by Bill Walker
He waved his hand casually and said, “Think nothing of it, my dear. May I get you some champagne?”
She nodded.
Bock reached for a bell cord and pulled. A moment later the same butler appeared bearing a tray with a single flute filled with the sparkling wine.
She smiled. God, this man’s ego is monstrous, she thought.
“May I introduce you to an associate of mine,” he said, turning to two figures just walking into the room through another set of doors. “Brigadeführer Leslie Parsons, may I present Herr Werner Kruger, Hero of the Reich.”
He stepped forward and bowed. Kruger appeared older than in the videos she’d seen, and from what she knew, Kruger was about the same age as Bock. Age had not dimmed his persona; there was something dangerous about him, like a coiled snake about to strike. Leslie held out her hand and Kruger kissed it in the old, formal way.
“I am honored, Brigadeführer,” he said. “May I present my fiancée, Hannah Raeder.”
An Amazon, nearly six feet tall, Hannah Raeder had long, red hair, flawless white skin, and proportions that actually made Leslie feel small for the first time in her life. To call this woman merely voluptuous would have done her a disservice. Equally striking was her aristocratic, exquisitely featured face, like that on a cameo brooch. However, what struck Leslie most about Miss Hannah Raeder was the obvious disparity in ages between her and Werner Kruger. Fifty years give or take a decade. In spite of all of her striking qualities and regal appearance, the illusion instantly shattered as soon as she opened her mouth.
“Pleased ta meetya, I’m shooah.”
Leslie flinched inwardly at the sound of the woman’s horrendous dialect. She could have been a rocket scientist, for all Leslie knew, but she sounded like a bimbo.
“When are we gonna eat, Wernie?” she whined.
Acts like one too, Leslie thought.
If Kruger felt embarrassed or uncomfortable by her crass and tactless question, he didn’t show it.
“Soon, my dear, soon,” Bock said, smiling indulgently. “Would you excuse us a moment? Your betrothed and I have some business to discuss with the Brigadeführer. Hans will fix you a drink in the anteroom.”
Hannah gave Kruger a sexy smile and strutted from the room, her curvaceous behind twitching rhythmically beneath the tight, emerald-green gown she wore. When the door closed, Bock’s cordial manner disappeared.
“Sit down, Brigadeführer,” he said.
Leslie took a seat in a richly upholstered wingback chair while Bock remained standing. Kruger strolled over to one of the bookshelves, pretending to absorb himself in one of the old volumes. Bock glowered at her.
“Do you realize how much grief you have caused us? Do you know how serious the situation is?”
Leslie felt her blood begin to boil. “Excuse me, Armand, but I think I have an idea—”
“YOU HAVE NO IDEA!” he screamed.
This time Leslie did flinch. Bock turned nearly purple with rage, his eyes popped out of his head, and a small bit of spittle sprayed out his mouth. In a second he transformed, calm, as if nothing were amiss.
“Let me tell you a story, Ms. Parsons. And please forgive my lapse of military etiquette, but I find these SS titles so cumbersome.”
Leslie said nothing.
“It is a story of glorious proportions—of heroic deeds and monumental stakes. But first, a little visual aid. Werner, the pictures.”
Turning from the bookshelves, Kruger crossed the room, a manila envelope in his hands. He stopped in front of Leslie, who took the envelope from his liver-spotted hands. She shuddered involuntarily as she looked into his cold eyes. Looking away, she opened the mailer and found two pictures. One was a group of SS men taken about 1944, the other was a class picture that had been taken in 1988.
“What’s the point of—” she began. Her voice trailed off when she saw the bright, shining, young face of Werner Kruger staring out from both photos. Her eyes snapped up to Bock, who stared at her, his eyes burning with a queer intensity.
“As I said, the story is of epic scope, involving major figures of our time. Have you ever heard of telekinetic transport through the fourth dimension?”
“No.”
Bock chuckled. “I thought not. Anyway, our story begins as all stories do, with a hero and a villain...”
