Black Tuesday (Area 51: Time Patrol)

by Mayer, Bob

Ivar was startled. “What?”

  “Someone to make the trades?” Lansky asked.

  “Uh, no.”

  “By the way, you know the name of your dead buddy?”

  “As I told Mister Siegel,” Ivar said, “I just met him.”

  Lansky smiled. “You know, I kind of believe you. We did some further checking. He is, was, actually, a bag man for Joe Kennedy, although he pretended to work for both Masseria and Maranzano. A real slippery character. You know who Joe Kennedy is, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kennedy worked on Wall Street a while. Made a killing, pun intended, my friend. He was there in ’20, right there on the corner, when the bomb went off. Strange coincidence.” Lansky smiled. “You know my theory on coincidences, eh?”

  Ivar was beginning to understand. Lansky wasn’t telling Ivar all this. He was reminding himself, putting pieces of conversation out there, and sorting them verbally.

  “He started his own firm. Did well in the bull market. I keep telling these lugs we can make more on the market than on booze, but what’s the fun in that? Strange, though. This year, Kennedy’s been shorting the market. And making a killing. Him, J. P. Morgan, some of the others, it’s like they got secret information. Making deals that make no sense at the time, but turn out rich. I don’t think those guys are hurting today, like everyone else.”

  Lansky sighed. “And you know what’s strange. Couple of months ago, Kennedy began pulling out of the market. As if he knew what’s going on was gonna happen. Weird thing that. He’s sold almost everything.” Lansky held up the $10,000 bill. “About ten million worth is what I’m told. Not all of that ten was his; he’s got partners, some we know about. Some we don’t, although he’s had some dealing with the Outfit in Chicago. And, of course, he’s got the Boston Irish. They’re some tough fellows. But he’s worth about two million at least.

  “So,” Lansky said, “I know two million of this is ours. But about the rest, I think some of it might have been stolen from others. I think a good chunk is from Mister Joseph Kennedy and crew. Why this fellow or whoever he works for needed more, I don’t know. But greedy people, tend to be, how shall I say, greedy? An event like this crash, who knows where it will end? Who knows whether something like it will ever happen again? So maybe today, today is a very unique day. A unique opportunity. And they all wanted in on it?”

  Lansky snapped the bill and peered at it. “So. What to do? What to do.” The first was a question, the second a statement.

  Lansky pointed with one finger at Ivar. “Do you work for Kennedy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “But you don’t work for Masseria or Maranzano either. And I got a feeling you might well die under Benny’s knife before telling. But let me tell you what could happen. The possibilities here.”

  Ivar stiffened at that word.

  “If I tell Bugsy,” Lansky smiled, “and I will tell him using that name, which is guaranteed to get the man’s blood up, that Kennedy stole from us, you know what’s gonna happen?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Benny will visit Mister Kennedy and he will no longer grace this earthly coil with his presence.”

  Ivar was shaking his head before Lansky was done.

  Lansky smiled triumphantly. “Ah, something you care about! You don’t work for Joe Kennedy, but he’s important to you. Why?”

  Ivar knew he couldn’t answer that.

  Lansky waited, but when nothing was forthcoming, he continued.

  “I got someone checking out this bank account here,” Lansky said, indicating the piece of paper. “If it turns out to be in Kennedy’s name, then he is a dead man. There is no question of that. It’s a matter of precedent. We cannot be stolen from.”

  Ivar’s mind was racing ahead, downloading the Kennedy family history. Joseph Kennedy, Jr., was alive right now. Born in 1915. But he would die in World War II. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the next, born 1917, which meant he was twelve years old now. Living somewhere close by as his father still worked on Wall Street. That sent a chill down Ivar’s spine.

  How would it affect JFK if his father was murdered by the mob when he wasn’t even yet a teenager? And if he lost the money and the mob connections that influenced JFK’s career later in life? Those wouldn’t exist. It was as if Ivar could feel the future change as a subway rattled nearby.

