by C. R. Berry
“Good. And?”
Henri cleared his throat, not that there was anything in it. “I have set a plan in motion for Diana and Dodi to leave the hotel with as little attention from the press as possible. The Mercedes and Range Rover they have been using through the day will act as decoys and leave from the front of the hotel. Diana and Dodi will leave from the rear entrance in the Rue Cambon in the Mercedes your people are providing. This will make it easier for you to” – he swallowed – “pursue.” It all left a horrid aftertaste in his mouth.
“And you’ll be driving our Mercedes, Mr Paul?” said Jane.
He swallowed again. “Yes.”
“You sound nervous.”
What a stupid thing to say. “Are you surprised?”
“Don’t overthink it. All you have to do is head for the tunnel, wait for the engine warning light to come on, act like something’s wrong and, once you’re inside the tunnel, pull the car over. Then, before anyone knows what’s happening, we’ll advance on the vehicle, abduct the princess, and be gone. Piece of cake.”
Did she actually just say ‘piece of cake’?
Jane continued, “And I promise you, when this is over, you’ll never hear from us again.”
“Apart from when you wire fifty million francs to my bank account, you mean?”
“Apart from that, yes.”
Henri hung up the phone. His fingers went limp and the phone slipped through them, crashing onto the tiled floor.
He’d thought that the money would make it easier. It didn’t. He felt like he was standing too close to an inferno, his skin burning, his lungs filling with smoke. He couldn’t breathe.
Princess Diana was the most famous woman in the world – and Henri was about to aid and abet her kidnapping.
Was he out of his mind?
Outside the front of the hotel, two photographers – a blonde woman and a bald man – joined the back of the crowd just as the excitement among the press was starting to build. Both wore jackets and jeans, rode motorbikes and had big, expensive-looking cameras hanging from their necks. But these were just props. The woman and the man weren’t photographers at all. They were Million Eyes operatives.
The woman, Lynn Forbes aka ‘Jane’, tucked her phone into her pocket after Henri Paul had hung up. She and her colleague, Alex Bradley, started round to the back of the hotel on their bikes. A couple of photographers followed, but most were expecting the princess to emerge from the main entrance and stayed put.
Stopping near the rear entrance in the Rue Cambon, Forbes took out her phone again, this time to call her boss, James Rawling.
“We’re in place, sir,” she advised. “The princess is leaving shortly from the rear entrance in our Mercedes in a ploy to evade the press.”
“And Sebastien Touchard?” Rawling replied. “Has he been dealt with?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. What about the evidence?”
“We’ve disabled all traffic and CCTV cameras on the scheduled route of the Mercedes. Simpson’s in place at the mortuary and is going to swap the dead drunk driver’s blood samples with those taken from Henri Paul at his autopsy. We’ve also arranged for a transport forensics expert to remove all evidence of the rigged brakes and seatbelts from the Mercedes. Subsequent reports will state that the brakes and seatbelts were functioning perfectly and all the passengers would’ve been able to put their seatbelts on. Everyone will see it as their fault for not wearing them.”
“This forensics expert – is he Million Eyes?”
“No, but he’s getting the money we’ve promised to Henri Paul. And I’ve threatened to kill his children.”
“It looks like you have everything under control, then.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, Miss Forbes. I’m confident everything will go without a hitch. Actually, I’m starting to think it’s pre-destined to go without a hitch.”
“Er, I’m sorry, sir?”
“Never mind. Call me when the princess departs and I will be on my way.”
Diana and Dodi left the Imperial Suite and moved downstairs with Henri Paul and Trevor Rees-Jones to the hotel’s rear entrance to wait for their car. Henri was sweating, still wondering if all this was worth fifty million francs. He took out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead.
“Are you alright, Mr Paul?” Diana asked.
“Yes, princess,” Henri lied. “Absolutely fine.”
“You’re sweating rather profusely.”
“Yes. It’s… a warm night.”
