Jeff lay among an array of small ferns on his back, staring up at the canvas of trees above him and considering his options. He had a limited scope of the world around him, but since he’d come across an enormous facility that hadn’t been there a half-hour before, he reasoned that everything had changed. Claustrophobia overtook him, as if the boundaries of this new reality had closed in on him.
What did the new world look like? Had their failure to eliminate the Soviet, Belochkin, restored the history that Evelyn had undone? From his vantage point on the wet, cold forest floor that was already beginning to chill him, there was no way to be sure. But he couldn’t help himself from believing it was exactly what had happened. It was only logical.
He thought of Evelyn’s closet full of books on Soviet history; her meticulous detailing of a chain of events that were real only in her mind. He hadn’t taken the time to go through all of them, and the ones he’d actually spent some time with he’d only skimmed for their unbelievable highlights. But she’d chronicled everything and it was quite possible that changing that one moment in time had ultimately made her the smart one. And him the dupe.
He wondered if she was gone. Ekaterina, the older version, known as Evelyn. When her younger self had gone back to 1983 to murder Belochkin the first time, she’d had no way to get back to her present time. She’d lived thirty-some years to become Evelyn Peters. Ekaterina hadn’t answered him when he’d asked if she’d found Evelyn in the compound, so he had no way of knowing what might have happened. She hadn’t approached Belochkin, so perhaps she’d found her and carried out that part of her mission. Whether Ekaterina got to her or something else transpired, his gut feeling was that she was gone – and he was even more certain that Evelyn Peters, the American living in a mental institution in the Bronx, was gone. Though he knew it had been a likely, even intentional, outcome, it made him sad.
Laying there in the forest, he had no way of knowing the date and time. It could’ve been his present time, and perhaps not. If they’d arrived at a point in time where the original Ekaterina hadn’t yet gone back to 1983, he supposed it was possible that she still would. Of course, she’d then enter a situation where there were alarms going off, which wouldn’t make for an easy assassination – and which might scare her off from even trying, since the little girl that was to become Evelyn would have witnessed how volatile the situation had been at the time. It made sense that Ekaterina’s recalculation would have put her at a time where she could stop her other self from going back, though. She’d had the software overnight in the hotel and could have calculated any range of coordinates. Which raised the real possibility that there were now two of her in Russia – one who he’d brought with him and who had unexpectedly turned her back on him, and one whose intentions, if she existed, were probably more in line with his. And Evelyn’s.
That was all hypothesis, of course. All of it was. He hadn’t had time to perform the kind of experiments he’d wanted to with his time travel device before it fell into the hands of the FBI, so everything he was considering to be an answer was only speculation. His belief that there would be two Ekaterina’s – one “good” and one “bad” – he knew was driven by hopeless optimism, which was a dangerous motivation for a scientist. But in many regards, science could only take him so far. He needed a little luck, too.
In 1983, Ekaterina had disappeared into Belochkin’s house and then come out and altered their plan. Had she seen something in the house that made her change her mind? What had she said to him? His mind had been spinning as they were wrestling over the time device and he was trying to figure out what the hell was happening. He thought she’d said something about “restoring the glory of Russia,” or something like that. It was possible, even likely, that she’d been planning it from the moment he’d told her about their mission, and he felt foolish. Foolish that he hadn’t seen it coming. He’d been so caught up in the dynamics of the science that he’d forgotten about the politics. Which really wasn’t his job – if anyone should have seen it coming it should have been Fisher, the FBI, or the U.S. government. Who sends a Russian national to help keep her own country under the boot heel of the United States? How had this not occurred to anyone?
He thought Evelyn would be disappointed if she knew.
He shook his head at himself. The view of the sky and bare trees above him moved side-to-side. Obviously, it was a trick of time travel. It was too easy to accept that Evelyn and Ekaterina were the same person when they absolutely were not. Long before their thirties, at which point in time Evelyn had made the decision to change everything, their upbringings had been different. The original Ekaterina – the one that Jeff was overbearingly hoping still existed – was raised as a scientist, one of the brilliant minds of her time and of her nation, with a set of morals that inspired her to change historical events that were too much for the world to bear. That’s the upbringing that had yielded the wonderful elderly woman who had worried for thirty years that her efforts would be for naught. The other Ekaterina had an upbringing that he unfortunately hadn’t spent enough time studying. He knew she’d been trained as a spy. He thought of the way she’d overtaken him in the hotel, and the stealth with which she’d entered Belochkin’s apparently well-alarmed house unnoticed. Those weren’t the moves of a science geek whose face had been planted in front of a computer terminal for the last decade. They were the moves that gave her a tremendous advantage over him, as far as her wherewithal to take action quickly. As if her stranding him in the middle of a foreign country with no bearings and no way to communicate wasn’t enough of a head start.
But her not being trained as a scientist did give him an opportunity. Especially if the other Ekaterina, Evelyn, who knew the same things he did about time travel, was around and accessible. His only hope was that the facility he’d stumbled upon was indeed where the Soviet time program was being conducted. Given the proximity to the compound, and the secrecy with which Evelyn had told him the project was taking place, there was good reason for him to believe it was.
