The man looked up and down the hallway, then rubbed his shoulder again. “Do we have to talk here?” he asked. “Why don’t you get yourself settled in your room and I’ll wait for you down in the hotel bar. I’ll buy you a drink and we can talk?”
Now was her chance to rid herself of this man, but with the outreach from Evelyn Peters the week before, and this man seemingly having a great deal of knowledge about her version of history, she thought it might still be worth pursuing. His story was not well-thought out, and his approach was random. But Evelyn had sent him to her for a reason. This trip had been conceived as an adventure in the first place and now there was certainly more for her to explore.
She agreed to meet him in the bar in fifteen minutes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jeff’s shoulder continued to throb even though the woman’s hold had been released now for a good half-hour. He’d honestly thought she was going to rip his arm clean off, and pondered where in science class he’d missed the lesson on how to disarm a stalker with your bare hands. Perhaps in Russia the training was a little different.
He sat in one of two twin red plush chairs on either side of a chess table that he’d noticed were free when he arrived in the hotel bar, and had already ordered a scotch, believing that the shot of alcohol might relieve the pain in his arm. He’d never been to the Waldorf before and he was impressed, which wasn’t saying a lot, he knew, but he was pleased that his drink came quickly. Especially with the day he’d already had, it seemed like an important gauge for a hotel’s quality. Groups of upscale-looking business people clustered in various areas of the bar, the locals probably fraternizing before heading home to the family, the out-of-towners planning their New York adventure for the next day.
He thought about what he was going to say to the woman when – and if – she came downstairs to meet with him. In many ways, the words that had already come out of his mouth were befuddling. In his experiments, he’d considered with great seriousness the concept of alternate realities, but he couldn’t seem to wrap his head around Evelyn’s world as she described it, the one where the Soviet Union existed. But given that he was dabbling in time travel, he couldn’t help but admit that there was at least the chance it was possible. Especially if he tamped down his arrogance to allow himself to believe that he might just not be the only person alive who’d done it.
He tried to put the situation into a relatable perspective. He thought of his first excursion into time travel – his trip to 1951 to see Bobby Thompson’s “Shot heard ‘round the world” home run against the Dodgers, and how he’d tried to position himself to catch the famous ball and bring it back to the present time. Had he been successful in doing so, he would’ve changed the history of the moment. And while to everyone in the ballpark watching the game the ball would always have been caught by a fairly normal-looking guy in a gray fedora with a loosened tie over a white button-down with the top button open, one who was inexplicably never heard from again, he personally would remember another reality where the ball was caught by someone else who never identified him or herself. From a purely scientific point-of-view, he was forced to understand that Evelyn could be in the same exact position. Only on a much larger scale.
He noticed that his glass was empty – he’d gone through it pretty quickly – and made eye contact with the bartender who poured him another. He got up from his chair and picked it up off of the bar, but noticed Evelyn’s younger self walking through the bar’s main entrance. She scanned the room and saw him, then headed in his direction, telling him she wanted a Raspberry Stoli. He motioned to the chairs he’d just left as the spot where she should sit and ordered her drink. A moment later, he sat across from her.
Holding up his drink, he said, “To alternate realities.”
She ignored his toast and took a sip from her glass, then set it down on the table. “I’m not certain I’m ready to make a toast with you yet, Dr. Jacobs.”
He didn’t know she’d picked up his name upstairs, but apparently he’d introduced himself. He nodded. “I can respect that,” he said, setting his own glass on the table. “You know who I am, but apparently your name is not Evelyn. So I don’t know who you are.”
“My name is Ekaterina. You believe this Evelyn woman is me.”
He laughed. “Oh, we’re way beyond what I believe,” he said. “This is what I’m being told is the truth. But if I put it in the perspective of time travel, it follows a reasonable path, sure.”
“And what is your role here?”
“Well, like your friend Evelyn,” he said, struggling for a moment as to what to call Evelyn in regards to Ekaterina, “I have invented a device that allows for human time travel.” He paused, expecting this news to blow her away, which it didn’t. “Only mine can take a person backward and forward, which means that going back to 1983 wouldn’t require the person to stay there. You can return to the present at the precise time you left.”
“Your device works? You’ve used it?”
He nodded, though he made a split-second decision to not tell her about the government finding his device in California. “I have. I’ve only tested it twice, though. I used it myself to go to a famous baseball game in 1951, and I took a member of my team to Woodstock.”
“Your team of scientists?”
“No,” he said, then paused. How much should he be telling her? He wasn’t good at this, and he hadn’t had as much time to think it through as he might have liked. “I have a time travel team. The person I took back to Woodstock is my mathematician. She’s devised the system for calculating the coordinates we use in the device. You know, to make sure we don’t end up in the wrong time.”
“Who else is on your team?” She took a slow sip from her drink. He was pleased that she seemed to be warming up to him. If they were going to be forced into doing this mission together, some degree of camaraderie would be beneficial.
