True Path

by Graham Storrs

  Polanski smiled. “That’s what I was trying to do when you started playing soccer with my head.”

  She smiled back. “OK. You’ve got the floor.”

  He chuckled at the joke. “It didn’t say in your file that you were some kind of martial arts expert. Did MI5 teach you those moves?”

  She snorted with derision. “You know a lot less than you think. Why don’t you just get on with it?”

  “I’ve got a project I’d like you to work on,” he said, surprising her. “It requires your unique skillset. That’s why you were top of my list.”

  “And you couldn’t just offer me a contract, like anybody normal?”

  “That’s the problem. I ain’t just anybody normal.”

  Beside him, Peter was struggling to sit up. “You’re gonna be sorry for what you done, bitch,” he said, glaring at Sandra.

  “Peter!” Polanski’s tone was harsh. “You apologize to Miss Malone. We’re the ones in the wrong here. If you go around kidnapping folks, you can expect a bit of rough treatment from them if you let them get the upper hand. It’s only reasonable.”

  Peter looked as if he’d been slapped in the face. He cast down his eyes. “I was just sore, Zak. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  After a moment, he looked up at Sandra. “I’m sorry, Miss. I hope you don’t take offense.”

  Sandra gaped at them in disbelief. What was wrong with these people? Maybe they were just crazy. Maybe there really wasn’t any rational explanation for the kidnapping. “OK,” she said, standing up. “It was nice meeting you guys, but I need to be on my way now. If you’re ever in the UK again, don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

  “Don’t you want to know what the project is?” Polanski asked. Before she could tell him just how little she wanted to know, he said, “We need to you run a timesplash for us. I want you to help me get back to Washington, 1735.”

  Again, she goggled. “You two must be the craziest pair of kidnapping arseholes on the planet. I can’t begin to count the number of reasons why you picked the wrong girl for your harebrained scheme. Let me give you a few words of advice. Timesplashing isn’t nearly as much fun as you might have heard. Sure, there’s the buildings crumbling around you, and the streets are full of screaming people in pain, but, honestly, it takes a special kind of psychopath to enjoy watching a pavement turn to quicksand and swallow a baby in its pushchair, or a little girl screaming and dying a thousand times as a runaway truck smashes into her tiny body over and over again.” She stopped, the memories overwhelming her as they always did. She looked angrily at Polanski. “If you want kicks, take up bareknuckle boxing. Timesplashing is for the seriously deranged.”

  She was about to go, but her anger was growing by the minute and she couldn’t stop herself. “So you thought you’d just grab yourself a teknik and build a rig, did you? Jump back, shoot your grandmother, and have a wild ride? Was that the plan? To hell with all the people back at the lob site when the backwash comes to tear up their world and kill and maim them? What in God’s name do you think would induce me ever to be a part of that kind of insanity ever again? Were you going to threaten me? Pay me? Seduce me? Because, I tell you, there is nothing you’ve got, nothing you could do to me, that would ever persuade me to help you. Nothing.”

  Even as she said it, she realized there was one thing. Just one thing. But if they had Cara, surely they would have said something by now. She turned to make her exit but didn’t take a single step. There in the doorway, was the woman she had dismissed as harmless. Only now she had a double-barreled shotgun pointing at Sandra’s chest. How long the woman had been there, Sandra had no idea, but it would certainly explain Polanski’s insouciance. Maybe there had never been a time she could have escaped from the moment she had walked back into the bedroom.

  “Shit,” she said, and sat down on the bed.

  The woman threw a kitchen knife onto the floor by her feet and said something in Spanish.

  “She’d like you to free us now,” Polanski said.

  Sandra considered her chances of throwing the knife at the woman and grabbing the gun while she was distracted. There was a slim chance it would work, but nothing she wanted to risk her life on. So she picked it up and cut Polanski’s ties and then the boy’s.

