,” said Maeve, “Robert did some digging and it looks like they were playing with time effects in the nuclear testing program.”

  Paul stroked his chin, thinking. “It must have something to do with their reactors. That’s a nuclear propulsion system on Kirov—dual naval reactors. The energy driving these unassisted shifts has to be coming from that propulsion system. Robert, are you sure you haven’t missed anything?”

  “I was very thorough,” said Nordhausen. “If the Russians did come up with a technology they could use in tandem with their nuclear propulsion system, then they’ve kept the secret well.”

  “Alright…” Paul spread out a chart he had been drawing, with lines indicating the known movements in time they had postulated for the Russian ship. “The war starts revving up in the Pacific, and Kirov puts to sea,” he said. “It is involved in that big incident with the US 7th Fleet, and then vanishes again. This time we have an assist—the Demon Volcano. Where did they go?”

  “1945,” said Nordhausen. “I’ve got variation data in the Kuriles very near the ship’s last reported position in 2021. They supported Russian operations there, then moved south and ran into the American Pacific Fleet. Then all hell breaks loose. First off, there is evidence that the ship did not move alone this time. I have data on at least two other vessels.”