by Bill Walker
“What!”
Wiley nodded. “A million up front, plus a quarter million a year for expenses.”
“You know this for sure?”
“For sure.”
“Jesus, Christ. What’s he supposed to do for it, shoot the president?”
All the humor was gone from Wiley’s expression.
“Worse,” he said.
Jack signaled the bartender for another beer.
“All right, go on.”
“I’ll tell you what I found out. But first I’m going to tell you how I found out. That way you’ll believe me.
“Don’t count on it.”
“I hired a safecracker.”
“You did what!”
“Jack, I had to find out what was in that room upstairs. The club was closed for a week for some minor renovations and cleaning. It was the perfect opportunity.”
“So you burglarized the place?”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Basically? Wiley, are you nuts?”
Wiley’s lips compressed into a thin, angry line.
“Shut up and listen, will you?”
“But—”
“Just shut up and listen, Jack,” he said.
Jack’s beer finally arrived, and he took a large gulp.
Wiley calmed himself, but the impassioned glimmer in his eyes belied his excitement. Jack just wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and blot out the world, forget about that idiot Reece and everything else. But what Wiley said next drove all thoughts of sleep from his mind.
“The guy got us inside in about thirty seconds. All that shit you hear about locks and alarms is true, Jack. It was like nothing to this guy.”
“And?”
“It’s a goddamn war room! I mean maps, aerial photos all over the walls, and one of those big tables like you see in the movies where they plot troop movements. And this’ll kill you—a big old Nazi flag on the wall.”
“Maybe that’s how they get their kicks—playing army.”
“Jesus, if you only knew how close you are. Everything in that room, the photos, maps, the table, it all ties into the Normandy Invasion.”
“So, they’re hooked on D-Day? What’s all this got to do with Chessman?”
Jack could see a small vein throbbing in Wiley’s forehead and his eye twitched like mad. Wiley took a deep breath.
“They don’t want the Normandy Invasion to happen, Jack.”
“What are you talking about? It already happened,” he said, his voice rising.
The man sitting next to Wiley turned and stared at Jack, making him feel like an idiot. He lowered his voice.
“It already happened, Wiley.”
“They want to change that.”
“What do you mean, change it? They can’t change it! Look, you’d better tell me what the hell is going on or I’m going to walk right out of here, so help me.”
Wiley reached inside his jacket and pulled out a wrinkled envelope bulging with photos. He spread them out on the bar, his manner becoming more urgent.
“You remember that little Minox camera you gave me a few years back? Well, I thought it would come in handy. Boy, did it.”
Jack stared at the photos, trying to take it all in. Wiley began to explain.
“What you’re seeing are original German documents detailing the positions of both German and allied forces.”
He pointed to another photo that showed a pile of what looked like currency.
“What is this?” Jack asked. “Money?”
Wiley nodded. “A lot of money, enough to choke a horse. And it’s German, nineteen forty-four issue.”
Wiley flipped to another picture.
“There were files in the safe too. Three of them. Files on Chessman, a guy named Werner Kruger—who also lives in Greenwich, by the way, and The Plan. I didn’t have time to photograph them, but I looked inside them.”
“And...”
And then he told him.
“With Chessman’s help they are going to send Kruger back in time.”
The beer glass halted halfway to Jack’s mouth.
“What? Wiley, tell me you’ve come all this way to pull a joke on me. Tell me you haven’t flipped.”
Wiley stared at him.
“You’re not kidding, are you?”
“No.”
Jack shook his head and decided to humor his friend. Maybe after the joke was over they could get down to some serious drinking.
“Okay, pal o’ mine, tell me why the Nine Old Men would want to do this?” Jack said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.
“To stop the invasion, stop it dead in its tracks and let Hitler win.”
“What the hell for? What do they have to gain?”
“Power, old buddy... power.”
This was all coming too fast and furious. Jack shook his head.
“But wait a minute. The whole reason Hitler lost was because he wouldn’t believe his generals. What could Kruger do? Walk up to Adolf and say, ‘By the By, the Invasion is coming ashore at Normandy. Be a good chap and move your armies down from Calais?’ It’s crazy, it’ll never work—what am I talking about? This whole thing is nuts. You can’t go back in time and you can’t change history!”
Wiley looked at his friend, his gaze level and sober.
“They’ve already changed things.”
Jack just stared at Wiley, unable to speak. Wiley leaned forward.
“You ever wake up and feel something’s not right, that something’s different?”
“Yeah, it’s called a hangover.”
Wiley ignored the crack, his voice hushed.
“What if things were different? What if things had changed, only you didn’t know it?”
Jack lost his patience. “What are you getting at?”
“Chessman’s already sent Kruger back a couple of times. Once to nineteen sixty-three, the other to nineteen fifty-six. It was right there in the files. One of those times he changed something.”
“Oh, come on, Wiley, this is getting stale.”
“All right, I’ll show you.”
Wiley got up from the barstool and steadied himself. Jack decided his friend had been drinking far longer than he had. Reaching down to his trouser cuff, Wiley pulled up the left pant leg, revealing a leg crisscrossed with varicose veins and a very ugly knee. Jack was about to make a nasty crack until he saw the lost, frightened look in his friend’s eyes.
