Remembering “air raid drills” he had had to perform with his class in elementary school, Jeff simply nodded his head.
“This is where we will make the jump,” she said. “Then we will go through the tunnel into the compound, where Belochkin will be.”
“You’ve been through the tunnel? You know where it will lead us?”
“I have, yes. I was well-trained in emergency measures. Before we go, though, you need to have a shooting lesson.”
He reached back into the car and pulled out the gun. She took it from him and checked the cartridge to see that it was loaded, then handed it back to him.
“What do you want me to shoot?”
She pointed to her right. “There is a rabbit twenty meters away over there. It’s not moving. It should make a nice target for you.”
He didn’t know how she’d seen the rabbit – she hadn’t looked in that direction, not that he’d seen. “I don’t want to shoot a rabbit. Gimme something else.”
“If you can’t shoot a rabbit, how will you shoot a human being?”
He let out a big sigh – the same one he would have used as a teenager when his mother would ask him to take out the garbage. Then he brought the gun up and aimed it at a brown spot in the tall grass that he could only assume was the rabbit she was talking about. The whole exercise seemed pointless to him, having to aim at something so small and helpless when he was quite sure that adrenaline would see him through if he was called upon. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
“The safety is on,” she said.
He looked at the gun, and it wasn’t immediately apparent how to disengage the safety. “You could help,” he said, for the first time allowing some annoyance with her into his voice.
In a flash, she took the gun from his hands and unlatched the safety. Despite her speed, he got enough of a glimpse of her doing it that he could copy. She handed it back to him. Again, he aimed and pulled the trigger.
The shot fired and dug into the ground about three feet from the rabbit, causing a mound of sod and dust to shoot into the air. The animal scampered away and disappeared out of sight while the echo of the shot resonated across the field.
“Will someone hear that?”
“No. We are far away from anyone.”
“That wasn’t a rabbit,” he said, rubbing the skin in between his thumb and index finger, which was tingling from the shot. “Rabbits hop.”
“No, it was a rat,” she said. “Anyone can shoot a disgusting rat. If you’re willing to shoot at a rabbit, I trust that you can do this job.”
He exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Neat trick,” he said, trying to be glib.
She didn’t smile. “Let’s go.”
They geared up. Jeff restored the safety on the gun and tucked it into the back of his pants, not feeling like he’d actually passed the test. He pulled the time device from its case, checked the battery, and tucked it into the leg pocket of his cargo pants. He pulled the bag containing Abby’s tablet from the back seat of the Camry and slung it over his shoulder. From the other side of the car, Ekaterina pulled out the weapons case, and extracted the three needles. She handed one to Jeff, which he slid in his other leg pocket, and put the other two into a sheath she had strapped around her waist that he hadn’t noticed. Then, leaning on the hood of the car, Jeff pulled from his pocket a card with an array of digits on it, and then entered the coordinates for 1983 into the time device – they would lead them to the exact date and time that Ekaterina had indicated Evelyn had sent her – April 9, 1983. When he was done, he slipped the card into his back pocket.
“Are we ready?” she asked him.
“Ready when you are.”
“What do I do?”
He took a few steps away from the car. “Come around here. You just grab onto the device at the same time as me, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
She followed his instructions. They stood facing each other, gripping both ends of the time device. As calm as he’d been up until then, it suddenly hit him what they were attempting to do. He was immediately thankful that he and Dexter had taken their side trip, because without the successful recent time travel under his belt, he would’ve panicked. His original trip, going to a baseball game, and going to assassinate a Russian general were two very different experiences. Even so, his heart was pounding hard enough that he was certain it would’ve drowned out the previous sound of the gunshot.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said with a fake smile. “The gravity of this just hit me.”
“Well, I am glad,” she said. “I have been worried that you are taking it much too lightly.” With her free hand, she reached across and slapped him on the shoulder.
It helped. They were in this together.
He nodded at her and pressed the button on the device. The field, the trees and the wall blurred and seemed to melt before his eyes.
They stood in the middle of the same large field, Jeff and Ekaterina each holding one end of the time travel device. Only it was night, and the air was crisp and chilly. A sky full of stars greeted them. Jeff shivered as his body adjusted. Feeling him twitch, Ekaterina let go of the device.
“Are we here?” she asked.
“We should be.”
“That was incredible. It’s like nothing happened, but suddenly we’re in a different place.” She was whispering.
“Well, scientifically we didn’t go anywhere. It was the universe that actually changed around us.”
He watched as she took in her surroundings, taking several steps forward and pointing. She was looking at the row of trees that had been much larger a few moments before and now had strong floodlights coming from behind them. “I remember this,” she said, now caught up in youthful enthusiasm. “I spent my weekends here when I was younger. Right up until Belochkin died. The row of trees. There is a big house on the other side. And a large grassy area with tables and swinging chairs for reading. And a basketball court. I remember the basketball court. Listen.”
She stopped moving her feet in the grass and Jeff tried to hear what she was hearing. It was there. A repetitive thumping coming from the other side of the trees.
