With purpose, Ekaterina strode from her hiding spot toward him, at the same time reaching into her pocket. She hesitated for a moment when she realized that in her haste she’d forgotten to rid herself of any distinguishing paraphernalia. Silently swearing, she knew it was not the time to dwell on it. Her car keys, her identification and a few business cards had no relevance to the mission.
Regrouping, she pulled a thick hypodermic needle from her pocket and unsheathed it. When she was about five paces away from him, he finally heard the footsteps and jumped to his feet, facing her. His face held a look of terror and surprise – something she’d never seen from him in the 30-plus years she’d known him.
He started to speak, but was too late. Ekaterina’s right arm flung up and plunged the needle deep into his neck. “до свидания,” she said. Goodbye.
She’d done it quickly, knowing that if she’d taken even a split second to reflect on his role in her life it would have caused her hesitation. As a human being, he was a monster. But as a father-figure to her, he’d been fair and had always pushed her to become something great. No one deserved to die like this, but if she could stop the never-ending threat of nuclear war and, perhaps even more importantly, the threat of his devilish plans for time travel, she felt it was her responsibility to do it.
As he stumbled backwards from her, pulling the needle out of his neck, still oozing cyanide, he held a prolonged eye contact with her as if he knew her. She knew him as well as she knew anyone, but there was no way he could’ve recognized who this woman attacking him was. His mouth moved as he started again to say something, but instead he slumped onto his chair and fell onto the stone patio floor. As she sprinted away gingerly on her injured ankle, she could hear him struggling as his body started to convulse.
Unseen by anyone else, Ekaterina made her way to the secret door, through the tunnel, out of the outhouse, and into the world that she was pretty certain was 1983.
CHAPTER TWO
September 16, 2015
Dr. Jeff Jacobs sat in the back seat of a black FBI Town Car as it pulled off of the Hutchinson River Parkway in the Bronx. Within a minute, they were parked in front of a towering building with a sign reading “Bronx Psychiatric Center.” He leaned forward in his seat to the two agents in the front. “Anyone going to tell me what we’re doing here?” He glanced at his colleague and best friend, Dexter Murphy, sitting in the seat beside him, who shrugged. He was equally as mystified by the day’s events.
Only a few hours earlier, Jeff and Dexter had shown up to a scheduled meeting with representatives of the U.S. General Services Administration to present his report on his federally-funded research. Several years earlier, Jeff had won a grant from the federal government through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to forward his experiments which could change one type of matter into something completely different by speeding up their atomic structure to the speed of light before slowing it down again – a process referred to as “replication.” The tagline was that someday they’d be able to change “bricks into hamburgers” and feed the world. A noble cause.
But in Jeff’s experiments, instead of making hamburgers out of bricks, he had stumbled onto something unexpected – time travel. Same concept, completely different outcome. While either of his pursuits would revolutionize physics, he found his heart was in time travel, and without the government’s knowledge he began to dedicate most of his time to that body of research. Ultimately, he’d successfully created a device that could send a human backward or forward in time. Using himself as a guinea pig, he’d tested the technology by sending himself back to 1951 to watch the famous Giants-Dodgers game where Bobby Thompson hit his home run, the “Shot heard ‘round the world.” The mission was a success, so Jeff had begun to imagine the next possibilities. But running two groundbreaking research initiatives proved to be unaffordable, so Jeff began to consider a different approach. With a strategic team, he developed a grand plan: create a list of moments in history where it was documented that specific treasures would be available for easy taking, and go back and get them. If there was ever a “perfect crime,” he’d identified it.
His team – including Dexter the historian, Abby the mathematician, and Emeka the muscle – had developed a good list. It was filled with scenarios of lost opportunities in American history, misguided intentions and careless gallantry. There were parameters to keep everyone safe, and to ensure minimal impact on history. Their missions were well thought out.
But they hadn’t gotten to any of them yet. Which threw them for a loop when FBI agents intercepted them at Jeff’s meeting to present him with his time device, found in the middle of the forest in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. What Jeff hadn’t admitted to the agents now driving him into the Bronx was that mission #1 on their secret list was to hijack a 49er named Joe Wilton in the Sierra Nevadas in 1849 and take from him the 60 bars of gold he was carrying through a narrow, vulnerable pass before it was stolen by someone else the next day. But they hadn’t actually done it, so as they drove with the agents into the Bronx to an unknown destination, Jeff wracked his brain to figure out how his device could have gotten to California, and who would’ve brought it there.
Ignoring his question, the two agents got out of the car and opened the rear doors for them to exit. They stretched their legs and looked up at the building. “A psych center?” Jeff asked. “You’re not going to tell us anything, are you?”
“There’s someone here we’d like you to meet,” said Agent Fisher, a gruff stereotype who Jeff had met only two hours before. Jeff had been too taken aback when they’d first met and he was being inundated with questions for which there were no answers so that he hadn’t actually taken a moment to study Fisher. But now that he’d had the chance, he saw that aside from the intimidating ever-present FBI sunglasses, he looked like a normal guy who might work in Jeff’s building – clean-shaven, not overly muscular. In the car, Jeff had kept reminding himself that whatever message he was sending, this guy was just doing his job. Besides, he had to appreciate that, even though he’d been lying to the U.S. government about what he was doing with their money, Fisher hadn’t slapped handcuffs on him and led him directly to prison. He didn’t like the uncertainty here, but at least it seemed better than the alternative.
