“Wait,” Nick said, lifting the sword but finding his voice weak.
McMahon grabbed a nearby tablet. “Let me show you, Dr Houghton, how we deal with these sorts of betrayals.”
A face appeared on the tablet. Nick couldn’t tell who it was.
“I want Mary Kramer transported. Wipe her out.” McMahon jabbed a chubby finger at the chef, suddenly energised. “We’re going to take you from birth. You’ll be brought back here as a baby, and I’ll take personal pleasure in leaving you outside the walls to die.”
Nick shuddered. McMahon’s weapon against his enemies. Which maybe explained why most resistance to NovusPart had all but disappeared. Just like Harris had told him. But there was also a problem.
“Paradox,” said Nick. “You’re about to create a paradox.”
“It’ll just be a bump in the road. A few odd details for lunatics and conspiracy theorists to debate while they play video games. Instead of her, we’ll just have appointed a different chef. Some other stupid cow to serve us dinner and change our sheets. Except her replacement won’t be adding anything to the food. And she won’t be working for Harris.”
The tablet chirped. “We’ve checked with Who’s Where,” came a distant voice. “She’s a green risk. There are no intersection points prior to her joining NovusPart. However, there is an issue with her birth information…”
“Good. Proceed.”
Nick felt his brain whirr. The puzzle was once more being disassembled. And he suddenly found himself looking at a Rosetta Stone. But not of language; one of time. Imperial Rome with its bloodbath of imperial succession. The question of what would have happened if someone had killed Hitler before 1933. And Perkin Warbeck; the name finally clicked into place. Three chapters of history from different times.
But all telling the same story.
“How long do I have?” asked Mary.
“A few seconds,” replied McMahon, turning and tossing the tablet on to the couch behind him. “Just until they get a good enough lock.”
“Good,” she said. “So tell me. Who do you think is going to give you that slap on the back?”
Nick didn’t hear McMahon’s answer. He was thinking about the flipside to the question of what would have been different if Hitler had died before 1933. Because if Hitler had died, and you were already living in the alternative reality: how much would you give to ensure no one accidentally brought him back to life?
Nick started to shake. There was someone missing. Someone terrible. And if McMahon was removed, did that mean he could continue to exist?
White mist had begun to seep into the room. Nick ignored it. He wasn’t going to reach the tablet in time without a struggle. But he moved forward anyway, dropping the sword. McMahon made an instinctive swat at him, but Nick slipped past, reaching for the tablet.
He heard a slow scream behind him, like a warped cassette tape. He didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the tablet. “Abort!” he shouted. “Abort! Abort! Abort!”
75
“WHO’S MARY KRAMER?”
“Nobody important.”
Kirsten looked down at the papers. Her photograph sat uncomfortably next to someone else’s details. She looked back at Harris. “You’ve kept my real birth date.”
“It’s fine,” said Harris. He stared at her from across the desk.
The time, place and date of her birth. The names of her parents. The papers made her far older than she looked. It was a clear error.
“Who’s Mary Kramer?” she asked again.
“She’s dead,” Harris said. “Last year. You don’t have to worry about her cropping up. And you don’t have to worry about her ever having come into contact with McMahon, Whelan or NovusPart. She’s completely unknown to them. And that’s all they’ll care about.”
Kirsten looked down at the papers again. Saw her photograph. Saw her new name, and her new profession. Personal Assistant. A secretary by any other name. She’d have to get used to deciphering shorthand. “So when do I meet Professor Samson?”
“Soon. And it turns out he’s working on an interesting new project.”
76
“SO YOU KILLED McMahon?”
Nick didn’t answer.
“Did you need to?”
Again, Nick didn’t answer. Whelan lay on the floor of the tablinum, staring up at him. He’d been beaten. The left side of his face had been battered purple, and he was breathing shallowly.
Barbatus and Calpurnia waited at a safe distance in the atrium. Nick had asked them for a few minutes alone with Whelan. Astridge hadn’t been brought back from the arena, and Nick didn’t know what had happened to the porter. Perhaps Calpurnia had acted when she realised her father remained duumvir. Or perhaps the porter had been slain while Nick had been dealing with McMahon. Either way, there was now nothing left of NovusPart. Other than Whelan. The discarded toy soldier.