“What is it?”
“My leg, Jack. It’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay. It’s always been okay.”
Wiley slumped onto the barstool, his pant leg sliding back down.
“No, it hasn’t. I’ve had a prosthetic leg since I was fifteen.”
“What— Wait a minute—”
“Listen to me. Think about it. Really think about all those years you’ve known me.”
Jack looked at his friend and let the years reel off in his mind: college, those first years at that tiny agency in Detroit, the good times, the bad times, even the times he’d have preferred to forget. After a moment, Jack began to feel hot all over. A sweat broke out and streamed down his face. Suddenly, the world went white as something snapped in his brain, as if a small bomb had exploded. He felt himself reborn, remembering people he never knew existed, moments recaptured, lives relived. He grabbed his head and groaned.
Wiley grabbed his shoulder. “Here, take a drink. You need it.”
Jack took the proffered beer and drained it. That quick, knife-like pain he’d felt a moment before subsided into a dull, throbbing ache. He now remembered two Wileys, one with a false leg, one whole. It wasn’t that he’d convinced himself. He really remembered. It was as if they’d lived two infinitesimally different lives.
“Oh my God,” Jack said, his heart pounding in his ears.
Wiley nodded.
“It happened the same way with me. Almost as soon as I read the Nine Old Men’s plan. I don’t know what Kruger and Chessman did, but somehow, during one of his ‘trip
s,’ he set something in motion. One thing led to another, led to another, and so on. Like a ripple on a pond. Somehow the man who hit me ended up coming down that street a fraction later than he was supposed to.”
Jack had never believed the old literary cliché about someone’s blood running cold. But he did now. Wiley spoke in a low, matter-of-fact voice, but to Jack’s heightened senses, Wiley was shouting.
“But how do we know it, Wiley? How can we?”
Wiley shook his head. “I don’t know. I think something’s connecting us. Maybe, and this might sound far-fetched, maybe because we know about Chessman, and Kruger. Maybe the fact that we know they are changing things is enough.”
“So, the Nine Old Men figure they can send Kruger back and prevent the invasion? Convince Hitler to move his armies. That right?” Jack said, gripping Wiley’s arm.
“Yeah, but that’s not the worst of it. It’s a two-pronged plan. Convincing Hitler to change his mind is only the second part.”
Jack’s stomach twisted. “What’s the first?”
Wiley grabbed his drink and gulped it down, staring at the pictures laid out on the bar until Jack thought he would scream. Suddenly, Wiley turned, his eyes showing the depth of his fear.
“Assassinating Eisenhower.”
Chapter Two
Ridgefield, Connecticut
4 August 1993
As Dr. Morris Chessman drove his sputtering Saab through the center of town, he felt his ulcer acting up again. Ever since he’d been awakened at four a.m. by the incessantly ringing phone, his whole digestive tract had been in an uproar. It started the moment he’d heard Armand Bock’s gravelly voice on the phone.
“Be at the club by nine.”
He sounded even more abrupt than usual.
The car wound its way down Route 7, passing majestic homes set far back from the road. Ancient elms, oaks, and maples hugged the road, their thick, overhanging branches letting the sunlight in through their leaves. The light dappled the windshield, causing an irregular strobe effect that hurt the eyes. None of the natural beauty of the area penetrated Chessman’s thoughts this morning.
He stifled a belch and turned through the two stone pillars onto the cobblestone drive. He saw the large, gingerbread-style mansion with its mansard roof, Gothic dormers, and wide, canopied veranda. The whole place struck him as stuffy and arrogant, just like Bock and the rest of his “Waxworks.” That’s the way he thought of the Nine Old Men who ran the place: stiff, unyielding—cold, with beady eyes that revealed nothing.
For a fleeting moment Chessman wondered why he’d ever accepted their offer. But just as quickly, the feeling was gone. He knew exactly why. He desperately needed the cash. A million up front, plus another two hundred and fifty thousand a year for “expenses.” This was way too much temptation for a man who felt the call of the gaming tables at Atlantic City. That he was in debt up to his eyeballs was a constant source of worry, but not the cause of his ulcer. His compulsion to gamble had started late in life as a panacea to the pressures of his research. But it became such a colossal problem that his wife of twenty years got fed up and ran off with another of the faculty wives. She was now rumored to be living happily in the Arizona desert on a lesbian commune.
But aside from money, the real reason Chessman had left Duke was that he’d had it with academia. He could no longer stand the never-ending groveling for funding. It didn’t matter that his research stood on the brink of revolutionizing life as we know it. All the university wanted was favorable publicity and a published paper every year. Even before Georgina had left with that despicable woman, it was all he could do to keep from puking.
“Fools,” he said, his anger overcoming his nervousness.
He swung the car into the circular drive and left the keys with the young attendant. As he stared up at the old house, his stomach twisted, propelling that familiar, sour backwash up his esophagus and into his throat. He swallowed it back down and reached for the roll of Tums.
What is so urgent that they wake me up at four in the morning?
He chewed the chalky antacid, climbed the wide steps, and pushed through the front door. His nose wrinkled at the faint odor of dried flowers when he crossed the small, darkly paneled entryway.
