Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2)

by Craig W. Turner

  “You comfortable with this?” Fisher asked, turning to her.

  She nodded. “As comfortable as anyone could be.”

  “Then let’s get you on your way.”

  They climbed the stairs and boarded the plane. She couldn’t complain about the set-up – she would be enjoying a much nicer flight than the one she’d taken to America the other day. The American government... it did know how to spend money. There were seven plush, comfortable front-facing seats and behind them two couches lining each side of the fuselage. That was good, she thought, because when Fisher was talking about getting sleep on the plane, she hadn’t envisioned how it was going to actually happen. She did not sleep well in an upright position. In the rear of the plane was a small bar and refrigerator. It was going to be a reasonably enjoyable experience, given the circumstances.

  She chose one of the front-facing seats and reclined in it. She would move to the couch when she was ready to nap. She noticed that Jeff selected the seat across the aisle, but one row in front of her. He was trying not to be obvious about the fact that he wanted to avoid her. She would not let him get away that easily, though. She laughed to herself when he actually pretended to be falling asleep even before the flight took off. He was too easy to read.

  Within a few minutes, Fisher had descended the stairs and stood outside on the tarmac. The flight attendant closed the door and they taxied away. They were airborne quickly, and Ekaterina turned her focus from Jeff for a moment to watch the New York City skyline pass by her window and disappear. About twenty minutes later, the jet crossed the end of Long Island, leaving only the blue water of the Atlantic underneath them.

  She looked back to Jeff, who had his eyes closed; though his breathing was evidence that he was not sleeping. Not wanting to wait any longer, she leaned forward and shook his arm. He opened his eyes and turned his body toward her.

  “What’s up?” he asked, as though he did not know what was “up.”

  “I’d really like to know where you went while you were in the restroom.”

  He laughed now. “Isn’t that kind of a personal question?”

  “Dr. Jacobs, we’ve been thrown together in an important mission here,” she said, trying to emphasize her impatience with him. “We have a much better chance of success if we’re able to be honest with each other.”

  Now he was serious. “What makes you think I went somewhere?”

  She rubbed her chin and saw the look of realization on his face. He smiled, then looked up at her more closely and said, “That’s pretty good.”

  “Well, you’re probably lucky that your Agent Fisher didn’t notice. He was too worried about the comfort of our flight. So, where did you go?”

  Jeff held up a finger. “Just so you know,” he said, “what I did, I did at the advice of you as an older woman. It wasn’t even on my radar screen until the old woman suggested it.”

  She shrugged. “I did not ask you why you did it. I asked where you went.”

  He nodded. “Alright. I went back to 1849. The government found my time device in California, where it had been buried for 150 years.”

  “You left it there?”

  “No. I’d never been there. Someone took my time device back and never returned. Three days ago, Agent Fisher handed me a rusted device that’s identical to the one I’m carrying with us for this trip. Except for the wear. I had to go back and find out how it happened, and the only possible time I would have the device to myself was when I was alone in the bathroom. Once we get back from this mission, they’re not going to let me near it.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  He shrugged. “The nature of time travel. If I didn’t like the way things were going I could just go back and eliminate my own experiments.”

  He seemed as though he was being open with her now. She was well-trained in diagnosing signs of dishonesty, and Jeff had relaxed his muscles, suggesting straightforwardness. Almost as though his confession was a relief to him. Of course, he really had no reason to continue to lie to her. He apparently trusted the old woman to be steering him in the right direction. As did she. “I suppose that’s true,” she said. “And what did you find?”

  “Interestingly, I found a woman that I didn’t recognize in possession of my time device. She ditched it in the forest and disappeared.”

  Ekaterina held up her hand, stopping him. “Wait. How did you know where to go? If the government found the device, that would give you the location, but it would not tell you when it was placed there.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I knew the date and time because I was actually planning to go to that very spot, but hadn’t taken the trip yet. A famous heist happened there-”

  “Heist?”

  “A, uh, robbery. A man was robbed of sixty bars of gold in 1849. Our plan was to go back and steal the gold before it was actually stolen. By the person who ultimately stole it.”

  “But someone beat you to it?”

  He shook his head. “No. She didn’t. She wasn’t there for the gold. I think she was there to stop me from taking it. But I can’t be sure.”

  “And you don’t know this woman?”

  “Never saw her before yesterday. Well, what was yesterday to me.”

  She glanced out the window for a moment, at light cloud cover passing below, interrupting the steady flow of rippled blue water. She was sure that Jeff – and her older self – had theories about alternate realities and skewing timelines that went along with the physics of their time travel experiments. Her mind didn’t work that way, but right then she wished it did. As long as he was being honest with her, there was likely something to be learned that could be applicable to their current mission. “Did you change anything while you were there?”

  “Shouldn’t have. I don’t see how we could have, really. All we did was observe. I didn’t get a chance to check to see if everything was the same when I returned, though.”

  “But if you just observed, you would assume that nothing changed. This woman that you don’t know still went back in time with your time travel device and did... something.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that is all you know?”

