Plan for the Worst

by Jodi Taylor

  I stopped rolling. Small rocks and soil still slithered past me but I’d found some sort of root to cling on to and cling I did. For dear life. At some point the tremors had stopped. Now I had only the aftermath of a landslide to deal with. Things were looking up.

  Around me, small rocks were still tumbling downhill. I really should get out of here before I finished up in the sea so somewhat unsteadily I sat up, wiped the blood and sweat from my face, reached down my blouse to remove large lumps of Crete from my nooks and crannies, untangled my skirt, tried to shake the dust from my hair, climbed unsteadily to my feet and surveyed the shattered landscape.

  Just in time to be knocked down by another tremor. But there was something different about this one. This wasn’t a fluttery tremor. This was a ripple – a convulsion, if you like. And worst of all, to the north, a red glow showed over the horizon, getting larger and larger by the second. Like a second sunrise.

  I was lost. I had no idea of Markham’s whereabouts. Or Peterson’s. And the eruption had begun.

  35

  I am about to use bad language. Please feel free to turn the page, or fast-forward, or chuck the kids out of the car, or whatever. You might want to stop the car first, obviously, although now might be a good time to discover if the little devils really can tuck and roll.

  Fuck. Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

  OK. All done. You can let them back in now. Down I went again. I was hitting the ground more often than a screaming heroine in a 1940s B-movie. I lay, blinking in the dust, thought, sod it, and decided to stay put for a while. It might be that the god of historians had suddenly read the job description and was trying to tell me something. At some point during the landslide, my earpiece had fallen out. And I’d lost my stun gun. I still had my recorder though, and if that bastard Ronan turned up, I was all set to club him to death with it. I peered up at the rock- and tree-strewn slope above me. My gun was somewhere among that lot, I supposed.

  As was Peterson. I pulled myself wearily to my feet and stared around, convinced that at any moment, I’d see him picking his way over the rocks and grinning at me prior to saying something daft. Because this was Peterson. He had to be here somewhere. Why couldn’t I see him? Where was he? It hadn’t been a huge landslip but there was no sign of him anywhere. Was he buried under that lot? How would I ever get him out? Was he even alive? Without my earpiece or my com, how could I get help? And where, in all this, was Markham?

  I shouted, ‘Markham! Markham – can you hear me?’

  I was so busy shouting at the landscape that I didn’t hear him to begin with. And then, behind me, a rock clattered. Someone was carefully making their way towards me. Oh, thank God. I turned around.

  Not Tim. Not Markham. Clive Ronan.

  I stood on that Cretan hillside, disaster and ruin all around me, and knew that this was the end. One or both of us was never going to get out of this.

  Looking at him, he’d been swept up in the same landslip as me. He too had that bloody and battered just fallen down a rocky hillside look about him. The good news was that he also seemed to have lost his weapon somewhere along the way. The bad news was that there was no sign of Markham. There could only be one reason why. He would never have let Ronan get away from him. Not if there was breath left in his body. My chest closed. This couldn’t be happening. Not both of them. We’d been together for so long. Shared so much. We’d picked each other up off the ground. We’d shouted and argued together. We’d got drunk together. We’d been injured together. I remembered Tim after Thermopylae, barely able to stand, writing his tribute to the Spartans on the cliff face.

  And Markham, covered in lesions, bites, skin eruptions and soaking wet after Tim and I had been forced to throw him into the Nile. For his own good, of course. The thought of losing both of them . . .

  I thrust those thoughts away. I couldn’t afford to think about either of them. Not just at this moment. I needed to focus. What to do next? Running away was out of the question. The ground was rough and jumbled with fallen rock and not all of my legs were working properly. I suppose I could have jumped Ronan as he picked his way towards me although given my aching bones and fuzzy vision that probably wouldn’t have gone well. He wasn’t looking too good himself but he was still streets ahead of me. We regarded each other through the smoke.

  I said, ‘Not now, Clive. I’m busy.’

  He ignored me. ‘Where is it?’

