“Почему это не было бы,” the security guard responded. She thanked him for his thoughtfulness, then clicked off the line.
Ekaterina sat for a moment, shaking her head, then reached into her pocket, pulling out her phone. She tapped the screen and it came alive, indicating she had a text message. Her fingers danced across the screen and it opened.
“You are in danger,” it said. In English.
Conscious of her reaction at such a critical time, she set the phone gently on her lap and went back her computer for a moment, typing away on the keyboard. She pulled her right hand off of the computer and quietly slipped her phone back into her pocket, then rose from her chair, heading to the main door of the lab. She could get a moment of solitude in the restroom.
She nodded politely and smiled at the Podpolkovnik, who maintained his stern countenance. What a jerk, she thought, summoning one of her favorite American words, then stepped into the hallway. The bathroom was three doors down the corridor and she walked at an innocent pace until she was in the room. Locking herself in a stall, she took the phone out again. She changed the device’s language to English for the purpose of this conversation. As much as they prided themselves on keeping the West out of everything they did, everyone on staff had an American-made phone. While Soviet citizens were made to use Russian-manufactured phones, the government knew perfectly well they were not of the same quality, and procured American phones for their internal use out of public sight.
“Who is this?” she typed, slapping the screen in as demanding a way as possible.
She waited thirty seconds before another message came back. “Let’s say I’m a fellow time traveler.”
Her heart leapt, but she took a deep breath and typed, “You’ve got the wrong person. I am not a time traveler.”
This time she waited over a minute before an answer came back. “But you will be, no?”
She considered the time she’d been gone. If Dmitriyev had indeed seen her pull her phone out, he might be suspicious, so she tried to rush and ended up making typos. “Who is this?” she finally got out and hit send.
Back to the thirty second interval. “Too much to explain in 140 characters. Meet me in the parking lot. Now.”
She leaned against the side of the stall, exhaling a deep breath. She had not told a soul in the world what she planned to do later that evening. Especially not the 17 people who actually knew that the time travel device existed. No one on her team would be able to figure it out, even, from the steps she’d taken because everything that had been done to date was designed simply to fulfill the parameters of the experiment. The coordinates she would use were stowed away on a piece of paper she kept on her person at all times. Not once had they been entered into the system, and they would not be until the moment she was ready to go.
So whoever was texting her was doing so with inside knowledge that was virtually impossible for him or her to have. Unless, of course, this person actually was a time traveler that had somehow “witnessed” her jump, which she had yet to take. If that was the case, it would mean that she would ultimately be successful that evening, which strengthened her resolve against Belochkin and Dmitriyev.
While that explanation seemed far-fetched, her curiosity won the day and she decided she’d make the rendezvous. Her sixth sense was not feeling inherent danger, perhaps irresponsibly so, in meeting someone in the parking lot, even someone who had approached her in English, so she unlocked herself from the stall and exited the restroom. For a moment, she started back toward the lab to offer some excuse to Dmitriyev as to why she had to go out to her car, but thinking better of it she steered down an adjacent corridor toward the front entrance of the facility.
When she reached the front doors, she walked past the guard, Nikolai, the man who had just called her, sitting at his station scanning surveillance videos on a collection of monitors in front of him. The young man was intense and took his job of protecting the facility extremely seriously, but to the regular workers he was generally very personable and even made a habit of such kindnesses as walking Ekaterina and her other female colleagues to their cars in inclement weather. Never having been adept at the impromptu, she mumbled something about leaving her lunch in the car with a half-hearted laugh, and pushed through the door.
“Не сделал Вас только-” he started to call after her, but the door closed and he was cut off. She paused, though. Didn’t she just... What?
She didn’t have much time, though, so she continued to the parking lot. When she was about twenty paces away from the first row of cars, she could see a man standing on the other side of the lot, staring in her direction. Strangely feeling as though any danger came not from this stranger but from inside the building behind her, she glanced around to see if anyone was noticing her. Though, she knew that everyone was hard at work inside, preparing for the General Secretary’s arrival the next morning. As she should’ve been, too, from an objective point-of-view. A prolonged absence would definitely attract Dmitriyev’s attention. It was important to make this meeting quick.
It was also important not to be obvious, so after crossing two rows of cars, she turned abruptly toward her own, finding it in the third row. She pulled her keys from her pocket and clicked the driver’s side lock open. She pulled the door open and leaned inside, then looked up to see the man standing next to her. He looked to be about her age, handsome, smart, and exhausted. The left side of his body was wet, as though he’d been lying on the ground, and a brown satchel was slung over his shoulder.
“How is your English?” he asked.
She nodded, without allowing an expression to cross her face. She didn’t know him – he didn’t need to know anything about her.
“Are we safe talking here?”
