Alice nodded to herself. Her Da would be proud of her handiwork. Then her shoulders arched, and her body shivered.
“Alice…?” croaked Paul, wondering whether he might be next. Then he saw that her gaze fixed on the wax effigy chained to the stake above her. She dropped the axe.
***
The circle of fire round the stake was closing in on Jane. She moaned as heat began licking at the calves of her legs. Inquisitor Córdoba stepped forward to catch her eye. Yes, he wanted to teach the witch that since she had defied him she would die in torment.
Bundles of burning sticks hissed and crackled. A spark flew out. It landed on the Inquisitor’s oil-smeared robe. It immediately caught alight. Córdoba beat at it with his sleeve, which also ignited. He stepped back into a pool of oil, slipped and fell to the ground. The puddle beneath him lit up. Flames shot up his leg, finding his silk undershirt, a secret luxury he allowed himself. Within seconds, Córdoba was ablaze. The crowd backed away. The witch could kill even from the stake, it seemed.
But Córdoba did not die, not immediately. It would be seven more days of agony and delirium before Spain’s principal agent at the English court would breathe his last. The conspiracy to eliminate the Princess Elizabeth from succession would die as well. Later, as Queen Mary succumbed to fatal illness, Sir Giles De Fries would flee to Spain. But newly-crowned Queen Elizabeth’s reach was long. The ungallant knight would die after drinking Gascony sherry laced with arsenic.
Soldiers ran forward and beat out the flames on Córdoba’s robes. Jane heard the Inquisitor shrieking in the agony he had promised would be hers, yet she felt no pleasure at the sound, or the sight of him writhing. The feeling of otherworldliness had come over her again. She looked round at the fire behind her. The flames were licking her bound hands, yet she felt no pain. Not even heat. In fact, she felt its reverse. Cold. Intense cold. Perhaps this was the programming of the mind/body complex when undergoing a dreadful death, Jane speculated, a merciful delusion blocking out pain. She felt a force coursing through her. Then her vision blurred and pixilated. She heard men shouting commands at her. Telling her not to move or she would be shot. Then everything went dark. Yet again.
***
Armed police had burst into the White Tower. Pamela van Doren, naturally calm in a crisis, though this one had stretched her nerves to the limit, directed them to where the last gunshots had been heard, then resumed tending to the wounded. The police descended the stairs and switched on the lights illuminating the chamber that now contained real horrors as well as simulated ones. Paul was holding Alice close, with his other arm raised in surrender.
“Don’t shoot! I’m CIA Special Agent Montgomery. Get an ambulance!”
Probably a bit late for the fellow without his head, thought the leading police officer as he approached, submachine gun leveled. But Paul was looking at Alice’s hands, which were gripping his arm tightly. They were no longer pale. They were bright red, and large blisters were forming on them.
Alice suddenly stiffened. She uttered one word, “James!” Then she fainted dead away.
CHAPTER 51
Alice and Jane
A taxi pulled up outside Hammersmith Hospital in South London. Paul got out, wearing a smart suit he had just bought himself from Oliver Spencer, and carrying a bunch of pink and cream roses. Due to a delayed shock reaction, the girl had been unconscious for almost a week. Doctors had been worried that she might be sinking into a coma, but Paul had been told that this morning she had awoken, weak, but apparently coherent. Her first questions had been about him.
Paul walked through a bustling hospital corridor till he reached a security door, guarded by a uniformed policeman. He showed his ID and was admitted. A nurse placed his flowers in a vase. One Mr. Hannay, a senior official at the Home Secretary’s Office to whom Paul had previously outlined the little that he knew of the conspiracy, was there to greet him.
“How’s she doing?” Paul asked.
“Sleeping a lot. The blisters are healing surprisingly well. Burn specialist says there should be little to no scarring.”
“Good.”
“Your meeting with the Prime Minister today has been brought forward to 4:30. A car will be sent for you.” The invitation had been a reassuring sign that Paul would not be swept up in the brutal housecleaning currently taking place on the other side of the Pond.
“I’ll just see how she is, and then we’ll talk.”
Paul picked up the vase of flowers, and headed down the hallway. He entered her room quietly. The girl lay asleep, her bandaged hands across her lap. Paul looked at sunlight playing on the spill of fine fair hair across her forehead. He placed his vase of flowers by the window, where the light would bring out their color. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
“Alice...” he whispered in her ear. He saw a faint smile crease her lips. Paul sat down at the end of the bed. A few seconds went by, then she sat bolt upright with a gasp. She looked at Paul.
“Oh!...it’s you!” There he was. Hair dark as jet and those emerald eyes.
It was Jane who had awoken.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, much as a doctor would.
“Fine, I think…I just sleep and sleep...”
“That’s what you need.”
She looked at his pebble grain shoes, his neatly pleated slacks, and cashmere jacket. “Nice duds. Going to meet the Queen?”
Paul smiled. “The Prime Minister.”
