by Greg Ahlgren
“I’ll go in,” deVere suggested. “A Russian accent might raise suspicions.”
Natasha remained in the Nash as deVere walked to the office. As he swung open the screen door he saw five people huddled around a black and white television set. On the screen Lyndon Baines Johnson stood at a podium on a Washington tarmac, next to Jackie Kennedy, addressing the nation.
Chapter 29
Sunday, December 8, 2006
Lewis Ginter stood inside the Weston Observatory and surveyed Manchester from the top of Derryfield Park. He was at the city’s highest point. To his left, the access road led to the parking lot. It was the same lot where three months earlier two Manchester police officers searched the area while Lewis and company crawled to the woods.
The lot was empty now. Ginter had arrived before dawn, after parking his Corvette several blocks away in front of an elementary school. He retraced his steps through the woods and up past the stone quarry. Won’t be anyone using it for a swimming hole today, he mused as he peered through binoculars at gathering storm clouds.
He had wanted to be the first to arrive, and picking his way through the pre-dawn light had given him that. Using a crowbar, he had pried open the lock on the rusted iron door to the abandoned granite tower. Once inside, he had climbed the crumbling metal steps to the observation area. He opened one green shutter just enough to gain a view.
He had stayed hidden, inside, waiting for 3:15 p.m. when the wormhole would re-open.
Natasha arrived next, shortly after 2:30. He heard a vehicle straining up the access road and watched transfixed as a green Nash drove slowly past the reservoirs until it reached the center of the parking lot. The driver shut off the ignition, and slowly exited, keeping her hands away from her body. She walked deliberately up through the clearing, wearing a red backpack. Just like the ones in Greece, he thought. Son of a bitch.
Although it was raw and chilly, Natasha paused a few feet into the clearing, dropped the pack, and unzipped her jacket. Then she used both hands to hold the sides of her coat away from her body and slowly turned around.
Ginter smiled. Damn, she’s good. She knows I’m here.
He was about to descend when a second car, a bright yellow taxi, entered the lot and stopped. Paul deVere and Amanda Hutch exited together from the back seat. DeVere reached in through the front passenger window and paid the cabbie. He’s alive after all, Ginter thought. From his vantage point he could hear deVere tell the driver, “No, we’re all set,” before the cab turned and drove off.
Ginter had quietly walked away from the Texas School Book Depository while scouring the frenzied crowd for his friend, the written material to frame Oswald still in his pocket. In the 16 days since, he doubted that deVere was still alive. Not after all that had happened. Coming around the Depository, Ginter had seen Kennedy get hit from what appeared to be a frontal shot from the grassy knoll. He had started to head up there when he had spotted Amanda, trembling, standing alone across the street from the Depository. He changed direction and crossed Elm Street, taken her gently by the arm, and wordlessly led her away.
He never found Pamela. He feared that she had been taken into custody, but he resisted the temptation to contact the police or, for that matter, to remain long in Dallas. Pamela had money, was white, and knew when the return wormhole would open. The rest was up to her.
Ginter and Amanda left Dallas after packing and sanitizing Lewis’ apartment. He carefully wiped down every surface in his rooms at Cazzie’s, obliterating any fingerprints. By early evening, they were heading west in the Corvette, arriving in Los Angeles early Saturday morning. From a seedy hotel room in Watts on Sunday morning, they had watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. As Amanda gasped, Ginter thought how lucky he was.
From there they traveled north, then east, backtracking occasionally, at times together and at times separately.
Since they were now moving without a pre-ordained plan, Ginter knew there was no way that Paul could contact them, if he were alive.
He watched as Paul and Amanda walked up to Natasha and the three began conversing. Ginter detected neither concern nor surprise in his friend’s demeanor. He noted with approval that underneath winter coats both deVere and Hutch appeared to be wearing the same clothes they had during their arrival in August. Together the three turned and walked to the tree line and Hutch and deVere bent and scraped away the earth. Ginter looked around one more time from his perch but still saw no sign of Pamela. He moved back from his blind and carefully picked his way down the stairwell.
In New York, Ginter and Amanda had arranged to meet again, although they stayed in separate hotels. They watched television, although in 1963, the flow of information was maddeningly slow.
They read newspapers, listened to the radio, and watched more television.
And they waited for December 8, and for any word from deVere.
If he’s still alive. Ginter had used that phrase often, partly, he told himself, to jinx deVere’s death and partly, to prepare Hutch for what Ginter secretly feared might be the truth, that the unknown Russian agent had kidnaped and later killed deVere before proceeding back to his own wormhole.