“Are you going to say anything at all?”
Nick cleared his throat. In truth, he didn’t want to reply. Before Barbatus had arrived, he’d managed to find a phone and call his father. The conversation had been short and painful, but they hadn’t argued. Whether they’d ever see each other again was another matter. But he’d still needed to talk.
“I want to know about the missing man.”
Whelan coughed. “His name was Joe Arlen, Octo, we called him.”
“And his fixation was killing people who were already dead? Playing with them in the arena?”
“They say there’s no genius without a touch of madness.”
Nick grunted. Whelan’s eyes suddenly filled with regret.
“You’re right though,” Whelan continued. He coughed again. A few spots of blood dribbled down his chin. “We knew there were risks when we first tried to transport people – that they might not make it. But Octo told us not to worry; that they weren’t really people any more. That they were already dead. It wasn’t long before he started to talk about murder.”
“And New Pompeii was just a mask, wasn’t it? A convenient cover story for you to play out your little schemes.”
Whelan didn’t say anything.
“Arlen had his obsession with the arena,” continued Nick. “And the town allowed McMahon to take his enemies while they were children.”
Whelan didn’t say anything; one eye was swollen shut and the other concentrated on the floor.
“And what would your route to madness have looked like?” Nick paused. Thinking about the one piece of the town that still didn’t fit. “The empty townhouses? Not for the children, who were to be given away, so…?”
Whelan flicked his one seeing eye up. Nick could still sense some pride in him. “You’ve already seen my big idea,” he said, his voice bitter. “If you were on a plane that was plunging towards the ground, how much would you be willing to pay for your salvation?”
Nick nodded, understanding. He thought back to the restaurant – his first meal with Whelan and McMahon – and the protestors. He remembered what Whelan had told him: People only have one chance to live. The world doesn’t have the resources for two. He wondered what the protestors would say if they knew the rich might have access to the ultimate form of life insurance.
“You needed somewhere to keep them out of sight,” he said. “The price of their rescue was to keep hidden. To stop you being overwhelmed by dissent, to stop the chaos of people turning up to claim their property years after their deaths.”
Whelan didn’t answer. In the silence, Nick heard footsteps approaching. He just had one last question for Whelan. “So what did the guy in the helicopter tell you?” he asked.
Whelan took a long, rattling breath. He sounded like he was drowning. “The spy was a woman in her fifties,” he said. “Working somewhere in the town. Which doesn’t fit the description of anyone we employ here. Though I suppose Maggie would be the closest.”
Nick nodded. Calpurnia appeared at his side. “My father will grant you safe passage to wherever you decide to go,” she said. “But we both
very much hope you will decide to stay.”
Nick gave a half-smile, glancing back at Barbatus. “We?”
“I hope you will stay,” she corrected. “After all, your good judgement saved my life when they came for Felix. I can’t help but feel I owe you a debt.”
Nick thought of his father, and what waited for him at home. The world was about to change, and he needed to decide whether or not he wanted to be at the centre of it all. “And you?” he asked her, casting another quick glance towards the duumvir. “Will you stay with him?”
“Yes.” Calpurnia’s voice was tinged with resignation. She stopped to massage her stomach and the baby within. “I belong to him. But it won’t be long before I’m joined by little Marcus.”
“Named after your husband?”
Calpurnia nodded silently and then looked down at Whelan, her mood darkening but her voice soft. “He will tell us his secret to control time.”
Nick tensed, but then remembered that it all revolved around this. Those in the future, protecting their path to power. From Arlen. From McMahon. From Whelan. He looked over at Barbatus, and wondered what sort of emperor he’d become. “Do you think he’d be able to cope with that much power?”
“It’s a rare gift to wield the sword and be remembered as a great man and not a tyrant,” she said. But then she lowered her voice, as if something amusing had suddenly struck her. “But perhaps, in the future, a woman might rule?”
Nick grunted.
“So if you’ll translate for us one last time,” said Calpurnia, returning her attention to Whelan. “We need your friend here to tell us everything he knows.”
“And if he refuses?”
“Then, first, we’ll drill a hole in the top of his skull…”
77
“YOU DIDN’T TELL them.”