After finally mustering the courage to roll onto his stomach, cringing as twigs fallen from the naked trees above him cracked under his weight, he poked his head up to look around. He could see the facility and, under the cover of the forest’s low brush, took a better look at it. He remembered from before their initial jump to 1983 that they’d been in an extremely isolated area. This was top secret territory. His heart had fluttered when he’d first considered that the Evelyn of this time, if in existence, could be anywhere in Russia. That he’d have no chance of finding her in time. But if today by chance or by intent was the day of her time travel, he was certain she would be nearby.
“In time,” of course, took on a whole different meaning because he wasn’t quite sure what would happen if the timing of Ekaterina’s jump to 1983 came and went. Would she, could she, go back and try to carry things out just like she’d planned? If she didn’t, would the two Ekaterinas simultaneously exist, or would one of them disappear into thin air as he and Dexter had watched Dr. Erica Danforth do in the Sierra Nevadas? He couldn’t answer any of those questions right now, so he classified “in time” as getting to Evelyn before her evil doppelganger took it into her own hands to stop her. Now that he was beginning to understand Ekaterina’s true intentions, he felt fairly confident that reaching Evelyn would be her next step.
Unless, of course, his timing was way off – something he could do nothing about. He needed to act on the premise that their jump had coincided with Evelyn’s original jump. They’d left in September and it was clearly winter here. He’d been misled, and he’d fallen for it. The question now was whether or not he could resuscitate his chances of surviving.
Of course, having not been trained as a spy, and not having any idea what his own existence in this new dystopian present day would look like, he had no idea how he would have a prayer of stopping Ekaterina. He actually laughed to himself, because not only would his current adversary have a leg up as far as her skills,
her knowledge of the Russian language and culture, and a head start, but she looked just like herself, had the same identifying features, and would probably be able to move in and through the facility as though she’d been working there for years. This was not a race he could win.
Plus, she had his time device.
The consequences of losing? He would be an American trapped in the Soviet Union in a world that Evelyn Peters had led him to believe was not particularly friendly. He remembered the stories from when he was young – when the Soviet Union was still in existence – about people that tried to leave Russian borders, the basketball players that defected under gunfire, the tourists and business people who were held as political prisoners. Knowing what he knew about this Belochkin, it didn’t seem he had a chance.
But feeling backed into a corner set him in action to explore solutions. He started with his cell phone, not holding any hope that he could get a signal. In three decades, an awful lot could happen, and the likelihood that he would have the same phone number – provided he, himself, was alive and kicking in the U.S. – was low. Predictably, there was no access, so he stuffed the phone into his pocket.
He took the satchel from around his shoulder and pulled out Abby’s tablet. As he started it up, he hoped that the volume wasn’t on – he didn’t know if Ekaterina was in the vicinity looking for him, and the last thing he needed was one of Abby’s favorite songs to echo through the forest as part of the boot process. The device was active after about thirty seconds and Jeff searched for networks in the area, hoping that wi-fi was still an invention in his new time and place. It was, but every network, four of them featuring Russian letters and numbers, was passcode protected. Predictably, since they were attached to a high-security facility. Better yet, he realized, the tablet’s search for networks probably would have alerted their security systems to his presence, so he figured he’d better shut it down and find a new hiding place.
As he reached for the power button, though, he noticed that the bars at the top of the tablet’s screen were highlighted green. Which meant that Abby was the same Abby, and that he had remote access here, in the forest two hours outside Moscow.
“Abby, you beautiful human being,” he said out loud to himself, while stifling his own concern that Abby’s account was active and his was not.
He also noticed that the device had picked up its satellite connection for date and time. It was December 9, 2018 – three years into the future from where he and Ekaterina had originally left. He wondered how the date related to Evelyn’s initial jump, and if he’d been lied to on that front as well. Which now seemed likely.
He pondered what he could accomplish with internet access. At first, he thought about how he could get a better sense of his environment, but realized there was no time to sit in among the trees and surf the web. His first and foremost priority was reaching young Evelyn to see if she could shed some light on the timing. He was acting on a hunch – an educated one. While learning that he was three years into the future had shocked him, after a moment he realized that the only reason Ekaterina would have picked this specific date was because Evelyn would have given it to her. Which meant that Evelyn had already experienced this date. Which meant that she hadn’t gone back in time yet (and not returned).
He suddenly felt clear on that. Double-checking himself, he was certain, because Agent Fisher had related the same information to him, about the “deadline” – even before Ekaterina was in the picture. What he was not clear on was why she would have lied about it. That was some hypothesizing for another date and time.
He wondered if it would be possible to get information on Evelyn on-line. He opened up the tablet’s internet browser, was only a little surprised that Google still existed, and started to type in her name, realizing after getting halfway through it that not only did he not know the accurate spelling of her real first name, but he had no idea what her last name was.