  “But we have a much, much bigger problem here, my friend,” Lansky said. He snapped the bill he’d taken off the table in front of Ivar. “I don’t think Kennedy and his friends took ten million out of the stock market. And even with the money from the two from us, they got some of this elsewhere. Perhaps Masseria and Maranzano, but we’ve heard nothing. And how would they get this list?” He held up the sheet in his other hand. He pressed the sheet and the bill together. “This stinks. It makes no sense. No, this is much, much bigger.”

  Lansky sighed deeply and put the list back on the table. He held the $10,000 bill right in front of Ivar’s face, less than a foot away. “Tell me, my friend, what our other problem is. The really, really big problem.”

  Ivar had no clue what Lansky meant.

  “Look at it,” Lansky ordered.

  Ivar stared at the image of a balding Salmon P. Chase. Then the rest of the note. And there it was, underneath the crest of the right side of Chase’s image.

  Washington, DC

  Series of 1930

  When: Can’t Tell You. Where: Can’t Tell You.

  “You’re as good as we’ve ever had,” Dane said to Doc. “You worked on the Rifts, which are a form of gate. And—”

  Doc cut him off. “We have no idea how the Rifts really work.”

  “Bull,” Dane said. “We opened the Rifts into that other world, where the Fireflies were. And whatever else. The first one was opened a long time ago, in your time, back in 1947 at Area 51. You, as a member of the Nightstalkers, were able to close those Rifts.”

  Doc and Dane were walking along the balcony overlooking the Possibility Palace. The other members of the Nightstalkers were gone, zapped through a gate to accomplish their mission. Doc felt rather exposed without his team to back him up, a rather unique feeling, especially as he often looked down on the way the Nightstalkers handled missions.

  Dane continued. “We’re fighting a defensive battle against the Shadow. Always have been. Always will be unless we change something. We’ve never taken the fight to the Shadow because we don’t know where or when it is.”

  “As it doesn’t know where and when we are,” Doc threw in, indicating the facility they were in. “Nor do I,” he added.

  Dane ignored that. “A defensive strategy has one inevitable outcome. Defeat. What we would like to do is shut the gates. All of them.”

  Doc considered that, with what little information he had. “That would end time travel wouldn’t it?”

  “Most likely,” Dane said.

  “And implode the Space Between.”

  “Probably.”

  “What about the people there?” Doc asked.

  “This is a war,” Dane said. “There are always casualties in war.”

  Doc paused and turned to face the gaping hole in the ground. He put his hands on the railing. “Let me ask you something first.”

  “What?”

  “How do they get back?” Doc asked. “Everyone is always keen on infiltration, but what about exfiltration? You simply told them that when the twenty-four hours runs out wherever and whenever they are, they come back, sort of like Cinderella.”

  “That’s exactly the problem,” Dane said. “We don’t know ‘how’ they get back. We just know they get ‘snatched’ back by the HUB.” He pointed at a door, one of many doors. “They’ll be back in that room pretty much at the same time. A few seconds difference here or there.”

  “You don’t know how your own stuff works,” Doc said, his point made. “How do you expect me to figure out something that’s bigger than that? The entire theory of the gates and time travel and parallel worlds?”

  “Think ab
out it,” Dane said. “This all”—he waved his hands to take in the Possibility Palace—“dates back to Atlantis. It wasn’t as big at first. Just some survivors. But it’s grown over the years. We’ve picked up bits and pieces of stuff, like the block/download device. Usually via the Space Between. Now that our timeline has a Valkyrie suit and it’s being examined at the labs at Area 51, we’ll pick up more technology. But we’re chasing the monster’s tail instead of the monster. The key question is: When was this monster born?”

  “The first split,” Doc said. “The first timeline that was tsunamied off.”

  “Exactly,” Dane said. “We don’t know when that was, but our best guess was just after Atlantis was destroyed. Because the tale of that destruction is the one constant in every timeline.”

  “You’re missing something,” Doc said. “If the Shadow destroyed Atlantis, then there was already another timeline before Atlantis.”

  “That’s true,” Dane allowed.

