Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2)

by Craig W. Turner

  There was a need for Jeff to bring his full team up to speed on everything that had happened. He’d booked the Serenity, a chartered cruise on the Hudson that made berth in Jersey City, for an enjoyable evening as a way to say thanks to them for all of their work. Of course, there was more to it than just dinner and a great view – being out in the middle of the Hudson offered them some distance from the FBI folks who were tracking his every move. He didn’t particularly need to be out-of-sight, as he wasn’t planning on pulling anything, but he did want to talk with his colleagues without listening devices pointed in their direction.

  While Dexter and Jeff had been working together for some time, having built a friendship around their common cause, Abby Smith and Emeka Henderson had come later to the party – only after he and Dexter had begun to lay out the premise of their would-be experiments. Knowing they needed absolute precision in the calculations that would go into his time device, Jeff had hunted down some of the top mathematicians on the East Coast, eventually feeling that Abby’s know-how and the chemistry he felt with her made her the right fit. Emeka, the former Marine – and former classmate of Jeff’s in high school – joined the team after Jeff and Dexter woke up one morning realizing that what they were trying to accomplish had its dangers. Emeka’s guidance as they planned, and his friendship, was invaluable to Jeff.

  There were a few objectives for the team meeting. First and foremost, they were his advisers, and while he thought he had a good grasp on everything that was happening, and believed for the most part that they were on the right track, he wanted their opinions. He’d built the team specifically to have various perspectives covered, and knew it would be foolhardy of him to tackle this alone. Even if he’d be the one solely responsible for implementing the plan.

  Second, he needed Abby’s tablet, which contained the software that calculated the coordinates for their time travel destinations. He’d struggled over time with the idea of having back-ups for the program that Abby had created, but the consensus among them was that having only one installation of the software, and only one time device, was a necessary failsafe that allowed them to maintain more stringent control over their time travel research. If either the software or the device fell into someone else’s hands, each would be difficult to use separately. Together, however, they could cause a lot of problems.

  Finally, Jeff felt that he needed a confidence boost. For the first time since he’d engaged in his research, he was not in control of the situation – and he feared that he never would be again, now that the government had its claws in him. There was a survival sense that kicked in, and he knew of himself that he was not a reactive person. He liked plans, agendas and goals. Suddenly, those plans, agendas and goals were being dictated to him rather than orchestrated by him. It was unnerving, and he knew that having familiar, friendly, and supportive faces around him before he left on the mission was critical.

  With everyone aboard, they shoved off, headed for the center of the river, halfway between New Jersey and New York City. It occurred to Jeff that the FBI did have the capability of listening in on their conversations, but he figured if they intended to do so it would take some time for them to put the surveillance together. Not that he expected the conversation to include anything of significance to national security. He just needed some time to process what was going on, and he couldn’t do it with the feds hanging over his shoulder.

  Each of them selected a drink from the top-shelf bar and sat on soft cushions lining the outer deck of the boat. The Serenity was an amazing vessel, with every amenity that Jeff could’ve imagined available. Their private chef had set out almost immediately in preparing their dinner, which was several courses in prix fixe style – something Jeff was particularly looking forward to given the tenuous nature of the past few days. The view of the Manhattan skyline beginning to light up against the darkening sky was immaculate, and certainly gave an air of importance to their conversation.

  About halfway between the shorelines, the boat slowed to a lull, where it would remain for the next few hours. Jeff sipped the martini that had been made for him, a rare treat, and smiled at his friends. Dexter knew some of what was going on, but not everything. Abby and Emeka were in the dark completely, probably thinking that he’d be announcing to them their next assignment. Disappointingly, that wasn’t to be.

  “What are we celebrating?” Emeka asked, taking advantage of the quiet once the ship’s motor had slowed. He was smiling.

  “Nothing yet,” Jeff said. Though he’d intended not to, he instinctively glanced at Dexter, who was not looking at him, his eyes focused downward at the deck. Which actually stopped him for a moment, as he considered what might’ve been going through his friend’s mind relative to the rest of the team. His plan had been to break the news to them as casually as possible, but he suddenly thought that that might not be the right approach. “We’ve had a hiccup.”

  “A hiccup?” Emeka asked, leaning forward.

  “Well, more of a diversion. We’re not going to be able to get to our missions right now. Unfortunately.”

  “How long until ‘right now’ is over?” Abby asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t have an answer to that yet,” he said. “The FBI found my time device in the mountains in California, rusted and in disrepair, but it’s my device.”

  “The Wilton job?” Emeka asked. He looked at Dexter, who was now looking up, nodding his head. “You went without us?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Or, I haven’t yet, alone or otherwise. I’m not quite sure how it got there. I have to investigate that, but with the FBI hanging on me, I don’t know when or how I’ll be able to. I’m working on that as we speak.”

  “So if you didn’t put it there, who did?” Abby asked.

  “No clue. Yet.” Another glance to Dexter, who was at least looking up again, engaged in the conversation. “There’s more, though. The last few days have been pretty crazy.”

