Written in Time

by Jerry Ahern

  A PICTURE WORTH A HUNDRED YEARS

  Ellen opened the envelope. There was a copy of a photograph, just a Xerox, but remarkably clear. It was a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Naile and their two (unnamed) children.

  “This has to be an elaborate practical joke, Jack.”

  “Lemme see, princess.”

  She handed it to him. Despite the age of the photograph and the fact that it was a Xerox, the resemblance between the Naile family of nine decades ago and the Naile family of today was enough to make her want to throw up.

  She’d been looking out the Suburban’s open window but now focused on the other items in the envelope. There was a summary of its contents, typed on an old-seeming machine, Arthur Beach’s name scrawled at the bottom.

  “The Naile family arrived in town in 1896. They were apparently on their way to California for some new business when their wagon suffered an accident and was destroyed. Reduced to only a few personal belongings, the Nailes seemingly had considerable financial resources. There is no material yet available to me mentioning the fate of their descendants, nor concerning how or when Mr. and Mrs. Naile eventually died. The county medical examiner’s office burned to the ground in the 1940s, all death certificates archived there destroyed. I’ll keep looking.’”

  “Holy—”

  “Tell him to stop looking, Jack!”

  “Startling resemblance, that photograph. I’ll say that.”

  “Jack, it’s you and me and David and Elizabeth, and the picture was taken almost a hundred years ago!”

  WRITTEN IN TIME This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real persons and/or business/corporate entities is purely coincidental and unintentional. Copyright © 2010 by Jerry Ahern and Sharon Ahern A Baen Books Original Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 www.baen.com

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3399-6 First printing, November 2010 Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For our children and our children’s children and our nephew; in family, there is strength.

  PROLOGUE

  John Naile turned the Cadillac off the county highway and onto the black pavement of a pine-flanked single lane road. Not yet that familiar with his latest vehicular acquisition, he took his eyes off the road and glanced at the wood-accented dashboard in order to find the cigar lighter. He found the lighter and pushed it in. There was a half-filled package of Luckies in the cigarette pocket of his single-breasted gray suit. He started to reach for a cigarette.

  “You should try being pregnant sometime, John.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that, sweetheart,” Naile replied, looking over at his wife in the front seat beside him. Audrey was nearing the end of what she called her “first trimester,” but hardly looked pregnant at all. The A-line skirt of her maroon suit barely showed a bulge, even when she was sitting.

  “No, what I mean is these seats. I don’t know what it was about the ‘63. I mean, John, I really didn’t notice it until I got pregnant. But there was no back support!”

  “I think it’s more your back than it was the seats, babe. The New Yorker was a comfortable car.” He’d gone through two Chryslers, one Lincoln, a Mercedes and a Ford Country Squire in search of the perfect car for his wife, all because his father wouldn’t buy anything but a Cadillac. When the ‘64 model year was announced, John Naile surrendered to fate and ordered one.

  But John Naile had no intention, however, of abandoning his longtime personal car, the red Thunderbird. He was vice-president of Horizon Industries, the family business. He was married to the girl of his dreams and the arrival of their first child was only six months away. Behind the wheel of the T-Bird, its top off, the sound of its exhaust when he changed gears as throaty as Peggy Lee’s singing—sometimes that sporty little roadster was the only way of reminding himself that he wasn’t yet thirty.

  Adulthood had gotten him used to driving vehicles the size of a sport boat on wheels, but he didn’t have to like them.

  “You want me to try the radio, John, and see how it picks up out here?”

  “Sure, honey.”

  Audrey apparently found WLS at 89 on the AM band from Chicago, or at least it sounded like she had; it was an Elvis Presley song playing. “Do you think Elvis will last, John? Like Sinatra?”

  “I don’t know, Audrey. He’s got a good set of pipes, though.”

  “Okay. What was the first movie you ever took me to, John Naile?”

  “We saw Elvis in King Creole five years ago, one of the theaters in the Loop, and afterward we went to that deli next to the Chicago Theater and we both had hot pastrami. How’s that for being romantic and remembering stuff? Huh?”

  “And you ate most of my pickle.” Audrey laughed softly, sliding over a little closer to him, resting her head against his shoulder. John Naile still had the “lover’s knob” mounted on the wheel of the Thunderbird, but didn’t need one to drive the Cadillac one-handed. Maybe cars like this did have their merits. He folded his right arm around his wife. Despite her Jackie Kennedy-esque pillbox hat, he could still kiss his wife’s hair. He touched his lips to her forehead. The scent of her hair, her perfume and the new-car smell of the Cadillac’s leather seats all mingled very pleasantly. He’d forgotten to light his cigarette and didn’t want to at the moment; the smoke would dispel the ambience.

  “Glad you married me?” Naile asked.

  “Well, I’ve had to put up with a lot, John, you being rich and all, with Horizon Industries being one of the leading defense contractors and everything, and that White House dinner when we met President Eisenhower and Dick Nixon. Stuff like that. And then there’s your mom and dad—they’re so nice to me it’s almost spooky! The first time I met them, it was as if they expected you to bring me home and they knew we were going to get married.”

