by C T Cassana
“What you’ve got there isn’t even enough to pay for the bag,” he said, turning around at once. “I’m going home.”
“Wait!” cried Lisa, seizing him by the arm. “Alright, I’ll raise my offer. I’ll give you this for the bag.”
She took out all the money she had and showed it to the boy. He smiled slyly, grabbed the money and put it away in his pocket.
“Wait a minute!” snapped Charlie anxiously. “Give my sister the bag!”
With his smile still on his face, the boy pulled the cape out and then handed the bag to Lisa.
“What are you doing?” asked Lisa in astonishment.
“For the price you paid you only included the bag. You didn’t say anything about the cloth, so this is still mine,” replied the boy cockily. “If you want this, you’ll have to pay extra.”
“You little...!” fumed Lisa, raising her fist to deliver a right jab to the boy’s nose.
But Charlie held her arm back and gestured for her to calm down.
“Look,” she said, casting a glance back at the street they had come down moments before. Costaz was on his way back, panting and completely drenched in sweat. It wouldn’t be long before he saw them.
“Alright, what do you want?” asked Charlie firmly.
“What have you got?” asked the boy, enjoying the control he had over them.
Charlie hesitated for a moment while he watched Costaz enter the square and head toward the Institut d’Égypte. Luckily, it seemed the man had not seen them.
“I haven’t got any money, but maybe this will interest you,” said Charlie, pulling his flashlight out of his pocket.
It had not been changed, as the clothing annulus could only transform clothes, accessories and money, and the flashlight did not fit into any of these categories.
The Egyptian boy looked at it without saying a word. Although he was intrigued by it, he couldn’t reveal his interest if he wanted to keep the bargaining power he had over these two suckers. Trying her best to restrain her anxiety, Lisa looked at the boy, and then over at Costaz, who was walking through the square, dragging his feet and wearing a distracted expression. Charlie meanwhile kept his eyes fixed on his rival and the annoyingly impassive expression he wore. Finally, he pressed the button on the flashlight and pointed it straight into the other boy’s face.
“And there was light!” he exclaimed.
“What in the name of Allah? What are you doing?” shouted the Egyptian boy, staggering back a step.
“It’s for lighting up the dark,” explained Charlie. “Just like a candle or a torch.”
The boy reached out for the flashlight, as if he needed to hold it to look at it more closely.
“The cape first,” demanded Charlie, hiding the flashlight behind his back, well aware he was bargaining with a cheat.
“And quickly. We’re in a hurry,” added Lisa, nudging her brother with her elbow.
The young ruffian’s shouts had caught the attention of Monsieur Costaz, who had stopped a few yards away from the entrance to the Institute and was looking around him to see where they had come from. He seemed not to have seen them, or if he had he hadn’t recognized them... at least, not yet.
Charlie held the flashlight up for the boy to see it again, turning it on and off once more. He wasn’t sure how much longer the batteries would last, so he decided to be careful not to overdo it.
“You heard my sister; we’re in a hurry,” he said, reaching out for the cape with one hand while gripping the flashlight with all his might in the other.
The Egyptian boy looked him hard in the eye, handed him the garment and grabbed the flashlight as soon as Charlie opened his hand to show that the deal was done. He then immediately took off running down a small lane a few yards from where they stood.
Charlie smiled smugly as he watched his adversary run away like a dog with his tail between his legs. He then turned to his sister, expecting to find an expression of relief on her face. But Lisa didn’t look relieved, or even vaguely content. Instead, she looked tense, if not positively unhinged.
“Damn it!” she muttered, grabbing the cape and throwing it over her brother’s shoulders.
Charlie looked in the direction of the Institut d’Égypte, sure he would find the cause of her reaction there. And he did: Monsieur Costaz was heading straight for them in leaping strides.
“We’ve got to get out of here! Quickly!” exclaimed Lisa while she did up the buttons on the cape. “Reset the annuli on the bracelet!”
“I set them before while I was waiting for you!” replied the boy, crouching down to pick up the bag, which had dropped to the ground. “As soon as you’re done we’ll go!”
Costaz kept his eye on the children as he approached, wondering why on earth they weren’t running away. Instead, they seemed to be arguing frantically, while the girl draped a thick black cape around the boy, despite the terrible heat of the afternoon. It was clear that they were engaged in some kind of serious disagreement, or that they were plotting something. In any case, he wouldn’t get a better chance than this to catch them, so although he was out of breath and completely exhausted, he summoned up all the strength he had left and began running toward them.
Lisa did up the last button on the cape and grabbed her brother by the arm to check the settings of all the annuli. Then she raised her gaze and looked straight at Costaz, who was now only a few yards away.
The man strained to make the last few steps toward them when he saw them embrace, perhaps in a gesture of surrender on seeing they had no way of escaping. But just when he was about to reach out to seize them, something incredible and totally unexpected happened: the children disappeared right in front of his eyes, vanishing like a mirage in the desert.