“That’s him,” she said. “That’s him playing basketball.” She broke into a full run toward the trees and, after a moment of surprise, Jeff started sprinting to keep up.
The ground was uneven, so Jeff ran as cautiously as he could while still keeping pace. Eventually, they came to the outhouse standing conspicuously in the field. He watched as she reached out and opened the door.
“I remember this, too,” she reiterated, holding the door open for him to see while she inspected the inside, which was pitch black. She started to explain the outhouse’s existence again, as though they hadn’t had the conversation five minutes before. “This was the fastest way out in case there was any kind of attack or infiltration. I was taught to run as soon as I heard the alarm. We rehearsed and rehearsed. Of course, there never was an alarm, but I remember that we were as afraid of an attack from the Americans as they were an attack by us. We were made to believe it. Come.”
Jeff couldn’t see what was inside the door, but she entered the outhouse and he followed. After she lifted a wooden trap door, he found himself walking down a set of steep dusty steps into a dark tunnel. As though she’d been walking through the tunnel for years, she bent down and picked something up off of the ground and fiddled with it. A moment later, a light illuminated the corridor as she held out a flashlight in front of her.
“How did you know that was there?” he asked.
“It just came back to me. I must have walked through this tunnel a hundred times. We would run at least two drills per week so that we knew exactly what to do in an emergency. I remember every step.” She was speeding excitedly through the tunnel now, and he struggled to keep up, unnerved by moving so quickly through the dark. Even with the flashlight in front of them, the dark shadows
surrounding them were disorienting.
After about ninety seconds of shuffling through the dark, they came to a staircase which they climbed silently, emerging into the trees that they’d seen before. They stood side by side, hidden in the thick brush looking out at the expansive property, which was well-lit by the strobe lights. It was a beautiful backyard, with gardens and fountains, in front of an enormous house that fit the lavish description that Ekaterina had given him. To their left, under the lights a man played basketball alone, hitting jump shot after jump shot with precision accuracy.
“Is that him?” he asked, turning his attention to Ekaterina.
She nodded.
“Well, we’ve gotten you here like we needed to. All we need to do is take care of the job and we can go home.” Now in the situation, he found he couldn’t reference the fact that she needed to murder the man playing basketball, so he fudged it. Take care of the job. It sounded amateurish. Had he been in her place, though he knew this had to happen and the repercussions of it not happening, he still didn’t know if he’d have been able to do it. “I’ll be right here, but give me a second to get the device ready.”
He pulled the next card from his front pocket, with the coordinates for the time they’d just left plus one minute, ensuring they wouldn’t cross paths with themselves. She helped him by shining the flashlight where he could use the light and he entered the numbers onto the device, then double checked them.
“Okay, we’re all set. I’m not moving. I’ll be right here when you’re done.” She switched off the flashlight and looked out at the basketball court. He guessed what she had to be thinking, just as he was: Where is Evelyn? The other “job” they had to take care of. He heard her take a deep breath and tried to imagine what was running through her mind. Only a few days ago, she was living in Russia with her only connection to this story having taken place thirty-some years before. Now, following a whirlwind of new information, she was playing an integral role in preserving history. While the last few days for him had placed him on a similar track, he considered that the shock to her system would have to have been greater since he’d actually invented time travel, and had some idea what was possible already, instead of being enlightened with each new step they took.
Without a word, Ekaterina pointed toward the trees along the border of the compound to their right. She’d spotted her.
“You okay?” he asked, trying to suppress his own personal terror at the moment. “You can do this.” He had to offer something. That’s what “being there” for her was about, he hoped.
“There was never any doubt of that,” she said, then unexpectedly patted him on the backside like a ballplayer and disappeared along the fence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
April 9, 1983
Ekaterina slid invisibly along the line of trees, across the expansive yard from where Belochkin was playing basketball, quietly moving sideways while keeping her eyes fixated on him. She remembered many evenings listening from her bedroom to the sound of the ball bouncing on the blacktop court, a rhythm so comforting that, to this day, she still turned to repetitive noises to help lull her to sleep on restless nights. Seeing him now, the father figure who he had been to her in her youth, she almost refused to believe that he would become the monster that Jeff had told her he was his destiny. It did not seem possible.
Still moving, sidestepping like a crab would, she let her gaze wander across the property. She saw the tire swing where she’d hold on to its rope and lean backwards so close to the ground that her braids would graze the tops of the grass. She saw the gazebo where she’d plodded for the first time through Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and remembered how she used to fall asleep in the middle of paragraphs, and how here at the compound she was not chastised for doing so – had it happened back at the academy in Moscow, she wouldn’t have experienced the same leniency. She had always thought that was unfair... none of the other eight-year-olds were reading Tolstoy, after all!