  “Get Mom to show you her crystal ball sometime,” Naile laughed. “I never told you about her Gypsy blood, did I? And was that a yes? About being happy you married me?”

  Audrey turned her face up toward him and kissed his cheek. She whispered, “Yes, silly.” Her right hand drifted under his jacket, one smooth finger finding an opening between two shirt buttons.

  “Quit that!” He wedged his knee against the steering wheel for a split second and feigned a slap at her hand.

  “Why’d they make such a big deal about us coming up on a weekday?” Audrey did that sort of thing, picking up a conversation almost randomly. This one dated from when they’d first gotten into the car almost two hours earlier. “I mean, it’s always good to see them; I really love your folks. But you said you had a lot of stuff to do at the office with that new rocket-shooter thing and—”

  “Beats me, babe,” he told Audrey honestly. “All Dad said was that nothing could interfere with us being here this afternoon—not even prototyping the launcher.”

  Although John Naile handled the day-to-day running of Horizon Industries with a relatively free hand, his father was still president, chairman of the board and chief executive officer. Why Horizon was developing an inexpensively produced, disposable rocket launcher without any indication that the Pentagon was looking for one was something John Naile had never fully understood. With the apparent rush on the research and development so they could move into prototyping, wiping out a full day to come up to the estate was even more enigmatic. “I really don’t know,” he added lamely, “but Dad’ll tell us.”

  The weather WLS was reporting for Chicago didn’t match at all what John Naile saw through the Cadillac’s windshield. Usually,
central Wisconsin would have worse weather this time of year, but on this day at this moment, it was a classically beautiful November landscape through which they drove. They’d been on the grounds of the estate since twenty feet or so after leaving the county highway. And suddenly, he was reminded of the musical “Camelot,” the song that Richard Burton sang about the sheer perfection of that mythical kingdom’s climate. This was such a place this day, and John Naile wouldn’t have been too much surprised to learn that James Naile had decreed it thus.

  John Naile glanced at his watch and compared the Rolex to the dashboard clock; surprisingly, they were in perfect agreement that the time was a few minutes after noon. “You know, how Dad’s pushing how great Cadlillacs are and everything? I’ll say one thing—the clock keeps time.”

  “I still like the seats, John.”Audrey Naile pulled her legs up under her and nuzzled her nose against his neck.

  “Is that okay for you to sit like that? All scrunched up and everything?”

  “I’m not that pregnant, John. It’s still okay for me to do a lot of stuff.”

  “Hmm,” John Naile murmured.

  “Hmm, indeed. Maybe after we leave your parents’ place, we can—”

  “Why don’t we spend the night at Lake Lawn Lodge?” John Naile suggested.

  “I don’t have any clothes with me, John.”

  “You won’t need any for what I’ve got in mind. Besides, we can buy what we need, or you can borrow something from Mom.”

  “‘Gee, Mary Ann? Could I borrow some stockings and underwear? Your son and I are going to go misbehave and—’”

  “Hush,” he scolded his wife good-naturedly. The road was just about to split at the driveway leading to the main house, the fork to the left leading deeper into the property. The turn was a little sharp, and John Naile slowed the Cadillac before making the right. Audrey sat up and smoothed her dress. She slid over fully into the passenger side, turned down the visor and began adjusting her hat and her hair in the vanity mirror. As always, she wore very little makeup; when she woke up beside him each morning, she looked as perfect as if she’d spent hours in front of a mirror.

  All of this—the very comfortable living he made, the estate which someday he would inherit, and all the other family investments—was thanks to David Naile, who founded Horizon Industries in 1914 and never made a bad investment in his life. Phenomenal business judgment seemed to be a family trait. James Naile, David’s son and John’s father, bought large blocks of stock in obscure companies that always grew into dependable profitability. Who would have figured IBM would have gotten so hot? And why would anyone invest in Japanese electronics? John Naile shook his head just thinking about it.

  “What’s on your mind, besides your fedora, John?”

  “I always think about how things got started, every time I drive up here. My grandfather must have been a genius, you know? He piloted Horizon through the Depression as if there wasn’t any stock-market crash in ‘29 at all. Horizon’s steel foundries refused to sell scrap metal to Imperial Japan, and our aircraft and munitions plants were already working double shifts before Hitler invaded Poland in ‘39. And Dad seems to have his father’s magic touch. You’d better hope I’m just a late bloomer, babe.”

  “It’s experience, John, and you’re getting that.”

  “Maybe.” He nodded soberly. Every once in a while, he’d pick a winner in the stock market, but not that often and never anything that weird. His father and late grandfather possessed skill; with him, it was educated dumb luck.

  After his stint in the army at the end of the Korean War, he’d picked up his sidetracked life and gone to college. Because he “knew” his destiny—Horizon Industries— he’d studied business administration, but carried a second major in music. A certain natural proclivity for the piano and the Naile family jawline seemed to be his principal genetic inheritances from his grandfather, the natural business acumen noticeably lacking. He’d begun growing into that, yes, he supposed, since finishing college in ‘58 and marrying Audrey that same year. But he had a long way to go.