This place smells like a funeral parlor.
The bar had only one customer at this point, no doubt some golfer tanking up before hitting the links. The only other person aside from the bartender was an old man in tails polishing the brass railing. Shaking his head, Chessman walked quickly over to the small elevator and pushed the button. Even with no one there, Chessman felt nervous, exposed. Bock had specifically told him never to draw attention to himself when he visited. That was a laugh. In such a small club, how could anyone have remained inconspicuous? He stuck out like a sore thumb.
A moment later he heard a small ping, and the mahogany-paneled doors slid open. He hurriedly pushed the button for the third floor and glanced at his watch. Nearly nine. The Nine Old Men did not like to be kept waiting.
The elevator doors opened, and Chessman walked down the corridor to the steel door at the opposite end of the house. Painted a stark, battleship gray, it had no peephole or sliding panel. But there was a camera mounted high up near the ceiling. It eyed him silently, its single, glass orb unblinking. He stood there only a moment before the door clicked open, as if propelled by invisible hands. Chessman swallowed another Tums and walked inside.
The light in the “War Room,” as the Nine Old Men called it, remained subdued and indirect twenty-four hours a day, as if the idea of brighter light were anathema to the darkness in their hearts. Chessman crossed the floor, noting the topographical map of the French coastline had been filled with models of ships and soldiers. His eye caught the black, white, and red flag, its swastika making him shudder. His head throbbed, and the air smelled faintly of some pine-scented antiseptic.
In the center of the room sat another large table with ten chairs around it. Nine of them were filled.
The Nine Old Men waited.
“Ah, Doctor Chessman,” Armand Bock said. “Do come in.”
His voice, harsh and resonant, still bore the imprint of his German birth, though the accent was now very faint. He stood, bowed slightly, and indicated the one empty chair at the foot of the table. Chessman found himself bowing in return and quickly seated himself in the plush chair. It made a hissing sound when it took his weight, and the faint odor of leather wafted into his nostrils.
Armand Bock sat at the opposite end and regarded Chessman with a sly smile. Like all the others, Bock was in his late seventies. He had a full head of frosty-white hair, cut in the severe style of the pre-war German military; black, bushy eyebrows over a pair of shocking blue eyes; and a sharp, aquiline nose. His skin had a healthy bronze color he kept year-round, and he wore his customary, dark blue double-breasted Savile Row suit with highly starched collar and striped tie. His one accommodation to vanity was a small, gold signet ring on his right hand.
“Well, Doctor, I am sure you are wondering why we got you out of bed so early?”
It was not really a question that Bock expected answered.
“We are moving up the timetable. Kruger leaves tomorrow night.”
Chessman bolted upright and stared at the group in front of him. To a man they all stared back, their eyes relentlessly boring into his.
“But you can’t,” he said, groping for words. “Mr. Bock, I’m not ready. Kruger is not ready. There are things yet to be considered…”
Chessman trailed off as Bock’s eyes narrowed.
“Someone has been in this room since we last met.”
A cold, invisible hand gripped Chessman’s heart.
“What?”
“Someone has broken into this room and tried to cover their tracks, but they were not clever enough,” Bock said.
The man sprang from his chair, surprising Chessman with his agility, and walked around the table toward him.
“Certain papers were dis
turbed from the positions I knew them to be in. We have to assume that those inimical to our cause know our plans. We must act accordingly.”
“But how could they?” Chessman asked. “No one—”
“Yes. No one knew but the nine of us... Kruger... and you.”
Bock’s eyes blazed. Chessman felt his bowels loosen.
“Surely you don’t think I—”
Bock slammed the table with his fist.
“SILENCE!”
Chessman flinched like he’d been slapped. Bock resumed speaking, his voice even and controlled.
“Do you think we wouldn’t know if you had betrayed us? Do you think you would even be sitting here if we even thought you had betrayed us?”
Chessman shook his head, deliberately blotting out the image those words conjured up.
Bock began to laugh. It started as a low chuckle and grew into a glorious bellow. The rest of the Nine Old Men smiled faintly, otherwise remaining impassive.
“Have no fear, Doctor. We know you had nothing to do with the burglary, but surely you must see the need for alacrity, ja?”
Chessman finally found his voice again.
“Of course, Mr. Bock. I understand completely, but I still feel I must warn you that there are aspects to the experiment that we cannot be sure of.”
Bock became attentive.
“Go on, Doctor.”
Chessman leaned forward, a rush of confidence flooding his mind. He was on solid ground for the first time since entering the room, and he resisted the urge to smile as he imagined these creaky old men as one of his classes at Duke.
“Both of Kruger’s brief forays into the recent past proved successful, yet we cannot be sure of their ramifications. The time-space continuum is very elusive. There are all manner of whirlpools, eddies, and crosscurrents. One small event could have catastrophic effects.”
“That is what we are counting on, Herr Doktor.”
“But you do not understand. Kruger may change something inadvertently, something we cannot control!”
“Then that is the risk we must take, isn’t it? Would you prefer things as they are?”
Chessman frowned and felt his stomach lurch.
“No,” he said.
