Madigan tapped his fingers against his desk, one after another. “Quite the mystery,” the warden said.
“Is there a doctor here? My nose—”
“Yes,” the warden said before his anonymous guest could say any more, waving away the request with the back of his hand. “As soon as we figure out who you are, we’ll take you to the infirmary.”
“I already told you, I don’t know who I am.”
“Yeah, yeah. You told me, all right.”
The time traveler let out a long sigh as he slumped in his chair and let the drops of cold water from the melting ice run down his face and onto his shirt.
His shirt?
Madigan saw the look of confusion and said, “We got you into some clothes after you were subdued. Couldn’t have you sitting in my office in just some soggy pants. Nobody wants that.”
“I must have lost my clothes,” the time traveler said.
“You lost a whole lot more than that. Lost your name, too.”
If only the warden knew the half of it. The time traveler hadn’t lost just his name, but his entire identity. He would never be able to go back to being the man he had been, a man who lived in fear of what the Tyranny would do next and whatever reason they would come up with to carry out their next war or set up more checkpoints. He gave up the children he taught history to. The dog that wandered his street, seemingly without an owner, sleeping on whichever doorstep he happened to be nearest to when it rained. Even that dog.
“We’ll figure it out,” the warden said. “We can tell who most people are by the pattern on their fingertips.”
The time traveler nodded. He tried to remember when a database of fingerprints became popular. While he couldn’t be positive, he was pretty sure that even though they had been around since the early 1900s, they hadn’t been in widespread use during Alcatraz’s time. It was something that law enforcement was just now learning to use as a bluff in order to scare possible lawbreakers into confessing things they might otherwise try to conceal.
After the time traveler didn’t reply, Madigan shrugged and went back to his paperwork. Page after page, he signed at the bottom, flipped to the next sheet or paper, signed where he was supposed to, until he had amassed a stack of completed papers without having read any of them.
In a few years, whenever it was, reporters would begin to question the living conditions of the inmates at Alcatraz. The warden would start by laughing off the reporters, at one point even telling one, “Living conditions? These are the worst of the worst that our country has to offer. They’re lucky we haven’t lined them up and shot them.”
Those investigations, combined with the cost of operating the prison and the raw sewage it released into the San Francisco Bay, would ultimately lead to the prison’s closure. And the warden, clueless as to most of what had been going on in his own prison, would die a jaded man, claiming that because he hadn’t known about any of the wrongdoing, he shouldn’t be held accountable for it. As if ignorance was a plausible defense.
The time traveler had a hard time believing the man in front of him would end up that way. He seemed so good-natured.
Madigan saw the time traveler watching this procession of ink to paper and said, “Who’s your team?”
“What?”
“Your team. Who are you rooting for?”
His first instinct, the truth, was to say he had always been a Bayern Munich fan. But, the warden was probably referring to a specific sporting event in the near future. Perhaps the World Series, and any response that didn’t possess this common sense knowledge would only make the time traveler seem all the more suspicious. Not to mention that no one in the middle of the twentieth century in America gave two shits about soccer. The warden wouldn’t even know what a Bayern Munich was. And after he found out it was a soccer club, he would likely think the man handcuffed in his office was some kind of perverted weirdo.
“The underdog,” the time traveler said instead. “I always root for the underdog.”
The warden laughed. “A man after my own blood. You know what the only problem is, though, right?”
“What’s that?”
“How can you call either team the underdog? The Dodgers are the defending champs and the Yankees are there every year, it seems.”
“Yeah.”
“So how can people like you and me root for either team?”
“I don’t know.”
The warden laughed. “Damn right. But I’ll tell you one thing: it oughtta be a great series.”
“Sir?”
The time traveler looked behind him at the guard who had re-entered the warden’s office.
“Yes.”
“We checked the roster and there are no missing prisoners.”
Madigan’s smile completely vanished. And right as the time traveler watched, in the time it took for the man to let out a long sigh, the warden seemed to age ten years. His hair looked thinner, his wrinkles deeper.
“Every cell?” the warden said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Every cell?” he repeated, saying every as if the guard were so incompetent that he might have taken every to mean every other.
“Yes, sir.”
“Every single prisoner was in every exact cell he was supposed to be in?”
“Sir, yes.”
Madigan shifted his eyes and took a long look at the time traveler, which caused the guard to take a tiny step forward so he could sneak a look at their guest’s face as well.
“Who are you?” the warden said, as if testing the still-handcuffed man.
“I don’t know.”
Madigan turned to the guard. “Uncuff this man.”
“But, sir, we still don’t know who—”
“Do you think a man who almost drowned in the ocean, and who isn’t an escaping prisoner, would do anything dumb while inside a federal prison?”
“No, sir,” the guard said, already reaching down to his belt to the assortment of keys stationed there.
“That’s all,” the warden said once the cuffs were off, and the guard disappeared.
