by Donna Hosie
“Screw The 48!”
“That’s Katie,” I gasped.
“I think one of the other voices is Willem’s,” said Charlie. “He was her Asset contact for the Beijing assignment forty-eight days ago.”
“What the hell are they doing here? Should we go help?”
“No,” replied Charlie sharply. “There was nothing in our briefing about meeting up with other Assets. And it’s not like they have to keep us informed of every mission TOD’s running. This could be a test.”
“A test? For us? Out in broad daylight? That’s insane! The 48 is as covert as it gets.”
“I know,” replied Charlie, biting his lip.
We listened in silence for another twenty seconds or so. Someone was going to be in serious trouble back at The 48 for making this so public. But Charlie was right; we couldn’t allow it to become our problem.
Then Katie started screaming and the side doors of the silver van were suddenly pulled back.
“What are they doing?” asked Charlie.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I don’t like it.” Several Tenets were running through my head, but it wasn’t my voice reciting them. It was the voice of Piermont, the one senior Asset who terrified me above all others.
Then we saw our colleagues.
Willem, portly and bald on top, was being dragged toward the van; he was trying to fight off two other men who weren’t saying a word, despite the altercation. They were dressed in gray sweatpants and black T-shirts, and another two people had Katie by the arms and legs as well.
I dropped the curtain before anyone looked up and saw us. Then I grabbed the TV remote. I would block out the noise with a French soap opera if I had to.
But I couldn’t quiet my mind. I knew how things were supposed to be done in our world. If this was a disposal of an aging Asset, then it would still have been covert. One day they were there, the next day they weren’t. It definitely wasn’t done on a public street—in the daylight. Piermont’s voice practically sang the section in the Tenets about disposal in my head.
No Asset will continue with The 48 once their forty-eighth year comes to an end. At that age, an Asset’s health, like any person’s, will have begun its terminal decline. Impaired eyesight, fitness, and mental capacity are liabilities that can result in both the death of other Assets and assignment failure. Thus all Assets must operate at full capacity at all times. Those Assets incapacitated by incurable illness/disease before their forty-eighth year will also be terminated. There are no exceptions.
“I don’t like this, Charlie,” I repeated.
“It doesn’t matter, Alex,” said Charlie. “If we don’t move fast we’re going to miss our assignment. Shut off the TV and get ready.”
I caught my reflection in a grimy mirror near the door as I obeyed. The blood had drained from my face. I looked like a ghost.
Charlie softened. “Look, we’ll find out what happened as soon as we get back.”
“Do we have a backup plan?” I asked quietly. “Just in case.”
“Of course not.” Then Charlie glanced at the window. “But it probably wouldn’t hurt…”
My brother was always one step ahead of me. So I didn’t question him as he pulled out a wad of hundred-euro notes and taped them to the underside of a large lamp with a rectangular base.
“Even if it’s moved for dusting, no one will find it unless they physically pick up the lamp and look underneath it,” he explained.
“Good idea,” I replied. “Now, what about—”
I didn’t have to finish my sentence. Both of us always instinctively knew what the other was thinking. We were supposed to leave our passports in a PIN-protected locker near the Louvre.
The number had been provided by The 48, which meant they could access it at any time.
“I think we should leave the passports here too—just in case we fail and forget the number to the locker,” I said. “Judging by the dust in this place, no one has cleaned it since 1973.”
“We won’t fail,” said Charlie reassuringly. “Not at any of this. We’ve already assimilated into the court. We’ll just be picking up where we left off. Everything’s going to be fine.”
But he left the passports with the money anyway.
* * *
—
Fifteen minutes later, my brother and I were in a taxi, heading for the Louvre, and forcing whatever the hell had just happened with Willem and Katie to the periphery of our minds.
Our assignment was on.
We of The 48 do not become Assets until we possess an appreciation of special relativity and general relativity. Physics is an Imperative area of study. The works of Albert Einstein are required reading. To Outsiders, time travel is a subject of fiction. To The 48, it is real, present, and the means to our success.
Reciting Tenet excerpts calmed me down. So I said them in my head the entire way to the museum. I focused on elements of the time travel Tenet, which had always made me feel good. Special. Like I was part of something important.
I glanced at my brother as I did my recitations. Trainee Assets sometimes asked me if looking at Alex was like looking in a mirror. We weren’t the only set of twins at The 48, but we were probably the most obvious on account of our height and hair color.
Most of the time I replied yes, just to be polite, before excusing myself from the conversation. But in truth, finding Alex wasn’t like finding my reflection, because when I looked at my brother I saw not only his features, but also his personality. And we were different. Alex rarely excused himself from anything. He reveled in being noticed. In that very important way, Alex and I were nothing alike, and secretly I envied him—just a little.
* * *
—
Alex and I had been born on a Sunday. For Outsiders, Sunday tended to be convenient for things like births—or funerals, or grocery shopping—because Sunday wasn’t a workday.