  In about fifteen minutes, Jeff laid out for them all of the activity of the last 72 hours, from the FBI greeting them at his quarterly meeting with the government folks, to Evelyn Peters and her roomful of Soviet propaganda, to the “other” Evelyn named Ekaterina, to his new mission. They didn’t say a word while he talked. All the while, he tried to determine whether they were stunned at the turn of events or disappointed about them.

  When he finished, he realized his glass was empty, and stood to get another one. After two steps, Emeka asked, “Are we involved at all? Does the FBI know anything about us?”

  Jeff turned and shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so. Other than our little outing here tonight, which I can explain away, there’s really no link.”

  “Then what do you need from us?” He asked it solemnly. Jeff took it as recognition that they were a team no matter what happened. He held up a finger and went to the bar, where the bartender mixed and poured him a second martini, then returned to his seat. “You should really take me with you,” Emeka said when he’d settled.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Are you kidding me? Do you know how dangerous this is?”

  “I guess I don’t,” Jeff said. “Or, I’m ignoring it. My hope is that I play my small role and then come back and get back to work.”

  “But we’re not doing any missions,” Abby said. “Not if the government has control of your program.”

  “No, that’s not entirely true,” Dexter said, speaking for the first time. They all turned their attention to him, including Jeff, who was curious what his friend was going to say. He stared off at the skyscrapers lining the Manhattan skyline as he spoke thoughtfully. “This is one of the dangers of time travel that I’ve been so concerned about, but it’s something that could work to our advantage. I’ve been thinking about this relative to the old woman. When someone travels through time and does something to change history, he or she is the only person who could possibly know that it happened. That’s why this woman, Evelyn, has this memory of a reality that no
ne of us know or understand.” Now, he leaned forward, returning his focus to the group. “Provided you can actually get your hands on your device without anyone seeing, you could travel through time and come back, and no one would be the wiser. The trick is getting the device and being alone, but since there are no protocols in place for any of this, I wouldn’t think it would be impossible.”

  “That assumes I’m going to make it through this one unscathed,” Jeff said, half laughing at Dexter’s theories. In truth, he hadn’t had the time to give much thought to what would happen after the Russia mission, and at least for now couldn’t see how he would have any freedom with his experiments.

  “Does it?” Dexter was looking right at him.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, and I’m not saying the logistics would even work, but it seems to me that if you could get alone with your time device even for a few minutes, you could jump back in time, do whatever you needed to do, and come back without them knowing.”

  Jeff started to answer, but the host emerged from the cabin and invited them to follow him to the dining area, where dinner was being served. They all stood and headed up the stairs to the ship’s top deck, but Jeff lagged slightly behind with Dexter.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. “You think we can still do one of the missions?”

  He was shaking his head. “No. It would be foolish to try to have all of us go. But I would think your top priority right now is finding out why your device is in California. I’ve been thinking about this all day. We can do it.”

  “How?” Jeff hadn’t even been thinking along these lines, and he was genuinely intrigued.

  “I’m not sure, exactly. But there has to be some point in the next 24 hours when you’re alone with the device. When you go to bed at night. When you’re in the shower. Somewhere.”

  Jeff shook his head. “But I don’t have it. They’ve got it under lock-and-key.”

  “When will you have it?”

  He shrugged. “I’m assuming I’ll meet them at the lab and get it before we leave for the airport in the morning.”

  “The airport,” Dexter said. “How about the airport?”

  “What about it?” He looked up the empty flight of stairs. Abby and Emeka must have been wondering where they’d gone, so he put his foot on the first step.

  “Can’t you get alone somewhere at the airport?”

  “With the device,” he said, thinking. The plan Dexter was outlining was a shot-in-the-dark, but suddenly he was thinking it had some merit. “It’d be tough, but I bet you I could. Where, though? Find an isolated hallway or something?”

  “The bathroom?”

  The bathroom. In the morning it would be reasonable for him to excuse himself to the restroom before getting on a long flight. Would they let him take the device with him? Chances were that they were not thinking about time travel the same way he was. They might not see any reason for him to stray from the plan. “That could work.”

  Dexter was nodding. “It could. Let’s get up there and have dinner then talk about this later. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Where?”

  “At the airport.”

  Dexter bounded up the stairs two at a time, and Jeff followed slowly. When he reached the top deck he found a lavish dinner setting with candles, white tablecloths and soft music. The light smell of seafood hit his nose and his mouth watered. The dinner would help him stay focused. Since they had just now covertly planned another mission without involving one-half of the team, he needed to stay sharp and not get lost in his thoughts.

  Jeff took a seat next to Emeka and across from Dexter, admiring the ambience. The aroma of a crock of Manhattan clam chowder rose from the table in front of him.

  “This is really wonderful,” Abby said. “Thank you, Jeff.”

  “Thank you,” he said, tasting the soup in front of him. “Emeka, you’d asked what I needed from you. Believe me, I’d love to have you with me. But like I said, you’re not involved now, so it’s probably best to keep you separate from all of this since it’s impossible to tell what the government would ask of you further down the road. But I need your thoughts. And Abby, I hate to ask this of you, but I need to take your program with me.”