“Not for long,” she said, in English, motioning for him to get into the car. He looked cautiously around the lot, then walked to the passenger side and got in. She sat in front of the steering wheel. The air was cold and she hadn’t brought her coat, which would also attract attention, but she left her door open, her foot resting on the pavement. In the back of her mind, she reasoned her posture would also allow for a quick getaway if necessary. “Why did you bring me here?”
The man laughed. “If I don’t have long to talk, I need to give you the short version. I was sent here by you. Well, actually, I was sent to 1983 by you, but ended up here.”
“What do you mean, ‘by me’?” This man did know something. The reference to 1983 – the exact year she was headed that evening - was too much to ignore.
He held up his hands and nodded. “Ok,” he said, catching himself. He was trying to organize his thoughts, but was definitely scattered. “I think tonight you’re planning to go back to 1983 to assassinate a Russian general, who I believe is now the head of the country. If it’s not tonight, my guess is that you’ll be doing it soon.” She gave him no indication he was correct, but it didn’t matter because he was looking down anyway, lost in thought. “You will be successful in that, provided you actually get to do it. Unfortunately, and you know this already, you won’t have a way back, so you’ll be marooned in the past.”
How this man was so specifically detailing the concerns that had been plaguing her the past 48 hours, she couldn’t comprehend.
“As a result, you will stay in the past and live the last thirty-some years over again, ultimately moving to America and building a life for yourself there.”
America? That didn’t seem like her. Still she said nothing.
“As a direct result of your taking out the general, the Soviet Union falls in 1991.”
Now she felt she had to stop him. “Why are you saying all of this? This history is not real.”
“But it is,” he said. “It’s the history where I come from. In the history where I come from, Russia and the United States are at peace. Even allies at times.”
“So why are you here?” She peered around the lot again. By now Dmitriyev would be wondering where
she’d gone. She hoped she could count on Nikolai’s confusion about her leaving to buy her a little time, if the Polpodkovnik asked of him where she was.
“You sent me here. The older version of you influenced the American government to believe that, as a part of your experiments, you determined that if someone travels through time and changes an event in the past, if you want that event to maintain the change, someone must go back and fulfill it. I’d subscribed to the same theory, which I’ve called ‘fulfillment,’ but now I’m realizing we were wrong.”
“And you are?”
“I’m a physicist. Dr. Jeff Jacobs.”
“And you’ve time traveled?
“Yes. And this is going to sound crazy, so bear with me.” He turned toward her, focusing on her for the first time. “The elder version of you connected me with the present day version of you – that is, the present day version of you in my reality – to fulfill the assassination of the general. So, we traveled back to 1983, but unfortunately when the time came, the other you pulled a fast one on me. She stopped the assassination and transported us back to the future, I believe. But a different future. The one that you originally were in before you traveled, which is today. Right now. I’m sorry, I know this doesn’t make sense, but it is what it is.” He rubbed his forehead.
She was thinking. “No, it’s alright,” she said, but there was one specific point she’d picked up on. “So you have created a time travel device that is portable? It allows you to travel backward and then forward again?”
He nodded. “Yes, but she has it.”
“The other me?”
“Yes.”
“How did you-”
“That will have to be a conversation for another time,” he said, pointing at the main entrance to the facility.
She looked up to see Dmitriyev and Nikolai standing outside, scanning the parking lot. Without taking her eyes off of them, she said, “Why am I in danger?”
“You’re in danger because the other Ekaterina is here, in this time, right now. Probably inside the building using your fingerprints and eye scans and whatever else she needs to get in. Even though we were sent to save the reality we came from, she’s created this new reality all over again, and I believe she intends to try to keep it. I can only assume the best way for her to do that is to eliminate you before you can time travel tonight.”
“There are two of me here?” Dmitriyev was starting to move toward the lot. They had to finish their conversation.
“Yes, and she will do anything to stop you if she finds you. She might even do anything to stop you if she can’t find you. I know you’d have to take a leap of faith to believe an American who showed up out of nowhere with a ridiculous story about how we all got here, but I can assure you – and this is from what you as an old woman told me – that the world became a better and safer place once you completed your mission. I hope you believe that. I hope you’ll carry out your plans and help me restore that reality.” She paused for a moment, so he continued. “We do need to talk more, but first and foremost I wanted you to know to protect yourself. You have my number. All I can do is text, though, so please contact me. And please be careful.”
With that, he quickly opened the passenger door and rolled out of the car onto the ground. From his lying down position, he looked up at her. “Why did you choose that date in 1983?”
