by RR Haywood
‘Never listens,’ Malcolm says.
‘Never bloody listens to anyone,’ Konrad says. ‘Not an evil man.’
‘Not evil, just selfish.’
‘And a coward too. Left his wife and kids. Ran off and left them to die.’
‘Awful,’ Malcolm tuts sadly. ‘Mind, though, Kon, Ria went back of her own accord, she did.’
‘She did,’ Konrad says as the others play conversation-tennis and look from one to the other. ‘Always headstrong was our Ria.’
‘Headstrong,’ Malcolm adds.
‘Immature sometimes,’ Konrad says.
‘Kids today, Kon,’ Malcolm says with another tut. ‘Got another beer there? What we doing with that dead Nazi then? He’s still in the main room.’
‘You can’t leave him there,’ Emily says in disgust.
‘Can’t put him outside, miss,’ Konrad says. ‘Get a hungry dinosaur eating him? Change the world that could. Only takes a spore or a seed . . . or eating a dead bloke from the twentieth century . . .’
‘Another one for the list of shit to worry about,’ Safa tells Ben.
‘Noted,’ Ben replies.
‘My great granddad was in the German army in the war,’ Konrad says.
‘Was he really?’
‘Got shot in the foot at the start. We still had his uniform when I was a kid. It looked a bit like that dead bloke’s. The dead guy was SS, though. My granddad was just regular army.’
‘I thought the SS wore black,’ Malcolm says.
‘Some,’ Harry says, giving them both a look that thereby signifies the end of that conversation.
‘Fuck me,’ Ben says softly, nodding at Konrad to pass another bottle of beer down. ‘Lot to think about.’
‘It certainly is,’ Miri says, looming from the darkness to take the bottle Konrad was reaching for. She pops the lid one-handed and holds it out to be passed down before taking another for herself. ‘HB state, report,’ she adds, looking at Konrad.
‘What’s the HB again?’ Konrad asks.
‘Home base, Kon,’ Malcolm says. ‘And it should be condemned. The bloody thing isn’t fit for purpose now.’
‘Not an option. Repair?’ Miri asks.
‘Repair she says,’ Malcolm mumbles into his bottle.
‘We can patch it up,’ Konrad says.
‘Good. We used Milwaukee twenty ten as our supply source, but that is now negated.’
‘Why Milwaukee?’ Malcolm asks.
‘The locale suited purpose with access to the services and function we required.’
‘Great,’ Malcolm says weakly, trying to decide if Miri is more intimidating than Safa.
‘Why’s it negated?’ Konrad asks. ‘Because of Ria and that lad?’
‘That and if two new members of our team deploy from the vehicle in that parking lot it will draw attention,’ Miri says. ‘The van needs to be forensically destroyed.’ She lowers herself slowly to sit at the table and places the notepad down in front of her.
‘So we need a new supply source,’ Ben says.
‘We do,’ Miri says. ‘And it’s called a staging area.’
‘We had staging areas all over the world,’ Emily says.
‘Every government has staging areas all over the world,’ Miri says.
‘I know, Miri. I was just making a comment,’ Emily says primly.
‘Was it true about the basement in London?’ Ben asks, looking down the table to Miri.
She feigns ignorance for a split second with a lifetime of habit ingrained at being asked a direct question about her past. Then she remembers where she is and who these people are. ‘Affirmative,’ she says.
‘What basement?’ Safa asks, looking from Ben to Miri.
‘Legend has it,’ Ben says, ‘the US intelligence services back in the late nineteen seventies or early eighties bought a house in London. Right in the middle of a part of Chelsea before it became so upmarket. The house was said to have been bought through offshore companies registered to other companies and all sorts of stuff. Anyway, they had the house renovated from top to bottom, but while that was going on they secretly built a big secret underground bunker thing, but with a secret entrance hidden somewhere away from the house. The house was then rented out on short-term lets through a local agency while the CIA used the secret basement as a staging area for covert operations in London.’
‘Oh, we knew all about that,’ Emily says. ‘Worst kept secret ever. We even gave it a postcode and pinned a Christmas card on the secret entrance once,’ she adds with a laugh, while making speech marks.
‘That true?’ Safa asks Miri.
‘Emily is ahead of me in time, but, yes, that staging area was known.’