At 12.20am, the other Mercedes arrived. Henri and Trevor Rees-Jones led Dodi and Diana to the vehicle, immediately catching the attention of a small band of photographers gathered on the other side of the road, motorcycle engines coughing into life.
Here goes. Henri got in the car and switched on the engine. Diana and Dodi scrambled into the rear passenger seats, Rees-Jones closing the door behind them and hastening round to the front passenger seat.
As his three passengers clawed at the seatbelts, Henri drove away.
“Mr Paul, my seatbelt’s not working,” said the princess. Henri turned his head. Diana and Dodi were both struggling to buckle themselves in.
“Neither’s mine,” murmured Dodi.
“Or mine,” said Rees-Jones.
That was odd. In his haste to speed away from the hotel without attracting attention, he hadn’t even tried his own. He wondered if his wasn’t working either. He took his right hand off the steering wheel, reached for his seatbelt, pulled it over his shoulder and plugged the metal tongue into the buckle, expecting it to click.
No click. The tongue jerked back out. He tried it again – it wouldn’t fasten.
This was the Mercedes they had provided – why would it have defective seatbelts? That didn’t make sense.
“Mr Dodi, I think I should pull over, check the seatbelts…” Henri murmured, thinking as soon as he said it that if he did, he might scupper the plan to kidnap the princess and screw himself out of fifty million francs.
He saw Dodi looking through the Mercedes’ rear window. The motorcyclists who’d seen them were in pursuit, engines snarling.
“No, don’t stop. Speed up,” said Dodi. “They’ll be all over us if we stop. So much for your fucking decoy plan.”
The Pont de l’Alma underpass wasn’t far. Henri just needed to get there. The engine failure warning light would come on, he’d pull the car over, and that would be that.
He sped up.
Despite Dodi’s orders, Henri was forced to stop anyway – at the traffic lights at the corner of the Avenue des Champs Elysées. Like wasps to sugar, the motorcyclists swarmed the vehicle. A blitz of camera flashes rained down on the passengers. Diana buried her face in Dodi’s jacket. The moment the lights turned green, Dodi hollered, “Go! Let’s lose these bastards.” Henri pushed the accelerator to the floor in a bid to outrun them, tyres wailing.
As Henri started his approach to the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, the engine failure warning light still hadn’t come on. Should’ve done by now. Henri needed it as his excuse for pulling over. He noticed in his rear view mirror that a white Fiat Uno had joined the mob of motorcyclists and was following him.
Cameras flashed like fireworks.
Henri sped up. The speedometer flickered past sixty-five.
The paparazzi started falling behind, apart from two motorcyclists – a man and a woman – who matched Henri’s speed with ease and swerved around to the left side of the Mercedes, passing by Dodi’s window.
Here come the kidnappers.
Heart racing, Henri saw the two motorcyclists take sunglasses from their pockets and put them on. The man fished something from inside his jacket – some sort of tubular device. What were they doing?
The Fiat Uno pulled up next to the Mercedes on its right side.
They were surrounded.
Still no engine warning light.
Henri was moments from entering the tunnel, and it wasn’t a long tunnel. He had to
start pretending something was wrong. He had to start slowing down.
He was going to have to do it without the warning light. He had no idea what. He had to fake something – and quick. The only thing he could think of was pumping the brakes, making the car jolt suddenly and repeatedly, forcing him to bring it to a stop.
He took his foot off the accelerator and, with a deep breath, rammed the brake pedal.
Huh?
The car didn’t jerk, or react at all.
Henri pressed the brake, gentler this time. There was no resistance. The car didn’t slow.
“What the fuck?” He pushed the brake pedal to the floor, then thrust his foot against the clutch and lowered the gear.
Nothing worked. The speedometer was stuck at sixty-five miles per hour.
“Henri, what? What is it?” shouted Dodi from the back.
“They set me up!” Henri screamed.
“What?” gasped Diana, lifting her head.
The Mercedes and surrounding vehicles entered the tunnel. As they did, Henri yanked the steering wheel to the right, tossing his passengers against the left side of the car, in an effort to push the Fiat Uno out of the way.