The time traveler looked down at his wrist and the marks the cuffs had produced. Where he came from, many of his friends had disappeared wearing similar cuffs. Some were then shot in the back of the head, the Tyranny claiming that the deceased had tried to grab for a weapon, or else they were taken to secret prisons where no one could find them, visit them, or hope to see them ever again.
Madigan stood up and said, “Well, it’s certainly been an exciting night.”
“Where am I going?”
“We’ll have one of the guys take you over to the mainland. The people there will be able to deal with you.”
“Can’t I see a doctor before I go?”
The warden’s smile returned. “Trust me, you don’t want our doctor. They’ll let you see a real doctor once you get over to the mainland.”
The bag of ice sagged in the time traveler’s hand. His shirt—the shirt they had dressed him in—was soaked from the neck down to the waist. To add to that, his head wasn’t as numb as it had been an hour earlier. Pain cascaded from temple to temple.
“Can I at least get a fresh bag of ice?”
Madigan patted the time traveler on the back as he escorted him down a dark hallway. “Of course. For a guest, we have all the ice in the world.” And then, as the warden handed him off to one of the guards who would theoretically take him by boat across the bay, the warden offered his favorite joke: “Now, make sure we never see you here again.”
The time traveler didn’t bother with an answer.
16 – Money Talks
Year: 1961
A month after his meeting with the Director of Central Intelligence, President Kennedy traveled to New York, where he intended to meet with William Martin, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Most of the men JFK had spoken to were either new appointments, designated to serve under the Kennedy administration, or else they were people who had distinguished themselv
es under the previous administration and deserved to stay where they were. But Martin was different. Not only had he served as the Fed Chairman all eight years of Eisenhower’s presidency, he had also held the role during Truman’s time in office. It took a special kind of person to hold onto power that long.
For a while, Kennedy listened to Martin talk about how his father had helped write the original Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which had given a few financiers a tremendous amount of authority, controlling U.S. currency and monetary policy.
“It changed the political landscape,” Kennedy said.
Martin nodded and grinned, taking the comment as a compliment. Knowing Kennedy had served in World War II, he also spoke about his own experiences in the war. Instead of saving the lives of men while nearly dying in open water, as Kennedy had, Martin had held a supervisor’s job, far from battle, where he watched over the disposal of raw war materials.
“But I was happy to serve my country any way I could,” Martin said.
Kennedy wasn’t interested in talking about World War II. Even as he spoke to the chairman, the pain in his back, a result of his heroics in the war, made him want to lie down flat on the floor and take more medication.
Instead, he said, “Did your father think it odd that much of what would become the Federal Reserve Act was written in secrecy and then brought to Congress for a vote when most of Washington was gone for the holidays and couldn’t object to it?”
Martin rolled his eyes and gave Kennedy a playful wink. “He did not. I can guess what his response would have been. He would have said, ‘They should have waited to take their vacation if they wanted to raise objections to it’.”
“Tell me a secret,” Kennedy said, and for a moment he thought he saw Martin suck in a breath of air. Had he somehow heard about the conversation with Dulles?
“Sure,” the Fed Chairman said, grinning and leaning forward with his forearms propped against the table.
“Tell me how you’ve remained in the same position for so long. What’s the secret to being around after everyone else who started the same time as you has retired?”
“Oh, that,” Martin said, swatting his hand in the air to wave the question away. “I’m good at what I do. I have the best interests of the American people at heart. And I never let myself get caught up in any of the nonsense in Washington. As a great banker said long before I was around, ‘Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”
It was said as a light-hearted comment, but Kennedy squinted and leaned heavily on one elbow.
“Do you ever worry the Federal Reserve may have too much power?” he said, his mouth curling into a frown when Martin burst out laughing.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the Chairman said. “I thought you were joking. No, I do not think we have too much power. And,” he added, still smiling, “like I tell every president I’ve served under, we are always accountable to Congress.”
“Of course,” Kennedy said, not bothering to add that the largest and most powerful banks, who worked with and benefited from the Federal Reserve’s policies, helped almost every member of Congress get elected, so of course most senators would be willing to turn a blind eye if it meant they could remain in office.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Truman and Eisenhower,” Martin said, offering a smile so large it looked like his jaw was going to fall away from the rest of his face. “I’m happy to work with you as much as our interests are aligned. But my ultimate goal is doing what’s best for the country.”
“And how do you decide what’s best and what’s not?”
“My faith in our economy and that our banking institutions are what keeps the country running.”
“And if we differ on what we think is best?”
“Well, like I said, we’re always accountable to Congress, aren’t we?” After a moment of silence, the Fed Chairman said, “Ah, come on now. Don’t look at me like that. We’re friends, I promise.”
“We don’t have to be friends,” Kennedy said. “But you do have to understand I’m the president of the country.”
