Prologue

by Greg Ahlgren

  “Oh, that. Actually it was a Soviet container ship. One docks every month from Murmansk filled with personal computers manufactured in Minsk. Lousy things but dirt cheap. Anyone who wanted a computer for their kid’s school work usually bought a Ludka 311.”

  “Yeah,” Ginter added disgustedly. “With imbedded programming that forwarded any radical thinking straight to Vodkaville.”

  The pair had reached the bottom of the incline and Lewis studied the street sign. “Belmont Street,” he said aloud. “I guess this is where we turn left.”

  They turned and walked along the right side of the street. Ginter shook his head. “Look at these cars. If we could take them all back it would be amazing. There’s a ’57 Chevy that has to be all original.”

  The pair walked on in silence. Ginter turned to the younger woman. “So what was Arthur going to do with the container ship?”

  “Blow it up and sink it in the harbor.”

  “Why not just dress up as Indians and throw the computers overboard?”

  “Huh?” Pamela asked.

  “Nothing. Just a joke. How was he going to blow it? Use a mine?”

  “He’s got a friend who’s a fire-eater in the Harbor Guard. His job is to board all in-bound ships and scan for weapons, contraband, booby traps, that sort of stuff. He had this device to scan for explosives except Arthur was going to load the scanner itself with C-4 and a detonator and this guy was going to get Arthur on board as his assistant. They’d be down in the hold and set a timer and then just say that there had been an explosion. The wreck would block the harbor for six months. Arthur figures that they wouldn’t get it up till next spring. Meanwhile the whole harbor is shut down and there is more resentment against the provisional authority.”

  “Just C-4?” Ginter asked. “I’ve seen those scanners, they’re about the size of a briefcase. They hold maybe four pounds.”

  Pamela shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “I know a bit about explosives,” Ginter continued. “There’s no way that would be enough to blow a hole in a Russian container ship. Those babies are double hulled. The force would dissipate. Even if you punched through the hull the ship would never sink in time. The pumps could easily keep up till it made dock.”

  Lewis Ginter walked on, head down. He turned again to Pamela. “How well do you know Arthur? Is he likely to have miscalculated the amount of C-4 needed to sink a container ship?”

  Pamela shrugged. “He’s done other bombings. Blew up the car owned by the civil administrator in Portland. Except the freakin’ guy wasn’t in it at the time. Did the CA recruiting offices in Bangor. Supposedly he’s done others but I really don’t know the guy.”

  Lewis came to a full stop in the street and turned and looked at Pamela. He started to say something, but then changed his mind and resumed walking.

  “Don’t know the guy?” Ginter asked. “I thought you and he were–you know–a couple?”

  Pamela laughed. “Me and Arthur Pomeroy? We’re not a couple. We never have been. I know Arthur from Portland. Seen him in some meetings and stuff but we’re not together.”

  “Oh, I thought, I guess I just assumed that. You’re just the percussionist.”

  “Percussionist?” Pamela asked, perplexed.

  “Bomb maker. Bomb designer. You know, the explosives expert,” he said, seeing Pamela’s blank expression.

  “An old military term.” Ginter waved his hand. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter.”

  Pamela took a few more steps before speaking. When she did there was uncertainty in her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I don’t know anything about bombs.”

  Lewis Ginter slowly came to a stop and turned again toward Pamela. Her face betrayed nothing but apparent confusion. He reached out and grabbed her arm. When he spoke, he did so slowly, deliberately spacing each word.

  “What do you mean you don’t know anything about bombs?” he asked. “Weren’t you Arthur’s bomb maker?”

  Pamela shook her head in bewilderment. “Me? No way. All I ever did was put pamphlets into those circulars at restaurants and such. You know the circulars advertising used cars and real estate you see all around? I’d swipe a whole bunch and then insert information packets about the Sovs and then put the whole bunch back the next day. I never did anything violent.”

  Pamela looked down at her arm and winched with pain. Over her shoulder Ginter could see a housewife in a white cape style house peering at him through a front picture window. Ginter swore to himself and let go of her arm. He turned and started walking again.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize my grip was so tight.”

  She rubbed her left arm. “Why are you so upset?” she asked.

  “I was told you were an explosives expert and that’s why Eckleburg sent you to check out our weapon.”

  “Who told you that?” Pamela asked.

  “Eckleburg told me that night in New…” Ginter stopped in mid-sentence.

  “Shit. Shit. SHIT!” he said. “Eckleburg never told me that. It was Lorrie Maddox who told me that.”

  He replayed the scene of himself standing at the doorway in Newton peering out at the falling torrent as Lorrie explained that Pamela was the bomb expert who Eckleburg had chosen to check out the Intervention Project.

  “If you’re not a bomb maker, then why did Eckleburg think you were?” he asked.

  “Search me. I never told him I was.”

  “You only met Eckleburg twice, and were not Pomeroy’s girlfriend. Then what were you doing in Newton?”