The day of our birth was neither convenient nor inconvenient for our parents, because they weren’t Outsiders. Every day was a workday for them, including the Sunday—three years after our birth—when our father was terminated.
Just like his father before him.
Our mother followed our father into oblivion two years later.
Just like her mother before her.
I didn’t want to follow in their footsteps, but I’d always known my chances of reaching middle age were nonexistent.
I was one of The 48. We didn’t live to see the age of forty-nine.
* * *
—
We’d flown to France from Toronto. The 48’s compound was in Canada, not because of any allegiance to that country’s government, but simply because of geographical convenience. It had huge swaths of land that were remote enough for us to operate discreetly, but still close enough to civilization to quickly access what we needed to exist in relative comfort. And to do training in the midst of Outsiders. Interaction with the outside world was necessary for our education, of course, and growing up, we were often taken into the field.
The field never came to us, though. Outsiders were forbidden at The 48. Our leaders were happiest when we were running as insularly and self-sufficiently as possible, so when it came to things like meals, or maintenance, or making babies, we looked no further than our own walls.
As for TOD, we had no idea where it was headquartered. Alice told me she’d once heard a rumor that it operated secretly under the very noses of the UN delegates in New York. What we did know for sure was that the time writers who became the founding fathers and mothers of The 48 were from many different nations.
* * *
—
Our cabdriver had gotten us to the Louvre in record time—so early that Alex and I had a few minutes to kill before our meetup. We opted to meld with the huge crowd swarming the Mona Lisa. Hundreds of tourists with camera phones were
trying to take photos above one another’s heads. Most of them would end up getting the surrounding walls or a reflected flash, as the painting was sealed behind thick, bulletproof glass.
“This is ridiculous,” said Alex. “And boring. Entertain me, Charlie.”
I ignored him and concentrated on the painting. Personally, I didn’t see the appeal. It was small. Colorless. Nondescript.
It was also a fake. The 48 had the real one hidden in a safe house in Italy. Assets couldn’t use historic artifacts if they were covered in protective glass.
My brother nudged me again, harder than the first time, nearly propelling me into the thick red rope that had been placed in front of the painting. I glared at him.
“Knock it off, Alex,” I growled. “Are you trying to draw attention?”
“Lighten up. I’m just eager to get this thing started.”
“Do us both a favor and shut up,” I whispered. “It’s not time yet. Let’s move.”
Alex smiled and followed me obediently. I was the older twin by four minutes, but I knew I sometimes acted like I was four years older. Or maybe it was that Alex acted four years younger. Either way, I felt responsible for him, despite what Aramis had written about the importance of looking out for number one. What a pointless piece of paper. Alex and I had been so annoyed by it that we’d tossed it the second we left the physics block.
In the relative quiet of the adjacent gallery, I checked my watch.
“We have ten minutes,” I said, placing my hand on my brother’s upper arm. He was rippling with tension and excitement. “We can head up to the second floor now—but only if you calm down. We can’t stand out.”
My brother gave me a look. The look. The look that said We’re six feet tall, redheads, and twins. Of course we’ll stand out.
Then he smiled and squeezed my shoulder, just long enough to ease some of my tension, before darting past The Coronation of Napoleon to the stairs.
When I reached the second floor, Alex was waiting.
“Where are we meeting Grinch again?” he asked. “I know they moved the painting.”
“Outside room twelve. It was in the paperwork, remember?” I said, wondering just how seriously Alex was taking all this. But as we walked toward room 12, I noticed that he seemed to shrink a little. His movements were slower, more deliberate. He was breathing in through his nose, doing the calming exercises The 48 drilled into us on a daily basis.
It was hitting him, just as it was hitting me, that this was it.
* * *
—
Grinch was waiting. Naturally. She was so timely she would arrive early for her own funeral, not that she’d ever have one. The 48 didn’t do funerals.
Grinch wasn’t her real name, of course. The Deputy Director of The 48 had earned the moniker because she had a slight green tinge to her skin: a side effect of the radiation that was worse in the older Assets because of the amount of time traveling they had done. The nickname stuck only because Grinch wanted it to. Some people said she never shut it down because she was secretly fond of it, which in itself was remarkable because Grinch was the least sentimental person on the planet.
There were rumors about a lot of things at The 48, but I tried not to pay attention. Tenets, Imperatives, and my training were all that mattered. Gossip sure as hell wouldn’t keep me alive.
* * *
—
Grinch’s sickly coloring looked even more pronounced under the artificial lights of the museum. She was reading a floor map. It was totally for show. Grinch knew every nook, every cranny of the Louvre. She had been coming here since she was seventeen. This would be her last year. She was forty-seven years old.
* * *
—
“Bonjour, Charles. Bonjour, Alexandre,” said Grinch in flawless French.