“You know this place?” he asked, looking at Dexter. He felt terrible about dragging him into this. Even though at this point he had no idea what “this” was.
“I know it exists,” he said. “Never been here for anything.” Dexter, his faithful sidekick and, as a prominent historian, the brains of any time travel they were set to do. He was a professor of history at Columbia who Jeff had tracked down to engage in his research. Together, they had created the list of opportunities they hoped to someday undertake. With the FBI’s new involvement in their lives, though, it looked less and less likely they’d be moving forward with their plans.
The four of them – including the other much more menacing agent, Agent Figueroa – walked across the lot and in the front doors of the hospital. They waited for a moment at Admission as Fisher spoke with the clerk behind the desk. The woman made a quick phone call and a few moments later a nurse exited the elevator doors and approached them.
“Hello, can I help you?” she asked, kindly.
Fisher pulled out his badge and flashed it. “Agent Fisher, FBI. I was wondering if it would be a good time to pay a quick visit to Ms. Peters.”
The nurse studied his face for a moment, then looked past him at the rest of the crew. “I remember you. You were here a couple months ago.”
“I was.”
“What do you want with Ms. Peters?” Jeff noticed her being a little protective. Even defensive.
“Just a few moments to chat with her. Same as last time. I’ve already spoken to Dr. Koren.”
“You have?”
“We’re actually here because Dr. Koren called us.”
The nurse looked over at the clerk who was listening
and motioned something to her that Jeff couldn’t see. A moment later, she handed visitor badges across the desk. Each of them pinned on a badge and the nurse led them to the elevator.
Inside, she said, “I think I know why you’re here. I believe Ms. Peters is in a session right now with Dr. Koren. You’re welcome to listen in until it’s done and then we’ll make sure you get a few minutes with her.”
Fisher nodded his thanks. They got off on the 9th floor and were led down a long, sterile hallway. As they walked, Jeff couldn’t help himself from voicing his wonder, “Who’s Ms. Peters?”
“You’ll find out in a minute,” Fisher said.
The nurse led them into a dark room that was separated from an interview room by one-way glass. Through the glass there was an Indian man in a lab coat sitting across a table from an older woman, probably in her sixties, with short silver hair. The woman wore sunglasses, though the room wasn’t particularly bright. It was a much more comfortable room than Jeff would have imagined such a room would be, with nice art on the walls and cushioned chairs. The woman didn’t look as though she could be dangerous, so he assumed it could be a room for the less-animated patients of the hospital.
The door closed behind them, catching their attention. A moment later, the nurse appeared in the other room and whispered something to Dr. Koren, who inadvertently glanced at the window. Catching him, the woman did the same.
“Who’s in there?” she asked as the room’s door closed behind the exiting nurse.
“It’s the people you asked for,” the doctor said with a thick accent.
Jeff looked over at Fisher. “What’s he mean by that?” Fisher ignored him. He watched as the woman took off her sunglasses and slumped back in her chair, putting her head back with her eyes closed. She looked satisfied, even relieved, by the doctor’s answer.
“Can we continue?” Koren asked after a moment. She sat up and nodded, so he went on. “You were telling me about this new drawing.” He held up a piece of paper so that it faced her. From Jeff’s vantage point, he couldn’t see what was in the picture.
The woman looked over at the window again for a prolonged time, then stubbornly put her head down. She wasn’t talking with them there.
“Evelyn,” Dr. Koren said, “those people are here because you asked for them. You have nothing to worry about with them standing there.”
She shook her head, still resting her head on her arms on the table. The doctor thought for a moment, then excused himself and left the room. A moment later he came through the outer door and approached Jeff and the agents. He introduced himself and shook hands around the group.
“She won’t talk, and I need to get some more out of her for today’s session,” he said. “Dr. Jacobs, I’m glad you’re here and I’d like to connect with you before you leave. Until then, let me get one of the nurses to take you to Evelyn’s room. It’ll give you a bit of the story. In the meantime, I’ll try to get her to open up a little.”
Following Dr. Koren’s instructions, they left the room. The nurse met them once again and led them down the hallway. They reached the elevator and she pushed the up button. While they waited, Jeff asked Agent Fisher, “Why are we going to her room? Have you seen it before?”
Fisher ignored him again, which was getting aggravating. As if they hadn’t been through enough, he didn’t know if he could take the silent treatment. He traded glances with Dexter, who only shrugged back at him. The elevator arrived and they piled in, headed for the 12th floor. They exited the elevator and made their way halfway down the long hallway before the nurse stopped in front of one of the doors. She took a key ring from her pocket and pushed the door open, stepping aside for them to enter.
