by Simon Hawke
"I wonder if we will," the colonel said.
"We will. Count on it. We'll make it."
"I wish I could be so sure, " said the colonel. "Tell the men there's a briefing scheduled for 0600. A target's been selected.
We're going out tomorrow night."
I could sure get used to this, thought Hunter, toying with the stem of his wineglass as he stared at the beautiful, elegant blonde sitting across the table from him. She was dressed in a simple, low cut black dress, an expensive designer original that clung to her lush figure, accentuating it with every move she made. The table top was glass, allowing him to appreciate her gorgeous legs, which were crossed in a calculated manner so that the dress would ride up high. Throughout the meal, she'd been leaning forward slightly, inconspicuously matching her physical attitude to his, making little, almost unnoticeable movements, speaking a subtle body language that was almost as blatant in its effect as if she had tom off all her clothes and sprawled out naked on the table. She smiled and her sea green eyes whispered promises. She was good. She was very, very good.
Yes, sir, thought Hunter, I could sure get used to this. Fine clothes, expensive cars, beautiful women… becoming stranded in this timeline could be the best thing that ever happened to him. In a matter of months, he bad effortlessly parlayed the few dollars he bad stolen into a multimillion dollar' fortune. And that money had opened many doors. And the more doors the money opened, the more money came in. And as more money came in, more doors were opened for him. After a while, it seemed as if the entire process had started to become completely self-sustaining.
The warp disc and a little common sense was all it took. I should have done this years ago, he thought.
"Penny for your thoughts," the blonde said. Her voice had the rich, low contralto tones of a cello by Stradivarius.
"Hmm?"
She smiled a dazzling, slightly crooked smile. "It doesn't exactly do wonders for a girl's ego "hen you drift off like that, you know," she said.
"I'm sorry," he said, with an apologetic smile.
"You seemed so far away. What were you thinking just now?"
"I was just thinking about something I had started out to do." He gazed out the bay window of her penthouse apartment with the view of Central Park. "At one point, no so very long ago, it seemed terribly important." He smiled. "I guess I was just trying to remember why."
The compact disc player automatically segued from Pat Metheny to some mellow, soulful blues by Carlos Santana. The dinner she had cooked for him had been exquisite, the wine was an excellent vintage white Margaux, and there was something very tantalising about the subtle scent of her perfume. This woman was trouble, Hunter thought, but it was the kind of trouble a man usually walked into with both eyes wide open.
Her name was Krista and they had met at a party hosted by Domenico Manelli, a man who described himself as an investor and a financier. He did invest quite heavily, hut not all of his investments were in blue chip stocks. He also dealt in some commodities that did not appear on the big board. And as for being a financier, well, he did finance certain politicians, a few judges, several entertainers, and a battery of lawyers.
It hadn't taken Hunter very long to figure out that Krista was on Domenico
Manelli's payroll. She undoubtedly did not think of herself as a hooker, Hunter thought, because there was a world of difference between Krista and a common prostitute. She was much more than an exclusive call girl, too. Men did not call Krista and pay her exorbitantly for her favours. Few men would have been able to afford the price, either financially or psychologically. Besides, she couldn't be bought that way. No, Krista was a much more interesting creature. She was a weapon that Domenico Manelli used with careful judgement and restraint. And a weapon like Krista was worth an entire ream of intelligence agents, Hunter thought.
The fact that Krista had approached him meant that Manelli had become interested in him and Hunter had been trying to decide how to react to that. He didn't quite know what to make of Domenico Manelli. In some ways, the man was astonishingly obvious, while in others he was as complex and devious as a Medici prince.
He had taken the twofold path, as all really smart criminals did, establishing himself as a solid, taxpaying citizen with a wide variety of legitimate business interests and community activities while at the same time cleverly furthering his illegal operations, which had provided the seed capital for him to become a respected pillar of the community to begin with.
Manelli functioned on the principle that it was never very smart to become too visibly successful, but that if one did, the thing to do was to create an economic smokescreen. The moment the money became significant-and at the same time, inconveniently inexplicable-he invested it. He invested it legitimately in a manner that allowed for a reasonable return that could then be used to grease the wheels.
He used the dirty money to create clean funds that were then used for paying taxes, contributing to various charities and political campaigns, supporting popular causes, starting businesses, creating jobs.. in other words, buying his way to indispensability to as many people as possible.
In the meantime, he erected barriers between himself and the criminal activities that had financed the whole thing to begin with. He carefully selected subordinates who did not appear to be subordinates and who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut and take the fall if it became necessary, knowing they'd be taken care of for their loyalty. And along the way, the campaign contributions and the community activity gave him access to important people and allowed him to determine which ones to stay away from, which ones could be manipulated, and which ones could be bought outright.
Hunter's instincts told him to stay away. Getting involved with a man like Manelli could be dangerous, but then if he had wanted to play it safe, he would never have joined the C.I.S. in the first place. The trouble was, Hunter was having a hard time deciding what to do. The odds against his stumbling upon a confluence point all on his own were astronomical, not even worth considering seriously. The odds of his finding a way to contact the Underground were somewhat better, but he had no idea where to start or even if it was what he really wanted to do.
