Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2)

by Craig W. Turner

  Quickly, she made her way through the tunnel and back into the compound. She emerged into the expansive yard as she had left it earlier that day. A handful of students and adults still meandered around the property, oblivious to the fact that anything was happening, so, under the cover of the trees, she paused to recover the coordinates for 1983 in the time device. Then she walked purposefully across the lawn to the patio. She saw several of the young men and women look up at her, probably wondering where she’d come from, but paid no attention to them.

  Suddenly, she heard an alarm pierce the air. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but noticed the compound’s residents all standing to stare in the direction of the facility. She reached the patio and took a position several steps from the kitchen doors. She saw a man sitting about five meters away in a soft chair, the book he was reading open face down on his lap. He looked confused.

  “да, это – для меня,” she said, letting him know that the sirens were her fault. She smiled and he nodded, pulling his cell phone from his pocket and obligingly handed it to her as she’d asked. He must have been fascinated by the strange woman appearing, out of routine and with alarms blaring, simply asking to borrow his phone. She saw him watching with great interest as she used the phone’s calculator to do the math necessary for new coordinates – Belochkin’s plan as she’d stolen it from him. It took her about 90 seconds, which was longer than she would have liked given the situation, but she entered the new coordinates into Jeff’s time device and tossed her new friend back his phone.

  She thought ten minutes would be about perfect.

  She held the device out at arm’s length, ready to push the button. Before she did, however, she reached into the pocket of her cargo pants and pulled out one of the deadly syringes.

  Ekaterina nodded a quick thank you to the man and pushed the button.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  They climbed out of the tunnel and into the thick trees lining the edge of the property.

  “I’m going with you this time,” Jeff said. As if “this time” meant anything to her. She’d been here once without him, and he’d been here once without her.

  She shook her head. “Two people will make it more difficult to stay quiet.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m up for it.”

  They looked out across the yard. Belochkin was still playing basketball, but Jeff knew that he’d be finishing up soon. They inched through the trees quietly, conscious of the sound of every step. They were still pretty far away across the enormous property from the general, and with the repetitive thumping of the basketball on the pavement there was little chance he’d hear them. But they maintained their stealth as best as they could. Unfortunately, they were two scientists trying to become assassins before the real assassin that was already on the premises could ruin it.

  It occurred to Jeff that there was probably another version of himself here, as well. If that was indeed the case, they most likely would’ve walked right past him moments before. He didn’t let that distract him, though. This was different than last time, when he knew he’d been irresponsibly aloof, thinking that Ekaterina had everything under control. Now, he was diligently focused on the mission, and had a sudden confidence that he had what it would take to get it done. He’d seen the result of failure. Unfortunately for him, if they failed it probably wouldn’t only mean permanence for the alternate reality. He was pretty sure Ekaterina the spy, who was also here, would not let him get away alive.

  When they were halfway along the tree line, they noticed Belochkin stop, towel himself off, and retire to the patio for his drink. Which meant they had a matter of minutes before the other Ekaterina would sound the alarm and come out of the house. He tapped Ekaterina on the arm and spun his finger in a circle in the universal sign of “hurry up.” He hoped that Russians had the same hand gestures and that she understood. She nodded, so he guessed she did.

  They reached a point parallel with the back of the house as Belochkin finished fixing his Manhattan. Jeff felt as though he was watching a play he’d already seen. The general pulled a patio chair out and sat in it, reclining back and resting from his work-out. Knowing they had only minutes to act, he grabbed Ekaterina by the arm and together they emerged from the trees, walking quickly to the side of the house. He peered around the corner as she readied the syringe, taking it firmly in her hand in a stabbing position. They made eye contact, nodded to each other, and stepped out from behind the wall.

  There was plenty of ambient noise in the yard to mask their approach. Jeff could hear hordes of crickets, cicadas in the trees, and the squealing of bats high overhead. His anticipation was great enough, though, that if Belochkin turned to notice them, he was prepared to break into an adrenaline-fueled dead run and tackle him so that Ekaterina could reach him with the needle.

  They got within fifteen feet of him when the house alarm went off.

  They were too late.

  The siren echoed in the night air and Belochkin rose quickly to his feet, looking around as Jeff and Ekaterina froze. After a quick turn, he noticed them, and with the speed of an Olympic sprinter out of the gate made a beeline for Jeff. In his life, Jeff had never been forced to react to anyone running at him like that, so he braced for the impact. It came hard, and the two men went sprawling onto the grass. The tackle caught Jeff in the soft part of his midsection, so although he couldn’t breathe immediately, he didn’t recognize any specific damage. Six inches higher, with the force of Belochkin’s blow, he was certain he’d have been looking at broken ribs or worse. He landed several feet from Belochkin, and both of them raced to scramble to their feet.

  From behind him, Ekaterina advanced with the syringe at the ready. But Belochkin turned and deflected her with his arm, then grabbed her by her shirt and tossed her several feet onto the grass. Jeff watched when she hit the ground, as she frantically began searching in the darkness for the needle – a dangerous proposition in itself.

