TimeSplash

by Storrs, Graham

  “You’ll have that analysed, of course.” Holbrook glanced toward the display.

  “We won’t find anything.”

  “No. Quite.”

  There was a short silence while Holbrook seemed to consider all the options he no longer had.

  “Where’s that bloody girl? That’s what I want to know.” Porterhouse glared at Overman as if the section head was deliberately hiding her. “And the little pansy who’s supposed to be minding her.”

  Holbrook grimaced. He seemed wounded, a little lost, not at all his usual self. He turned his gaze on Porterhouse. “You’re right to remind us of our failings, of course, but I think a more positive attitude is what we need right now.” He lifted his head and straightened his back, as if taking his own advice.

  “Overman, get your SAS friends over here and suited up. Put them on round-the-clock readiness. You never know, we might get some good news. Meanwhile, your top priority is to locate Sandra Malone—and Jay, if you think it will help.” He touched a paper report on his desk. “I see you raided the house in Surrey this morning, Porterhouse, but all you found were two dead bodies.”

  “That’s right. Both hired guns. Local muscle. Also plenty of forensics to suggest that one other person was injured there, probably tortured. DNA matches a local prostitute. Specialises in sadomasochism. Went missing three days ago. And they found Sandra Malone’s DNA all over one of the dead men, so she’s in the frame for at least one of the killings. There was other stuff too. Another woman. Several other men. The labs are still going over it.”

  “Nothing actually useful then?”

  Porterhouse glared at Holbrook. “No folder marked ‘Top secret plan to kill Winston Churchill’s mother,’ if that’s what you mean?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.” He shook his head and drew a deep breath. He turned to Overman. “The analysts are considering Winnie’s mother, I suppose?”

  Overman knew that half the service was working on identifying the most probable splashtargets. Assuming it was going to happen within Greater London any time between 1880 and 1920, they’d narrowed it down to just fifteen hundred possibilities. “I’ll ask them,” he said, dryly. Holbrook ignored the hint of insubordination. “The girl was at the house. I think that means we need to have a word with her, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “On your way then.”

  He let the two men leave, then swivelled his chair to face the big window and its panoramic view across the Thames and south London. He could see Vauxhall Park quite clearly from where he sat. He could even see the police cars and the crowd of onlookers at the spot where the body must have been found. He needed to make some calls. The Royals were safely away. So were the politicians. A more general evacuation was now essential. No one was going to like that idea. Yet the way things stood, Sniper could not be stopped. Unless the girl knew something, and they could find her in time, it was all over bar the shouting.

  * * * *

  Bauchet finished his call and turned his sharp, hooded eyes on Jay and Sandra. “That was Five,” he said. “Their agent inside Sniper’s team has been found and executed.”

  Jay knew immediately what this meant. So did Sandra.

  “We should go,” she said.

  “I will go with you,” said Bauchet. “There is still the mole to think about.” He spoke to Sandra. “If you reveal your information too soon, it will be worthless. Sniper will find out that we know about his plans and he will call off the lob. Then he will simply disappear and try again somewhere else.” He paused as if checking his own reasoning. “No, no. We must be there at the moment Sniper makes his move. It is our only hope now to send people back in time to stop him. I suspect you will need help in keeping your knowledge from Jay’s friends at Five until the last moment. And there, I think I can help.”

  He excused himself and made some more calls. Sandra took Jay aside.

  “What’s he talking about? They still can’t go back in time and stop Sniper unless they know just when he’s going to make his lob. And that’s not something Camilla knew. Just when he does the lob is down to Sniper.”

  “I know. Even if she had known, Sniper’s changed his plans by now, brought the lob forward.”

  “So how does us knowing the splashtarget help? If we jump back now and Sniper hasn’t gone already, the timestream will be smooth. He won’t be there. If we jump even a few hours after he’s been and gone, the timestream will have smoothed out again. It will be just like he’d never been back. A timesplash doesn’t change history, you know. It just messes it up for a short while. Bricks are still anchored in the present. That’s why they get yanked back, why the splash doesn’t affect them much while they’re there. If it wasn’t for the backwash, you’d never know a splash had happened.”

  “You have a good grasp of metatemporal physics, Mlle. Malone.” Bauchet joined them, his calls done.

  “I don’t know metatemporal physics from a hole in the ground,” she snapped back. “But I talk to a lot of bricks.”

  Bauchet smiled. “You should talk to a few more tekniks then, because they would tell you we can now detect a temporal displacement field when it is activated.”

  Jay and Sandra looked at him in astonishment. Bauchet shrugged. “It is only a prototype, and it runs only at CERN, but a field as big as the one Sniper hopes to create can be detected from anywhere in the world. Or so I am told.” He held up his compatch. “As soon as the lob starts, I will know about it.”

  “And can you pinpoint it?” Jay wanted to know.

  “Sadly, no. They’re still working on that. But we have Mlle. Malone’s intel, do we not? So we know just where Sniper will be—and when—at the other end of the lob.”

  Sandra grinned.