He remembered the business card he’d stolen from Evelyn’s room. Reaching back into Abby’s bag, he pulled out the card, hoping that it would still match the restored reality.
He nearly whooped when he scanned the card to see that he had it all: name, phone number, e-mail, everything. Listed at the top was what he hoped was her real name – Ekaterina Batrudinov – but it was exactly what he needed. She must have wanted to preserve some piece of herself, so she’d saved the card when she’d traveled. He considered it to be good science that she’d done so. It was also fortunate that he’d had the presence of mind to pilfer it on the way out of her room. Not normally a praying man, he thanked God that that he’d been light in the fingers.
He considered what would be the best way to get Evelyn’s attention without alarming and frightening her. He didn’t know anything about her, really, but what he did know – and it was something that no one else knew – was that she was planning to time travel to 1983 at some point in the future, possibly even that very evening. If there was anything that would get her attention, that would be it.
He wanted to test the information first, though. While the probability was much greater that the numbers in front of him would not be accurate, he believed it was possible they could be, and that had to count for something. He had nothing else going for him.
He opened a text messenger on the tablet. Most of the card was in Russian and he couldn’t decipher it. But he had the name and the number, which were the important pieces. He typed in the phone number off of the card. Expeditiously, he tapped the keyboard on the screen.
“You are in danger,” he wrote, then stared at it. Couldn’t avoid a message like that.
Hoping for a little bit of luck, he hit send before he had the time to reconsider.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ekaterina Batrudinov could feel the Podpolkovnik staring at her, and it was unnerving. She hated when Dmitriyev was there, and even more so now that she was aware of the Premier’s horrible plan. It had only been 48 hours since she’d learned what they intended to do with the time travel device she had created, and she was infuriated that she’d been his puppet all along. She’d dedicated most of her life to the science behind human time travel, and every step along that path, for which she’d received accolades and celebration, was to serve no other purpose than to fulfill the twisted plot of a devious mastermind.
“Свободные губы погружают суда” – loose lips do, indeed, sink ships. And if Belochkin, her boss, mentor, and father figure, as well as General Secretary of the Communist Party, had not imbibed too many Manhattans at a reception at the compound two nights before, she never would’ve found the courage to walk through that door that had been forbidden to her since her youth. What was inside – evidence of Belochkin’s intent to use her devise to change American history – devastated her. It was enough for her to deviate from the plans that had been set in stone for months and create her own mission. She would be giving up everything she had, everything she was, to do this, but Belochkin had inflicted too much terror on the world already. What he planned to do next was not allowable.
Of course, now that she knew, Dmitriyev’s constant presence very much made sense. He had no scientific knowledge, and for that she and her team had considered him to be generally useless and unimportant until now, nothing more than a statue standing in the corner. But it was clear at this point that he was there to ensure that everything went exactly to plan, and that no one on the team would be cavalier with their invention. Quite possibly, even, he would be the one carrying out Belochkin’s mission, since she could not envision Belochkin time traveling himself. Belochkin’s concern was reasonable – Ekaterina had herself detailed, in all of her work, the dangers inherent in time travel. There was no policing people’s actions. If someone traveled back in time and changed something, history simply changed around everyone that wasn’t a part of the trip. There was no way anyone could know. Which is why everything had to be done under lock-and-key, in a remote facility nowhere near anything remotely resembling
civilization other than the General Secretary’s compound. She’d built this device at Belochkin’s direction so that he could change history, and that was all that was planned for it. No science. No research. No marveling at the possibilities. It was constructed for one thing and one thing only.
The question was when he would pull the trigger, and she knew from the way Belochkin normally operated, the notice would come with little warning. In fact, he was due in the morning for a presentation on their progress. Unfortunately, given the circumstances, her progress report would indicate that the device was ready for use, and she was certain that his response would be to move immediately forward. Which was why she was planning her own operation for that very evening, the moment that the team and the Podpolkovnik went out the lab’s front door. But there were still several preparations to be made – the device was not meant to be operated by a single person. She just couldn’t be obvious about what she was doing.
Fortunately, Dmitriyev was ignorant as to what they were working on – the technical aspects of it, at least – so she felt she could get quite a bit accomplished despite his presence. What she could not afford to do was have anyone on her team ask questions or appear to be confused, as it would raise his suspicions. He enjoyed interrogation, though he could never understand the answers. Intrigue was her enemy right at this moment. She’d gotten some time in without being under his scrutiny the past few hours, but he’d returned about twenty minutes ago. His glare had returned with him.
The phone on her desk buzzed and she reached over and hit the intercom button. “да?”
“Это - безопасность. Только проверяя, чтобы удостовериться все в порядке.” It was strange for security to check on her. Of course she was fine – nothing had happened out of the ordinary.
“Почему это не было бы?” She wondered if they would actually tell her why they were calling, but likely not. They were always so mysterious. While she wracked her brain for any missteps she may have made in her initial planning for the evening, she came up with nothing. She reasoned that the call had to do with the General Secretary’s impending visit. Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she reached down and pushed the volume button through her pants to silence it.
Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2) Page 21