She remembered that Belochkin’s basketball session would last about an hour, but she didn’t know when he’d started. He was still moving at an aggressive pace, so she thought that he might not have been playing for very long. She could count on his routine, certainly. He’d practice for an hour and then relax with a drink – a Manhattan, ironically – on the patio, sometimes reading a magazine. She’d spied on him out of her bedroom window enough times to know what he did each night, and one time had asked one of the house’s maids what he was drinking. From what Evelyn had told her in her message, she’d killed Belochkin while he was enjoying his drink, and she herself remembered that he had been found on the patio.
She turned her attention to Evelyn, roughly 100 meters ahead of her, also hiding in the trees. The time travel was playing tricks with her mind. Meeting Evelyn as an older woman was difficult to accept, but she imagined it would not be as difficult as standing face-to-face with her other self, approximately the same age. What would that be like, seeing herself readying to approach Belochkin? Would she have the endurance and willpower to do what Evelyn had asked of her? Her thoughts were not only convoluted, though. They were a distraction. She tried to purge them from her mind.
Continuing to shadow the compound wall, she heard a rustle in the brush ahead and realized Evelyn was now only a few meters away from her. Her other self would not want to be heard any more than she herself did, so Ekaterina knew her own approach would not be met with screams. To remain hidden – and to mitigate any doubt in her own mind – she would have to be decisive, and strike quickly.
She allowed herself three seconds to catch her breath, then moved silently forward. Through the trees, the woman came into view. She was her mirror image, though with longer hair silhouetted in the shadows.
It was fortunate that she’d disallowed herself contemplating what she was about to do. Seeing herself, it became very clear that any second thought would have created a mission-endangering pause. Especially when she got within one meter of Evelyn, who at the last second turned to face her.
Despite the darkness, they made eye contact for a split second before Ekaterina lashed out with her hand, grabbing Evelyn’s wrist. The woman tried to squirm away, but her years of typing on a computer keyboard were no match for Ekaterina’s military training. With her other hand, she forced Evelyn’s fist to her neck, where the open syringe she’d been carrying toward Belochkin buried itself deep into her own skin.
Evelyn stumbled backwards, crunching the brush beneath her feet, so Ekaterina leaned forward and caught her. She caught a glimpse of her frightened eyes trying to connect with her, but forced herself to look away. There would be no explanation, no understanding of the motives behind the attack. Laying her gently to the ground, she thought of Evelyn, the old woman who had endured the pain of living her life twice. The woman who’d pled with her for her help. She’d fulfilled this part of her mission.
The sound of Belochkin’s basketball continued to echo through the compound. He hadn’t heard a thing.
Continuing to deny herself an emotional reaction, she assessed her surroundings. She’d reached a point along the tree line where she was now parallel with the house. Belochkin himself was out of sight around the corner of the house, though she could still hear him. She could see Jeff hiding in the trees, the strobe light reflecting off of one side of his face. She wondered if he’d witnessed her interaction with Evelyn. She knew he didn’t have the stomach for the mission, but she hoped at least that his aloofness was gone. He would be feeling great haste for her to get the job done and return. Which she thought was good. He deserved to have some anxiety about this. Especially since what she was about to do had been tormenting her brain ever since she’d first heard from Evelyn.
She looked at the house. If her memory served her correctly, any maids and servants would have by now retired to their quarters, which were on the front side of the house. She distinctly remembered, as a little girl, waking in the morning to find the commotion in the back yard – she’d slept
through the excitement and had been roused by an ambulance. But it had been hours after the attack had taken place, and Belochkin had been dead for some time. She’d been rushed away from the scene of the crime and literally within hours was reinstated to a more normal life at the Academy. Everything had happened very quickly and, as a result, her memories were blurry. But she did remember looking out the window in the morning to see the crowd gathered on the rear patio, and she remembered not knowing the reason they were there. She’d never forgotten the confusion she’d felt that day.
Once she’d seen for herself that Dr. Jacobs was indeed able to time travel, her perspective had changed, and she’d begun to consider her environment. It was not lost on her that the little girl inside the house was actually a third version of herself on the premises. She specifically had not told Jeff that she’d been there during the murder, not wanting to change his perspective on the mission. Considering the fact that they were already following the directions of her as an old woman, knowing the she as a little girl would also be present would have been another distraction.
Knowing she could ponder the intricacies of time travel at a more appropriate time, she crept out of the trees and to the side of the house. Memories came flooding back to her, and it was suddenly as though not a day had passed. She reached the house and ran her hand along the wall to maintain her position since the massive lights in the yard didn’t bend around corners. She headed toward the front of the house and away from Belochkin. She wanted to get inside, but remembered it was riddled with entry alarms, except for in one spot, an outdoor basement entry that was kept alarm free purposefully – for silent escape should the need arise. Belochkin was an extremely paranoid man, and if the house was attacked, he wanted a way out that wouldn’t draw notice. Thus the tunnel in the back of the yard, as well.
She reached the doors and lay on the ground next to them, remaining as still as possible. She pulled a bobby pin from her hair and expertly picked the lock that could be accessed from either the inside or outside. A moment later she was in the basement, closing the heavy wooden doors silently behind her.
Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2) Page 18