  A police officer put her head around the door and told them their car was ready. Jay shook his head as they started to leave. “God, this is so risky,” he grumbled. Sandra thwacked him across the shoulder. “Oh, shut up, you big wuss.”

  Jay frowned back at her. With all their lives at risk, and millions more, she seemed in unusually high spirits. She thinks they’re going to kill Sniper, he told himself. This is the day she’s been waiting for.

  * * * *

  “We’re going now!” Sniper was shouting, banging his fist on the workbench, glowering at the implacable Klaatu.

  “It isn’t ready yet.”

  “It’s ready. I can see it’s ready.”

  “A lob this big needs a lot of control. The gear needs very fine adjustment. It’s delicate work.”

  With a roar of frustration, Sniper turned and paced across the floor. “When then?” he demanded, whirling back to face Klaatu. “When? When? When?”

  Edna stood nearby, grinning at Sniper’s tantrum. T-800 was sitting in a plastic chair, reading a newspaper. All three bricks wore their splashgear, the close-fitting pressure suits that would protect them during the lob. They looked like a group of fighter pilots from a sci-fi vid. Their helmets and weapons were on a table nearby, along with the costumes they’d been out to collect that morning.

  “Soon,” Klaatu reassured him. He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “An hour. Maybe two. You want to survive this, don’t you?” The way Sniper’s eyes narrowed made him try a more conciliatory tone. “Look, get changed into your fancy dress outfits and we’ll be finished as soon as we can be.”

  Sniper glared for a moment more then turned away. “They’re close, Klaatu. We’ve got to get this done now, or they’ll find us. Just fucking hurry it up, all right?”

  He walked away to brood and Klaatu turned back to his work. The “fancy dress outfits”

  Klaatu had mentioned were Edwardian costumes the bricks would wear over their splashgear. Everything they did in 1902 was going to be anomalous to an extent none of them had experienced before: every pebble out of place, every person who saw them, every horse that shied. The clothes would be needed so that they could walk through the streets of old London without them setting up a
minor splash by shocking everybody they passed.

  Sniper stalked across to the table where the clothes lay. He eyed them with distaste.

  “Goes against the grain, right?” Edna said, standing next to him. “We should be kicking up as big a shit-storm as we can, not creeping about on tiptoes.”

  Sniper looked at him. “Without these, we’d never make it to the splash.” He spoke in a subdued voice. It pained him too to accept the constraints of the situation. “We’re five kilometres away. We should be at least ten, but we’ve only got fifty-six minutes when we get there. If things start going crazy, it will delay us too much.”

  “Yeah, but…mate!” The Aussie shook his head sadly.

  T-800 appeared behind them and put a hand on each of their shoulders. He was grinning broadly—something rarely seen. “Yes, but when we finally get there and take that crap off… Man!

  We’re going to be like killer demons from the fucking apocalypse!”

  Sniper barked out a laugh and slapped him on the chest. “Fucking A, man!”

  Edna whooped and jumped up on T-800’s back. In a moment, they were wrestling and shouting and tumbling about like a cageful of monkeys. From the control console, Klaatu watched them in silence.

  Chapter 21: False Start

  People in the SIS Building foyer looked nervous. Six heavily armed Metropolitan Police officers stood like robots in full body armour, weapons at the ready. They formed a perimeter around Bauchet, Colbert, Jay and Sandra. No one in the group spoke. Everybody waited. Around them, people averted their gaze and spoke in hushed voices, trying hard to give the impression they were no danger to the hard-eyed police officers.

  At last, Director Holbrook walked in with Overman and Porterhouse flanking him. Bauchet stepped forward to greet him.

  “Jonathan, how good to see you again.”

  Holbrook took the Europol Superintendent’s hand and shook it. “It’s always a pleasure, Jacques.” He let his eyes wander over the armed guard. “I see you brought a few friends.”

  “Just a precaution. I have with me the most important person in all London—possibly in all the world. I couldn’t risk her being mugged in the street now, could I?”

  Holbrook looked past one of the bulky police officers. “Hello, Sandra. And Jay, how nice of you to drop by.”

  “Don’t be too hard on the boy, Jonathan. I assure you he has been working hard to protect the interests of your nation. If not for him, I would not be able to bring you the information you need to save the city.”

  Holbrook’s expression was suddenly very serious. “If you have the target coordinates, I want them right now. I also want these clowns out of my building.”

  Bauchet’s smile vanished too, leaving him looking hawk-like and dangerous. “First, I want a complete block on communications in and out of this building—except for a single netID I will give you shortly. We have the splashtarget and I don’t want your mole letting Sniper’s team know about it.”

  “My mole?” Holbrook seemed about to argue the point but didn’t. “Yes, I suppose it has to be that.” He spoke into his compatch for a moment then looked at Bauchet. “The netID?” Bauchet gave him his own compatch address. Holbrook passed it on. “There. It’s done.”

