Out of Time (The Adventures of Eric and Ursula Book 4)

by A. D. Winch

  "We have made an error," Andrea announced as she joined the motorway. "We should have destroyed the phones."

  "And then the police would have been called, and we would have been in trouble," Alexander replied, sitting down beside her. "We told them what the consequences would be. They were good guys. We'll just have to trust in human nature."

  "That is why we have made an error," Andrea replied, ramming the gearstick into fifth gear.

  Ten hours later, they reached the outskirts of Prague. The remainder of the journey had passed without incidents, and Andrea headed towards a campsite. She did not want to risk going straight to the Meyer Villa.

  The alert appeared on Agent Hoover's screen, and he opened it immediately. He punched the air in delight. Six Albanian man had posted photos on various social media sites. Each one had been conveniently tagged with 'Eric Meyer' and 'Ursula Benjamin.'

  The photos were more or less identical. The men were crowded around the children as if they were famous, and all were smiling as if this was a great day for them.

  He called Agent Angel and emailed him the photos.

  "They wouldn't be smiling if they knew what Black Queen and White King are," Agent Angel sneered. "You know what to do, Hoover. Find them!" and he hung up.

  None of the Albanian men had specified exactly where the photos had been taken, but this did not worry Agent Hoover. One photo had been tagged with 'Gas Station on E75, Serbia.' Fortunately, the time code was visible on one of the other photos; almost twelve hours had passed since it had been taken.

  It did not take long for Agent Hoover to access all the security cameras from all the gas station on the highway. There were not many. He scrolled through the footage from each one to the stated time. The first two were dead ends, but he hit the jackpot with the third.

  A camera behind the cash desk clearly showed White King and Black Queen with the Albanians. They were all smiling. He rewound and watched the whole footage. The man known as Alexander was with them, as were the traitor Schwarzkopf and the elf.

  Agent Hoover rubbed his hands together gleefully. He accessed other cameras at the gas station, but they only showed other interiors or the forecourt. A few minutes after White King and Black Queen had left the café, an exterior camera caught a vehicle passing in the top right-hand corner of the frame. Only the bottom half of the wheels and the lower part of the vehicle were visible. It was not a car, and it was difficult to make out the model or make of the vehicle. To make matters worse, the licence plate could not be seen.

  Agent Hoover tapped his fingers on the glass desk. He looked up at the large surveillance screens in front of him and zoomed in on the service station. It was morning in Serbia, and his prey would be long gone by now.

  He overlaid a map on the screen and zoomed out to see where the motorway could lead to. An almost straight blue line led from the gas station through Hungary, into Slovakia and then into the Czech Republic.

  They can't be returning to Prague, he thought incredulously, but they might.

  He sent a message to Agent Angel and politely asked that he joined him in the surveillance room.

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  ***

  Chapter 10 – A Clean Sweep

  The campervan drove slowly onto an island in the Vltava River. Boats were moored on the side nearest to the river bank, and a few were being repaired in a small boat yard. A man directed them towards the campsite at one end of the island. As they drove past him, he shook his head in disbelief that tourists were still willing to camp in October.

  Autumn leaves covered the campsite grounds. Apart from one other campervan and a tent it was empty. Andrea parked next to the river and turned off the overworked engine.

  It was too early for the camp attendant who was busy sleeping in a cabin near to the entrance. When he woke up, they would pay him.

  Everyone in the campervan was awake. They had eaten on the way and one by one they stepped out of the vehicle. Eric walked to the river bank and looked at the Vltava as it flowed past. On the other side, he saw a tram trundle below an ancient fortress. He could see the church within the fort's walls and knew that beyond it, less than three kilometres away was his parents' Prague residence. If he took a river taxi across from the campsite and then walked, he could be there in about thirty minutes. It didn't feel right to be so close but not be allowed to go there. Before his experiences in Roswell, he would have become angry at such a thought but now he accepted it.

  Andrea and Alexander were convinced that the surveillance equipment the OSS had hidden both inside and outside the property would still be in use. Until Andrea had control of these, the campervan would be their home. She predicted that it would take her no more than twenty-four hours. Eric hoped she was right. One night together in a cramped campervan was enough for him.

  Johan stood beside Eric and looked up the river. He could see a railway bridge that he remembered from his brief time here many years ago. In the distance, he could just see Prague Castle. It was a special sight, and he vowed that he would visit it while they were in the Czech capital.

  Ursula was busy explaining to her grandparents what she knew about Prague. Her grandparents were eager to hear what she had to say. They were finally able to see the places that they had imagined.

  Except for Alexander, no one noticed Andrea leave the campsite. She walked quickly away, stepped onto a tram and headed for the villa.

  "I'm going for a look around," Johan told Alexander, walking back towards the campervan.

  "I'm not sure that is a good idea," Alexander replied. "We need to stay together and keep safe."

  Johan stopped and looked at Alexander. He shook his head sadly.

