Box Set - The Time Magnet Series

by Russell Moran

  I felt my hood being pulled off my head.

  “Buster!” I screamed. I looked to my left and saw that Jack was okay. I then looked at the floor and saw our two houseguests lying in a pool of blood.

  Two Navy shore patrolmen ran into the hallway and began to tape off the area as a crime scene.

  Jack and I ran to hug each other. As we collided, we both realized that our hands were still cuffed behind our backs. I crashed into Jack’s large chest and my nose slammed into his left shoulder blade. It started to bleed. Buster, always the gentlemen, fished the keys out of the pocket of one of our houseguests and set us free.

  Jack and I hugged, the kind of hug you give someone who, until a few moments ago, you thought you’d never see again. I looked into his eyes, dabbing the slight trickle of blood from my nose.

  “Your move,” I said.

  Jack actually laughed at my lame attempt at humor.

  ***

  Buster gestured toward the library and the three of us walked in. He closed the door behind us.

  “People from Naval Intelligence will be here shortly to get your statements, but I want to let you know what just happened.”

  “I think I speak for both Jack and myself when I say that we’re somewhat curious.”

  “This is what I’ve been worried about. I found out what was about to happen only 20 minutes ago. I was tipped off by one of my operatives, thank God. I tried to call you, but they cut the phone line. So what I was worried about is none other than the Muslim Brotherhood. Over the years it’s going to branch out into things like al Qaeda and ISIS, but here we are in 1940 and we’ve just seen something the three of us are familiar with – a terrorist kidnapping attempt.”

  “I could tell from their accents that these guys are Arabs,” said Jack. “What the hell did they want with us?”

  “My inside guy tells me that the Brotherhood, or one of its local branches, is positively obsessed with the story of you two time travelling. From what I can piece together, they wanted you to teach them how to do it. You can’t make this shit up.”

  Odd as it was, both Jack and I laughed.

  “Now there’s an idea,” said Jack. “Maybe we could start a franchise, the Ashley and Jack Academy of Time Travel.

  “Buster,” I said, “I have a question from left field. Could this have anything to do with the Empire State Building?”

  “Well,” said Buster, “I have some amazing news. I shouldn’t even be telling you this, because it’s absolutely Top Secret, but here goes. All eight Empire State Building bombers are Middle Eastern. Law enforcement has been concentrating on finding German or Japanese suspects, and nobody seemed to think the Arab connection was significant. This war suddenly has a new front.”

  Chapter 56

  Kurt Schweitzer here.

  As Germany’s top intelligence official in the United States, I’m accustomed to being told about big events before they occur. But I knew nothing about the bombing of the Empire State Building. My office is only four blocks from 14th Avenue in Whitestone, a street with a great view of the building. When I heard the commotion, I ran to the corner of 14th Avenue and 154th Street to see it for myself. By the time I got to the corner, the building was already half destroyed.

  I just received a cable from Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo and my superior. According to Himmler, the Fuehrer is enraged. I can’t blame him. Everybody assumes the act was ordered or influenced by Germany, even though there is no evidence for that conclusion. It has been over a week since the bombing and the American authorities are combing through the rubble, looking for clues. Because it’s essential that my identity remain a secret, I haven’t visited the Midtown area, but have ordered five of my operatives to visit the site of the disaster. I’m expecting a report in two days.

  Somebody is pulling strings, powerful strings. I’m supposed to know about these matters. Himmler tells me that the Fuehrer wants to know why I didn’t have any knowledge of the plot to bomb the building. I want to know the same thing.

  Goering also wants me to update him about the strange aircraft that landed at LaGuardia, and my plans to steal it. I guess if you’re commandant of the Luftwaffe that makes sense. He told me that my orders came directly from Hitler himself.

  But now Himmler wants me to find out everything about the bombing of the Empire State Building. That also makes sense, especially because Himmler is the chief of the Gestapo. That order also came directly from the Fuehrer, according to Himmler.

  But I still know nothing about the strange aircraft, and I know less about the Empire State Building.

  I’m sure Hitler will understand.

  Or perhaps I should stop making stupid jokes with myself.

  Chapter 57

  Jack and I just returned to the house after our visit to the chapel and our morning run. It was Sunday morning December 1, 1940, a little over a week since Jack and I were almost kidnapped. Sylvia Tanner, God bless her, found a nearby bakery that made the best bagels in the world, well the best in Brooklyn anyway. We knew that Buster was meeting that morning with an important governmental official, whose name we didn’t know. We expected him shortly to fill us in and join us for bagels.