‘Bit shit, then,’ Safa says before downing her bottle.
‘Just a bit,’ Emily says with a laugh.
‘Hang on,’ Ben says, looking at Miri and seeing that carefully hidden smug look. ‘Decoy?’
‘Who knows, Mr Ryder?’
‘Eh?’ Emily asks as Ben bursts out laughing. ‘What? What’s funny?’
‘How many?’ Ben asks.
‘Four,’ Miri replies. ‘Chelsea was blown on purpose, so the UK intel services felt comfortable. The other three were never discovered in my time . . .’ She leans forward to look at Emily and the smile slowly fading from the younger woman’s face as everyone else laughs.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ Emily says with a huff. ‘We probably did know about the others.’
‘Still a two,’ Safa laughs.
‘Stop saying that! It was a lack of promotion that—’
‘Okay, okay,’ Ben says, cutting in with a wave of his bottle. ‘So Milwaukee is out. Where then? Needs to be an English-speaking country . . .’
Miri flips open the front page of the notepad and starts leafing through the sheets until she finds a list she made several months ago.
‘What’s that?’ Ben asks, craning over to look and reading New York, LA, Dallas and more US cities, along with years and sequences of numbers recorded against each. ‘Population density?’
‘Yep,’ Miri says, resisting the urge to tell him to move away and stop reading her notes.
‘LA’s a bit risky,’ he remarks. ‘You’re from California, aren’t you?’
‘Spoken like a true Brit,’ Miri remarks.
‘Eh?’
‘California is bigger than Great Britain.’
‘Someone once said if you stand in Piccadilly Circus in London you’ll meet everyone you ever knew,’ Ben says.
‘That’s because the UK is tiny,’ Miri says with a flash of a smile that makes the others laugh at the look on Ben’s face. ‘Priorities,’ she continues in a tone that suggests no one should interrupt. ‘The sewage tank in the bunker needs emptying, correct?’
‘Yep, but we don’t have a hose,’ Malcolm replies.
‘Orders,’ Miri says. ‘M and K deploy with Harry and Emily to Milwaukee . . .’
‘Eh?’ Konrad asks. ‘We don’t need babysitting . . .’
‘You have no counter-surveillance training,’ Miri cuts in. ‘You will deploy with Harry and Emily to the construction depot. Ben and Safa will deploy to the mall to buy supplies for the next few days until we can establish a fresh staging area . . .’
‘Ooh, can I go with Safa?’ Emily asks, earning a glare from Miri at a trained agent requesting to alter the orders. ‘Not being a girl, but a construction depot isn’t very interesting,’ Emily adds, ‘and I’ve never been shopping with Safa.’
‘I hate shopping,’ Safa says.
‘Shush, you’ll love it,’ Emily says, waving a hand at her.
Miri just stares. This would never happen in her former life.
‘It’s fine,’ Ben says easily. ‘Harry and I can go with Malc and Kon . . .’
‘Maybe I want to go to the builders’ centre,’ Safa says. ‘Sexist dicks.’
‘Do you?’ Ben asks.
‘God no,’ she snorts. ‘I’ll go girlie shopping for hairbrushes and tampons.’
‘Are we doing this tomorrow?’ Ben asks.
‘No. Now.’
‘Now?’
‘Now, Mr Ryder. Tomorrow we are going forward to twenty-one eleven.’
‘Camera!’ Ben says, clicking his fingers. ‘Just remembered. We need one of those endoscopy things. The construction depot will have one . . . you know . . . the little camera on a long pipe thing they shove down blocked drains and gutter pipes. We need one of those.’
‘It’s a bit late for that, Ben,’ Konrad says. ‘The bunker’s not blocked anyway, it just needs emptying.’
‘No, for twenty-one eleven,’ Ben says to the blank faces. ‘We make the portal tiny and shove a camera in first to have a look and watch it on a screen.’
‘Hey, that’s clever, that is,’ Malcolm says.
‘Clever,’ Konrad echoes.
‘Bright spark, aren’t you?’ Safa says, grinning at Ben.
‘Good,’ Miri announces, pushing up from the table. ‘Deploy now . . .’