  They got up and rubbed their wrists. Polanski went over to the woman and took the gun from her. They exchanged a few words in Spanish and she left. Sandra sat down again and waited, staring at the floor and silently calling herself every rude name she could think of.

  “I’d like to think I could still persuade you to help us,” Polanski said.

  Sandra didn’t even look at him. “Dream on, arsehole.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “What if I told you that by helping us, you could free my people and restore democracy to my country?”

  Wanting to see his face, she looked up at him. He was not smiling. He was dead serious.

  Chapter 6: Cara

  Cara let Jay lead her through the busy streets of Brussels. He stopped at a quiet café where the manager seemed to know him. It was still mid-morning and there were few other customers. Jay ordered coffees and croissants and then turned his attention back to her to continue his questioning.

  “When were you born? The exact date.”

  Irritated, she told him. She could see his brain clanking through the calculations. “I’m not lying,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t think this is the most important issue right now.”

  He seemed bewildered. Her mum had said that he could be a bit slow sometimes, that you had to spell things out, say things three times before he finally got it. She had seemed to think it was cute, but Cara was finding it infuriating.

  “No, I think it’s pretty damned important,” Jay said. “Trust me, there’s a lot going on in my life right now, but a fifteen-year-old girl turning up out of nowhere and claiming to be my daughter pretty much trumps everything.”

  “Not everything,” she said. She could tell him why she was there if he’d just shut up for a minute. It had been nonstop questions ever since he sprang on her like some sort of mugger in that alley.

  “How did you get here?” He was off again. “Does your mother know where you are? Where is she? Is she in Brussels too? How long have you been here? Where are you staying?” He kept asking question after question without even waiting for an answer.

  “Dad,” she said, wanting him to stop and listen.

  The word hit him like a punch in the gut. For a moment he looked so stricken, so hurt, that Cara recoiled in alarm. His lips moved but he made no sound, as if the engine that had driven his endless stream of questions had slipped a cog and couldn’t work his mouth any more. It was her chance to jump in and speak but now she couldn’t. That look of pain in her father’s face held her both fascinated and appalled.

  Eventually he found his voice again but all he seemed able to manage was one word. “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why didn’t she tell me? Why keep it—keep you—a secret all these years? Why …?” He seemed to struggle with his breathing and, to her horror, Cara saw tears in his eyes. “I thought she …”

  Loved me.

  Cara could hear the unspoken words as clearly as if he had shouted them. For a moment, she thought about getting out of there, just getting up and leaving. This was all too much. It wasn’t what she expected. She didn’t know what to do with this stranger’s—her father’s—heartbreak. Yet she had a message, something she had to do. Whatever else happened.

  “Mum’s been kidnapped.” She watched her father stop and frown. He shook his head, like he was reeling from another blow...

  “What?”

  “Two men took her. Olivia saw it. She was there. They were Americans. They grabbed Olivia outside the lab and tied her up and then they took Mum.”

  Jay began floundering again. “The lab? Olivia? What?”

  Cara had arrived home that day from school to find the police and Olivia waiting for her. She
remembered the shock, and she remembered the nasty smell of the police woman’s uniform. She remembered lots of stupid little details, but she couldn’t remember what anybody said, or how it had come to be almost bedtime before Olivia found the chance to get her alone and say, “Your Mum said to tell you it’s the first four numbers of the Fibonacci series.”

  Cara had known instantly what that meant. It was the combination to the safe, the safe that held her mum’s instructions for what to do if bad things happened. She’d always thought her mum was an old drama queen, that nothing would ever happen to either of them in sleepy old Norwich, that they’d both grow old and die of boredom in that rural backwater. Her mother was always warning her to be careful about people she met, to stay clear of reporters, to avoid talking about her past to her friends. She made Cara report home all the time if she ever went anywhere. She’d tried and tried to get Cara to take karate lessons and made her carry pepper spray and an illegal stunner with her all the time. There were two bags in her mum’s wardrobes, one bag for each of them with spare clothes, passport activation codes, and money. She thought her mum was mad, a crazy person, paranoid—probably from doing too many drugs in the ’Forties. But here it was, the bad thing, the one her mother had warned her about. It was real. It was happening.