  “I came down to see Eckleburg to get money for a computer system to hack into print shops and change the text before production. We would have been able to print all sorts of messages on mass mailings.”

  “We?” Ginter asked.

  “Me and some friends in Portland.”

  “When did you come down to ask him?”

  “July, beginning of the month. I came down the weekend of the Fourth for the fireworks. I stayed at Lorrie’s.”

  “Before Pomeroy was picked up?”

  Pamela nodded. “I saw Eckleburg that Friday and ran the request by him. He said he’d think about it and get back to me. Arthur got picked up after I was back in Maine. I heard that Eckleburg wanted to meet me again and so I came back down and he asked me to do this job for him. But I never said I was any bomb expert.”

  “That was the only other time you saw him?”

  Pamela pondered a moment. “Yeah, except at that meeting at Lorrie’s house the night I met you. It was during the week and I had to leave work early.”

  “I saw you at a meeting in Somerville last April,” Ginter argued.

  Pamela nodded again. “Yeah. A friend up in Portland told me Arthur was down here and had a good money connection and I should go down and meet this guy. She set it up and I came down and hooked up with Arthur who took me to that meeting. It was a Saturday night; I remember that. The doctor was supposed to be there and I was going to meet him but he never showed up. Arthur got drunk and was running off at the mouth and I got spooked. I had to work Monday so the next day I drove back to Portland.”

  “How long had Arthur been down here?”

  Pamela considered. “I’m not sure exactly. I think he said he came down the end of January.”

  “End of January?” Ginter was incredulous. “He came down in January to ask for money and was still here in July? What the hell was he doing all that time?”

  Pamela shrugged. “He got a job delivering the Boston Herald in the morning. You know, a paper route. Dropped them off at stores and stuff. He said it was good money and things had been a bit warm for him in Portland since he tried to blow up that guy last fall.”

  Ginter considered. “Did Gonzalez get him the job at the Herald?”

  Pamela pursed her lips. “Gonzalez? Yeah, I think Arthur said that he did. The guy at Lorrie’s house, right? Carlos?”

  Ginter walked on, head bowed. A hundred possibilities floated in a
nd out of his mind.

  “Who told you that Eckleburg wanted to see you that second time?” Ginter asked. “After Arthur disappeared?”

  “Lorrie did. She called me at home and asked me to meet her at the doctor’s office that Friday. So I did.”

  “Was Lorrie present for the meeting?”

  “No, she stayed in the waiting room while I went in supposedly to have an eye exam.”

  Ginter nodded slowly. “Then either Eckleburg was lied to by Maddox about you or else Eckleburg was lying to Maddox. But why?” he asked rhetorically.

  Pamela shrugged. “Maybe they were just all confused and just assumed that since I knew Arthur that I was his girlfriend or else that I was some sort of explosives expert. Maybe they were just mistaken. What’s the big deal?”

  They had reached an incline in the road. Ahead cars sped along the cross street that appeared to be the main thoroughfare deVere had mentioned.

  “That must be Bridge Street,” Ginter said. Across the thoroughfare on the left side was a corner grocery store. “Let’s stop and get a drink. We have to interact with others eventually. This is as good a place as any to start.”

  The sign over the front door announced, “Pete’s Variety.” Inside, a lone cashier stood behind a counter in the middle of the small room. Novelties and simple grocery staples were arrayed around the store. Ginter nodded to the clerk and crossed to a freezer in the rear. Lifting the lid he extracted two cans of ginger ale. He handed one to Pamela. She held it up and slowly turned it over in her hands.

  “You need an opener,” Ginter said and looked around. A can opener hung from the freezer by a length of twine. Lewis pried open a diamond shape wedge in the top of one can and handed it back to Pamela. She took one sip before quickly lowering the can. Ginger ale drooled down her face.

  “Air escape,” Ginter muttered and took the can from her. He pried another hole at the opposite end and handed the can back to her. “Apparently, pried holes aren’t big enough,” he muttered as he pried two holes in his own soda.

  Lewis strode to the counter and studied the shelf in front of it. He picked up a newspaper and scanned the triple headlines. “TAX RATE JUMPS 90 CENTS,” “U.S. KOREA PATROL CLASHES WITH REDS,” “TREATY SIGNED AT KREMLIN.” Yet it was not the headlines that riveted Lewis’ attention but the masthead. Across the top it read, “Manchester Union Leader, Monday, August 5, 1963.”

  Ginter handed the newspaper to Pamela. He handed the clerk a one-dollar bill.

  “I’ll take the paper too,” he said. The clerk returned sixty cents. He and Pamela stepped back outside. Pamela still clutched the newspaper, staring at the front page. She slowly lowered it.

  “We’re in deep trouble if we need a physicist to tell us how to open a can of soda,” she remarked absently.

  They began walking down Bridge Street together.