“Oh, trust me. I do.” The grin was so large now that if an animal were released into the room, Martin would surely swallow it whole and let his stomach digest the creature while it was still alive.
Kennedy tucked his upper lip into his mouth and breathed out through his nose. Why was it that someone always wanted to test his authority? Surely, this man, as rich and successful—and yes, powerful—as he was, knew he had to answer to the President of the United States.
“Mr. President,” Martin said, “there’s that face again. Please, don’t think of me as an adversary. I’m only here to help. I can even prove it.”
“And how would you do that?”
“I can tell you about the book you’ve been asking about.”
Kennedy knew which book Martin was referring to without having to ask. During the course of his visits with various Agency heads, Dulles hadn’t been the only person who had heard that such a book existed. All of them had heard the same rumors—that it was written by someone from the future who wanted to change the course of history. None of these people had actually read the book, though. Kennedy was also trying to figure out how Martin had heard he was asking about it.
“And?” the president said.
“And I can assure you it is very real.”
“How can you do that?”
“Because I’ve read it.”
Kennedy leaned forward, close enough to smell Martin’s aftershave.
“You’ve read it?”
“Certainly. I have it in my possession.”
“You?”
“Of course. Who better than someone who is independent from Washington and doesn’t have to worry about politics?”
“I would be very eager to see it,” The president said.
“I’ll see if I can find it for you.”
“I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll have some of my men pick it up and bring it to Washington for me.”
“Mr. President,” Martin said, his head bobbing slightly from side to side as he smiled. “If only it were that easy. I’m not even sure which safe it’s locked in. I promise I’ll try to find it for you, though. But until then, you must take my word that the things Dulles and others are doing to find any potential time travelers are of the utmost importance. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t go to the trouble of having people infiltrate every segment of society.”
So that was how it was going to be, Kennedy thought. Martin had to know exactly where the book was, and yet he was offering a polite dismissal of the president’s request, probably hoping more urgent matters would take his interest away and cause him to forget all about it.
Martin was still talking: “The important thing is that you trust me: the person who wrote that book and anyone else like him have to be stopped at all cost. They are a danger to our way of life. And no matter what you do, you mustn’t tell anyone about the book. The fewer people who know about it, the better.”
“Because the American people can’t be trusted with the information, right?”
The Chairman smiled, but didn’t say anything. Kennedy guessed all of the possible things the Chairman could be thinking. That he didn’t have to answer to the president. That the Federal Reserve was separate from the government. That politicians needed bankers more than bankers needed politicians.
But none of those things were what Martin ended up saying: “I have seen the future, or, rather, I have read about it, and I think you’ll find that it really is best to keep as much information from the public as possible, at least when it comes to the way the world works and the things our government has to do to keep them safe.” And then, for good measure, “Mr. President.”
“We’ll see,” Kennedy said, standing and pushing his chair away from the table. Why did his back have to hurt so much? Why did it seem to hurt even worse when meetings like this took place, as if the literal weight of the world was trying to press
him back down?
“Have a pleasant evening,” Martin said.
And then JFK was gone.
17 – No Right Answer
Year: 1956
The San Francisco Psychiatric Hospital was a four-story brick and stone building that loomed over anyone who approached it. The gargoyles on top of the building did nothing to help it seem more welcoming. Rather than actual goblins and monsters, each one was designed to look like an infant who was possessed by the devil or else was horribly disfigured and grotesque. Ironically, across the street from the hospital was the Bank of California, the city’s oldest bank, with the sculpture of a stone angel above its entryway.
Although the time traveler was no longer handcuffed, the police officer next to him kept looking at him out of the corner of his eye, making sure the man he was escorting didn’t dart away, as if he was a fugitive instead of someone who had been found in the middle of the bay with a broken nose. At the hospital, as a doctor reset his broken nose and bandaged it up, his police chaperone hadn’t let him out of his sight for a single moment. Now, at the mental institution, the police officer put a hand in the small of the time traveler’s back and gave a gentle push toward the front door.
After walking up a set of ten steps and through the thick wooden double doors, the police officer motioned to a set of chairs in the lobby and said, “Sit there. I’ll be right back.”
He was the only person in the lobby. No family members were waiting to visit with afflicted loved ones. No patients traversed the hallways. No receptionist to sign him in. Only him. There were no pictures on the walls. The chairs, he noticed, were bolted to the floor as if someone might come in from the street and steal them. Were college students daring each other to race into the lobby and steal whatever they could from a place that looked more intimidating than a real-life haunted house, or did the psychiatric hospital simply not care about making a good first impression?
Through a small plastic window he could see the cop talking to one of the hospital’s staff, at various times shrugging his shoulders and at other times pointing to the time traveler. A minute later, the police officer re-entered the lobby, but only long enough to wink at the time traveler and continue through the front door and back to the station.
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