  I blinked to try to clear my vision. ‘You’re going to have to be a lot more specific.’

  He seized my arm and shook me which didn’t do my poor head a lot of good at all.

  ‘Where is it?’

  I was bewildered. ‘Where’s what?’

  He shook harder. I swear my teeth rattled.

  His face was scarlet with effort and heat. And rage. I’d never seen him so out of control. Dust was stuck to his forehead and cheekbones. He looked almost unhinged. The thought crossed my mind that this was not the time to be messing with him.

  I shouted at him. ‘I don’t know what you want. I don’t know why you’re here. What do you want from me?’

  ‘Tell me.’ He was practically screaming.

  So was I because I had no idea what this was all about. ‘Tell you what?’

  He was gripping my arm so tightly I could feel my hand throbbing with the lack of blood. I took a deep breath and made a huge effort to speak quietly.

  ‘Clive . . . Clive. What is it? What do you want?’

  His grip tightened even further although actually I don’t think he was aware of it. I made up my mind I was going to lose the arm.

  ‘The pod, of course.’

  Now I was bewildered. ‘Which pod? Yours? Mine? Which?’

  He stepped back, taking his face out of mine. He let go of one arm and wiped his face, leaving streaks of Cretan dust all over it.

  ‘Theirs.’

  I shook my head. I’d just been chased by bulls, caught in a forest fire and fallen down a hillside. I was going to need a moment. ‘Whose? What are you talking about?’

  The ground rippled again and we both staggered. It was like trying to keep my balance on a trampoline when someone else was using it. I had my back to the sea, but I wasn’t imagining it. The sky was darkening. Thick grey and black clouds, lined with red, were drifting across the face of the sun. The tremors were now only moments apart.

  His hot breath gusted in my face and the memory came flooding back.

  Hello, little girl.

  Again, I felt his breath hot on my cheek. It hadn’t just been a nasty way of frightening the living daylights out of me as I’d thought at the time. No, it had been a case of mistaken identity in the dark. He’d thought I was someone else. And now I knew who. This was what he and I had fought over in the Cretaceous. The bait we’d dangled in front of him to draw him into our trap. How stupid of me to think he would have quietly given up. This was what he’d been looking for at our remote site. When he’d mistaken me for Mikey. Who’d announced her intention of visiting the latrine. And I’d followed her into the night. And somehow, in the dark, he’d found me instead.

  He was still after the teapot.

  A quick word of explanation before anyone thinks I’ve sustained yet another blow to the head and lost my wits again. I’m not talking about tea-dispensing equipment. I’m talking about Adrian and Mikey – described either as those lovable scamps or those irresponsible idiots, depending on whether they were being described by us or the Time Police – who had put together a pod that somehow – and no one knew how – managed to bypass all the usual in-built safety protocols. In this pod you could jump to anywhere you liked and do whatever you liked when you got there, including stealing whatever or whoever you liked. It was – and this is the Time Police talking now, although I am inclined to agree – the most dangerous piece of equipment in the world. We’d dangled it in front of Clive Ronan as bait and
he’d jumped at it and missed. And now, here he was. Back for another try.

  The teapot wasn’t here on Crete but I couldn’t tell him that. We never leave St Mary’s unguarded but it was functioning on a skeleton staff at the moment. Most of us were here and the place was being manned mainly by the Kitchen and Admin crews. True, in their own ways, they were as lethal as the Security Section – if not more so – but they’d be taken unawares and I had no idea of the resources at Ronan’s disposal. Since Laurence Hoyle’s attempt to change History at Bosworth, I’d sometimes wondered, vaguely, whether there wasn’t some link, however tenuous, between Ronan, Halcombe and Hoyle’s ‘shadowy figures’. I don’t know if anyone’s ever noticed my not terribly high opinion of politicians and the government, but it really wouldn’t surprise me if, somehow, they’d all found each other. For what purpose, I had no idea, but that wasn’t important at the moment. And if there was somehow a connection between them, that could explain how Ronan knew we were here.