“I have a historian and an operative.”
“What do you mean, ‘an operative’?”
He laughed. “You never know what you’re going to face when you go back in time. A lot can go wrong. My strategy was to have someone with some combat skills who was quick on their feet. I have a friend who falls into that category.” He rubbed his shoulder. “Though now that I’ve met you, I’m thinking maybe I should look at a few resumes before making a decision.”
He thought that might get a laugh, but no. There was probably a limit to the level at which she would warm up to him.
“I would think as a scientist your goal would be to study time travel with as little impact as possible,” she said. “I can understand including a mathematician and a historian on your team, but the fact that you’ve recruited an operative suggests to me that your motive might not be solely scientific discovery. Am I correct?”
Yes, she was, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead, he shook his head. “No, you’re not. I can’t predict what could happen during a time travel mission. What if the calculations are off? What if we land in the middle of a hostile situation? The goal is not just to not change history if something happens. It will be to return to the present with our lives. We’re not getting into this for action and adventure. But if anything goes wrong, I don’t trust a cadre of people who have spent their entire adult lives in either a classroom or a lab.”
She was nodding. At least his case was making sense to her. A group of suited young professionals to his left laughed loudly, distracting them for a moment. Then, she turned back to him.
“So you’re to take me back to 1983?”
“That’s the plan that Evelyn laid out. Are you up for it?”
Now she laughed for the first time, then drank down her vodka. Jeff caught the bartender’s eye and tapped her glass for a refill while she talked. “Well, Dr. Jacobs, let’s see if I understand what you’re asking me if I’m ‘up for.’ While your responsibility in this mission is to press a button and magically transport us back in time, I am then being asked to assassinate a high
ly-trained Soviet officer that took the place of my father up until the day he was murdered. I am not wholly certain why I was brought into this, because it does not sound like a good deal for me.”
“I can’t answer that for you,” he said. “That’s probably where Evelyn has to come in. I’m assuming it’s because you have familiarity with the general’s house and can speak the language if necessary. By myself, I am one hundred percent ill-equipped for this trip.”
“And you are the only option for time travel?”
“The only one anyone knows about, at least. Look, this isn’t my mission. I’ve been coerced into it, same as you. I’d much rather be back in my lab right now.”
“Instead of here with me?”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
Another group let out a social guffaw, this time to his right. He looked over toward them and noticed a familiar face sitting at the corner of the bar.
Agent Fisher.
Fisher nodded at him with a slight smile. Jeff wondered how long he’d been following him. Looking back, he noticed the bartender pointing to a full glass sitting on the bar. He motioned to Ekaterina that he was going to the bar to retrieve her drink, and walked the several steps across the room without making eye contact with Fisher. He returned and set the glass in front of her. She thanked him and took a sip.
“I understand your qualms,” he said, picking up where they’d left off, feeling like he could talk plainly with her. “I honestly don’t know if my role here is to try to talk you into doing this. I guess I assumed that since you made the trip to New York, you knew what was going on and were agreeing to participate. It hadn’t occurred to me that once I found you, there would be a recruiting process.”
“What do you believe? Do you believe this needs to be done?”
He sighed. “Anything I believe on this matter is purely theory,” he said. “It seems, though, that Evelyn and I feel the same way – that in order for an event that happens due to time travel to actually remain a part of history, it has to be pro-actively completed.” He drank the last bit of scotch from his glass and held it up for her to see. “In five minutes, I’m going to send this glass five minutes into the past. What do you think will happen?”
She didn’t get his question. He could see the confusion on her face.
“What will happen right now, if in five minutes I send this glass five minutes back in time?”
“The glass will suddenly appear?”
“Exactly. All of a sudden, there will be another glass sitting here. Just like when we’ll suddenly appear in 1983, which is why you’ll need to lead us to an isolated place. Anyway, the glass is now here-”
“And there are two of them...”
He stopped for a moment, thinking about what she’d said. “Yes, there are two of them now. But in five minutes, what happens if I decide not to send the glass back in time.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you see, I don’t have that choice.”
“You don’t?”
‘No – well, that’s my theory, at least. I call it ‘fulfillment.’ If a change is made to history through someone traveling backwards in time, in order for it to remain a part of history, it must be fulfilled. Even if it comes from a different reality.”
“What if it’s not?”
“It has to be. We don’t have a choice.” He realized he was smiling at her.
She held up a finger, though, waving it at him. “What if we do everything in our power to not send that glass back in time? What if I pull it from your hand right now and hurl it against that wall?”
“Then – again, in theory – it would not have shown up when it did. There’s no way around it.”
She finished her drink and leaned back in the chair, thinking. Then she sat up again. “Dr. Jacobs, I’m going to have to think about that one,” she said.
“Can I get you another?”