His question caught her off-guard, because she knew she hadn’t actually divulged anything to him. But with his knowledge of her mission, she couldn’t deny his role, and had already made the assessment that he could be an asset. Even if it was just for information. She kept her eyes fixated on the Polpodkovnik. “On April 9, 1983, General Belochkin told me about his dream of time travel. The next morning, he was hosting the leadership from the Science Academy to tell them of his plans and set the research agenda in motion. I reasoned that if he held that meeting, no matter what happened afterwards, the Republic would – even if it was Belochkin’s dream – pursue the program.” She turned to him. “You must go.”
He nodded and quietly closed the door.
It was just in time, too, as she looked up to see Dmitriyev striding toward her. She stuffed her hand into the car’s console and pulled out an emergency granola bar she kept there for long nights in front of the computer.
A moment later, he was standing beside her car.
“Вы ушли в течение некоторого времени.” While he was calm in telling her that her unauthorized absence was an issue for him, she got the point.
“я сожалею. я нуждался в перерыве, и я получал головную боль.” She thought of classmates at the academy who would use the excuse of a headache for nearly every predicament in which they found themselves. It didn’t usually work.
It didn’t work here, either, as the Podpolkovnik demanded she get back inside, reminding her that the General Secretary would be visiting the next day, and that he expected everything related to the experiment to be in order.
It was already ready, of course. But now she had something else to think about. Though she remained resolved that the General Secretary would not arrive the next day because he would be dead thirty years before.
Unless Ekaterina’s other self was making any progress in stopping her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ekaterina was lost. These buildings were a maze and she was having trouble getting her bearings.
Unfortunately, now traffic in the corridors was starting to get heavier, so she couldn’t afford to appear as though she was even a little bit confused. Playing someone who was expected to be in the building, and if Evelyn’s memory had been sound, someone who held a leadership role in the facility, she’d would raise suspicion if anyone noticed her floundering.
She tried to gauge where she was, which was difficult because she felt she’d been turned around. From the outside, she’d counted seven buildings. Since she’d been inside, she’d made several changes in direction, which she believed put her in the tallest of the buildings. Each room she passed looked like the last, though, and none of them struck her as lab space. Everything looked like offices, almost as if the facility were the headquarters of a large bank. Nothing she’d seen would have suggested that there were time travel experiments happening on the premises, which was likely the way they wanted it. Not one passerby had paid her any attention, but she knew at some point someone would.
She remembered of her view from the outside that the top floor of the tallest building had panoramic windows on it, and wondered if she could use the view to gain perspective. It would have to be public space – “public” with the caveat that this was a high-security facility, and a hope that it wasn’t the office of whomever was in charge. But Russians approached management differently than Americans – at least they had in her time – in that their heads-of-state and heads-of-business didn’t put their offices above their staffs like gods watching over their minions. They put them on the ground floor where their leadership would be better enforced.
Hoping she was, indeed, in the right building, she found an elevator. She was validated immediately, finding that the elevator went up to the eighth floor, so she pushed the button. No one joined her for the duration of the trip, and when the doors opened she emerged into a large square room that was reminiscent of an airport lounge. The entire floor, which was at the peak of the building and was smaller than the other floors, was one room, and featured distinct areas of soft couches and chairs surrounding flat screen televisions. To one side was a small eating area, to the other a well-stocked bar. The decor was comprised of soothing earth tones. This was the place that people would come when being stuck in a Soviet science compound for indefinite amounts of time became too much for them.
For now, though, it was empty, working to her advantage. She strode across the room to one set of windows and peered outside. In this direction, she could see little – just a forest and field heading off into the sparseness that was mo
st of Russia. Based on her relative analysis of the location of the compound, she reasoned she was probably facing south, so she moved to the right. Looking to the west, she saw two buildings, both three stories tall and with dark windows, but looking like nothing more than office buildings. Beyond them was the large power generation structure that she guessed kept the facility running, and most importantly, off of the electrical grid and away from suspicion. Continuing her stroll, she approached the windows facing north and could see Belochkin’s compound and its expansive property. It was a captivating view for her, having spent so much time there as a child. At the time, the house had seemed enormous, but seen from above it was of manageable size. She could see the window leading to what had been her room, wondering what it would currently be used for, and the room that she’d been in only an hour before, analyzing Belochkin’s timeline. Thirty-five years before in real time.
She hadn’t had the time when she was in the compound in 1983 to reminisce much, but from high above she found it was dangerously easy to get lost in her thoughts. While she’d been very young, when she had spent time at the compound, she remembered the oak tree on the far end under which she’d sat on a tire swing for hour upon hour, spinning herself dizzy in between her studies. She remembered playing P’yanitsa on the large boulder near the basketball court, studying the mathematical behavior of the cards as she peeled them off of the deck. And she remembered being interrupted from reading Aleksandr Blok in the hammock, so that Belochkin could confide in a 5-year-old that he wanted to travel through time.
Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2) Page 22