  Belochkin turned to face Jeff in a wrestling pose, ready to engage. Jeff backed away slowly, hoping to avoid another impact. He knew two things were in the process of happening. One, another version of Ekaterina – his previous traveling companion – would be emerging from the house any second and dashing across the yard; and two, the Russian sentries would be there momentarily. Neither was particularly beneficial for his own welfare, and he reached around to the back of his pants where the pistol remained stashed. He only hoped that his one shooting lesson with Ekaterina was enough to stop an oncoming bull. If he missed, he was certain that Belochkin would take him apart piece by piece.

  Belochkin demanded something from him in Russian.

  Of course, Jeff had no idea what he was saying, so he continued to stand defiantly and cowardly facing him. He didn’t want to pull the gun until the general advanced. To his left, Belochkin’s right, Ekaterina still scampered on the ground. Probably sensing that Jeff might have a weapon behind his back, Belochkin only focused on him. He repeated his question, only this time in thickly-accented English. “Who are you?”

  “No one,” was all he could think to say.

  They stood in stalemate for a moment, eye-to-eye. Jeff knew he would not be the quickest off the draw, so he said a quick prayer to the gods of time travel that something would happen to make this turn out right.

  Amid the noise of the siren, they heard an ear-splitting cracking sound that made all three of them wince and put a hand to their ears. A split-second later, as they searched for the origin of the sound, a female figure appeared behind Belochkin. It was another Ekaterina, and Jeff immediately noticed that in one hand she was holding his time device. He glanced quickly at the Ekaterina lying on the ground, who was staring at her doppelganger in amazement, and calculated that the new arrival meant that they had not been successful in killing Belochkin and restoring history. His heart sank.

  Belochkin turned to the new Ekaterina, but before Jeff could even process in his mind that the odds had suddenly become even
more stacked against him, her other arm swept upwards and attacked the general’s neck. As he looked closer, he could see that she’d buried a syringe deep into his jugular.

  She stepped back and they all watched as Belochkin buckled to one knee. He grasped at the needle still stuck in his neck, but already he no longer had the dexterity for fine motor skills as the poison quickly affected him. Wide-eyed, he stumbled forward and within seconds he was on the ground, motionless.

  The siren continued to rain down on them as his current partner Ekaterina stood. They both stared at the newly arrived Ekaterina in amazement. She’d done everything she could to stop Belochkin’s death, and suddenly she was the perpetrator.

  “Why did you do that?” Jeff yelled over the alarms to her.

  He waited for an answer, which never came. Instead, like a viper Ekaterina dashed the ten feet between herself and the scientist Ekaterina, in one fluid motion pulling another syringe from the pocket of her pants and thrusting it into her neck. Jeff didn’t even have the time to call out her name, she was so fast. And then he barely had time to lunge forward to her before Ekaterina was on him, taking him from behind and wrapping her arm around his throat. They watched Ekaterina fall to the ground as Belochkin had a moment before, a look of bewilderment shadowing her face in the strobe lights. As he tried to gasp for breaths, he could feel her other arm sneaking down his side to his own cargo pants, where the final syringe was still hiding.

  “What are you doing?” he yelled, trying to break himself free of her grasp.

  With her face right next to his, she spoke right in his ear. “There will only be one version of me, and it will be this one,” she said.

  “But you killed Belochkin.” He twisted his body to keep her from getting to the pocket.

  “The life I have relies upon Belochkin being dead. It was a necessary evil.”

  “But your mission-”

  “The old woman was watching out for one person. Herself. I was her puppet. I won’t let that be the ending.”

  Jeff’s options ran through his mind as he struggled. Either the sentries or Ekaterina were going to kill him. Was either preferable? All he knew was that he had to keep thinking of a way out up until the very end.

  It came to him as suddenly the original Ekaterina – the one he’d met at the Waldorf and traveled to Russia with – emerged from the kitchen patio doors. He watched as she took a first step to sprint across the yard, then stopped to see the bedlam in front of her. Jeff watched as she looked up, a look of confusion on her face, to see an identical version of herself standing and facing her.

  “If you’re so worried about multiple versions of yourself, you forgot one,” he said angrily as she successfully unbuttoned the pocket on his pants and reached for the syringe.

  “You’re right,” she said, pulling her hand back. Without hesitation, she pulled the gun from the back of Jeff’s pants and fired a shot over his shoulder. He ducked late, as the reverb echoed in his ear. The other Ekaterina twisted and fell immediately to the ground. “Thanks for the advice,” she said, her hand moving back down his side.

  Suddenly, her grip loosened around his neck and he pulled away.

  “What’s happening to me?” she asked from behind him, awkwardly stepping backwards. “I feel... tingles...”

  Jeff turned to face her. Her arms, her legs, her torso… were becoming translucent. She was literally disappearing before his eyes – exactly the same as how he and Dexter had watched Erica disappear. He looked at her face and made eye contact with her for a split second. He saw fear, anger and failure. Not failure in her mission, but failure in that this weak American who was not worthy of her cause had bested her. She started to let out an angry scream, but instead her empty clothes fell to the ground in a heap.