The crunch and squeal of metal on metal rang out as the Mercedes swerved hard and struck the Uno. Didn’t work. The Uno was slightly ahead and able to block Henri’s escape. The pillars on the tunnel’s central reservation rushed past the car in a soft blur. Dodi, Diana and Rees-Jones were all screaming at him, but he didn’t register any words, their panicked voices blending into the noise of roaring engines, screeching tyres and Henri’s own thumping heart.
Then, from both sides, dazzling explosions of light illuminated the whole tunnel and Henri saw nothing but white.
His head spun with the same thought, over and over. They lied. They lied. They lied.
Then a crack of thunder ripped through his head.
Bradley deactivated his flare. James Rawling in the Fiat Uno did the same. The blasts of light went out and Rawling sped up, hastening to the tunnel’s exit. Bradley and Forbes slowed down, letting the Mercedes advance. They could see that Henri had lost control. The Mercedes careered towards the thirteenth pillar of the tunnel at high speed.
Forbes hit the brake, sucked in a breath and watched the Mercedes ram the concrete pillar, front half crumpling like paper with a boom so tumultuous that it rattled her brain in her skull. The vehicle ricocheted off the pillar, spinning like a toy in a rapid three hundred and sixty degree turn into the right hand lane. It hurtled into the tunnel wall with another dreadful crunch, spraying flecks of glass and chunks of metal everywhere, then rebounded slightly and stopped, mounting the kerb along the tunnel’s right side.
Forbes and Bradley edged towards the crashed Mercedes, climbed off their bikes and walked towards the vehicle. Inside the car, they saw Henri, unconscious, head buried in an airbag; Trevor Rees-Jones next to him, face a fleshy, disfigured mess, but moving and murmuring; Dodi Fayed slumped between the two front seats, body twisted and bloody, unconscious; and Diana, Princess of Wales, in a crumpled heap in the passenger foot well, also unconscious.
Forbes thrust her arm inside the shattered rear window towards Diana. She reached inside her blazer, searching for the transcriber. Nothing in her right pocket, so she tried her left – and there it was.
Forbes grabbed the book and pulled it from her pocket. At that moment, Diana awoke. Her arm shot up and her hand clamped around Forbes’s wrist.
Her grip was weak. Forbes yanked free with ease.
Forbes opened the book and read a few lines of the transcription that had caused Million Eyes centuries of damage. At last, they had it.
She handed the book to Bradley and retrained her eyes on Diana. The princess was dazed, eyes rolling, blood dripping from a three-centimetre-long wound in her forehead.
It was hard to feel sorry for her. All these royal cunts had such self-importance. It was time they realised they weren’t any more special than anyone else.
“You… you won’t… get away with this…” Diana choked, labouring to lift her head, voice barely there.
“We already have,” Forbes replied coldly.
Forbes spun away from the car. Photographers were advancing on the scene, some instinctively snapping pictures of the wreck, others trying to assist the victims. Forbes and Bradley quietly extricated themselves from the rising commotion, returning to their bikes and making a quick exit.
They drove to a small, quiet side road. There, Forbes dismounted, made sure there were no nearby storm drains (strict orders from Rawling), and reached for the disruptor holstered on her hip.
Bradley handed her the transcriber and she placed it on the ground, pointed her disruptor and pressed the trigger. A shaft of bright green light skewered through the book and the ground, kicking up chunks of tarmac and blowing the book apart. Scorched slivers of paper and a few flakes of the binding were all that was left.
Job done.
“I think we deserve a pint,” she said to Bradley as she got back on her bike. “Or two or three. What do you say?”
Bradley was staring ahead with a deep shadow of remorse on his face. “We’ve just assassinated Princess Diana. I think I’ll go for something stiffer.”
25
September 2nd 1997
Erica Morgan smelled sweat and something else – urine, maybe – as rotund American billionaire Arthur Pell leaned forwards and kissed her on both cheeks.