“Bonjour, Madame,” we replied in unison. Our French was perfect too. Authentic. We had been students of the world, past and present, since we could crawl.
“You have four minutes left, gentlemen,” said Grinch, switching quietly to English. “Room twelve is clear and the cameras have been disabled. The collection of Tudor artwork is in place. It will remain that way until forty-eight days have passed.”
Alex inhaled sharply. It was suddenly all too real. We had been gone from the Tudor court for two weeks. This time we would not return to the present day until our time had run out and we were pulled back through the cosmic string.
“You have everything,” said Grinch. It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. Of course I had everything. Since arriving in Paris two days earlier, I’d been on near-constant inventory patrol. I had triple-checked our packs the night before, and double-checked that morning to make sure Alex hadn’t switched anything around or taken anything out as a joke.
“Very well. Then I suggest you take the next half minute to visit the bathroom,” said Grinch, indicating the restroom in the hall next to us. “You do not want to arrive at your destination in wet pants.”
Grinch had no sense of humor, so we knew she wasn’t joking.
“I’m okay,” I replied. I glanced at Alex. He was chewing on the inside of his cheek. He shook his head.
“Fine. Then I’ll leave you with a few reminders. As before, concentrate on the vanishing point,” said Grinch. “Do not take the pill until you are fixed on it. This is a portrait, not a landscape, so the vanishing point is harder to find. Recall that your arrival on your reconnaissance mission did not go according to plan. This time your thread will take you to Wolsey’s apartments, so you won’t be tempted to misbehave again. Your timer will activate when you arrive. You’ve been given forty-eight-day pills, and you will be brought back to the present after forty-eight days have elapsed. Remember that at that time, you must be fixed on the vanishing point of a painting in the Tudor court that still exists in the present day.”
We knew all this, but as I glanced at my brother, I was finally seeing the mirror-me. His face was pale; his pupils were so large it was as if someone had blotted black ink over his blue irises.
He looked how I felt.
Grinch lifted the sleeve of her cream-colored blouse to check her watch. “It’s time. Please enter room twelve. You know the painting: Portrait of Henry VIII. Look beyond the image and concentrate on your intended time destination.”
“Time destination,” we repeated.
“Take the blue pill once you are fixed,” said Grinch.
“Will you be here when we get back?” asked Alex, securing his backpack over both shoulders.
“No,” replied Grinch. She nodded once, turned, and walked away. No goodbyes. No good lucks. Nothing.
“Did you notice how green she looked?” muttered Alex. “I swear she’s actually morphing into an amphibian.”
“She doesn’t have long left,” I replied as we entered room 12 and a riot of color assaulted my senses. The paintings on loan to the Louvre there were larger than life—literally.
“Do you think we’ll turn green if we get to her age?”
“If I reach her age, I’ll be happy to be green with blue spots.”
“We’re gonna be okay,” said Alex. “I’ve read through the archives like a hundred times. Only three Assets have ever died on their first assignment.”
“Don’t look through the archives for deaths,” I snapped. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because I wanted to know what the odds were of us reaching our eighteenth birthday,” replied my brother.
* * *
—
I sensed that Alex, at least, was cautiously optimistic about our chances. Our assignment was to prevent Henry VIII from marrying Jane Seymour. She was a devout Catholic, and her death as queen would see a resurgence in the Catholic faith in England as people mourned for the “sainted” wife who gave them hope after the toxic years of Anne Boleyn’s reign.
Our assignment was a small piece of a large puzzle. The 48 had been ordered by TOD to start working to eradicate religion from history throughout the ages. The process had to be implemented in stages and was so expansive we knew it wouldn’t be finished within our short lifetimes. TOD believed that all religions had—or eventually would—become a catalyst for conflict among people. For humankind to endure, we were told, the religious past had to be changed. That meant TOD needed Assets from The 48 deployed around the world, in every country, through time. My brother and I were but two of hundreds. In our case, we’d been sent to ensure the continuation of the Reformation ushered in by Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.
Alex and I had authorization to kill Jane if necessary, but it wouldn’t come to that. Not only because my brother and I enjoyed a psychological challenge, but also because it wouldn’t be much of a challenge to begin with. The king didn’t love Jane. To his disgusting way of thinking, she was just a walking incubator, like all of his other wives. We would be able to change his mind easily. And we’d be doing Jane Seymour the biggest favor she’d ever get.
* * *
—
I checked my watch, then unstrapped it and left it on the floor. I wouldn’t need it where we were going.
One minute to go. Alex and I quickly wound our kit bags to our torsos and took our places in front of the life-sized painting of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger. TOD physicists had worked out the exact spot at which cosmic strings were most stable, and the timings of our departures from the present and past were calculated to ensure that we arrived in one piece. I was thinking of none of that, though, as I stood in front of the painting. If this calculation was not correct to the microsecond, violent oscillations in the loops would split the natural atomic radiation in our bodies into a million fragments.