He began pacing casually about the room as he told his incredible story of time travel and brutal assassination. He was right. The scope of what he told her was monumental. At first, Leslie found it unbelievable. After a while, she found herself leaning forward, hanging on to every word. When Bock had finished, he smiled triumphantly, his eyes shining with a euphoria usually reserved for the criminally insane.
Leslie’s mind reeled. Time travel, a world in which the Nazis no longer existed, a world where they had in fact been roundly defeated? It boggled the mind. It certainly boggled hers. But the most incredible part was that she’d known Jack in that life too. Somewhere in another reality, another dimension where things had progressed differently, she and Jack had been together, perhaps lived their whole lives happy and content, away from all of this.
“What I don’t understand is how you knew Jack found out.”
Bock shrugged. “A simple matter of reviewing the club’s video surveillance tapes. Aside from the camera outside the door, there was another inside the room. Only I knew about that camera. After verifying that it was Mr. Carpenter and a local safecracker, we killed the safecracker and began a full-time surveillance of our dear Wiley. When he met with Jack Dunham in Miami, we had a man in the restaurant. Unfortunately, he could not get close enough to hear what was said. In any event, we were reasonably sure that he told Mr. Dunham everything.”
“But you weren’t absolutely sure.”
“That’s where you came in, my dear,” Bock said. “After Kruger went back and all had changed, I had to be sure. If he remembered like we do, then he had to be stopped.”
“Right,” she said, feeling angry again. “I suppose you knew about me, too, from that other timeline?”
“Is it not obvious?” he said, gesturing expansively. “We watched you from birth, made sure you had all the right advantages, the right promotions...”
Leslie didn’t like where this was going.
“Wait a minute. I got those promotions because I deserved them.”
“Of course you did. We just made sure the opportunities for advancement were favorable.”
Leslie felt her mouth go dry. In that moment she knew Bock was mad and totally ruthless. He had engineered her lover’s “heart attack,” had callously swept away a brilliant officer just to serve his own ends. My God, he’d altered the whole universe to those same ends. How many others had been expendable?
Leslie stood up and gathered her small clutch purse.
“If you will excuse me, Herr Bock, I am not feeling well.”
“Sit down,” he hissed. Leslie stopped in her tracks as Kruger turned and moved toward her. The threat was subtle, but obvious. Gripping her purse until her knuckles turned white, Leslie sat down, perching herself so as to be ready for anything, verbal or physical. Bock smiled, but his eyes remained cold.
“Wouldn’t you like to bring Jack to justice? Him and that woman?”
“Let me ask you something,” she said, regaining her composure. “If you knew about Jack, why didn’t you just kill him when he was a baby or something? Why let him live and cause you trouble?”
“Because, my dear, as professor Chessman feared, we did not remember our old lives until a few years ago. By then, he was entrenched in the Ministry and, for all we knew, blissfully ignorant.”
“So that’s where I came in?”
“Exactly.”
“In answer to your other question, yes, I want both of them. Their escape is an embarrassment.”
“Quite so,” Bock said. “Werner will go along to aid you where he can.”
Leslie smiled, trying to hide her annoyance.
“With
all due respect to the Hero of the Reich, I prefer to work alone.”
“I regret that is not possible.”
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but he’s too old. He’ll slow me down.”
Both men began to laugh, their voices echoing in the large room.
“If anything, it is you who will slow him down. Werner! Show the lady!” Bock said, barely containing himself.
Kruger stepped forward and walked toward Leslie. She reached for the small Walther pistol inside her purse. Kruger smiled, as if reading her mind, and halted a few paces away. Reaching up to his neck, Kruger grabbed a flap of skin and pulled. Leslie gasped, the gun forgotten, recoiling as the latex mask dropped at her feet. In front of her stood a young and vibrant Werner Kruger, all of twenty-eight years old.