  I said stupidly, ‘You’re after the teapot?’

  ‘Where is it?’

  I nodded my head vaguely in the direction I supposed Mount Ida to be. ‘Up there.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  I nodded, sincerity oozing from every orifice. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘And why would it be up there?’

  ‘Birthplace of Zeus,’ I said, making it all up as I went along. ‘They should be stripping his shrine right now. Lots of gold.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You gave that up too easily. It’s still at St Mary’s, isn’t it?’

  Yes, it was. Along with Adrian, Mikey, Leon and Matthew, Professor Penrose and everyone else I held dear.

  ‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘You’re right. We didn’t bring it on this assignment because . . .’

  ‘Shut up.’ He stood for a moment, thinking. I took a quick look around because things weren’t getting any better anywhere else, either.

  The world was full of sound and fury. The rock beneath my feet shuddered at regular intervals. Even from here I could hear the shouting and screaming in Knossos as people jammed the streets. I hoped they were evacuating. Go up, people. Climb. Get as high as you can. Dogs were barking and howling. Over to my left, the fire was spreading and the drifting smoke wasn’t helping visibility at all.

  He looked over at the city. Terrace after terrace of buildings, storerooms, sanctuaries, and the palace itself, all surmounted by those massive bull’s horns.

  ‘It’s over there, isn’t it? Inside the palace.’

  I suppose one of the shortcomings of being a villain is that you assume everyone thinks the same as you. Because that’s where he’d be, helping himself to any treasure he found lying around, he’d assumed that’s where we’d be, too.

  I bit my lip and said nothing, giving, I hoped, a masterful impression of an historian with something to hide. All the time I was thinking about how to get out of this. How to look for Peterson. And find Markham, about whom I had the gravest concerns. How to get them out of this and up to safer, higher ground. If they were still alive. Of course they were still alive. They both had too much to live for. Markham with his unborn child – and any year now, Peterson would get around to initiating some sort of relationship with Lingoss.

  Ronan was staring over my shoulder. Turning, I could see distant black smoke boiling up into the heavens, lit underneath by that sinister, ever-growing red glow. Thera was seventy miles away and I was certain I could hear the rumbles. Feel the continual tremors. Between Ronan and the volcano, I really couldn’t see how I was going to get out of this.

  I had to raise my voice to be heard. ‘Clive, you should get out of here. You know as well as I do that Thera is about to blow. Get out while you still can.’

  He shook me again, shouting, ‘I’ll ask you one last time. If you won’t answer then there’s no point in me keeping you alive.’

  I was staring at him, trying to think of something – anything – that would keep him away from St Mary’s, when there was a sudden and familiar wind in my face. My hair streamed out behind me. But it couldn’t be. This was impossible. Obviously, the day had got away from me and I’d finally gone mad. I wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised. Everyone always said it was bound to happen one day.

  He screamed over the noise. ‘Where is it? Tell me!’

  Truly, the god of historians was on form today. And yes, I know Peterson and Markham were missing and Thera was about to disappear beneath the waves and Crete would be overthrown by fire, flood and invasion, but sometimes a benevolent Universe sends you the perfect moment.

  I grinned at him. ‘It’s behind you.’

  36

  It bloody was, too. I wasn’t mucking about. There it stood. Just what you expect to see in Bronze Age Crete right in the middle of an epoch-ending earthquake – a twelve-foot-high teapot. Happens all the time.

  Incredibly, Ronan believed me. He spun around, dropping me. I fell to the ground and frankly was quite pleased to stay there because events were getting further away from me every minute.

  For anyone who wonders why Mikey and Adrian’s pod is called the teapot, it’s because that’s just what it looks like. It’s a precarious-looking, top-heavy structure, bulbously teapot-like in appearance. An extrusion on one side looks like a spout and a corresponding extrusion on the other side resembles the handle. Its khaki and brown paintwork was dented and blistered – where it hadn’t been scraped off altogether. A hand-painted Union Jack adorned the side.