  “Haya Goldsmith was raving about your parents’ place.” Another resurrected conversation appeared magically out of the blue. “Remember when you and your dad had that big dinner for everybody in the international divisions last year? She talked my ear off! Haya loves Tudor; there isn’t a Tudor anywhere in Israel as far as she knows! Did you ever date Haya?”

  “No, she was only thirteen or so when Dad got her dad to start up the Israeli division for him, and their whole family packed up and left the country.” Then John Naile remembered something. “I take that back about dating her, though. The summer before my senior year in high school? Dad took me over to Israel with him on business,

  and I took Haya to a movie once.”

  “What movie did you see with Haya?”

  John Naile thought about it, but couldn’t remember. It was probably just as well that he couldn’t, all things considered. Haya was a genuine knockout, the prettiest comptroller anybody could hope for. Finally he said, “Can’t remember what movie it was.”

  “Right. You’ve got a memory like a steel trap, John.”

  “No kidding, Audrey. Something old with Humphrey Bogart, I think.” Horizon was one of the first companies to pump money into Israel after independence, and—John Naile had learned only in 1960—had secretly smuggled arms to Israel while the fledgling Jewish state fought for its very existence after the British withdrew from Palestine. The man who’d run that clandestine operation for Horizon was the same man David and James Naile had used to coordinate intelligence data for Horizon during World War Two. Horizon had provided Allied Intelligence with a lot of information both the U.S. and Great Britain had cheerfully—and quietly—accepted. The intelligence data concerning the death camps, sadly, the Allied governments had largely—and quietly—chosen to ignore.

  Even in late autumn, the landscaping within the immediate vicinity of the main house and its garage retained a pleasant degree of understated, evergreen elegance. The driveway looped toward the eight-thousand-square-foot Tudor’s three front steps. John could see the front door opening and his father and mother emerging.

  Mary Ann Naile was still a pinup-quality beauty, her son thought. He’d seen plenty of pictures of her from the time when his mom and dad first met and through the years since before he was born. She had a reasonable amount of gray in her shoulder length hair, but didn’t dye it. And she still had her figure, too. There was a heavy cardigan sweater draped over her shoulders, beneath it a silk-looking blouse of the identical shade of gray above a black knee-length skirt, sheer stockings and medium black heels. She hadn’t fallen into the First Lady look that Audrey only occasionally affected.

  James Naile was tall and straight as ever. Facially and structurally, he resembled the great swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in his role opposite Ronald Coleman in The Prisioner of Zenda—or so it had always seemed to John Naile. Only, unlike Fairbanks’ character of the dashing swordsman, James Naile hadn’t a nefarious bone in his body—and he had more gray hair. He wore a white shirt, blue slacks and black loafers, a pipe—unlit— clenched in the right side of his mouth.

  John Naile stopped the car, turned off the engine and climbed out. Before he could cross over to the passenger side, his father was already opening Audrey’s door. “How are you, sweetheart?” James Naile swept Audrey into his arms and hugged her. “You look great, kid! Feeling okay?”

  “Just fine, Jim. Never better.”

  “Good! Good!”

  John took off his hat, intercepted his mother and touched at her shoulder as he gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Oh, John! It’s good to see you.”

  “What’s the matter, Mom? It’s like we haven’t seen each other for months. But it’s less than a week since—”

  “It’s just that it’s today, and today is a funny day, John. Not funny like funny, but funny like—well, I don’t know what.”

  “Are you guys . . . ?”
>
  “We’re fine, the business is fine. Now, go say hello to your father.” John put his arm around his mother’s shoulders and she rested her head against him for a split second, then announced, “Jim! Aren’t you going to say hello to your son?”

  “Sure, after I’m through hugging the pretty girl he came in with.” James Naile turned around and extended his hand. John took it, and his father leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I like the new car, son.”

  “Figured you would, Dad. It’s a Cadillac, as you’ve no doubt noticed.”

  They were all mounting the steps, but before entering the house, Mary Ann said, “Audrey, help me out in the kitchen, will you? We gave everybody the day off, and after Jim and your husband take care of a little business, I thought we could have some lunch.”

  “Sure, Mary Ann,” Audrey responded. “Let me take off my hat and freshen up.”

  “I’ll meet you in the kitchen, then.”

  John Naile caught an odd look in his wife’s eyes as she veered off along the entrance hall. She paused in front of a gateleg table in the hall, set down her purse and looked in the mirror, beginning to remove her hat.

  John Naile looked at his father and mother. “What’s up, guys?”

  James Naile looked at his wristwatch, a Rolex identical to the one John Naile wore. “We don’t have a lot of time, John. Mary Ann?”

  She paused before answering, her eyes following Audrey as her daughter-in-law walked out of sight. “I know. Linger over making lunch.”

  “Yeah.” James Naile turned to his son. “Come with me, John. Everything you want to know—actually, a lot more than that, in spades—you’ll know.” James Naile grabbed a vintage brown-leather bomber jacket from the larger of the two hall closets, donning it as he said, “Let’s cut through the house, John. It’s faster,” and started walking.

  John, gray fedora in hand, followed his father, looking once at his mother’s face to see if he could get a clue as to what was about to transpire. She looked oddly sad.