Nick shook his head. The taberna was nearly empty. He sat at the back with Kirsten, and sipped a small cup of heavily watered wine. “No,” he said. “They think I killed McMahon.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Because Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK, and Princess Di’s driver was drunk.”
“I don’t understand.”
Nick thought about Ronnie. “The simplest explanations are usually true,” he said.
“Oh. I see. Then thank you.”
Nick let his eyes close for the briefest of seconds. He’d only just dropped the tablet. Only just turned back to face McMahon when the scream erupted and the murmillo’s sword pushed its way out through McMahon’s stomach. Behind him stood Kirsten. Who’d grabbed the weapon from the floor and taken her revenge. “I thought you were going to kill me too,” he said.
Kirsten smiled. The tension broke. “It was already too late. There would have been no point.”
“But you killed Samson.” He tried to spot any emotion in her face. But perhaps she’d always been difficult to read. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“He’d started to panic about the plan. Thought it wouldn’t work, even though he wouldn’t explain why. Just kept on going on about Perkin Warbeck.” She looked at him. “He wouldn’t even tell me who that was.”
Nick took a deep breath.
“You know, don’t you?”
“Yes, but it’s not really my era.”
“Spit it out, will you?”
“Okay,” Nick said, trying to recall his boyhood history. “So when Edward IV died, his two sons were locked in the Tower of London for their own protection. They soon went missing and Edward’s brother became Richard III.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“Perkin Warbeck turned up, years later, claiming to be one of the missing princes. He was an imposter, of course, but if he’d attracted supporters it could have brought down Henry VII. Which means no Henry VIII, or Elizabeth I. It was obviously something that was niggling at Samson in his last days here. I think he’d noticed the missing part of the NovusPart triumvirate. And it mixed with another hobbyhorse of his: how would the world have turned out if Hitler had been killed before 1933? It’s just that McMahon was never really Hitler. There were three of them at the start, and McMahon was the number-two guy. Goebbels, maybe. Not Hitler.”
Nick cleared his throat. Having now heard Kirsten’s side, he hoped the final form of the puzzle was now correct. All those years she’d been skipping forward in time – and she’d been able to see two very different slants of history: one where the survivors of Flight 391 had been saved, and one where they’d been murdered. And all had been down to the presence or absence of just one man. “McMahon and Whelan removed Arlen from the timeline just after they removed you,” he said. “And Samson was worried that, by killing McMahon, you would cause Arlen to re-emerge.”
Kirsten nodded in silence. “I don’t remember him as being any sort of threat.”
Nick didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help wonder at what point the Romans knew Caligula had gone mad. At what point he’d stopped being the golden boy of Rome, and at what point they’d known they needed to act. “What do you remember?”
She looked at him sadly. “I just knew him as a kind, sweet-natured guy. And given that they took him and when, I suppose that’s how I can still remember him, isn’t it?”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
MANY PEOPLE WERE involved in getting this book published, and I would like to express my thanks to every one of them. My mum and dad (Maureen and Andrew Godfrey) provided the invaluable first wave of proofreading and encouragement. The team at Cornerstones (Helen Bryant, Kathryn Price, Ayisha Malik, Sophia McDougall and Will Mawhood) supplied advice on the story’s first and second incarnations. Sophia’s input in particular helped identify which parts of the story needed to be shown the axe and what could be further developed.
A big thank you to my agent, Ian Drury (Sheil Land Associates), for helping me nail the ending, and for the amazing speed with which he found my novel a home at Titan Books. And, of course, many thanks to my editor Miranda Jewess and everyone at Titan (Lydia Gittins, Philippa Ward, Chris Young, Natalie Laverick, Cath Trechman and Sam Matthews) for taking a chance, offering me a contract, and for their enthusiasm in turning my manuscript into a finished book. I was also delighted with the cover designed by Martin Stiff (Amazing15) which I think perfectly captures the concept of New Pompeii.
Finally, thank you to everyone who supported my self-published efforts over the last few years. The positive feedback really did help get this one finished and accepted. Cheers!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANIEL GODFREY LIVES and works in Derbyshire, but tries his best to hold on to his Yorkshire roots. He studied geography at Cambridge University, before gaining an MSc in transport planning at Leeds. He enjoys reading history, science and SFF. The sequel to New Pompeii, Empire of Time, will be published in June 2017.
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