  She was gone.

  He let out a sigh. It was what he’d thought would happen, what he’d hoped would happen, but he didn’t have time to think about it now. He could hear the footsteps of the sentries as he looked back toward the rear of the property, where he hoped his own other version had the sense to simply return to his present time with the device he was holding. It would be unfortunate to go through all of this only to have his other self get captured or killed, which, as had just happened to Ekaterina, could end his adventure very quickly.

  His only hope was the time device that Ekaterina had been holding, which was now tangled up in the pile of clothes. He sifted through it and found it on the ground in the darkness, just a foot away. Provided Ekaterina hadn’t gone anywhere else first, he had one trip left in the battery. He did not have time to fire up Abby’s tablet to get the right coordinates to return him to his original present time, so he had to count in his head how many jumps they’d made to scroll back to the right time. He started to count when he saw a red uniform and black automatic weapon approaching him.

  Knowing Belochkin was dead, and that the future was safer than anywhere else, he scrolled back two jumps. In the future – the good, American future – he could contact himself or his team and get back to his present. At least it was the most viable option for him. He heard shouting in Russian as he pushed the button to escape 1983.

  The flash of red coats blurred around him, and the temperature of the air cooled instantly. He fell to the ground in a panic from the situation he’d just left, but he was safe, sitting in the middle of the dilapidated compound with broken trees and the house in disrepair. Belochkin’s fortress had been restored to its original present-day muck.

  If he was correct, he was three years into the future. That being the case, there would be no hotel room waiting for him with his luggage in it. There would be no private jet booked to take him home from his victorious journey. There would be three years of his life missing.

  But he was safe. For now.

  He rose slowly, for an irrational fear that someone else would come and take a shot at him. He felt pain in his stomach from Belochkin’s tackle and hoped that he hadn’t ruptured anything.

  He heard a crackle of sticks to his left and turned quickly, reaching for the gun that was no longer in his pants. It was nothing. Some animal or something moving innocently through the trees. He slid his hand into the cargo pocket on his pants and pulled out the syringe. Only moments before, he’d seen one of these thrust into Belochkin’s neck and then Ekaterina’s. He thought of her now, and her untimely and unfair fate. All she’d wanted to do was make things right – to help the world. For that, she was murdered. He heaved the last syringe into the trees.

  With that, he headed for the secret tunnel. The state of disrepair of Belochkin’s house was evidence, but it wasn’t concrete proof that he’d been able to restore his original reality. He had to make sure that on the other side of the wall there was not an enormous facility that existed solely for the purpose of enabling time travel.

  He entered the tunnel slowly, feeling relieved to have no one chasing or shooting at him. He ran his hand along the dirt wall, counting his paces in the unlikely event that he ever had to go through it again. After a few moments, he saw a hint of light in the distance, then his foot hit the first step. He rose quickly and emerged through the outhouse into a wide open field.

  Jeff breathed an historic sigh of relief and almost fell to his knees from exhaustion. He’d done it. He’d put the world back to the way it should’ve been. Only with no Evelyn Peters, the wonderful and brilliant woman who had set everything in motion. He knew in his mind that there was still an Ekaterina somewhere – when he’d told her that she was forgetting another version of herself, she was actually forgetting two – the 5-year-old Ekaterina was in the house, tucked into bed. But she didn’t have anything to do with him. Which was best.

  Still, he was now an American stuck two hours outside of Moscow in the middle of a forest. There was a road that led to a more highly-trafficked area, but he certainly hadn’t been able to memorize it. He had Abby’s tablet, which he thought might be able to pinpoint his location and get him contact with the real world. It did occur
to him that no one would have known where he was for three years, so an e-mail or call from Russia would cause incredible confusion. Still, it was his only option.

  If he remembered correctly from when he’d landed in 2018 the first time, it was only about 1 p.m., so there was plenty of sunlight for him should he try to find some semblance of civilization. But he needed to get his bearings, and decided the best place to do so would be inside the compound. The last thing he needed after everything he’d been through was to be attacked by a bear or something standing out here in the field. Which he realized was probably a Russian stereotype.

  He turned back toward the outhouse when a sharp glint of sunlight pierced his eye, triggering the memory that, when he’d left this exact time before, it had been overcast and snowing. Either he was in the wrong place, or the changes to Russian history over the past 35 years had affected the climate. It was reasonable – industrialization, pollution and many other factors would have had an impact. If he was ever able to get back to the science of time travel, it was an important discovery.

  He squinted and blocked the glare with his hand. Then he saw one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen in his life.

  A Toyota Camry rental car perched in the grass.

  It hit him how much had changed in the last hour. A bustling facility that was the epicenter of Soviet scientific research had been replaced with a field so desolate that no one had noticed a car that had been parked there for three years.

  He walked slowly over to the car and pulled on the driver’s side door handle. It opened toward him and he sat in the front seat. Hanging in the ignition were the keys, which made him immediately wonder if Ekaterina had been so certain that she would be able to change the past that she knew the car would not be here when they got back. Or, she just knew that no one ever traveled this way and there was no danger of anyone finding it.