  She had run to the safe in her mother’s bedroom and tapped in the sequence. Inside were two envelopes. On one was written: “Read this if I’m dead.” On the other: “Read this if I’ve gone missing.”

  She’d snatched up the “missing” envelope and torn it open. She tried to read it but it didn’t make sense. She tried to focus harder, to look closer, but there was no information in it and the words were a gray blur. She gripped the paper tighter as if she could force it to make sense by sheer willpower. Then she realized she was crying. Her eyes were dripping tears. Her mother had been kidnapped. She was in danger. She might never see her again.

  Cara couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand up. The fear was unbearable, maddening. She couldn’t lose her mother. It couldn’t happen. She needed her. She wanted her so much it felt as if her insides were tearing apart. She fell to the ground, sitting on her mum’s carpet, clutching at the quilt on her mum’s bed, breathing her mum’s scent. What if these were the last things of hers she would ever know? What if these things were all she had left?

  Olivia came into the room and Cara shouted at her to go away. Olivia had let them take her mum. She’d been useless. She’d just let it happen. She didn’t want to see Olivia ever again. She pulled the quilt from the bed and squeezed it to her, sobbing into it, all restraint gone.

  -oOo-

  It was dark when Cara woke up. She was on the floor, the quilt under her and a blanket on top of her—put there by Olivia, she guessed. She crawled over to the bedside table and turned on a light. She remembered the letter from her mother and searched the bedclothes for it. The letter was on the floor, under the quilt, crumpled and torn. Frantically, she laid out the pieces on the bed, smoothed them down, tried not to drip and more tears on them. Angry at herself for being so useless, she wiped her eyes clear and read the letter.

  Dear Cara,

  The only reason you’re reading this is because something terrible has happened—or you’ve added safe cracking to your many other accomplishments. I know you must be worried and frightened right now but it’s going to be all right. There is someone who can help you—and me. I want you to go to your father. Take your running away bag and go now. The sooner you get to him, the sooner he will be able to help us. I know I promised you I’d take you to meet him when you were old enough and I know this isn’t any way to say hello to your dad, but that can’t be helped. He’ll get over the shock soon enough and after that, I promise you, he will move Heaven and Earth to find me and to make sure you’re safe. I’ve always told you he’s a good man. The nicest man you’ll ever meet. And it’s true. He just does a dangerous job in a world I’ve always tried my hardest to keep you well away from.

  Well, it looks like that world—the world of my misspent youth—has finally caught up with me. There isn’t anyone else you can turn to except Jay to keep you safe and help find out where I am. The local police won’t be any use. Don’t waste your time with them. Jay has better resources and he’s smarter than anyone they could put on the case.

  Don’t tell anyone where you’re going—not even our friends. Anyone you tell could put you in danger, or you could be putting them in danger. Just slip away quietly and find your father.

  I’ve never told you but I set it up so you can access my credit and my bank account. The passwords are attached. Program them into your commplant and then burn the piece of paper. Your father’s work address is also attached, along with the home address of his friend, Jacques Bauchet, in case Jay isn’t there anymore for some reason. If you can’t find him, come home and let Olivia look after you. I asked her if she would and she told me I need never worry about you being alone or uncared for.

  That’s all, darling. Be careful. Go to Jay. And remember that I love you more than anything in the world. I’m so sorry this has happened, but I know you will be strong and brave and that I’ll be proud of you.

  With all my love,

  Mum.

  PS The other letter you found in the safe—the one you read when I’m dead—you can safely ignore. It’s the one with all the smoochy stuff about how much I love you. Get to Jay and come and find me and I can slobber all over you in person, OK?

  Cara called a taxi and went downstairs to the sitting room, carrying her bag. There she found Olivia asleep on the sofa, looking uncomfortable. A wave of gratitude washed through her for her mum’s friend, but then she immediately felt guilty about what she would have to do. She opened the fridge and grabbed a carton of milk, taking a long drink before returning it.