  "You are a good man, Alexander. You are constantly thinking of others and the need to protect them. I am proud to call you my son because of this. But your protection is fuelled by paranoia. Not everyone is hunting us. We will be exploring areas filled with tourists, and we will be hidden among them. If we stay here then will we not arouse suspicion? A group of tourists who spend all their time in their vehicle? We can all go, and we will all stay together. Nobody knows we are here, and you didn't mind us doing that in Parga." Johan looked at him pleadingly.

  Alexander knew he would spend the day looking over his shoulder, but he did not want to drive a wedge between himself and his father.

  "Okay," he replied reluctantly, "but we need to cover up, wear hats and reduce any chance that we may be seen by security cameras."

  Johan agreed, and once everyone was suitably dressed and had met with Alexander's approval, they left the campsite to become tourists for a day.

  The Meyer Villa appeared empty. Andrea had spent thirty minutes sat against the wall separating the park from the road. She held a mobile phone to her ear, but she wasn't talking to anyone; she was watching. There were a few dog walkers amongst the trees, but there was no other movement. She stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder and did a complete circuit around the villa and through the park. Unless someone was hiding inside, which was possible but Andrea felt improbable, the villa was devoid of life. She arrived back at the front of the building and walked down the driveway. There were OSS sensors to her left and right, hidden amongst the trees and on streetlamps. She had found them all before and knew exactly where to go. None had been moved.

  The visual sensors and heat-detecting devices had not been touched since she had investigated them before. Apart from rusting slightly, the boxes were no different, and the words 'Property of Czech Electricity Company' were still evident upon them.

  During the summer, she had rebuilt one of the sensors from memory. She had placed it in a tree opposite the hotel in Parga. It had worked well and conveyed images back to her computer. If someone appeared in the visual field, the time was logged, and an alarm sounded. She had wanted to use a facial recognition package linked to the web to name the people but had not had the time.

  Once she knew her replica was working, she had designed a device to control it
. At first it had been as big as her replica, but over the weeks she had made it smaller. By the time she had achieved her target size, it ran on mobile phone batteries and fitted snugly into a matchbox. When wired to the replica, it was possible to turn off the camera and replace it with an image broadcast via the matchbox. It was crude, but she knew that it worked.

  In Andrea's bag, she had enough matchboxes to control the sensors at the front of the house. When night fell, she planned to use her devices to take control of them. Until then, she would sweep the inside of the house and make it safe for their visit.

  The morning rush hour trains ran noisily down the track and into the tunnel towards the main station. Andrea entered the tunnel during a brief window of time when the railway was empty. She moved quickly along the track beside the walls. She did not notice the darkness as she walked along the metal rail, but she was ready to move when she felt a vibration. As soon as she felt the first movement, she stepped off the line and stood with her back against the tunnel until the train passed her. She had to do this twice before arriving at the correct metal door.

  The secret tunnel entrance had been left wide open. The passageway led to the cellar and into the Meyer Villa. It was possible that the OSS or someone else had discovered it, but she thought this unlikely. Her assumption was that Alexander had left it open when he had visited last for her repairs.

  The tunnel leaked in places, and the ground was damp. The footsteps in the mud could all be accounted for, even the stilettos that she knew from Alexander's description could only have been Sasha's. When she reached the cellar door, it was closed. She opened it, and light streamed down the tunnel. She now understood why the electricity bill for this residence had been so high, even though it was empty. The large circular floodlight that hung from the rock ceiling had not been switched off. It lit up the curved walls and the terracotta brickwork as if it was a summer's day.

  Underneath the floodlight, Martin Meyer's collection still covered the floor. Six items had been moved but otherwise it was all in place. There would be time to check this systematically later, and Andrea moved past the strange objects to the small room beside the cellar.

  The computers indicated that no one had entered the villa or its cellar since Alexander had brought Sasha to the residence. Andrea struggled to find a reason why Sasha had not brought the OSS down here. She decided that there were three possible scenarios. The first was that Sasha was no longer working for the OSS. The second was that she had not understood what was in the cellar and had, therefore, viewed it as junk. The third was that she had forgotten to mention it, or for some reason, had decided not to.

  Andrea uploaded the software she had written to control her devices. While it ran, she checked that each of them functioned correctly and then found a radio frequency detector from a shelf under the computers. Any bugs left in the villa would have to transmit to somewhere, and it was an easy way to find them. Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs Meyer had entrusted the protection of their homes to Andrea, and she was used to doing this. She took the detector and left the computer room to sweep the villa.

  In Parga, they had planned their mission to Roswell; an integral part of this involved Martin Meyer's collection. For many years, he had secretly acquired alien artefacts. They had to take a substantial number of these with them and the only way to do this was through the villa. If they could not get these out of the front door and to the airport, the plan would fail.

  Andrea walked up the rock steps and opened a door that led into a passageway. The steel-plated door at the other end was closed, and she placed the key in the lock. Slowly, she pushed the door open, and it groaned as she did so. The detector picked up nothing, and Andrea entered the larder. She looked around and compared this to her last memory of the room. Nothing had changed.