“No. I have had a very long day and would like to get to my room and rest. Apparently you and I are supposed to know each other, so I am imagining that I will speak with you again tomorrow.”
She stood and Jeff stood with her, then watched her leave the bar. It was only a matter of seconds before the space she left was filled with Fisher, who set his half-full pilsner glass on the table next to Ekaterina’s empty vodka glass.
He picked up her glass by the edges and inspected it. “Do you think we can get good fingerprints off of this? See if it’s true?”
“See if what’s true?”
“If your new friend and Ms. Peters are actually the same person?”
“You would know better than I would,” Jeff said.
He set the glass down and leaned forward. “So, do you really think all of that is real?”
“All of what?”
“About the glass? Your theory about fulfillment?”
He looked around the bar. “What? You could hear what I was saying?”
“Somewhat. I could read your lips closely enough to figure out the rest.”
Jeff shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? How long have you been following me?”
Fisher laughed. “We usually follow people from the last time we see them until the time when we’re done needing to know where they are. How did you know she was coming?”
“The old woman told me.”
“And you didn’t want to clue us in?”
“She asked me not to,” he said, shaking his head. “Look, I’m trying to get through this as easily and as quickly as possible. So far I’ve been threatened by you and had my ass kicked by that woman. What I really want to do is get this done, get back to my experiments, and then find out why my time device was sitting in the forest in California.”
“You don’t know?”
“I honestly don’t. And I understand how that might look suspicious to you, but I have no clue.”
Fisher leaned forward. “But your own theory would suggest that for it to end up there for us to find, you still have to go back and take it with you. Right?”
“That makes sense, yes. Or someone else has to.” Deflecting, though he knew, of course, it was him.
“Which says to me that you’re going to get through this okay, you’re going to go back to your experiments and make it happen. Almost as if it’s predestined. Yes?”
Jeff sat back and looked around the bar again. He’d had his conversation with Ekaterina and now he just wanted to go home. Of course, Fisher’s logic was right, according to what Jeff had just told Ekaterina ten minutes before. But he had nothing to go on. He hadn’t had the chance to experiment with changes to the past, much less predestination of the future. And he was getting a sense from Fisher’s line of questioning that they had no problem being a little more cavalier with time travel than he was. It wasn’t about science for them. It was about something much bigger. It was the way Fisher had leaned in, as if trying to goad him into his answers. “It’s a theory,” he finally said. “Theories should be tested.”
“That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”
“You know, if we’re going to have a philosophical discussion sitting here, I need another drink.”
Fisher nodded, swallowed down the rest of his beer, and went up to the bar. He returned a few moments later with two full glasses, setting them down on the table. “Better?”
“How long ago did you say you found my device in the forest?”
“I didn’t. We came across it about four weeks ago,” Fisher said.
“That’s how long it took you to track me down? Wow. Pretty quick.”
“Actually, we tracked you down in about a week. The time consuming part was figuring out what to do with you when we contacted you.”
“What to do with me?”
“Well, yes. You’re running unregulated time travel experiments out of your lab, using government funding to finance it. We don’t know where you’ve been-”
“I’ll tell you exactly where I’ve been, so that we have
a level of trust,” Jeff said, picking up his drink and taking a swig. “I have run a number of experiments on objects. Which is difficult because you can’t send an object back any substantial length of time.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll have no way of knowing if you’re successful. You can send things incrementally into the future – one minute, five minutes – and it works. But to go back in time, you need a human presence. You can’t send a brick back 100 years and then hope it’ll still be there. Once I was comfortable with my equations, I obviously used myself as a guinea pig – it was the only option.”
“So, where’d you go?”
Jeff smiled. He’d connected with him, at least for a moment. “Well, where would you go?”
Fisher now sat back and shrugged. “I don’t know. Never thought about it.”
“C’mon. You could go back in time and see any event in history. You can’t pick one?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I like cowboys. I suppose I would go to the Old West. See the OK Corral.”
Jeff nodded. “I could see that. I like baseball. I chose to go to a baseball game. I figured I could get lost in the crowd and there wouldn’t be much chance of changing any details of history.”
“A specific game?”
“Yes. The Dodgers-Giants playoff game in 1951.”
“The ‘Shot Heard Round the World,’” Fisher said, smiling. He crossed his right leg over his left, reclining. “That’s a great choice. Can I change my answer?”
Was he really bonding with the agent? “Don’t make me do this thing in Russia, and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” He’d meant it as a joke, but it came out sounding like a bribe.
“No, we need you to do the thing in Russia,” he said. “You could’ve thrown a bet down on the game. Won a lot of money.”
“That’s not what I created time travel for,” Jeff said, shaking his head. Though his own plans were something along those blurred lines of morality, the betting thing was a little too obvious for him to want to consider.
“No, no, you’re right. So, you haven’t been to the Sierra Nevadas yet. What are you going to do with your new Russian friend?”
Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2) Page 6