If his goal was to create a significant disruption in this timeline, then the
Underground was an ideal place for him to be. He could convince them that he'd deserted from the Temporal Army and infiltrate their organisation, using their contacts and their information to achieve his ends, although they'd kill him if they suspected what his plans were. Only were those still his plans?
Why not simply accept things as they were? He was trapped in this universe and chances were that he'd never find his way back home. But then, why should he even try? The life he had created for himself here was infinitely better than the one he had as an agent for the C.I.S. Why fight it? Back home, he never would have dared to try anything like what he had accomplished here. Even if the idea had occurred to him, he'd have resisted partly out of fear of getting caught and partly out of concern that he might somehow disrupt the timestream. Here, what did it matter? It made no difference what he did here, there would always be the fear of getting caught, so why not make the most of his opportunities? And if he did do something that created a disruption further up the timeline, then it would not affect him here and he'd be doing no more than his duty. The warp disc was his protection. He could always escape further into the past, The temptation to do exactly as his twin in this timeline had done and simply opt out was tremendous and Hunter was seeing less and less reason to resist it. The last thing he needed was to bother with someone like Manelli.
The problem was, Manelli was bothering with him. Hunter did not flatter himself that Krista had been coming on to him simply because he was so undeniably attractive, He'd been playing cat and mouse with her, knowing that she was subtly trying to draw him out and pump him, while at the same time he was purposely obscure about his background and tried to do the same to her, about both herself and her relationship with
Domenico Manelli and his crowd. Prudence would have dictated that he break it off, but Hunter found himself unable to resist her and they had reached an impasse where both of them fully understood the game that they were playing, though neither would admit it to the other. They were both getting a perverse enjoyment out of it, though Krista was starting to exhibit some signs of frustration.
"I sometimes have the feeling that you're not really who you seem to be at all," she said, taking a gold cigarette case out of her purse. "It's almost as it you're playing a role."
With playful mockery, she took two cigarettes from the case and stuck them both between her lips, then handed him her Dunhill lighter. Hunter grinned and lit the cigarettes for her. She took a drag or two to get them going, then took one from her mouth and reached forward to place it between his lips. If she had done so seriously, it would have been extremely
comical, but with her slightly exaggerated humour playing on the role reversal, she somehow made it very sexy.
He took a deep drag on the cigarette and leaned back in his chair. "Everyone plays roles," he said. "Mine just happens to be a bit more subtle than most people's. I don't really believe in going around baring your breast to everyone you meet, that's all. People who do that are insecure."
“You're definitely not insecure," she said, smiling. “Most men would go to a great deal of trouble to impress a woman. But you're not like that. You seem very comfortable with yourself. No need to prove a thing."
Hunter shrugged. "It takes too damn much energy to run around always trying to prove things to yourself and other people. I haven't really got anything to prove.
But maybe that's because I don't have much imagination. I'm just an ordinary guy."
She shook her head. "I wouldn't say that at all. You're the most elusive man I've ever met. You really don't reveal very much at all, do you?"
"Well, I thought they said that a little mystery was supposed to add a bit of spice to a relationship."
"Is that what we're doing?" she said, arching her eyebrows.
"Having a relationship?".
"I don't really know," said Hunter, loosening his collar slightly. It was getting warm. "What are we doing? You invite me up here, cook me a world class meal and ply me with vintage wine in an atmosphere of mellow, romantic jazz, soft lighting, a dazzling view-both through the window and the tabletop.." he grinned.
"One would almost think that you were setting a trap for me. "
She smiled. "You're absolutely right. I confess. It is a trap." "Ha! I knew it all the time! The wine was drugged!"
She pursed her lips and watched him over the rim of her wineglass. "No, not the wine," she said, softly.
He suddenly felt dizzy as he stared at her, his vision blurred. She took her cigarette, which after the initial puff to get it going, she hadn't smoked at all, and stubbed it out in the ashtray.
The cigarettes!
He lurched to his feet and the room started to spin. She got up quickly and backed away. He grabbed the table for support and abruptly lost his balance, bringing the glass-topped table crashing to the floor.
It shattered and he fell in a spray of glass. He heard a door open and footsteps come across the floor. He tried, but he could not make out their faces as they stood over him. He couldn't move. One of them bent down and pulled up his sleeve.
"That's it," someone said.
He felt the warp disc being removed and then everything went black.
Chapter 6,
"There's nothing there," said Steiger, bending over the charts and studying them closely.
"Or. Gulliver, are you sure that was the correct position?" said Delaney, glancing over his shoulder at Gulliver, who stood behind them, looking down at the charts spread out on the table.
"I'm absolutely certain of it," Gulliver said. "I've sailed as a ship's surgeon long enough to know my navigation, gentlemen. I took a reading with my sextant on the day of my escape. Longitude 110 degrees, 4 minutes east; latitude 30 degrees, 2 minutes south. "
"That would put it approximately 200 miles to the north-west of Perth, Australia," said Steiger… And there's nothing there."