  “Well, there’s the phone.”

  “What phone?”

  “She left her phone in the forest with the time device.”

  That was a shock. “A cell phone?”

  He nodded.

  “Was there anything on it?”

  “Oh, yeah. Including three text messages from me.”

  “To a woman you don’t know?”

  “I know. I haven’t figured it out myself yet.” He put his head in his hand, leaning on the arm rest.

  “Did you try using the phone?”

  “When I got back. The number belongs to someone else.”

  “So she changed something when she went back in time?”

  He nodded again. “That’s what it looks like. Yes.”

  Ekaterina knew she would need some time to think about this. From his story, it would seem that this woman went back in time and changed something that led to a new history. And even though things had changed, there was evidence of her original history – including the phone and her apparent knowledge of Dr. Jacobs. It suggested that no matter what reality she came from, she was still part of history.

  She looked back toward Jeff. He had taken the brief interruption in the conversation to turn back to the front and close his eyes.

  She was right in her thinking. There was clearly a correlation between Jeff’s time travel and their trip to Russia. A moment in history was a moment in history. Unless it was specifically changed at the point it happened, it was in the history books. Which – in her mind with about 90 seconds of thinking about it – meant that it was of no consequence if they went back to 1983 and assassinated Alexandr Belochkin or not. In this reality, he was dead, murdered in the dark of night in his backyard, and he would stay that way. Where his attacker originated was not important.

  Th
at seemed logical. Perhaps Jeff knew something that she and Evelyn didn’t know, but her new theory made sense. With his passionate belief that Belochkin’s assassination had to be fulfilled, it wasn’t something she was going to refute before they time traveled. It would make the jump superfluous.

  One thing stuck in her mind, however, relative to his side trip. She leaned forward and nudged his arm again. He startled awake – he actually had fallen asleep in that short time – and turned again to face her.

  “One question,” she said. “Since you’ve traveled back to 1849, do we have enough power to do what we’re expected to do?”

  “We do,” he said, nodding. “I swiped an extra battery pack from my lab and used that one up. Each battery is good for four trips. The battery I have with me is fresh. We have four trips, so we have a little leeway in case anything goes wrong.”

  “Why did you take four trips to go back to 1849?”

  He stifled a yawn and then laughed. “I couldn’t jump back to 1849 from New Jersey. It would’ve taken me months to get across the country and there would’ve been no way to pinpoint the time and date I needed to reach. We went back a few months, caught a flight to California, and then jumped from there. So, four jumps. One back three months. Back-and-forth from 1849. And then back to the present.”

  “That’s very clever,” she said, making quick note of the fact that he’d mentioned “we” when referring to his time travel. Who was in the bathroom with him? She’d ask that question at some point, and for now be thankful that his fatigue from his travels had made him sloppy.

  “Well, the other thing is that to do this you really need to know exactly what you’re getting into. You have to find somewhere to jump where you can be sure that there’s not going to be anything sitting there when you get to where you’re going. A field is good. A quiet path or road. A room in a building that you know is there. I knew that I could jump from the bathroom in the airport to the same bathroom because the set-up would be the same. I jumped to a time before the airport opened so I knew there would be no one in the room. But I have no idea what stood in the place of that airport bathroom before the airport was built. So I played it safe.”

  She picked up that he’d noticed the “we” himself, and had corrected it. “What happens if you do jump somewhere where there’s another object or person?”

  “I think I just learned what happens. The stall door in the bathroom was open and I jumped right onto it.” He stood and pulled on the back of his shirt, exposing a tear stained with a smattering of blood. She was surprised she hadn’t noticed it before.

  “What happened?” she asked with genuine concern. The cut probably needed to be treated, and he hadn’t realized its severity.

  “I landed right on the door. Destroyed it. It shattered into pieces on the bathroom floor.”

  “That’s unbelievable.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. I didn’t know I had it in me.”

  She looked past him and saw a box with a red cross on it, so she unbuckled and walked to get it. “Let’s take care of that,” she said, opening the box and pulling out the appropriate accouterments. He resisted at first, saying they were “just scratches,” then accepted her help. She professionally field-dressed his wounds. When she finished, Jeff said he needed to get comfortable, so he took the sofa on the right side of the plane. Within a few minutes, she heard him snoring lightly, leaving her to spend some time wondering who “we” was.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jeff opened his eyes, the inside of the plane blurry around him. He rubbed them and leaned on his elbow, looking out the window. It was now dark out, with a sea of black beneath them, giving no clue as to where they were.

  He rolled within the available space on the small couch to get a look at Ekaterina, who he found sleeping curled up on the sofa across from him. Which was good. She’d been interrogating him before he’d excused himself to sleep and while he’d said quite a bit about his trip to 1849, he’d meticulously omitted certain details. He’d been trying to end the conversation before her prying questions continued to get him to divulge things. Not that anything he’d told her was dangerous. His connection with her was superficial – after this mission was complete they would have nothing to do with each other anymore. Without Dexter here, it had actually felt good for a few moments to have someone to talk with about it. But he specifically didn’t tell her what the text messages said. He didn’t tell her about the whole angel/supernatural aspect of the Wilton heist. And he didn’t tell her about his plan to go back.