Five
Siberia, 2060
Siberia, even in summer, is not a pleasant place. This city certainly isn’t. A dire, nasty, grim place full of hard men and harder women. He sits in his usual place drinking his usual tea and reading his usual newspaper.
The café owner had the tea waiting for him. That’s the sign of a good embed when the locals start thinking of you as a piece of the furniture.
The same café owner strolls out, lights a cigarette and tuts heavily at the scene across the road.
‘What’s going on?’ the man at the table asks casually, only half-interested.
‘Fucking politician,’ the café owner says bitterly, but in a quiet voice and with a glance round to make sure no one else can hear him.
‘Politician?’ the man at the table asks, turning the page of his newspaper. ‘See they’re finally doing repairs on the main road by the gas station,’ he adds by way of conversation.
The café owner glares at him, tutting again. ‘For the fucking politician. Not for us. Everything has to be clean and working for the fucking politician, then he’ll fuck off back to Moscow and we’ll go back to having fucking broken roads and fucking . . .’
‘What politician?’ the man at the table asks, showing confusion.
‘Visiting the hospital,’ the café owner says, as though the answer is obvious. ‘I told you last week.’
‘Did you?’
‘Did I? Are you my wife? She doesn’t listen either.’
‘Am I your wife?’ the man at the table asks, showing some slight concern and earning a quick grin.
‘Fool, drink your tea.’
‘I would, but someone is moaning about a politician and disturbing my day.’
‘Find another café then!’
‘I would if your tea wasn’t so good . . .’ the man says, glancing over at the security team climbing out of the dark four-wheel-drive vehicles. Men in suits wearing sunglasses and carrying sub-machine guns. Big men too. Shaved heads and mean looks. They set up a perimeter, flanking the main door to the hospital, and busy themselves intimidating anyone within the immediate vicinity.
‘Gorillas in suits,’ the café owner snorts. ‘Not a clue. Look at them. Not a fucking clue.’
The man at the table shrugs. ‘They look good to me,’ he says.
‘Look good?’ the café owner sputters. ‘You never served, did you? I was fifteen years in the army and that is not how to guard a perimeter. Look at the gaps! They’re not paying attention. Look at those two talking to that pretty girl. Shameful. They need to move out and gain a greater angle of view.’
‘Go and tell them,’ the man says, smiling at the café owner.
‘And get shot by gorillas in suits? I think not! Let them fuck it up and if anything happens I will tell them what they should have done.’
The two men lean forward at the sound of engines screaming down the closed main road. A flotilla of dark four-wheel-drive vehicles driven at speed and no doubt done to impress the locals with a show of power and might.
‘Fools,’ the café owner says, still tutting and shaking his head. ‘Too fast. Where is the view ahead? They’ll have to brake sharply now or risk collision.’
He’s right too. The convoy do brake fast and have to veer and steer away from one another to avoid a concertina effect. To the untrained eye, it might look good. Fast vehicles, heavy braking and rakish angles, but to anyone with experience of such things it’s bloody awful. The café owner laments on this while the man at the table nods and remarks that he thinks it looks good.
The two bicker quietly as the politician sweeps out from his vehicle, surrounded by heavily armed men, and is escorted into the hospital, while a TV crew and photographers follow behind. A quietness ensues for twenty minutes while the man at the table drinks his tea, reads his newspaper and continues to bicker with the café owner and while the politician – a maverick, outspoken young man who is becoming very well known for his anti-western views – continues his tour of the hospital.
‘Right,’ the man at the table says. ‘Enough of your moaning. I’m going.’
‘Good riddance,’ the café owner says. ‘You’re like a bad smell.’
‘This place is a bad smell.’
‘See you tomorrow.’
‘Unfortunately, you will,’ the man says, stretching and yawning while paying no particular attention to anyone or anything. He strolls out from the café as the politician exits the hospital and walks swiftly to his vehicle just as a very big fuel truck driven by a very drunk Russian comes careering down the middle of the road. The driver is a frantic man, but then anyone in his situation would be. His family are being held hostage. His wife and children have guns at their heads. He must do this or they will die.