  “The earlier question that we need to answer,” Doc said, “is where did Atlantis come from? In 10,000 BC, it’s estimated there were between two and ten million people. Hunter-gatherers. No cities. Not even villages. They kept on the move. Yet at the same time, you’re saying there was this great civilization in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It makes no sense. For the rest of the world it would be almost two thousand years before true agriculture begins in the Fertile Crescent. That’s what we consider the beginning of civilization. So you’re telling us that before all the rest of mankind had civilization, there was civilization. How?”

  “Your numbers are a bit off,” Dane said, “but overall, you’re correct.” He sighed. “The Ones Before.”

  “The who?”

  “The Ones Before,” Dane said. “They’re the enemy of the Shadow. But we have fewer clues about who they are than what the Shadow is.”

  “So the Ones Before are pre-Atlantis?” Doc asked.

  Dane shrugged. “One would have to assume so.”

  “And the Ones Before built Atlantis? Founded it?”

  “Perhaps.” Dane turned to Doc. “That’s why we need you, Doc. You do have the most current knowledge of physics. We want you to take a look at the original documents we have from Atlantis. Read them. Study them. Maybe you’ll see something we haven’t seen yet. Some clue to how all this came about. How it works. Because if we can understand that, maybe we can shut all of this down. And mankind can develop on its own, in each timeline, without interference.”

  “I can try,” Doc said.

  “Good.” Dane turned around and pointed at another door. “Everything is in there.”

  The East Coast of England, 999 AD. 29 October

  Tam Nok opened her eyes after a few more minutes. She didn’t appear surprised to see Roland standing there alone. She signaled for him to come to her. He walked over. There were markings on the stone faded by time, a form of the hieroglyphics that they were using at the Possibility Palace but too faint to read.

  “Do you feel it?” Tam Nok asked.

  “I feel something,” Roland allowed, mainly pissed at Ragnarok for abandoning them.

  Tam Nok reached up and placed her hands on either side of Roland’s head. “Clear your mind. See the possibilities.”

  Roland immediately knew the crack Mac would make about that, which indicated Mac didn’t know Roland as well as he thought he did.

  For a moment there was pure white in Roland’s mind. Then flames. He saw a battle, Vikings versus berserkers, and caught in the middle the people who lived outside the monastery and those inside, the monks, dying without fighting back. There were also nuns, and the vision zoomed in on one young woman, at the end of her teens, her hair shorn tight, wearing a plain brown dress. She was cowering in the corner of the chapel, a cross held in front of her as a form of protection.

  A figure was approaching her, but Roland couldn’t see who it was. The figure was all black, a silhouette moving with purpose and rage. A hand knocked the cross aside. Her dress was torn. She screamed.

  The vision blinked black, and then showed the same young woman, lying on a straw bed in a hut. A midwife was between her legs and a baby was brought forth and—

  A young boy, sitting in a room, a monk, switch in hand, looming over him, teaching, making him read scrolls and—

  A warrior teaching the boy swordsmanship, a whip at the ready to correct any mistake, and—

  The boy, now in his midteens, strapping, powerful, but without the full muscle adulthood would bring, wearing armor, riding into battle and—

  The man riding out of battle, blood and gore–covered, obviously reveling in the combat and—

  The man wearing fine armor, standing behind a pulpit, exhorting a crowd of soldiers and priests and monks and nuns and—

  The man wearing a crown, now an emperor, of what wasn’t clear, but there were armies following him and—

  Ships sailing from England, filled with soldiers, but also with priests among them, priests wearing a strange emblem around their necks: a silver cross inside an iron circle with an iron slash across the top of it all and—

  Ships landing; slaughter; conversion forced upon those who surrendered and—

  Roland staggered back as Tam Nok pulled her hands away.

  “What was that?” Roland demanded.

  “That is a possibility that springs forth from this very evening,” Tam Nok said, “if it is not stopped.”

  Roland, as usual, had a simple solution. “Then let’s stop it.”