  So he saw her being asleep as a good thing. The less time they spent chatting and getting to know each other during the trip, the better. Of course, that was Jeff the guy from New Jersey speaking, not Jeff the scientist. Jeff the scientist would be probing this miraculous woman for every bit of insight he could draw out of her. The fact that two versions of this woman existed, each with her own interpretation of history, was fantastic, and needed to be explored. He started to think whether there was a way to accomplish both ends – not say a word more to her and also find out everything he could about her. He thought he could do it if he controlled the conversation.

  For now, though, he wanted her to stay sleeping. He wasn’t quite awake and alert enough for such a confrontation. She was very sharp, and in his exhausted state he knew she’d get the best of him. Quietly, he slid his feet off of the couch and onto the floor, standing. He slowly walked to an intercom near the cockpit and pushed the button.

  “Yes?” the pilot’s voice came over the speaker, too loudly. Jeff cringed and looked back at Ekaterina, who remained still.

  “Just wondering where we are,” he said.

  “In about twenty minutes, you’ll see the South of England out your window.”

  That didn’t mean much to him relative to the length of the full flight, but at least it gave him his bearings. “Thank you,” he said, leaning close to the speaker. The buzzing inside the intercom switched off.

  He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of juice, uncapping it and taking a swig. He estimated he’d slept for about four hours based on their location, and he could taste the hours of sleep in his mouth. The juice was good and cold, so he walked back to the front of the plane and took a seat in the first row. At his feet was a black suitcase that had been brought on board before they’d arrived at the plane. It held their supplies for the mission. Jeff pulled the case onto his lap, opening it.

  Inside the case was a foam insert with several indentations containing various pieces of equipment. His eyes were drawn immediately to three large needles connected to tubes filled with clear liquid. If he understood correctly, the needles were weapon-of-choice #1 for the Belochkin assassination, similar to the method used by Evelyn in the first place. They were menacing-looking devices, and he could only imagine what they were filled with, though he was certain it was deadly and quick-acting. They were not going back in time to make Belochkin suffer. They were going back to finalize his death.

  That there were three needles was disconcerting in itself. It was pretty easy to figure out if one was meant for Belochkin, who the other two were for. The U.S. government apparently didn’t want another Evelyn situation. If something went wrong and they weren’t able to get back, they were expected to fix the problem themselves. He thought that was short-sighted, since with his knowledge there would always be a chance to return. However, he imagined that the government didn’t want the knowledge of time travel out there for just anyone to use. What he couldn’t imagine was Ekaterina taking the needle to herself because the U.S. government wanted her to. He was quite sure that wouldn’t happen.

  To the left of the needles was a silver pistol and a handful of cartridges. He didn’t know guns, but it looked appropriate for an assassination – some chic weapon he’d envision in a Bond film. He hoped he wasn’t the one that was supposed to use it, because the only gun he’d ever shot in his life had sprayed water into a clown’s mouth at the carnival. But the mission had to b
e completed at any cost, and if a bullet was the ultimate answer... He trusted that Ekaterina knew what to do.

  Above the gun was an envelope, which he opened. It was filled with Russian money. He didn’t know the denominations or conversion, which made him realize that he wasn’t very well prepared for this trip. Because of that, he was putting an awful lot of power in Ekaterina’s hands – a woman he’d just met a few days before. He didn’t speak the language, he wasn’t aware of customs and traditions, and he didn’t know his way around. If he’d been a tourist, he’d have actually studied the country he was visiting. But being thrown into an assassination, he hadn’t had the time to get to Barnes & Noble to buy the Russian travel guide. Though, he had to keep reminding himself that there wasn’t a whole lot to the trip. They were going pretty much straight to the location, traveling through time, completing their mission, and coming right back. If, when they returned, they lingered a little – he had always wanted to see the Kremlin, after all – the pressure of killing a Soviet general would be behind them.

  He tucked the money back into the envelope and stowed it in the box. Closing the case, he set it at his feet and then leaned back in his seat. A strange thought occurred to him as he rested his head. When they landed, they would have to pass through customs and immigration. How would they get this box and the weapons in it into the country? Fisher’s plan for them didn’t seem to be very well thought-out, or else he didn’t know the whole of it. He reminded himself to ask Ekaterina when she awoke if she’d had the same questions in her mind.

  He glanced out his window. As promised, he could see sporadic flecks of light beneath the plane as the Atlantic ended and Europe began. He celebrated a small victory for himself, that the flight hadn’t terrified him. Perhaps fear of flying ebbs with age, he thought. Or, perhaps, since he’d been willing to intensify the molecules in his own body to the speed of light, sending himself into a state of timelessness only to emerge in the past, he had a little more sense of daring. He laughed out loud.