by Mayer, Bob
Discretion being the better part of valor in Ivar’s opinion, he moved to the other side of the cobblestone road. The two men paid him no mind, obviously intoxicated and leaning on each other as they wove their way to whatever destination they sought.
Ivar slid into a recessed shop doorway. There were bars on the door and windows; some things never change in New York. Ivar pulled the pocket watch out of his vest and angled it toward a flickering gas lamp so he could check the time. Twenty-five minutes after midnight. He stepped out onto the street and continued on his way. He saw a large statue of George Washington in front of an imposing building. That oriented Ivar as information poured into his brain, most of which he knew would give Eagle a hard-on but momentarily confused him: While the Stock Exchange was diagonally across from the statue on the other side of Wall and Broad Streets, the space behind the sculpture was where the original Federal Hall, built in 1700 as City Hall, later became the seat of the new government of the United States. George Washington was inaugurated on the steps of the old building. Congress passed the Bill of Rights there. When the original building was torn down in 1812, the statue of Washington was located approximately where the first president had been sworn in.
And just nine years ago from this time, a bomb inside a horse-drawn carriage exploded right across the street, killing thirty-eight people, the worst act of terrorism in the United States up to that point.
Ivar sighed.
Some things never change. Carriage bomb, car bomb, terrorism.
And Wall Street somehow being involved.
Wall Street: No one knows exactly how it got its name, the best theory being that the Dutch, the first Europeans to settle in lower Manhattan, built an earthen wall along the north part of their settlement, de Waal Straat. This was to protect them from attacks by Native Americans.
Apparently the twenty-four-dollar payout for the land to the Natives wasn’t enough to keep the peace.
In 1685, Wall Street was laid out by surveyors along the path of the original stockade as a larger stockade was built a bit farther north. The street ran from Pearl Street, which was the shoreline back then, across an old Indian path, Broadway, to the other shoreline at Trinity Place.
From the beginning, Wall Street was a place of commerce, and not the most pleasant kind. Slaves were brought there to be rented out by their owners for the day or week. In 1711, New York City made Wall Street the city’s official slave market for Africans and Indians.
The information didn’t seem pertinent to the current mission, but Ivar thought it was. He had no particular affinity for the place or its business, and today was going to go down in history as Black Tuesday, tumbling the country, and indeed the world, into the Great Depression.
Which would only be ended by World War II.
So was his mission a good thing or a bad thing?
And what exactly was his mission?
It is 1929. Mother Teresa arrives in Calcutta to begin her work among India’s poorest. The St. Valentine Day massacre in Chicago kills seven. Grand Teton National Park is established by President Calvin Coolidge. Herbert Hoover then becomes president. And the first telephone is installed at the White House. The yo-yo is introduced. The New York Yankees become the first team to put numbers on their uniforms. Vatican City becomes a sovereign state. The USSR breaks diplomatic relations with China. President Hoover proposes the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounces war. The first US roller coaster is built. Lieutenant James Doolittle flies over Mitchell Field in NY in the first all-instrument flight. The Peking Man skull is found.
Some things change; some don’t.
More than the others who were sent back, Ivar was really bothered by all the practical things about time travel. He’d always been a fan of science fiction, even though as a scientist he knew most of it was widely impractical, especially time travel. Well, that’s what he had thought. But now it was like watching that reality show about Big Foot where they never really showed Big Foot, but suddenly, one day, they did. Surprise, surprise.
Wall Street was quiet now, but it wouldn’t be later. Ivar looked at the pavement and thought of people jumping.
Bad thought.
He started to whistle “Winchester Cathedral,” and then wondered what the heck that was all about?
Ivar was startled as a man darted out from an alley and ran into him. He felt wetness on his face and realized it was blood as the stranger collapsed to the ground. There was blood everywhere and Ivar’s instinct was to flee, but his Special-Ops training upon “joining” the Nightstalkers allowed him at least to stand his ground for a moment.