  She used her commplant to write a note to Olivia. Please don’t worry. And don’t come looking for me. I’ve gone to find Mum. It was her idea. Thanks for everything, Cara. She set the message to send in one hour. By then, she would be far away.

  She stepped outside and closed the door quietly behind her. The taxi she had called appeared within minutes and she climbed in. “Airport,” she said and the driverless vehicle whined into motion, smoothly accelerating along the road. She looked back at her home and felt it being drawn away from her.

  -oOo-

  Sitting in a café in Brussels talking to this strange man who was really her father was the end of a long journey. Cara was filled with sadness and anxiety and hope. Now, as she regarded Jay Kennedy while he floundered around trying to make sense of it all, she wondered what her mum had seen in him all those years ago. He wasn’t bad looking, she supposed, in a tall, gangly, boyish sort of way, but she knew he wasn’t her mum’s type at all. And yet her mum always went on about how very nice Jay was. She made him sound like one of those blokes who ran the youth club in the Church annexe. And her mum and Jay had met when they were very young—not much older than Cara was now. They’d shared some big adventure back then, she knew. They’d been together during the Big Splash—although her mum had always been infuriatingly vague about just what had happened. Maybe they were both caught up in some kind of adrenaline rush at the time. It was hard to see any other explanation for them getting together, in her opinion.

  “All right,” Jay said. He’d said “all right” about twenty times so far. “Let’s start at the beginning.” And then he stopped, again with that bewildered look. For him the beginning was sixteen years ago, she supposed, and the thought of the road from there to here seemed to overwhelm him. With a sigh, Cara decided to take charge.

  “Look, Mum told me all about you. She said you were some kind of cop and your life was dangerous. She said she wanted to keep me safe from all that so that I never got sucked into it, or something. She’s completely paranoid about it. Said if you ever knew about me that you’d want us to move to Brussels, or you’d come to Norwich, and it would all start up again.”

  “Jesus,” her dad mutte
red. He sounded angry. Cara pressed on.

  “She always said her past had been stupid and reckless and there were people from back then who might want to hurt her—and you—and me. So she kept me quiet. She doesn’t have many friends—just Olivia really—and we don’t go out to places where anyone would know us. I only just realized that a couple of years ago. She just said it was better that way. And she freaks out if there’s ever a hint that the press is onto us.”

  “Olivia’s the one who saw the kidnapping?” Jay seemed to be getting over the shock at last.

  “You know her, Mum told me. She used to call herself Nahrees.”

  Jay struggled with his memory for a couple of seconds before he remembered. “But she was … I thought your mum wanted to get away from all that.”

  It had always seemed odd to Cara too. “Yeah, that’s the weird thing. She went off and got all these degrees and stuff and then she decides to work in a time travel lab with an ex-teknik.”

  “A time travel lab?”

  “At the University of East Anglia. They do research on—”

  “On remote sensing of historical events.” Jay had either been running searches or he had a good knowledge of the field. “So Olivia is … Dr. Olivia Bradley, right? I never knew her real name. And Sandra works for her?”

  “Mum’s the teknik these days. She makes cute little insect probe things that go back to watch ancient battles and all that.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  There was a long silence while Jay digested this new information. Cara picked at her croissant. It seemed to be just plain bread. She looked about for some butter.

  “All right,” Jay said again. “So Sandra—your mum—and Olivia were in the lab and you say Olivia went out for a walk and two guys grabbed her and brought her back in. Then they tied her up and took your mum away. And there was no fighting and no struggle? She just went with them?”

  Cara nodded. She could see what he meant. “Mum’s on the uni karate team. You’d think she could have kicked their butts, right? But Olivia said Mum was trying to save her.” It was good that her mum was so self-sacrificing and everything, but Cara wished she’d just kicked the bastards to death and let Olivia take her chances.