  “My tablet?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s not a problem,” she said, then smiled. “As long as you take good care of it.”

  “Well, since my life could very well depend on it, I think you can count on me.”

  “Good,” she said. “But since you asked for our thoughts, I have one for you. You’ve talked in the past about this concept of ‘fulfillment,’ and now you’re attributing it to this mission to Russia.”

  “Yes?” He chewed on a piece of clam. Delicious.

  “And I know we’ve discussed this before, but I want to make sure you’re thinking about it,” she said, resting her own spoon afloat on top of the chowder. “You say – or the old lady says – that someone has to go back in time to kill this general or else it won’t happen. But the thing is, it did already happen. In history, the guy was assassinated. We’ve had this conversation about the diamonds and I’ve always struggled with it. But I don’t think that I agree with you now.”

  When he’d told his diamond experiment story to Abby for the first time, she hadn’t been able to get past the concept of him choosing not to send the diamond back, wondering what would have happened in that case. Jeff had reasoned that the point was moot because he, being responsible, followed through. It was the same logic that he and Evelyn shared about the fate of the Russian general.

  “You don’t agree that we need to go back and fulfill the assassination?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t. And you know why? The time device in California.” Now she resumed eating.

  “What about it?”

  “The fact that it’s there,” she said, politely chewing in between thoughts. “It doesn’t matter where it came from. It’s there. It’s sitting there in our reality, in our history. And you don’t know how it got there.”

  “Well, I kind of do,” he said, looking at Dexter to back him up. Dexter was looking at Abby, contemplating what she was saying.

  “Like I said,” she said, “I’m not saying I’m right. This isn’t my area of expertise. But you should at least consider the idea that the general is dead, and he’s going to stay dead, whether you go back in time or not.”

  “It’s a risky hypothesis you’re throwing out there,” Jeff said, smiling. “And I think that’s how the FBI feels. The safer bet is to follow through.”

  “Well, to Abby’s point,” Emeka said, “and if she’s hedging her bets saying she’s not the expert, you certainly don’t want to be listening to me – but as far as we know, there’s nobody else using time travel, right? So what if there was, and you had to follow through on every change made to history? That could get out of control fast.”

  “Well, fortunately, that’s not the case,” he said. “Look, I appreciate your thoughts on this, and I’ll do some thinking of my own about it. But I think the FBI is fully convinced this is the path we have to take, so I don’t have much of a choice. Especially with the deadline they’ve given. Dexter, what do you think?”

  “Huh?” Dexter was staring away from the conversation. It wasn’t difficult for Jeff to figure out where his mind was. “Yeah, I agree with you,” he said.

  A repetitive thumping sound from above caught Jeff’s attention. He looked up to see a black helicopter hovering several hundred meters south of where they were floating.

  “That for you?” Emeka asked.

  Jeff laughed. “Yeah, probably. How fun, huh?” He looked back down to see the waiter approaching with large plates of king crab legs. “I hope this isn’t what life is going to be like going forward.”

  “I’m assuming you mean the surveillance and not the dinner,” said Emeka, sliding his soup bowl out of the wa
y to make room for the crab. “Because I could get used to this.”

  “Take it while you can get it,” he said, then leaned forward over his plate. “Let’s talk about something other than time travel.”

  Cognizant of the eyes above, the team enjoyed a wonderful dinner and drinks for the next few hours before heading back to the marina. Jeff hoped it wouldn’t be the last time they worked together.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  September 18, 2015

  Jeff walked three paces behind Ekaterina through the terminal at Teterboro Airport, wheeling his luggage behind him. Over his shoulder he had Abby’s tablet safely encased in a satchel, and he kept tugging on the strap to keep it from sliding down his arm. Agent Fisher was to his left, walking in stride, though he wouldn’t be flying with them. He was only there to see them off.

  Their private jet was waiting for them, so there wouldn’t be the usual security checks and shoe removal. They would just hop on, wave goodbye to Fisher, and be on their way from North Jersey to Moscow. According to the timeline they’d all agreed upon, they had about 36 hours to get to Russia and get Ekaterina back in time to fulfill the assassination of General Alexandr Belochkin. The flight would eat up about 11 of those hours. They would stay the night in Moscow and in the morning travel by car to the site of the assassination in 1983. It wouldn’t leave them much time, but their only requirement was to make the jump before Ekaterina was the exact age – to the second – that she’d jumped in the first place. At least that was their theory, as absurd and fortuitous as it sounded.

  The last 24 hours had been too much of a whirlwind for Jeff to even take a moment to contemplate whether that science was sound. Abby, who he trusted implicitly, had raised the issue at dinner, but he’d dismissed her thoughts, having come to his own conclusions long ago. But, either way, as “old” Ekaterina had put it, it was better for them to be proactive and wrong than to sit around and wait to see what would happen. He couldn’t wrap his head around what might happen if a paradox occurred and the current reality shut itself down. Moreover, he had no intention of finding out. If the safest bet was to get Ekaterina to travel back in time as quickly as possible, then that’s what he was going to make happen.