  Overman could not contain himself any longer. “Director, whatever our internal security issues are, we can’t just let another agency march in here and—”

  “Be quiet, Overman. You know as well as I do we’re leaking like a sieve. I hoped we’d have time to find out who it was, but we don’t. Superintendent Bauchet is quite right. This agency is a danger to the safety of London. My directorate! Whatever it takes, we will stop these damned maniacs, and your pride is not going to be an obstacle.”

  Overman was clearly unhappy but he backed down with a surly “Yes, sir.” Porterhouse looked like his close-cropped head might explode from sheer fury but he said nothing. Holbrook turned back to Bauchet. There was no more cordiality in his manner. “The netID was so that you can be contacted by the CERN detector team, I take it.” Bauchet nodded. “Then let’s get to the lobsite. And I meant it about getting your storm troopers out of my lobby.”

  Bauchet gave a nod to the sergeant in command of the squad and he marched them all out into the street. Meanwhile, Holbrook looked over to the reception desk. “Would one of you kindly arrange some refreshments to be brought to room G-twenty-seven, please,” he called out. “We might be a while in there. Oh yes, and I’m invoking Operation Scorched Earth. Deputy Director Anderson will know what to do about it. But don’t forget the refreshments, will you?”

  He led them through the corridors toward the lobsite.

  “Scorched Earth?” Bauchet asked.

  “Evacuate the city, get everyone out of harm’s way, that kind of thing. There’ll be a general announcement on all the news channels telling people to evacuate central London. The Mayor’s office will be coordinating. The Army’s been standing by to help out. Your friends in the Met are in on it too, along with London Transport and all the other players we need to empty a hundred square kilometres packed with people in fourteen hours.”

  “Fourteen hours?”

  “Absolute best-case scenario, Jacques. More likely the whole thing will be a bloody shambles, of course, but it’s the best we can do.”

  He sounded unhappy and defeated and Jay, walking along in silence, realised that giving such an order could easily be the last act of Holbrook’s career. Succeed or fail, splash or no splash, no one would be happy about evacuating the city. Someone’s head would have to roll. And, of course, this was probably the last act of Jay’s career too. After the way he’d hidden Sandra away, after he’d gone to Europol for protection, after he’d helped Bauchet force Holbrook’s compliance, he couldn’t imagine having much of a career in Five. Besides all the other trouble he’d caused, he was also part of the team that had failed to stop Sniper pulling off a timesplash, right here in the nation’s capital. That kind of stain didn’t wash out. They entered the MI5 lobsite and the teknik Nahrees was there to greet them. The room was humming and Jay guessed that the big capacitors were being kept fully charged. Colonel Davidson, the SAS team leader, was there too, already wearing splashgear.

  “You have the coordinates?” the Colonel asked. He looked grim. As well he might, thought Jay.

  “All in good time, Colonel,” Holbrook said. He introduced Bauchet. “We’re waiting for a message from CERN to say the balloon’s gone up.”

  “CERN, sir?”

  “They have a detector at their facility near Geneva. They can tell us when Sniper makes his move.”

  Nahrees seemed agitated. “If you could give me the coordinates now, sir, we could get them programmed into the system.”

  “It makes sense, sir,” said Porterhouse. “We shouldn’t be wasting time. The Colonel’s men will have a hard enough time of it without all this bullshit.” Although he was speaking to Holbrook, he was glaring at Bauchet. Bauchet returned the stare calmly.

  Holbrook snapped at Porterhouse. “You have my orders.” Then, to the Colonel, “Where are your men, Davidson?”

  “In the back there, playing cards.”

  “Very well. I suggest we all make ourselves comfortable. It could be a long wait.”

  Chapter 22: TimeSplash

  Klaatu threw the switch with a flourish and the F2 generator array hummed into life. They all stood around his displays as the readouts rapidly flicked across to full power. He nodded to one of the tekniks, who pulled down a row of levers, one by one, feeding the power into the little grid they’d built and firing up the heavy capacitors.

  “Two minutes and you’re ready to go,” he told Sniper.

  “You’re a fucking genius,” Sniper said. His voice contained genuine admiration. “No one else could have put this together so fast.” In his Edwardian morning coat, high buttoned collar, and elaborate necktie, Sniper looked handsome and elegant. His almost-white hair gave him an air of distinction, and his slender, athletic physique wa
s enhanced by the long lines of the frock coat. He held a carpetbag in one hand with his weapons and a top hat inside, and in the other he held his helmet.

  “I miss the countdowns,” he said to Klaatu, speaking softly. He looked wistful. Klaatu had a sudden flashback to the days when he’d watch Sniper out in the cage, strutting and yelling, the music thundering, the girls screaming for him, that arrogant face beaming at them from a wall of gigantic displays. “Yeah,” said the teknik with a small smile. “Me too.” An indicator switched to green. “Okay. Time to go.”

  “Hey, look at that.” Edna was pointing at the one of the displays that was running a news channel. “They’re evacuating London.”

  “Too late,” said T-800, darkly.

  The display showed roads clogged with vehicles and tube stations jammed solid with people.