Costaz ran on a few yards further, propelled by his own momentum and lacking the strength to bring his legs to a halt. When he finally managed to stop himself, he rubbed his eyes in bewilderment. It was a terribly hot afternoon; of that there was no doubt. He was worn out, totally drenched in sweat, and now it seemed he had also begun suffering hallucinations.
. . .
Charlie broke apart from Lisa and dropped to the attic floor.
“He almost had us!” he said, referring to Costaz.
“I’d rather not think what would have happened if he’d caught us,” gasped Lisa. “Do you think the cape would have brought him here with us?”
“What a mess that would have been!” replied Charlie, rather amused by the idea. “It would be funny to have the house filled with people from other eras. What do you think Mum would say if we brought some character from one of her stories to dinner? ‘Doctor Livingstone, meet my mother. Mum, this is Doctor Livingstone’,” he went on, acting out an imaginary introduction.
“Oh my God! I don’t even want to think about it!” replied his sister, amused and at the same time horrified by the idea. “You’d better put the cape away, in case Dad comes in.”
“By the way, what did you say to that guy that got him so mad? He was smiling at you one minute, and then suddenly he turned real serious and started shouting that we were spies.”
“I don’t know,” said Lisa, thinking it over. “I’m not sure if it was because of the mummy or the miles.”
Charlie shrugged his shoulders. He had no idea what she meant.
“And what about the papyrus scroll?” he asked.
“Denon took it, just like it said in the logbook. He left for France with it more than a year ago... I mean, in August 1799.”
The girl picked up her brother’s orange backpack, which had resumed its original form, and took out the camera.
“Let’s go see Helen and tell her what we found out. I’m sure she’ll know what we should do with this latest clue,” she said. “Don’t tell her anything about what happened, that I spoke to Costaz or that we have the photos. If she thinks we were in any kind of danger, she’ll tell Mum about the cape and we’ll never get the chance to go to France and look for the scroll.”
> The children went downstairs to the library to tell their father they were going to the museum. But before they left, Lisa felt a twinge of curiosity and turned back to her father.
“Hey Dad, in olden times, did they use leagues or miles?” she asked.
“That depends on where you mean. Both are old units of measurement, but miles were used, and still are, in most English-speaking countries. Leagues were used in many European countries, but they were dropped when the metric system was introduced.”
“So you’d be able to guess where a person came from by the unit of measurement they used,” reasoned Lisa. “If they used miles they were English, and if they used leagues they were from somewhere else, like France, for example.”
“Well, that could be one way to find out, yes,” agreed Marcus.
Lisa sighed. Clearly, Miss Rotherwick was right when she’d said they needed to prepare themselves and study everything they could before their journeys. And it wasn’t just historical information they needed to know, but every single detail about the era they were visiting. The smallest slip, the tiniest word out of place, could give them away. And she, and especially her brother, had an irrepressible habit of talking too much.
CHAPTER XVII: E. Milford
Jeff Carter reviewed the information he had so far. By hacking the emails of the governmental agency, he had been able to determine that the bubonic plague victim had been treated at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, having been admitted via the emergency service. But in spite of all his efforts, he couldn’t find any trace of the patient’s identity or diagnosis in the hospital information system. Everything appeared to have been removed in order to keep the matter confidential, no doubt by using alphanumeric codes in place of the individual’s name and condition.
Nevertheless, he knew from experience that however thorough a cover-up might be, there was always a slip-up somewhere, some forgotten record in the immensity of cyberspace with a traceable piece of information. He just had to have the patience and intelligence necessary to find it.
St. Thomas’ had a sophisticated computer system which, among other features, provided medical records with dynamic and precise information on each patient’s condition. The hospital lab was in full operation 24 hours a day, conducting all kinds of clinical studies on site and producing a PDF of the results that hospital staff could consult from any computer merely by entering their user name and password.
Jeff smiled maliciously, convinced that this would be the missing link, the chink in the armor that nobody had thought of. The patient’s real name would appear on the results of the blood test. Nobody would have replaced it with the code name that had been created once the diagnosis was confirmed, simply because a PDF was like a photograph of the original document, and once created its content could not be altered.
Before beginning his search, he double-checked the patient’s admission date as shown in the emails of the governmental agency. He then opened up the box with the margarita pizza he’d just received and settled down to read, one by one in chronological order, the results of every blood test taken at St. Thomas’ Hospital from that day on.
. . .
Lisa and Charlie arrived at “HQ” with expressions of bitter defeat on their faces.
“Hi, Helen,” said Charlie as they entered. “We have bad news... and more bad news. Which would you like to hear first?”
Miss Rotherwick smiled at the boy’s words, although the situation was far from amusing. It appeared the children had come back empty-handed, and she knew that time was running out.
“Start with the bad news,” she replied amiably. “What happened?”
“We only found the papyrus scroll that’s already here in the British Museum,” announced Lisa. “The other one wasn’t there; Monsieur Denon had taken it back the year before.”
Lisa silently rued the visit her brother and Miss Rotherwick had made to the opera in Vienna, which had denied them the chance of getting their hands on the second scroll and bringing it to their mother, although she didn’t express this thought aloud. There was no way to change it now, and a new argument about it would only make things worse. Miss Rotherwick would baulk at the mere idea of their traveling back in time again, so Lisa thought it best to take the most relaxed and natural approach possible.