  Ronan stood and stared. I don’t know if he’d never actually seen it before and its appearance had come as a surprise to him, or whether he was just gobsmacked at it turning up like this. As was I. What the bloody hell was going on?

  The teapot sat there. Nothing happened – it just sat there. I crawled to a comfortable-looking rock and pulled myself on to it. I needed to conserve my strength for whatever fresh disaster was about to occur.

  The hatch slowly opened. Normally, either Mikey and/or Adrian’s heads would pop out, rather in the manner of a couple of surprised meerkats, and there would be cheery greetings and a great deal of unfocused enthusiasm. Not this time, however. Dr Bairstow looked down at me but his gun was pointed at Ronan.

  ‘Good afternoon, Dr Maxwell.’

  So here we had it. A full set of catastrophes. Peterson MIA. Markham MIA. Ronan sadly not MIA. Earthquakes. Bulls. Volcano. Fire. To say nothing of the most dangerous piece of equipment in the world right here in front of me. Exactly where it shouldn’t be. Together with a boss I no longer trusted to do the right thing. I felt quite light-headed. It’s quite liberating to know there really isn’t anything else that could possibly go wrong.

  Too taken aback even to speak, I raised a hand in polite acknowledgement and waited with considerable interest to see what would happen next.

  ‘They did warn me,’ said Dr Bairstow, wiping his mouth with a spotless handkerchief. ‘But it would seem they didn’t tell me the half of it.’

  I nodded. I’d made any number of jumps in that teapot and the best you can say is that it’s rough. Gut-churningly, bone-shakingly rough.

  Dr Bairstow swept on. ‘Good afternoon, Clive. How are you these days? Do step back, there’s a good fellow.’

  Good to see Ronan was as completely gobsmacked as me. Stubborn as always, he stood his ground, but he really should have heeded Dr Bairstow’s advice. I, on the other hand, was very familiar with the usual method of entering and exiting this pod and was already moving out of range as the heavy wooden ladder thudded to the ground. Clive Ronan had to skip sideways out of the way pretty sharpish and while he was doing that, Dr Bairstow took the opportunity to throw his gun down to me.

  I caught it neatly – although I nearly didn’t – and by the time Ronan had found his footing again, he was peering down the wrong end of Dr Bairstow’s long-barrelled gun – or cannon, as it was sometimes described. The one h
e usually kept in his top drawer. For those days when the Parish Council were being more than normally difficult, I suppose.

  Slowly and painfully, Dr Bairstow made his way down the ladder, eventually arriving at the bottom.

  ‘Goodness me,’ he said, dusting himself down. ‘What a very inconvenient method of egress. Of course, I suppose if you have two working legs, then it doesn’t represent too much of a challenge but sadly, those days are done for me. Well, you’d know about that, wouldn’t you, Clive? It’s very hot, isn’t it? Please excuse me while I mop my brow.’

  He took out his spotless handkerchief again and mopped his brow. I felt even dirtier and sweatier than ever.

  I had mixed feelings about this arrival. Yes, it was good that Ronan was no longer about to brain me with a rock, but at the same time, it was very, very bad that Dr Bairstow was here. And with the teapot. In fact, this was a catastrophe. I’d been fine. There was no need for him to be here. I had the situation under complete control – Clive Ronan and the teapot had been separated by several thousand miles and several thousand years. There hadn’t been a problem. And now there was. Why? Why would Dr Bairstow be so . . . unwise . . . as to be jumping around in a pod that, officially, no longer existed?

  The answer came before I’d finished asking myself the question.

  Bait. He was using the teapot as bait. And me as well. I’d been bait. And possibly Peterson and Markham. He’d used us all. And worse – he’d never said a word to any of us. We’d all marched blindly into this situation, completely unprepared. Defenceless. To be used as cannon-fodder in his determination to take down Clive Ronan. None of us were going to come out of this alive. The pair of them were on a course of mutually assured destruction. They were going to wipe each other out and take us with them. If the tidal wave didn’t get us all first, of course. Have I ever mentioned the benefits of an office job?