  As she was approaching the kitchen, the detector began to indicate the presence of surveillance devices. Andrea opened the door so she could see the room she was about to enter. The bread bin had been moved by a centimetre. A painting hung at a difference of three degrees to where she had placed it, and a bottle of wine had moved within the rack.

  Andrea knew that if she went any further she would be detected. She retreated to the cellar and returned two hours later with a laptop attached to a wifi receiver that she had modified. The wifi receiver soon picked up all the devices hidden around the villa. Using the strength of the signal and by triangulating the positions, Andrea was soon able to pinpoint exactly where they were hidden. She left the laptop by the door and set it up to read and record all the different data signals being transmitted from the villa. After four hours, she returned and took the laptop back to the computer room. She placed it on the desk next to a radio frequency jammer she had built using an oscillator.

  She uploaded the data onto one of the mainframes and set it to transmit on a constant loop. The signal was boosted, so it superceded the OSS devices and then Andrea ran back into the main building. Before she entered each room, she turned on the jammer. With the radio frequency in each room blocked, she was able to enter freely, locate the devices and deactivate them. By the time Andrea returned to the cellar, she was controlling what information the OSS received from inside the villa. When night fell, she would use her matchbox devices and do the same with the sensors outside.

  Agent Angel stood above Agent Hoover and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  "We can't rule it out, Hoover. They may be heading there."

  They both stared at the screens in the surveillance rooms and the various images of the Meyer Villa.

  "Why would they go back?" Agent Hoover replied, worried to question Agent Angel too much when he was in such close proximity.

  "You know as well as I do that civilians don't act randomly. People like to think that they are unexpected, but we know they're not. Maybe they're trying to double bluff us. Or maybe they've grown some balls," he paused. "Any unexplained readings from the sensors in the building?"

  Agent Hoover shifted his large belly as he turned on his seat and pressed some buttons on his keyboard. A large amount of information appeared on his screen. He summarized for Agent Angel.

  "Nothing. They're all negative. No sightings. No movement. No nothing. Exactly as it has been since we installed my babies."

  "Do we have any teams in the area?"

  "None. They were all called back after the Morocco catastrophe, but we do have two sleeper agents about an hour outside Prague."

  "Wake them up and send them in. I want a check of the building to confirm that it is still empty."

  Ninety minutes later two agents – a man and a woman – arrived at the Meyer Villa. They were dressed as civilians and held hands like a loving couple out for an evening stroll around the park.

  The villa was dark, and no lights were on. At first, they viewed the building from afar. They strolled through the park and past the dying vineyards that surrounded the villa.

  There was no sign of life. Once they had made a complete tour, they approached the building and peered through windows. All the rooms were deserted and looked as if they had been left for a long time.

  They lingered on the terrace and spent more time looking through the kitchen windows. All the cupboards were shut. There was no washing-up in the sink and no food left on the counters.

  The man put a finger to his ear and spoke.

  "The nest is empty. The birds have flown. I repeat – the nest is empty."

  "Confirmed," answered Agent Hoover. "Tallies with what we've got here. Return home."

  Agent Hoover was satisfied. The agents had confirmed what his sensors had already told him – the building was empty. He repeated this to Agent Angel, who was not surprised at the findings.

  "Keep monitoring. We'll send Team Moro. They're briefed and primed. They know what to expect and won't want to come back empty-handed if we do strike gold. Send them to Prague immediately. If the targets do return, we'll be ready for them. If they don't, we'll have a presence in Europe ready for when they are
next spotted. They're not going to stray far from where they feel safe. And it will be WHEN they are next spotted, not if."

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  ***

  Chapter 11 – As Light as a Plastic Bag

  "Two months Khan!" yelled Professor Warne, poking her angrily in the shoulder. "Two months we've been trying to get this lump of metal to fly and still nothing. This is all your fault! You gave Angel false expectations."

  Doctor Khan stepped back and tried to move further away, but the pod blocked her path. The curved metal pressed against her back.

  "How could you have been so inept?" screamed Professor Li, in her face.

  "If it hadn't been for me, we would have never opened the pod," Doctor Khan stuttered.

  The other two scientists turned away and stormed off. They reminded her of the boys who had mocked her in school back in India. Boys who had bullied her because she was a girl. A girl who liked science and whom they had felt threatened by. It was those boys that had driven her to succeed in school and who had given her the desire to flee and study abroad. And for what? To receive the same treatment by her adult peers? People who were supposed to be intelligent. People who were supposed to know better.

  Doctor Khan watched them leave the lab and tried not to cry. She was stronger than this. She was stronger than them. Desperately, she tried to convince herself. The problem was that she no longer believed it. Since Professor Schwarzkopf had escaped, she felt alone and imprisoned. There was no way out and no one to turn to. Agent Angel had made his disdain for her quite clear, and Jean Kurtz could be neither confided in nor trusted.

  With a heavy heart, Doctor Khan moved away from the pod. The next meeting with Agent Angel was set to begin soon, and she wanted to be punctual. They had failed to get the pod to fly, as he had requested, and he would not be happy. It would, therefore, be unwise to be late and make him even angrier. Even so, she did not have the enthusiasm to rush.