“Yes,” Charlie chimed in. “That Denon guy took it to Paris, along with the statue that’s also missing.”
“We saw the logbook at the Institute,” explained Lisa. “Monsieur Denon deposited the pieces on the 10th of August 1799, and he took them out on the 17th of the same month, just seven days later. Weird, isn’t it? I mean, it doesn’t make much sense to check them in only to take them out again a week later.”
“Did you say the 17th of August 1799?” asked Miss Rotherwick. “Oh my goodness! Of course!”
The children stared at her expectantly; they knew that her historical knowledge was extensive, and clearly that date had some kind of significance.
“On the 22nd of August 1799, Napoleon sailed from Alexandria in the greatest of secrecy to avoid capture by the British fleet,” she explained. “The Egypt campaign seemed to be dragging on too long, and France had other open fronts back in Europe, where things were not going very well for them. So Napoleon left General Kléber in command of his troops and returned to Paris with a few men. Vivant Denon was one of them. As I said, their voyage was arranged in secret, so when Denon deposited the pieces with the Institute, he wouldn’t have known that he was going to return to France only a few days later.”
“Which means we need to look for Denon in Paris in order to find the papyrus scroll,” suggested Lisa, trying to jump ahead of Miss Rotherwick’s next move.
Miss Rotherwick said nothing, but her serious expression made it clear that she didn’t like the idea at all.
“Come on, Helen. Don’t look at us like that; we’re so close to finding it,” added Charlie in a confident tone. “We just went to Cairo and nothing bad happened. If you plan the trip, everything will go smoothly, I promise you.”
The woman let out a heavy sigh. She didn’t want to get into another argument with the children; she felt too tired to stand up to them. She was just as eager as they were to find the scroll or some clue that would help Maggie find it, and be able to celebrate the discovery together with the Wilfords.
“Alright,” she replied with a look of resignation. “But this will be your last journey in time. After that, whatever comes of it, I’ll be telling your parents. And I would like you to promise to respect this agreement.”
The children lowered their eyes and muttered their assent.
“Come and see me on Monday. By then I’ll have prepared the information you’ll need,” said the woman. “I hope we have more luck this time.”
“We will, Helen!” answered Charlie. “You’ll see. We’ll find the papyrus scroll and everything will work out. With you on the team, nothing can go wrong.”
Miss Rotherwick smiled affectionately at the skinny, freckle-faced boy. She loved his spontaneous, charming way of speaking.
“You never told me what the other bad news was, my dear,” she said with a smile.
“Oh, right!” he replied, shrugging his shoulders and reaching for another brownie. “Well, you were right. We can’t understand other languages when they’re written. So that’s another letdown, I guess.”
. . .
Jeff Carter closed the document he had just read and went onto the next one; number 588, by his count. First he cast a quick glance over the standard data, and then looked more carefully at the more specific details. After reading just a couple of lines, he slammed his fist on the table. There it was; at last, he had found the blood test showing a positive reading for the bacteria Yersinia pestis. And best of all; just as he’d suspected, the patient’s original name was there, not camouflaged under some stupid alphanumeric code. The moment had come to close the case and send an email with his findings to his client, John Smith.
“Dear Mr. Smith,
The patient was one E. Milford, admitted to St. Thomas’ Hospital in London via the emergency service on March 4. Three days later, the patient was discharged.
As is to be expected, the patient’s identity has been totally erased from the hospital’s information systems, replaced with the code A95LT. Identifying the patient has entailed considerable effort, which is duly reflected on the invoice attached.
If you would like me to provide further information on E. Milford, please let me know; please note that such a request would be considered a separate job from this one.
Please make payment for my services to the usual bank account.
Best regards,
Jeff Carter”
Fifteen minutes later, Max Wellington was reading the email.
Max knew that Jeff Carter’s professionalism was beyond dispute. He was one of the best hackers in the world, and his pride would never have allowed him to close an investigation that was incomplete or off the mark. However, based on his conclusions, the initials of the patient would be “E. M.”, quite different from the letters “C. W.” engraved on the compass found at the excavation of the paleontologist Oswald Butler.
There were only two possible explanations for this. The first was that there were two different people, two equally careless time travelers who had come onto the scene at the same time. The second, which was much more plausible, was that it was the same individual, and that there was some other reason for the discrepancy between initials.
In any case, he now had a very strong lead to follow to clear up the mystery.
Max wrote an email with his reply:
“Dear Mr. Carter,
Your fees will be paid at once.
For your next assignment, I need you to compile a list of individuals residing in Greater London with the name E. Milford, including their given names, addresses and phone numbers.
Sincerely,
John Smith”
. . .
At lunchtime on Monday, Miss Rotherwick chose to stay in her office to take care of a few urgent matters. She was rushing to finish off a report when her cell phone suddenly interrupted her. While hitting the “save” button on her computer she picked up the mobile without even looking to see who was calling.