"Quite so," said Gulliver. "I have already told you that the island does not appear on any charts. "
"If that was the case only with the charts available in this time period, " said Steiger, tossing aside the charts that Gulliver had obtained for them, "then that would be understandable. However, ~ he tapped the modem maps spread out before him on the table, "it doesn't appear on any of our charts, either, and that's impossible. You must have made a mistake in calculating the position.".
"I don't mean to argue with you, Colonel," Gulliver replied, "but had that been the case, then I would certainly have noticed it when I escaped, for I would have found myself off course. However, the course I had plotted turned out to be correct, which meant that my original reading had to be correct, as well.
Lilliput Island lies exactly there." He stabbed his forefinger down at the map on a spot that showed nothing but open sea.
Steiger glanced up at Delaney and shook his head. "There's nothing there, Finn."
"Well, there's only one way to find out for sure," Delaney said.
"Wait a minute," Andre said, grabbing his ann. "You're not seriously suggesting clocking out there blind? What if Gulliver’s wrong?”
"We'll wind up very wet," said Steiger. "And those are shark-infested waters."
"Look, I may be a little reckless sometimes," said Delaney, "but I'm not crazy. I'm suggesting that a couple of us clock ahead to base and pick up some floater paks so we can do an air reconnaissance. We can fly a search pattern within a fifty mile radius of Gulliver's co-ordinates, or a hundred mile radius if that's what it takes, — but we're obviously not going to get anywhere sitting around here and arguing about what is or isn't on the map. We're simply going to have 10 go out there and look."
Gulliver cleared his throat. "Excuse me, Captain. "Yes?"
"Did… did I hear correctly? Did you just say that you were going to… to fly?"
"Don't worry, Lem," Delaney said, "no one's going to make you fly. Besides, it takes a bit of training to learn how to use a floater pak. You'll be staying here with Andre and Lucas while Creed and I clock out and fly our search pattern. And if we find your island, we'll come back for the rest of you and see if there are any little people on it."
"Six-inch commandos," Lucas said, shaking his head. “Incredible. If I didn't know better, I'd say we'd run into a bizarre new generation of Drakov's hominoids."
"You know General Drakov?" Gulliver said.
They all spun around and stared at him with amazement. "What did you say?" said Andre.
"General Nikolai Drakov," Gulliver said. "He is the leader of The Lilliput Legion."
"But that's impossible!" Delaney said. "Drakov is dead!"
"Yes, that's right," said Andre, slowly. "And so was Lucas."
Nikolai Drakov stood in Central Park with his hands in the pockets of his elegant, dark wool velour topcoat. A cool autumn breeze ruffled his thick, wavy black hair as he watched a young mother and her small boy from a distance as they fed the ducks with bread crumbs. The dark-haired boy bore a startling resemblance to
Drakov. In fact, he was Nikolai Drakov, or more precisely, a clone being raised under controlled conditions and carefully monitored from time to time by his creator/father.
This was the end result of Drakov's experiments with the hominoids, a subspecies of genetically engineered, human-based lifeforms that were first created under the auspices of Project Infiltrator, headed by Dr. Moreau and funded by the Special
Operations Group. Drakov had deceived the S.O.G. and spirited Moreau away from the parallel universe with promises of generous funding and unrestricted research, the opportunity of developing his hominoids to their fullest potential.
Instead, Drakov had taken control and carefully observed Moreau, studying the process until he had mastered it, and then he took the hominoids in direc
tions
Moreau had never dreamed of. Now, this was the crowning touch, the piece de resistance. He had replicated himself.
The young boy he was watching along with his "mother," an earlier generation hominoid, had been part of the first run, a dozen versions of himself born out of petri dishes and artificial wombs, then clocked back to various periods in the past, each to be raised in different environments, but under highly controlled conditions with predetermined key stages of development, the first occurring when they received their cerebral implants in early childhood, enabling them to be programmed at specific points throughout their lives, and the last when they received the scars that matched his own, a diagonal knife slash that ran from beneath his left eye to just above the corner of his mouth.
The first of these secondary versions of himself had already been subjected to this process that Drakov called "time lapse maturation" and had been killed in an encounter with the temporal agents. They now believed him to be dead. Drakov smiled as he anticipated their rude awakening.
He turned and started walking back toward Fifth Avenue. Gulliver's escape had been a minor setback, but it didn't really matter. The temporal agents were alerted to the threat now, but it was far too late. Even as they prepared to seek the secret island base of The Lilliput Legion, the Lilliputians would find them. And this time. his little soldiers would know what to expect.
"Wake up! Cmon, wake up!"
Hunter felt his face being slapped. His head rocked back and forth with the blows as if it were somehow a thing apart from himself and he tried to ignore it all, to retreat back into the warm, thick mist of unconsciousness, but they weren't having any of it.
"Come on, wake up, dammit!"
Whack.!
"He's still out of it."
"The hell he is, he's playing possum. only I ain't buyin' it.
Wake up, you bum!"