“Oh…” Jane looked toward the window, noticing the flowers. “I was interrogated this morning. Apparently, my fingerprints are all over an axe at the Tower of London. When are they going to charge me?”
“With what?” he asked.
“Oh…Unpaid parking fines, being a suicide bomber, that sort of thing,” she answered lightly, though in truth she was terrified that she’d be facing consequences for something she’d known nothing about.
“They’re not,” Paul said flatly. “No charges. At all. You’re a hero. That’s already been decided. You’ll have to give evidence at a secret hearing. Tell whatever you can recall. Just a formality.”
“So, I’ll be free…?” Jane was stunned. “What about… that Lizzie Borden moment I heard about this morning?”
“That’s our little secret. Ours and the CIA’s. We’re good at forgetting things.”
“Human rights, national sovereignty, stuff like that,” Jane said with a wry smile.
Paul thought for a moment, seeking common ground. “It’s a complicated world, Jane. Sometimes we make things better, sometimes we make them worse. This time we made them better.” It was the best he could summon. There was silence as they looked at each other for a moment.
“Well, thanks for saving my life.”
“Thanks for saving mine,” he said with equal gratitude.
Another silence. His feelings for this girl had not diminished in the intervening week, during which he had studied all available information on Jane Benedict, gifted undergraduate at the University of London. Alice was the one who had initially captured his heart. Yet he sensed that in some way Alice was still present in the wan but smiling girl leaning on her elbow beside him. It was hard to define quite how, but Jane seemed to Paul to be complete now. Paul was drawn to Jane as he had been drawn to Alice, even though he had to admit that he could scarcely claim to know either one of them. There were many things that he wanted to say to Jane, but this was not the time.
“I’m going to let you rest. Just wanted to be sure you were OK.” He got up and moved toward the doorway.
“Paul. Will I see you again?”
He was hoping she would ask. “If you’d like that. Tomorrow, then?” He grinned, and gently shut the door.
Paul walked down the hospital corridor reflecting on the week’s events. He scanned his tablet for the latest media coverage. There was gratitude that casualtie
s at the Tower were limited to one death and eleven injured, two seriously, one of whom was Brandt, whom media hailed as the Wounded Hero of the Tower.
After consultations between Downing Street and The White House, it had been decided that the truth was too monstrous be made public, as Nelson had predicted. Exposing the bombing as a false flag operation could undermine confidence in institutions of authority. While intelligence agencies in both countries introduced new safeguards and oversight procedures to identify rogue behavior, the decision was made, albeit with some distaste, to run with the story of the daring EST/CIA operation that had prevented a terrorist attack from being much worse, one in which senior and junior EST operatives gave their lives. Thus Nelson died as he had always imagined he would—universally admired—fueling the media’s need for human stories, in the lack of details of the bomber’s plot, which were designated classified due to ongoing anti-terrorist operations.
The absence of the bomber’s fragmented corpse was remedied by changing the labeling on the body bag containing Selwyn’s mangled remains, previously identified as “John Smith Killed by Train.” Rather than receiving a hero’s funeral, his relics were cremated as those of a perpetrator of atrocity, identity unknown. The reputation of Ian Selwyn, however, would be enshrined in memory as that of a hero of the War on Terrorism. EST Junior agent, Willem Jones, would be accorded similar treatment.
Angus Brandt had confessed everything he knew about this and other unauthorized operations he’d carried out under Nelson during lengthy interrogations. Publicly, he was billed as the hero who confronted the bomber, losing a leg in the process. To the few who knew the truth, he was scum. In return for his cooperation and silence, Brandt received the best medical care, was given early retirement, and put on a generous pension. He would live each instant as an imposter. Every time someone stopped him to thank him for his service, when his kids looked at him with pride, his wife with gratitude, he would be tormented. The conscience which Alice had revived in him like the nerve of a diseased tooth would flare into agony. People would be mystified, months later, when he put the muzzle of a Glock into his mouth and fired. The inquest would attribute his suicide to PTSD. His grieving widow and children would be left, as Brandt had always planned, well-to-do and respected.
Wounded CIA private contractors Levinson and his surviving crew were shipped to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany for urgent medical attention. They would never be seen again.
Senior CIA analyst Charles Farrell was arrested for arranging the murder of Section Chief Rick Almaraz, allegedly to avoid prosecution for unspecified corruption. National security would require the case to be heard in camera to protect classified material. Farrell would spend twenty-three hours a day in an isolation cell and the remaining hour slumped in a small exercise yard, endlessly reliving the chain of disasters that had brought him to this place. Who let him down, why didn’t they..? If only... if only..., till it drove him insane. Charles Farrell would wait nine years for a botched execution by lethal injection.
Pamela van Doren became the media’s darling. Fellow tourists trapped in the smoky Hall Of Kings had taken pictures and video of Pamela and her assistants Paige and Emily, as they tore strips from their own clothing to bind wounds and comforted traumatized survivors till paramedics arrived, in the process creating viral video history. The issues she championed would become debate fodder on every TV screen in the world, the very outcome the conspiracy had been designed to prevent. Local politicians everywhere would see advantage in joining her demand that access to pure water and safe food was a basic human right.