The man leaving the café hardly glances at the fuel truck. He has his routine and walks on, as though deep in thought. He hardly glances when the fuel truck swerves towards the hospital and the four-wheel-drive vehicles pull away. He hardly notices when shots ring out from the sub-machine guns firing at the truck, killing the driver, and he only glances round when the truck slams into the rear four-wheel-drive vehicle and explodes in a huge detonation triggered by a small switch in his pocket. Everyone dives for cover, even the café owner, but then he is ex-military and so maybe he has some experience in these things.
The politician is killed instantly. So are his guards and the press officials covering the event. So are several nurses, doctors and hospital workers and several more bystanders. The truck driver was struck with bullets a second before the impact. Later it will show he murdered his family and drove the truck in a crazed wild attempt to kill himself.
An assassination months in the planning. The man from the café will not go back for tea tomorrow. By tomorrow he will be back in London being debriefed and hopefully having a few days off before the next job. This mission was a hard one. The infiltration took a long time, but then he is the best at it. That’s why he is Alpha.
He reaches his small apartment a few minutes later to a backdrop of sirens. All he needs to do is grab his already packed bag and he’s off. A few hours’ drive into the next city to the airfield. A pre-booked commercial flight to Japan and the man he is now will cease to be as this legend is finished and another one begins.
He walks through the communal hallway to his apartment door. A prickle on the back of his neck as he pushes his key in the lock. Something is wrong. A detection of a change in air pressure. A lifetime of experience that tells him someone is waiting in his apartment.
‘Come in,’ a female voice calls out.
He blinks once, unlocks the door and enters quickly to see her standing in the tiny landing.
She looks different. Older. Her hair is greyer. The lines on her face deeper. The bags under her eyes darker.
‘Mother,’ he says quietly. His senses ramped. Why is Mother here? He looks past her to his small bedroom bathed in a green light.
‘So,’ she says, smiling at him. ‘Harry M
adden, Ben Ryder, Safa Patel and one of our own agents called Emily Rose killed you, but guess what? The British Government found a scrap of paper in the ruins of Cavendish Manor and used it to build another one.’
He listens and doesn’t show reaction, while outside more emergency vehicles swoosh past with sirens screaming and lights flashing.
‘Maggie Sanderson has a time machine. They used it to threaten every government in the world. You’re dead, but now you’re not dead and all of this happens in your future, but in my past. Confused?’
‘Slightly,’ he says quietly. ‘Green light?’
‘Time machine.’
‘Right.’
‘I just told you. Maggie Sanderson has one, but now we have one too.’
‘Time machine?’
‘Yes, Alpha. Fucking listen. A time machine. I say we have one. I have one.’
‘I see,’ he says, nodding slowly. ‘Is this a test?’
‘No,’ she says while looking round the dingy apartment. ‘I don’t miss covert ops. How long have you been here?’
He hides his reaction at the question. She sent him. She is handling him personally. He spoke to her yesterday by way of an encrypted call.
‘I’m from the future,’ she says, understanding his hesitancy. ‘About six or seven months from now. I remember this mission. This was your last before Berlin. The politician visiting the hospital. Yes, of course. Anyway, enough reminiscing. Are you coming? We have work to do. Extraction, they call it.’
‘Extraction?’ he asks as she turns to walk into the bedroom.
‘Extraction. Taking someone from their timeline. I am extracting you from yours.’
He follows her into the bedroom, which is a strange thing in itself, to be in a dingy little bedroom in Siberia with Mother. He winces inwardly at the sight of his soiled undergarments on the floor, but then he had to maintain an exact persona as part of the mission. A scruffy, unkempt Russian man working as a temp for a digital software company. Then he stares at the green portal shimmering at the far side of the room and swiftly forgets about his undergarments.
‘The concern was, of course, that by extracting you now, before Berlin and before Cavendish Manor, we would stop those events from taking place, but it turns out time is not fixed. You see, to me, those things will always have happened and regardless of what I do, or what we do, Maggie fucking Sanderson still has a fucking time machine and that’ – she snaps her fingers at Alpha – ‘cannot happen. I’m going too fast. Come on, I’ll debrief you. It doesn’t hurt, see.’ She waves her arm into the green light and Alpha observes, without expression, how her arm disappears. ‘Follow me.’ She walks through, vanishing from the room and leaving a still expressionless Alpha staring at the portal and he still doesn’t show any reaction when she leans back through to appear from the chest up in the room. ‘Hurry up, we’ve got work to do.’