“You see, my dear Brigadeführer,” Bock continued, “it was necessary to keep the populace fooled. We can’t have people knowing the real truth. Now, where are Dunham and Malloy?”
Until that moment, Leslie hadn’t really believed Armand Bock’s story—after all, pictures can be faked. But with the living proof in front of her, all her doubts swept away on a wave of conflicting emotions. She wanted to kill Bock for using her, but not as much as she wanted to wrap her hands around the neck of Denise Malloy for stealing the man she loved and turning him against her. For that, the bitch would die. But could she kill Jack? During the raid, she was so mad that he had gone off with that other woman, she’d wanted him dead, welcomed it. Now, she was not so sure. There was her duty, and there was her life. For the longest time, one had been the other, both intertwined. Now...
“Brigadeführer!”
Leslie snapped out of her reverie. “I’m sorry. I was trying to remember something. As to the traitors, we know they crossed the border into Canada,” she said.
Bock’s features darkened. “Yes, that debacle in Buffalo.”
Leslie ignored the interruption. “From there, they could have gone anywhere.”
Bock stood and went to the champagne bucket and refilled his glass. “I thought as much. Both Carpenter and Chessman are in Canada as well.”
“Then you know where they are?”
“Approximately,” he said. “You two will go there tonight, begin searching for them.”
“And when we find them?”
Bock drained his champagne flute and threw it into the nearby fireplace. “Kill them all,” he said.
Chapter Sixteen
Toronto, Canada
5 May 1994
Jack and Wiley watched Chessman prepare Denise for the final run-through. For the last nine days and nights they had worked far into the wee hours, expanding and perfecting Denise’s abilities. Everyone was exhausted. Just sitting and watching as she progressed from moving pencils to larger objects fatigued Jack. For Denise, the strain must have been enormous. But she didn’t complain, and she wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t stop a day’s training until Chessman called a halt, often not until after a full eighteen hours. Now she sat inside the Psionic Wave Detector once again, linked to the machine through the psionic sensor helmet and dozens of extra electrodes taped to her body. This was the moment of truth. This time she was going to try transporting herself.
Chessman bustled around the control panel, making adjustments, looking even more disheveled than usual. He muttered to himself, oblivious to Jack and Wiley.
“Are you ready, my dear?” he said into the microphone.
“Yeah. Now I know what a lab animal feels like,” she said.
She tugged at the electrodes taped to her head in obvious discomfort.
“I am sorry about the sensors, but the data your transport will provide will be invaluable.”
“That’s okay, Doc. Let’s do it.”
Jack turned to Wiley and whispered, “Are you as nervous as I am?”
“Worse,” he said.
Jack looked back at Denise and caught her smiling at him. God, she was beautiful. She hadn’t the classic features of Leslie, but somehow when she smiled like that, it lit up a room. Still, he wished he were in that booth instead of her. He couldn’t get used to the idea of her going, even if she was his ticket.
“All right, Miss Malloy,” Chessman said, “please begin.”
Jack leaned forward in his chair. Wiley began chewing his nails.
Nodding confidently, Denise closed her eyes and began chanting. For her mantra, Denise had chosen an old poem by Poe: “The Raven.” According to Chessman, it didn’t really matter what one said, the point was to focus the mind. Eventually, one wouldn’t even need it, the transport occurring with only the briefest moment of pure, concentrated thought.
Through his accelerated training program, Denise had progressed with frightening ease, much faster than Kruger. With him, it had taken weeks. Jack remembered an old saying that stated that work expands to fit the time. Perhaps an inverse corollary existed: Results accelerate in direct proportion to need. And they needed results badly. There was no telling when someone would come looking for them.
Jack snapped out of his thoughts when the lights dimmed in the room, the filaments inside the bulbs glowing a dull orange.
“What’s happening?” he said, alarmed.
Chessman beamed like a proud father. “Her mind is draining the power from the Wave Detector and using it!”