  “The big deal,” Ginter said, taking another sip of his ginger ale, “is that Eckleburg either lied to Maddox or Maddox lied to me. Either way someone sent you to scope out a weapons system you weren’t qualified to scope. Someone arranged for it to be you knowing that you would fail–that you wouldn’t be able to tell what it was. Which means someone else wanted us to succeed.”

  “Couldn’t this just be all one big mix-up?” she asked.

  Ginter shook his head. “There is no way that Dr. T.J. Eckleburg would ever get ‘mixed up’ on something like this. He may be an ass in some ways but Eckleburg sees everything that goes on. Nothing escapes his gaze. He wouldn’t have screwed up on this. Someone sent you knowing that we would fool you. Except that no one else knew what we were up to.”

  “O.K., let’s say you’re correct,” Pamela said. “So what? I mean, what difference does it make now?”

  Ginter wheeled on her. “It makes a huge difference. It means that someone back there knew what we were up to. In case you’ve forgotten when we arrived here in 1963 there were two cops looking for us. Someone knew we were coming. Somebody had arranged for them to look for us. Yet they had the wrong spot. Why was that? Someone had to be here to send those cops yet that same someone didn’t know where we were.”

  Ginter studied the blank look on Pamela’s face.

  “You don’t get it, do you? Whoever sent those cops must have come back to tell the cops where we were. Don’t you see? Someone else has come back and is trying to stop us. And if somebody has come back they may have already changed history. And we don’t know what they’ve changed it to.”

  Pamela’s eyes widened. “Who…who?” she asked.

  “What was it that the civil administrator’s assistant told you? That he had no idea where Arthur was held or any record of him being picked up? You said he looked stunned and nervous? You thought he was bullshitting you. What if he wasn’t? When does a civil administrator, or his flunky, ever act nervous? Suppose they really were confused. I think I know where Arthur Pomeroy and Ralph Collinson are. They’re here, back in 1963 with us. I don’t know how they got here or what the hell they’re doing or why they sent the cops at the right time but to the wrong spot but they’re here. And I don’t know what they’ve done.”

  Lewis Ginter stood back and ran his hand through his hair.

  “Pamela,” he said. “I need to know everything you know about Arthur Pomeroy and about all of your dealings with Dr. Thomas Eckleburg.”

  Chapter 15

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Paul deVere stood at a window in his hotel room at the southwest corner on the eleventh floor of the Carpenter Hotel surveying the city below him. The window faced west and deVere found himself looking out over a brick mill yard. Beyond it ran the Merrimack River. On the far side of that was a residential area of three-decker apartment houses surrounding a tall thin church spire that dominated the landscape. A working class town, he thought.

  Somewhere to his left was Bedford, where he would grow up after his birth in nine years. He tried to discern the border, but the city scape grew vague before him. “All that is real grows vague, and all that is vague lacks boundaries.” He tried to place the quote.

  Around the room sat Lewis Ginter, Pamela Rhodes, and Amanda Hutch.

  “It makes no sense,” deVere added. He turned and faced the others.

  He and Amanda had checked into the hotel 45 minutes before Lewis and Pamela knocked on his door. Their walk downtown had been uneventful, and despite his nervousness the checkin had gone smoothly. He had used the cash and the desk clerk hadn’t asked for identification. Paul had acted nonchalantly, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the cigar store Indian or the hand-cranked Nickelodeon that stood in the corner of the tiled lobby.

  “They’re anachronisms,” Amanda had whispered. “Even by today’s standards.”

  Paul had resisted the temptation to play with the Nickelodeon.

  “No one else knew we came back,” he said. “No one else knew we were working on time travel. There is no other Accelechron and no more fuel.”

  He pointed at Pamela. “Even the Descendants had no idea what we were doing. How could Ralph and some guy I never met have any idea? I never talked to Ralph about my work, and he wasn’t any physicist.”

  Lewis Ginter shifted in his chair. “I’m not saying that it makes sense. I don’t have an explanation. But someone lied about Pamela’s background and set it up so that we could fool her. They figured she would tell the Descendants that the weapon was legit. The Intervention Project would continue with funding from Eckleburg.”

  Amanda turned to Pamela. “Was it Dr. Eckleburg who was suspicious and wanted answers? Or was he reacting to someone else’s concerns?”

  Pamela shrugged. “All I know is that he said that there were concerns about this project and would I do them all a favor and check it out.”

  “Did he say why he chose you?” Lewis asked.

  Pamela shook her head. “No. The meeting was real short. He kept looking at the door as if he were expecting his nurse to tell him he had a patient waiting. It was a Friday afternoon and
I figured he wanted to get out of there for the weekend.”

  Paul shook his head. “But even if you’re right, that still doesn’t put Collinson and Pomeroy back here. I don’t think that Eckleburg or Maddox or Gonzalez could possibly know what we were doing. And even if they did how could they build something to send someone back? Pomeroy disappeared in, what…?”

  “July,” Ginter answered. “Right after the fourth.” He looked at Pamela who nodded in agreement.