  Los Angeles, California, 1969. 29 October

  Three hours later, watching through two tiny boreholes that Price had drilled in the wall between the room they were hiding in and the computer lab, they watched as Keane sat down at his keyboard. There was someone else in the room with him.

  Price and Scout were shoulder to shoulder, each with their own hole, watching and listening.

  Keane had a telephone headset on and was talking to someone at Stanford.

  He pecked at the keyboard once. “Okay, I typed in ‘L.’ You got that?”

  Apparently the answer was positive, because Keane tapped a single key. “Got ‘O’?”

  Keane was nodding and they could tell he was getting excited. He typed a single key. “Got the ‘G’?” His excitement disappeared quickly. “What? What? All right, get back to me when you’re back up.” Keane cursed and turned to the other guy in the room. “His system has crashed.”

  “Crap,” the other guy said, checking his watch.

  “The buffer,” Keane said, staring at his own computer screen.

  “What?”

  “He’s got a one-character buffer up there on his IMP. But look.” He pointed at his screen. “Our computer anticipated the ‘I’ and ‘N,’ figuring I was typing ‘LOGIN.’ Sent them at the same time. Overwhelmed the buffer.”

  The other guy yawned. “Well, it’s going to take at least an hour to get back up at Stanford. I have to be in the lab first thing in the morning. You can do this later if you want.”

  “Good night,” Keane said, hardly aware the other guy was leaving.

  Scout leaned back from the peephole and looked at Price. She leaned in, putting her mouth close to his ear. “The full message gets sent at twenty-two thirty,” she whispered.

  Price nodded, checking his watch. He signaled a small circle with one finger, indicating he was going to do a sweep, and Scout nodded. She went back to peering through the peephole.

  This was really, really boring, she thought.

  And then she continued thinking, trying to take a Nada perspective on this mission, because it wasn’t adding up. Why did Luke even bother coming after her? Was he afraid she’d stop him?

  Price was gone quite a while and Scout still hadn’t untangled this clusterfrak. But she figured maybe she didn’t need to understand as long as nothing went wrong in the next fifteen minutes. Finally the door to the room creaked open and Price was back. He gave her a thumbs-up and took his place next to her.

&nbs
p; Keane was pacing back and forth, leashed by the cord to his headset. He was worse than a kid in the backseat on a long trip: Are we there yet? “Are you up yet?” he asked Stanford for the umpteenth time over the phone.

  Scout checked her watch: 22:25.

  Not long now.

  She shifted slightly and her shoulder touched Price’s.

  That tingle was back. Scout closed her eyes, wondering why she was getting all excited about some dork typing onto a keyboard. But with her eyes closed she saw it in her mind’s eye: Keane gasping, clawing at his eyes, at his throat. Collapsing on the floor. Then a figure wearing a gas mask entering the room. Placing a package on the computer. Walking out.

  And the whole vision disappeared in a large explosion.

  Scout was faster by less than a second, stabbing the stiletto into Price’s side as his own knife came toward her throat. She jerked back and the blade nicked her cheek rather than her carotid artery.

  The tip of her stiletto came to rest in Price’s heart.

  That stone-cold killer look in his eyes flickered, replaced by confusion. But Scout was moving, all that training in the sand pits at Camp Mackall, all those screaming Green Beret instructors coming through in an automatic movement as she used her non-knife arm to clamp down on Price’s knife arm, locking it in place. Then she twisted, hearing the crack of the bone, and his knife fell to the floor.

  She still had the stiletto deep in his chest.

  But she hadn’t shredded his heart yet.

  “What did you do to the Time Patrol agent?” she asked.

  Price was staring at her, disbelief clouding his eyes.

  “Did you kill him?”

  Price nodded, a slip up, not professional at all, but it’s not every day you know you’re going to be dead in a minute or so. Quicker if Scout shredded. Right now, the blade was actually helping to keep him alive, partly sealing the hole it had made.

  “A double blind,” Scout said, awareness settling over her with absolute certainty. “Luke’s role was to die. To have me trust you. But he didn’t know he was the bait, did he.” She didn’t say it as a question.