“Are you him?” the man gasped.
Ivar knelt, trying to find the source of the blood, but it was everywhere and he hadn’t taken the emergency medical training as seriously as he should have. Then his hand sunk into the guy’s stomach, intestines like soft, warm snakes, and Ivar realized the man had been gutted. And there was a gurgling noise and Ivar knew the guy had been stabbed several times, including at least once in the lung as the sound indicated a sucking chest wound.
So some of the training had stuck.
Are you him? Ivar thought. What kind of question was that?
The stranger held out a canvas bag. It was smeared with blood, but Ivar automatically took it. Might be a bomb, he heard Nada warning, but Nada wasn’t here. Wasn’t around in the then (or was it now?) either.
“What is it?” Ivar asked.
The man was looking over his shoulder. “Run. Run. They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Them.”
“I’ll help you.”
The man winced in pain. “The mission is more important. Go!”
Ivar looked past the man and saw no one, but he had no doubt that whoever had wielded the blade would be following the blood trail.
Every instinct he had pressed Ivar to run away and leave the man as requested.
Ivar ripped off his overcoat and tied the arms tightly around the stranger’s chest and stomach, partially staunching the flow of blood.
“Come on.”
There was no protest. Ivar wrapped his arm around the man’s shoulder and headed off. Past the statue of George Washington, marking his inauguration at this very spot where slaves had been bought, sold, and rented. He turned into a dark alley, searching for a door or window.
The world was indeed never, ever, going to be the same.
The Pentagon
Follow the money. It applies to conspiracies, crimes, elections, the mob, damn near everything. Follow the money and you get to the truth.
Which is why Neeley was on the lowest level of the Pentagon, a level that few knew existed. She imagined if those building this place during World War II had been as ruthless as the Egyptian pharaohs, they’d have killed all the workers involved and buried their bodies in the concrete foundation of the five-sided building.
But it had been easier just to fool people with compartmentalization and complicated building plans.
Besides, who cared? The country was in the midst of World War II and there were more important things to consider. By now, most of those involved were dead.
Except Foreman.
The corridor was empty as Neeley strode down it. She turned one of the five gentle angles and walked up to an old man sitting behind a desk. He peered at her over his reading glasses.
“Good day, young woman?” Sentry asked.
In one hand he held a crossword puzzle. The other was under the desktop and Neeley knew he could blow her to pieces with a twitch of a finger.
“Good day,” Neeley said. “Hannah sent me. I need to speak with Mrs. Sanchez.”
“How is Hannah doing?” the old man asked. “It was a pleasant surprise to see her last week.”
“She’s doing well and sends her best,” Neeley said.
Sentry smiled. “Her best is better than most people’s. And her worst, of course, is much worse.” He glanced at a screen. “You’re not armed. I appreciate that.�
�� The hand under the desk moved a few inches and he hit a different button. A door swung open behind him, revealing a telephone-booth-sized room. Neeley walked around his desk and got into the small booth. She sat down and the door swung shut behind her. With a slight jolt, the booth began moving. Sideways. Neeley always found this network of rails underneath the Pentagon slightly disconcerting. She’d never told Hannah, or anyone, but it gave her a bit of motion sickness.
A few shifts this way and that, and then another jolt indicated that she was coming to a halt. The door opened to an open space and then a chest-high counter. Like the motor vehicle bureau. At least she didn’t have to take a number and fill out forms.
Neeley walked up to the counter. The older woman on the other side regarded her approach with a slight degree of trepidation. Even when they clearly knew they’d done nothing wrong, there was always that slight jolt of guilt all but psychopaths felt.
A visit from a Cellar operative tended to bring out that reaction from those government employees who knew of the covert group. Mrs. Sanchez was the comptroller for the Black Budget, which meant she knew how to follow money that even Congress, which allocated it, didn’t know how to track.