Jeff was the last to enter, feeling more than uncomfortable about invading the woman’s privacy. Once inside, though, he immediately noticed that the room was not conducive to having four people in it at once. It was simple, very similar to a standard hospital room with a bed, dresser, TV, and a private bathroom, though a little cozier than any hospital he’d been in. In the corner was a small table, empty except for a folded laptop.
At least the construction of the room was cozy. The decor, however, sent a chill down Jeff’s spine.
Lining the walls of this Evelyn’s room was a tribute to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Maps, drawings, hammer-and-sickle emblems... He felt as though he’d stepped into a museum of Soviet history. “Why?” he said out loud, not able to come up with anything else.
Without speaking, Agent Fisher walked to the nightstand where an I-Pod was sitting in a docking station. He hit play on the device and the speakers started to blare a stately Russian song.
Dexter nudged him to get his attention. “Soviet National Anthem,” he mouthed. Jeff nodded.
Fisher then picked up a heavy, brown homemade book from the woman’s nightstand and handed it to Jeff, who took it from him. He looked the agent in the eye for a moment, then began to flip through it. In the book were hundreds of pages of drawings and journal-type entries related to the Soviet Union. Honestly, it didn’t mean too much to him, so he closed it and handed it to Dexter, who was now walking around the room taking in everything he could.
“I don’t understand,” Jeff said, turning his attention back to Fisher.
“Evelyn Peters has been diagnosed with Delusional Disorder,” he said. “She believes that she is a former Soviet nationalist who went back in time to the early ‘80s and was never able to return. She claims that she was born in 1975, though clearly you can see that she’s much older than that.”
“She went back in time from when?” Dexter asked from behind him. Jeff turned to see him standing with the book open in his hands.
“Well, she’ll say she went back from right about now. Though, I’m not entirely sure she knows what ‘right about now’ is.”
“This is crazy,” Dexter said, flipping through the pages of the book, “because these journal entries are all about the Soviet Union, but they’re all from within the past five years. That makes no sense.”
Fisher leaned across Jeff and opened a closet door that he hadn’t noticed. Jeff craned his neck to look and saw about 20 twenty more books just like the one in Dexter’s hand.
“I’m not sure why you brought me here,” Jeff said as Fisher closed the door. “I have no idea what any of this means,” Jeff said as Fisher closed the door. “She’s a kook. She’s in the right place.”
“There’s more to her story,” Fisher said. Jeff noticed Dexter sit in one of the visitor’s chairs against the window, still thumbing through the book. “Evelyn believes that in her time travel she changed the reality she knew. As she tells it, she came from a reality where the Soviet Union did not fall in 1991, and today – in this timeline she remembers – remains a world superpower. On top of that, she believes that she’s responsible for it happening.”
“How could she be responsible?”
“She says that her motive for traveling through time was to assassinate the man that would later become the Soviet Premier, a warmonger whose purpose in life was to keep the world in as precarious a situation as he could to maintain the strength of Mother Russia.”
“And then she says she got stuck in the early ‘80s?” Jeff said. “And she was born in 1975? So according to her she’s lived the past, what, thirty-some years – twice?”
Fisher was nodding. “That’s what she says.”
From his seat across the room, Dexter asked, “I suppose this is something I should know, but can you trace her story to any actual event in Russian history?” Jeff hadn’t realized his friend had been listening at all, imagining he’d been too engrossed in the book.
“There actually is. A Soviet officer named Alexandr Belochkin was murdered in his backyard in April, 1983, a crime that was never solved.”
“And that’s who she says she assassinated?”
“It is.” Fisher was nodding again.
Dexter grunted and went back to the book.
“Okay
, so here’s my question,” Jeff said. “Why, out of all the crazy people in the country that have similar delusional issues, is the FBI giving this woman the time of day? There has to be a bigger reason.”
“It’s because Evelyn’s IQ is off the charts.”
“So? I would think a lot of delusional people have a high IQ.”
“Well, hers puts her in the top one-tenth of one percent of people on the planet. Aside from the fact that we all think she’s crazy, if you put all of the details of her story together, she’s pretty buttoned-up. This is where you come in.”
“Me? Where do I come in?” If there was something for Jeff to “get,” he wasn’t getting it.
The door opened and Dr. Koren appeared in the hallway. He had excitement on his face as he looked at Jeff. “She wants to talk to you alone.”
“Me?” He looked around the room at everyone else. “I am really lost here.”
“I believe Evelyn can explain to you best why she asked for you,” he said. “She’d like to walk and talk outside with you, which is a huge breakthrough because she hasn’t been outside of this building in seven years, at her own insistence. My request, as her doctor, is for you to take her up on her offer.”
“What if she tries to run?”
Koren was shaking his head. “She won’t. She checked herself into the hospital. She’s free to leave whenever she wants. She’s not a threat to anyone.”
Jeff looked over at Fisher, who nodded subtly to him. He still had no comprehension of why he was there other than as a loose connection to time travel, but in the end, if it was going to keep the FBI agents from disciplining him for his dishonesty, he was probably relegated to doing whatever they wanted him to do, even if that meant spending a little time with a crazy woman.
“Alright, where is she?” he asked.
Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2) Page 2