The Olympian Gods would never be charged with anything, but they knew that their power had been curbed. For the present.
Paul looked up from his tablet. He saw the irony of the cover story. But his thoughts returned to the mystery of Alice and Jane.
Jane settled back on her pillow, enjoying the fragrance of the Peace roses that Paul had brought her. Nice touch. There was a perkiness bubbling within her, a sense of joy at little things that she had not felt for longer than she could remember.
As a child, Jane had imagined many colorful ways her life might turn out. None came close to her current situation. Apparently, she was an ax-murdering potential suicide bomber, pardoned without arrest or trial for actions she had undoubtedly carried out, yet of which she had no recollection. And all before the age of twenty. Not bad. What’s next? If her visions of a past life were caused by mental illness, recent events indicated that the real world was even crazier than she. This gave Jane some comfort, a renewed confidence. Perhaps Alice had left some trace of herself? But what was beginning to nip at her sense of wellbeing was the dreadful fate of Alice and James, which she had shared firsthand until the last moment. Alice Craddock’s reward for a short life of kindness, courage and humility was to be burned alive by evil men. The agonizing injustice of it rankled. Injustice still reigns. Jane’s mood was turning dark again. A nurse came in to check her vitals and administer medication. Her consciousness succumbed to the drugs.
CHAPTER 52
The WTF Moment
Jane was jolted from sleep feeling that she had fallen heavily out of bed. Yet the floor was not linoleum, but cold uneven stone. She opened her eyes to an uncertain scene. As the blur cleared, there was James De Fries lying prone on the floor, his arm outstretched towards her, concern turning to guarded joy at her awakening. Shock stunned her like a cattle prod. WTF! She was back! Subject to forces beyond her understanding—again….Was it a time loop? Some diabolical Groundhog Day? Then it came to her with a rush. The unjust fate of Alice and James had been on her mind before she was drugged to sleep. She had wished she could have fixed it. Now she was back at the last hour in which she could fix it. Was this her purpose? Her destiny? A surge of adrenalin gave her an involuntary shiver.
“Alice, be not afraid, lass. ’Tis I. Did they harm you?” asked James, noting the mark of a recent blow. He prayed she was not the snarling loon of the morning.
“James…” Alice murmured, after a moment’s silence. Jane realized that she had just made Alice say his name, as though her mind were lodged within Alice’s, a curious melding that Jane had not previously experienced. She could feel Alice’s thoughts and steer them into speech, yet she sensed that Alice remained unaware of the intrusion. Jane’s thoughts whirred as she processed her new predicament, recalling all that had happened and would still happen unless she could prevent it. It was as if within a nanosecond she had received and absorbed a file containing Alice’s life from its beginning. How much or how little should she say to James? If her approach failed, she might just be burnt to a crisp with Alice.
“My love...” she whispered, needing him to accept her as the Alice he adored, if she were to change his fate and thereby hers. As she uttered the words, she felt a warmth spreading through her, the wellspring of love Alice gave to this man. Even bruised, disheveled and dirty he was a strikingly handsome man with green eyes that seemed to bore right into her. Just like Paul. But she could not speak to him as she might to Paul. How could she predict his reaction? He might think her mad, or worse, the witch she was accused of being. This might cause events to fork in a different direction. Jane was concerned about triggering the phenomenon known in chaos theory as the Butterfly Effect. What if it was more than a theory? If she prevented pre-ordained deaths, how changed would her world be when she woke up? If she woke up…Well, she had no choice. She had to do something or die.
She reached to touch his hand, but their feet were chained to separate pillars. Their outstretched fingers remained inches apart. James gave her a rueful smile. “I have been granted Queen’s audience, by right of birth.” He went on to explain that his late stepfather had served the Tudors well over the years. “The Queen knows the estates are mine. I will prove the accusations against me are lies, created by my uncle to steal my inheritance.”
“The Queen will deny you…”
“How kn
ow you this?” asked James taken aback.
“I heard the men talking. Your uncle and the priest. They paid me no mind,” Jane said, dissembling as Alice as best she could.
“Then I will demand trial by combat and challenge my accuser.”
“He will appoint a champion. Cedric of Winchester.”
James, again taken aback, heard a new inflection she put on some of her words. Was she still a little touched?
Jane noted his reaction. She had spoken as Jane not Alice, an error she quickly corrected.
“How know you this?” James asked once more.
Again she lied. “They spoke of it,”
Before he could question her further, she asked: “Do you love me? “
“I do, with all my heart.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Aye, you are pure and good.”
“Do you believe that God may give a special gift even to the humblest?”
James could not grasp the import of her questions.
“I have God’s gift of second sight. “
While Jane was not yet ready to accept fully that mankind was ruled by a benevolent deity (though the concept was growing on her) she understood the persuasive power of the word “God” to a man in whose culture atheism was unthinkable. God was her best hope to make him to do what she needed him to do.
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