“You’re looking mighty fine this evening, Erica,” he drawled in his thick Southern accent as he helped her to her seat – one of those needless acts of chivalry that made her want to bring up her lunch. Still, there was plenty more she going to have to keep down tonight.
She smiled, brushed her silky black fringe from her eye and replied, “You’re looking mighty fine yourself.” She was lying, of course. Arthur Pell was a truly grotesque lump. “Have you lost weight?” Of course he hadn’t. If anything he looked bigger than when they last met.
“A bit, maybe,” Pell replied, voice as deep as a tuba, but that was probably because he had no neck, just a solid ring of fat that his round head bobbed on top of. “Don’t wanna lose too much, though. The ladies love my love handles.” He laughed, his fat face wobbling.
No, Arthur. They love your deep pockets.
Miss Morgan and Pell sat in Le Caprice, a swanky restaurant in Arlington Street, London. Last time they met she’d sussed him out. A crass, simple man who’d had fortune after fortune handed to him on a platter, the sort of man she could manipulate with some flirting, ego-stroking and a low-cut dress that made her boobs look giant.
After ordering starters, main courses and a bottle of champagne, Pell blared, “So, Erica, you got a man in your life?”
None of your fucking business.
“Oh, Arthur. You might have to get some champagne in me first.”
His eyes crawled down her body. “I’m gonna get something in you.”
She swallowed her gag reflex, forced a flirty grin.
The waiter arrived with bread and olives. Arthur shoved his sausage fingers into a brown roll, ripped a chunk off and tossed it in his mouth. He leaned back in his chair and mumbled, mouth full, “Come on, then. Give it to me.”
Miss Morgan cocked a teasing eyebrow. “Give it to you?”
“Reasons why I should invest my hard-earned dough into Million Eyes.”
She leaned low over the table to accent her breasts, her shiny black locks spilling over the tablecloth, and sunk her eyes into his. “Because Million Eyes will change the world.”
As expected, his eyes kept straying to her breasts. “Big words. How so?”
At this wholly inopportune moment, Miss Morgan’s phone rang. She frowned and fished it from her handbag. “I’m sorry, Arthur, do excuse me.” She looked at the screen on the front. Unknown number. And underneath. Unknown temporal variant.
Someone was calling – from another time.
“Arthur, forgive me. I have to take this.” She stood up and wrap
ped her silver and black brocade stole around her arms. Then she leaned towards Pell and said, winking at him, “I’ll promise I’ll make it up to you.”
In his deep, lecherous voice, “You better.”
She walked as fast as her tight blue gown and four-inch stilettos would allow, exiting the restaurant onto the pavement. Phone still ringing, she walked a little down the street to a quieter spot and finally answered, “Hello?”
A familiar voice replied, “Hello, Erica. It’s me… Erica.”
“Excuse me?”
“I am you. I am you from the future.”
She didn’t know how to respond. Yes, Million Eyes had secretly invented time travel and Miss Morgan had had various conversations with colleagues across time, but never with herself. She knew it was feasible but it just seemed so incredible, so unreal, so weird. She couldn’t quite believe it.
More to the point, if this really was her future self calling, wasn’t it an enormous temporal infraction?
Finally finding some words, “What do you want?”
Future Erica’s voice was thick with confidence, “I’m calling from a time when Million Eyes is the most powerful company in the world and you are its CEO.”
CEO! Admittedly it felt good to hear that.
Future Erica continued, “Your dinner with Arthur Pell was a contributing factor to both those things.”
“Then why are you interrupting it?”
“Because you need to know that there are people out there who want to destroy us, and that we’ve had to go to great lengths to suppress them.”
It sounded grave but Miss Morgan couldn’t help the not-really-pertinent questions darting through her head. How different was the future? What things had changed in her life? Was her wretched mother still refusing to die or had she finally kicked the bucket?
Future Erica noticed. “Erica? Did you hear what I said?”
She tried to focus. “What sorts of lengths?”
She heard her future self inhale. “I gather you’ve been watching the news the past couple of days.”
“Yes. I’ve seen some. It’s hard to avoid.”