At other times Ginter had feared that December 8 would be a trap, that the Russian knew the wormhole’s return path and would ambush them to prevent any re-return. And so, on this damp and raw morning Ginter had sat in the Weston Observatory surveying the park through binoculars, and trying to figure it all out.
No pro-Soviet agent from 2026 would have shot Kennedy. Ginter thought he had it pretty much figured out, but seeing Natasha with the pack put a face on the shooter.
Of course, he thought, as he exited the tower. He walked down to the three, keeping his own hands away from his clothing. Natasha studied him closely. The red pack lay on the ground beside her.
To his right was the small grove of sycamores into which he, Amanda, Paul, and Pamela had crawled. Although the weather hinted at the approaching New England winter, there were still birds in the trees. He thought he heard them singing. Then they stopped abruptly. Ginter turned to see Pamela emerge, alone, from the stand. She had apparently come back to the park by the same route as Ginter.
“Looks like everyone made it,” Ginter said.
Paul stepped toward his friend, his arm extended. “Lewis, there’s something you have to know about Natasha.”
Lewis waved him off. “I think I already know.”
“I left Dallas with her,” Paul continued. “She dropped me off in Tulsa and we agreed that it would be safer to get back here separately. I had no idea how to contact you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lewis said, still watching Rhodes as she approached.
“You made it out O.K.?” Ginter asked her.
Pamela nodded. “No thanks to you. I got out as fast as I could. I hid in a hotel for two days and then flew to Boston. I stayed there until yesterday, when I took the train up here.”
Pamela tugged her jacket tightly around herself and moved to Lewis’ right, directly across from Natasha.
“How’d you two meet up?” Ginter asked Amanda.
“We both checked back in to the Carpenter,” she said simply. “We saw each other there.”
Ginter snorted. “So much for cloak and dagger.”
“Lewis, I have to tell you about Natasha,” Paul began again eagerly. “She came back through our wormhole ahead of us. She’s involved in Euro-Resistano. She was in Dallas and asked about Oswald. Her being there was just a coincidence.”
Ginter turned to the Russian. “I think I’d like to hear it from Natasha herself.”
She shrugged. “It’s as Dr. deVere says. My parents were killed in the Second Great War with China. One doesn’t easily forget spending her youth in a Soviet orphanage. I could tell you stories...” Her voice trailed off.
“But I won’t,” she finished with determination. “I have long been active in the resistance in Europe. And as I told Dr. deVere, your plan never would have worked. Kennedy ha
d to be prevented from pulling out of Southeast Asia and your plan”-she indicated Ginter-”gave me the perfect option.”
Ginter nodded slowly. “I see,” he said and frowned. “But how did you get back to 1963?”
“I was in your lab weeks before the wormhole. I have my own Physics background, you know. And once I knew what you were up to, I had to go back and do what you couldn’t.”
“Tell me about Dallas,” Ginter said evenly.
“Dallas was simple. I had brought back a Dragunov SVD-S with a laser scope and set up the best shot.”
Ginter moved away from the group and stretched his back out to the left and then the right. The movement brought him directly to Natasha’s side so that the red pack lay between them on the ground.
“Nice choice,” he said. “I saw the older version in Greece. Seven point six two millimeter. Accuracy is what, less than two MOA at 600? Perfect, but how did you know about the Depository?” Ginter asked. “I mean, you being there with a Dragunov at the same time that we’re there with a Mannlicher. Bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
It was Paul’s turn to speak up. “She told me all about it,” he said. “It was the last chance before the 24th to stop Kennedy.”
“What I can’t figure out,” Ginter continued, ignoring his friend and looking straight at Natasha, “is how you would know where I was or what I would be doing on that Friday. Unless, of course, you had prior information.”
“What do you mean?” Paul demanded.
“A Russian was snooping around the émigré community and mentioned Oswald being in Cuba,” Ginter said. “Oswald thought the Russian was an American spy. But an American agent wouldn’t have thought that Oswald was in Cuba. Only someone from the future who didn’t know that history had been changed would have thought that he was there.”
“Of course,” Paul said. “It was Natasha. She admits it. You’re the one who thought it was Collinson or Pomeroy. You’re the one who was wrong.”
“Yes,” Ginter said. “Which is why I sent for you to come to Dallas. I incorrectly assumed that the Russian was a man.”
Natasha slowly raised her eyebrows. “So what,” she shrugged, “if that were me? I’ve told Dr. deVere it was.”