Jack watched with a mixture of awe and terror when the small interior of the booth began to glow. Denise herself had a small aura around her that pulsated a deep indigo. A second later he saw a pinpoint of painfully bright light emanate from her head. It expanded, filled the booth, blotting out everything. Jack shielded his eyes, trying to see her. A second later, the light imploded in on itself and the booth stood empty.
“Holy shit,” Wiley whispered, his voice a hoarse croak.
Chessman clapped his hands together and shouted with glee. “She has done it!”
“Where did she go, Doc?” Jack asked, worried.
“She would not tell me,” he said, straightening his glasses and checking the graph spilling from the machine. “She wants to surprise us.”
“I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve been surprised enough for one day,” Wiley said.
The lights began to dim again, and they turned as one toward the booth. In a repeat of what they’d just witnessed, the room filled with light and a second later Denise stood before them, the electrodes dangling from her head. She had a silly grin on her face.
“Hi, guys,” she said.
All three men rushed up to her, talking at once.
“Whoa, fellas, hold on a minute. Give a girl some space.” She laughed at her not-so-subtle joke, obviously high on her newfound abilities. Chessman, however, seemed concerned.
“Why didn’t you appear back in the booth?” he asked.
Denise shrugged. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
Chessman shook his head.
“What’s the matter, Doc?” Jack asked.
The old man smiled, still shaking his head.
“Nothing at all, dear boy. It means she has mastered the ability a lot better than I’d hoped. She was able to pinpoint her return coordinates precisely. This took Kruger the longest to master. She has done it on the first try.”
“Jack?”
Jack turned to Denise, who slipped into his arms.
“You miss me?” she said.
“You were only gone a minute,” he said, smiling at her.
“I know, but I can’t get you a surprise every time.”
Jack held her away from him, giving her a mock suspicious look. “Yeah? What?”
She played coy. “Oh, just something I thought you might miss.”
He frowned. What on earth could she be talking about?
“Give up?” she said.
“Come on, Malloy. Cut the cat and mouse.”
Smiling mischievously, she reached into her pocket, pulled out a large coin, and dropped it in his outstretched hand. Jack stared at it, unable to breathe.
“Oh my God!”
he said.
“What? What is it?” Wiley said.
“My Himmler gold piece.”
Jack tossed it to Wiley, who turned it over in his hands. Minted in 1954 the year after Himmler’s assassination during a state visit to Mexico, the coin had quickly dropped out of circulation and into the hands of collectors. Originally having a face value of fifty Reichsdollars, they were now worth a hundred times that.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” Jack said.
“It’s okay, Jack, I was glad to,” Denise said.
“No, I mean you shouldn’t have gone there. It was reckless and stupid.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I wanted to see if I could travel that far. Excuse me for being thoughtful!”
She stalked into the adjoining room, her anger leaving a palpable silence behind.
“What was that all about?” Wiley said.
“That coin was sitting in a drawer inside my apartment in Miami.”
Jack saw Chessman’s eyes widen.
“It was a stupid thing for her to do,” he continued. “She could have been captured, or worse.”
“Young man,” Chessman said.
Jack turned to Chessman.
“What might have happened is unimportant,” the professor said. “The point is, she has returned safely from a journey of over two thousand miles. She is ready.”
“You’re sure?”
“Perfectly. Now go to her. She needs you.”
Jack nodded and walked into the other room. He found Denise staring out the window overlooking the courtyard. The moon shone down, illuminating a small fountain that lay still, its water flow shut down for the night.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m sorry if I was unappreciative. But as soon as I saw that coin, I got scared. All I could see was you popping into an apartment swarming with SS.”
She turned from the window, an impish smile on her face. “So you did miss me?”
“Hell yes,” he said, taking her into his arms. They held each other tightly, both aware that a major corner had been turned. “What was it like?”
She pulled away from him, her eyes shining. “My God, Jack, it was like... like... I can’t describe it. It felt like I was wired into the universe or something, like I became part of everything at once and for the briefest second knew everything there was to know. Does that make any sense?”