Mrs. Sanchez wore a jean skirt and vest over a white blouse. She had flowing white hair, dark skin, and an aged but still beautiful angular face. She’d made the area on the other side of the counter her own, as much as one could, buried underground. Colorful Navajo rugs decorated the walls along with etchings of the desert.
“May I help you?”
“Foreman,” Neeley said. “What’s his budget?” Neeley noted that Mrs. Sanchez’s daughter, who usually worked with her, wasn’t back there at the other desk. It was normally the two of them.
“One hundred forty-six million, two hundred and twelve thousand, five hundred and forty-five dollars.” She hadn’t consulted a computer. Or a ledger. Just her phenomenal capacity for retaining numbers.
“Breakdown?” Neeley asked. She knew she was being harsh, but she was unsettled because Hannah was unsettled. It also disturbed her even further to realize how much she relied on her old friend to be her emotional anchor.
“He doesn’t supply one.” Mrs. Sanchez hurried to explain. “That’s not that unusual. Several organizations are not required to supply one. Like the Cellar.”
One sentence too many, an indication of Mrs. Sanchez’s nervousness, but Neeley let it slide.
“Who does he report to?”
“As far as I know, no one,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “Years ago he occasionally had to appear before various classified sub-committees of Congress, but it’s been decades. I think—” She paused.
“Go ahead,” Neeley prompted.
“I think he’s outlasted all of them. Very few people even know he’s still around.”
Mrs. Sanchez was too nervous. Neeley knew there was an appropriate level of angst to be experienced having a Cellar operative show up in your office, but there was something off about the old woman. Neeley looked past her and noted there was a half-eaten sandwich on both desks. Her daughter had been here. And left, quickly out the back.
Most likely upon being warned by Sentry that Hannah was on her way.
Overreaction.
Which indicated something was amiss. There wasn’t the reek that the truly guilty (those who weren’t psychopaths) gave off. And the psychopaths could be spotted by the complete lack of anything. Neeley had met more than enough of those in her time, since the covert world seemed to attract them. They were useful in certain jobs, but not always controllable.
Years ago, Neeley had worried for a while if she were a psychopath, given her past and her current occupation. But when she’d mentioned it to Frasier, the shrink for the Nightstalkers, he’d assured her she most certainly was not.
When she’d asked why, the response was simple: A psychopath would never ask if they were one.
“What do you know about Foreman?” Neeley asked Mrs. Sanchez.
“He asks for odd currencies sometimes,” Sanchez said. “Old currencies.”
That made sense, given the Time Patrol. “Anything recently?”
“Yes. He asked for as many $10,000 bills that I could gather. They’re very rare. Printed only between 1928 and 1934. Then taken out of circulation a long time ago.”
“How many did you get him?”
“Only one hundred and eighteen. He was very upset I couldn’t find more.”
“When did he ask for them?”
“Last week.”
Something, but not much, Neeley thought. And not enough to explain the undercurrent she was picking up. “What else?”
Mrs. Sanchez’s eyes did that up and right shift, so quickly most people would have missed it. Neeley wasn’t most people. It meant Sanchez was accessing the right side of her brain. The side that made up stories. Left side was memory.
Big difference between the two.
“Nothing,” Mrs. Sanchez said.
A lie, and it meant she’d tried to think of a story to tell Neeley, but then given up.
“What else?” Neeley repeated.
Slight flicker of eyes up and left. “I don’t like him,” Mrs. Sanchez said.
Neeley almost smiled. It always amazed her how often someone was sabotaged simply by the fact they had an abrasive personality. Exchanges and conversations that most times would be ignored or overlooked grated on people. And if it happened enough, those people began to foster resentment. And resentment could lead in a lot of directions.
“What did you do?” Neeley prompted.
“I started checking into him,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “I went to the Vault.”
Neeley knew about the Vault. The paper records of the covert world that never, ever would be digitized.
“And?”