“The so-what is that Paul and Amanda didn’t come to Dallas until the 19th, well after I had found out about the curious Russian. You didn’t end up in the Dallas Russian community by coincidence. Someone tipped you off that I was in Dallas doing something with a defector. I never clued Pamela in about the plan but you two”-he looked at Paul and Amanda-“knew that I was in Dallas running an op involving a defector from Russia. You may have assumed that I meant that the defector himself was Russian, not that he had once defected there. If that had been passed on to Natasha it would explain why she showed up in Dallas asking about Russian defectors before you two came down there.”
Paul deVere exploded. “Lewis, you don’t know what you’re talking about! I had nothing to do with Natasha and neither did Amanda. You’re, you’re paranoid!"
“Maybe, but I’m not wrong,” Ginter said.
Ginter turned to Natasha. “You have degrees from Karl Marx University. Advanced degrees in Physics. But you also have a history degree, don’t you?”
“And your point, Lewis?” Paul demanded, crossing his arms.
Ginter turned to Amanda. “You’ve taught at many places around the world, including Leipzig. The only University in Leipzig is Karl Marx University.”
“Lewis, talk about guilt by association,” Paul sputtered, but Ginter detected a trace of doubt in his friend’s voice.
Ginter pressed on. “I have a friend in the postal service who told me a young, good looking CA agent sent a package priority confidential to a Vladimir Romanov at Karl Marx University. My friend didn’t open it, but he thought it important enough to tell me about it.”
Natasha shrugged. “So much for PC mail now-a-days. Vladimir is my handler in the resistance. And he is also in the CA.”
“A boyfriend?” Pamela asked.
“I wouldn’t think so,” Ginter said. “He’s listed as an astrophysicist at Karl Marx and is older, much older. He would have to be in order to be senior enough in the CA to be sure Natasha got sent to Boston.”
Ginter turned back to Natasha. “Who is Vladimir Romanov?”
“He’s my husband,” Amanda said in a flat voice from the other side of the circle. “And Natasha’s uncle. Her mother’s brother.”
The four turned to stare at Dr. Hutch.
Natasha started to speak but Amanda silenced her with a wave. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Natasha, what’s done is done,” she said.
She turned to Ginter. “Natasha is only trying to protect me but now”-she waved her arms around-“what difference does it make?”
Paul started shaking. “Amanda, you told me you were divorced.”
She smiled at him. “Actually, I told you I was twice married. You just assumed I had divorced my European husband. After my visa expired I married him to stay in Leipzig so we could finish training for this.”
She turned back to Ginter. “When Vodkaville began getting suspicious of Paul researching time travel, they passed that information up the line to Vlad since he was the chief physicist with the Agency. And he learned from Paul’s file about us in Ithaca. And it wasn’t hard for him to figure out my true leanings,” she added with a smile. “Even over there.
“He came and asked if I would help,” Amanda continued, facing the group.
She turned to deVere directly. “As soon as he explained it I knew you would do it, Paul. If anyone in this universe could have made this time thing work you could.”
She paused, and her soft gaze lingered on his face.
“But I also knew that you probably didn’t have what it took to get it done at this end,” she said abruptly, turning back to the others. “Technology is not enough, no matter how advanced.”
She turned to Ginter. “And military prowess wasn’t enough. To affect the type of political and historical change that we were all talking about that had to come from within. For me, I’d do anything for what I want. But for you it was just personal.”
Paul swallowed hard. “Peter,” he said.
Amanda scoffed, and the gesture took Paul by surprise.
“Is that what you tell yourself?” she asked. “Or just others? Maybe Peter is part of it, but it’s more personal than that. It’s really you, isn’t it, Paul?”
Paul blanched, and then reddened.
“If you can undo the Soviet takeover then maybe things that went wrong get undone, not only in the country but in your own life,” Amanda said. “You become a different person. The person you might have become if the whole world had never flipped over on us.”
Amanda looked back at Ginter. “I didn’t know you, Lewis, and Vlad didn’t have a good read on you either, so we couldn’t count on you to pull it off.
“But Natasha has the fire to do what it took,” Amanda continued. “And Vlad has that same fire. He got Natasha assigned to this project. He even cleaned her personnel file so there was no link back to him.”
She turned to Ginter. “What gave it away?”
Ginter smiled. “You did. You told Paul in the lab that you had to go back and get your purse. He told me that you had said it was a bad time of the month or some such.”
“Yeah, so what?” Paul asked.
“Our friend Amanda is a cancer survivor. Ovarian, surgery, and then chemo, correct?”
Amanda nodded and Paul detected a faint smile on her face.
“And that meant instant menopause,” Amanda finished. “Good listening, Lewis. I see that your outside knowledge extends beyond antique automobiles.”