“I found something that didn’t make sense,” Mrs. Sanchez said. She shook her head. “Let me back up. Why I went to the Vault. The payouts to Mr. Foreman from the Black Budget are scheduled. Routine. Like most, I assume he relies on them to keep his organization, whatever it is, going. But during government shutdowns, that routine is upset. I get complaints from every organization. They believe they are exempt from such a shutdown. But they aren’t. Everyone complains.”
“Except Foreman,” Neeley completed.
“Correct.”
“So he doesn’t worry about the money or need it?”
“I assumed he had his own source of funds.”
“So you went to the Vault.”
“Yes. I found some records. Things most people wouldn’t understand. But Foreman does have another source of income. Revenue generated from stockholdings. Not as unusual as most would think. Lots of agencies use the market to launder money. But his dated back. All the way back.”
“To when?”
“Nineteen twenty-nine. And they’re worth a lot.”
“How much?” Neeley asked.
“As near as I could tell, and the records were incomplete, his organization is worth almost two billion dollars in various stocks.”
“Bought in 1929?” Neeley confirmed.
“Yes.”
Neeley now had two pieces. How they fit, she had no idea. Ten-thousand-dollar bills. And a lot of stock. But gluing them together with the Time Patrol wasn’t hard.
“So you gave him—” Neeley started to do the math, but Mrs. Sanchez was much more skilled in this.
“One million, one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in ten-thousand-dollar bills.”
Foreman had his own agenda. What it was, Neeley had no idea, but she knew where she needed to go next.
Off the East Coast of England, 999 AD. 29 October
With the disappearance of the Valkyrie, the wind had picked up. Roland and the rest were able to lock down their oars and let the wind take the ship west. The Nightstalker had immediately stretched himself out on the bench and fallen asleep, another hard-learned lesson for warriors: sleep when you can.
He woke when the lookout, perched on a narrow wooden platform n
ear the top of the sail, cried out: “Sail!” He pointed directly forward.
Roland hopped to his feet, picked up his sword (he was thinking he needed to name it, and was considering christening it “Neeley,” but he wasn’t sure whether she would be honored or insulted if he did so—women, hard to figure), and walked forward to join Ragnarok in the bow.
Roland could see nothing on the relatively flat sea, but the lookout had a height advantage on him.
“There,” Ragnarok pointed and Roland squinted. There was the slightest smudge on the horizon.
“A small boat,” Ragnarok said, and Roland could still only make out a speck. But it was coming closer.
“Enemy?” Roland asked for lack of anything better as he began to make out a shape. Tam Nok had joined them.
“Ahh,” Ragnarok said in disgust. “Not an enemy. See the sail? Three black lines straight up and down?”
Roland could not. “Yes.”
“Lika-Loddin. It is bad fortune to cross paths with that ghoul.”
“Does it work for the Shadow?” Roland asked.
“He works for himself,” Ragnarok said. “But since he’s in front of us, we might as well speak with him. He knows more than most what happens on the sea.”
“Only him on that?” Roland asked, impressed someone would be brave enough to venture out in such a small vessel.
“He can handle the sail. If there is no wind, he sits and waits for it. He has great patience. And he is an expert sailor, I will give him that.”
Roland could clearly see the other vessel now. It was a much smaller version of the longship he was on. Instead of shields on the sides of the vessel, there were several long bundles wrapped in heavy canvas and secured with thick ropes.
A man was in the rear, a hand on the tiller. As he got closer, he locked the tiller down and got to his feet, lowering the sail. He was tall, about Roland’s height. He wore leather pants and a long-sleeved leather shirt, both stained black.
“What cargo does he carry?” Tam Nok asked.
Ragnarok spit over the side. “Bodies. He is also known as Corpse-Loddin. He travels the northern seas, recovering the bodies of men lost during the winter or in raids. He is coming back from his first journey of the season. He sells the bodies back to their families so that the departed might move on to the next life in the correct manner.”