  While we waited for Buster, Jack and I sat on the couch in the living room holding hands. I’ve noticed something about our life together since we came through the wormhole a few weeks ago. Jack and I are actually growing closer. I didn’t think that was possible, but it was happening. I don’t doubt that our strange circumstances have something to do with it, but there’s something more going on. It’s like we just met and fell in love, even though that happened three years ago (or 150 years ago if you make a time travel adjustment to 1861 – I’ll never get used to this time travel crap.). We can’t seem to stop touching each other, holding each other, kissing each other. Why the hell am I analyzing this? Jack and I love each other. Case closed.

  ***

  At 11:30 AM, the doorbell rang. It was Buster, and not a moment too soon. Jack and I were starving.

  “Join us for bagels, or did you eat breakfast with the mystery man you met with?”

  “No,” said Buster, “I’m famished. My contact doesn’t like to mix meetings with food.”

  “So who was this guy?” Jack asked as we sat around the kitchen table.

  Buster was spreading cream cheese over his lox on a warm bagel. He looked at Jack, then at me. I thought I knew what he was about to say. He didn’t surprise me.

  “Ashley, Jack, I’m sure you understand, but you two simply do not have a need to know the identity of my contact at this point.”

  I was about to throw a tub of cream cheese at Buster, but managed to get my anger under control. The look on Jack’s face told me that he was as pleased as I was with Buster’s response.

  “Commander,” I said, figuring that I’d pull rank, although Buster’s role was not a military one, “I think it’s time we get clear on something. Jack and I, along with you, don’t belong here. We’re from 2016, and we got here courtesy of a wormhole we had no intention of flying through. Understand this, Buster: there is nothing, not one – fucking – thing, that Jack and I don’t have a need to know. So who is this mystery man you met with, what is his name, and when do Jack and I get to meet him?”

  I don’t like to cuss; it’s unprofessional. But I was furious, and I felt the need to make a strong point.

  Buster put his face in his hands. As a super spook, Buster is great at masking his emotions. But he wasn’t doing a good job of emotion-masking. I’m not sure how a person can look embarrassed, but Buster looked just like that.

  “Could I have some more coffee, please?” Buster said.

  “Not on your friggin’ life – until you answer my question.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Buster, “I apologize. I won’t sugar coat it. I was wrong. You and Jack have a need to know everything, and you will know everything. Will you two accept my apology?”

  Jack shook his hand. I gave him a friendly whack o
n the shoulder. Then I poured him another cup of coffee.

  “The man’s name is General William Donovan.”

  “Wild Bill Donovan?” asked Jack, my Google-brained husband.

  “Yes,” said Buster, “the one and only. He’s the guy who will formally head up the OSS, the precursor to the CIA, in less than a year. Right now he’s in the planning stage, but think of him as the country’s top spook. He emphasized that his position is Top Secret. Well hell, both of you have top secret clearances, and as I’ve just said, I agree that you have a need to know. Now, can I please have another bagel?”

  “No more need to know bullshit?” I inquired.

  “Promise. Bagel please, with some more lox and cream cheese.”

  Chapter 58

  I’m getting too old for this. Who would think that I, Sylvia Tanner, would get involved in a big Top Secret project? With Nigel Blake of all people. Don’t get me wrong, Nigel is a good man, a mensch. He’s also the smartest man I ever met. And for some reason he thinks that old Sylvia can be of help.

  Nigel wants me to push forward our knowledge of digital technology. I have to admit, he probably picked the right lady. Nobody knows more about this than me. But all of my knowledge is theoretical. I have derived mathematical formulas that definitely tell me that a digital future is on our doorstep. But we have a problem with our computational power. Jack Thurber, that handsome boychik who’s married to that pretty admiral, told me that the first digital computer would be made in 1942. That’s two years from now. He also told me of a crazy instrument called a transistor that could double and triple the computing power of any machine. But that won’t be invented until 1947. This time travel business is meshugga, but it does give a crazy old mathematical lady like me a lot to think about.

  Nigel wants to come up with a machine that can read the Flight Data Recorder on that amazing airplane that Jack and Ashley flew here. They call the recorder a Black Box. Without the ability to read the data in the box, Ashley and Jack can never find their way back through that thing they call a wormhole. That’s how they came here to 1940 from 2016. I wish I was younger. All of this crazy business is the most exciting project I’ve ever worked on. Nigel really likes Ashley and Jack and he wants to help them. I don’t blame him. They’re good people. They probably saved my life by convincing my son, Ikey, to get me out of Berlin, away from those crazy Nazi bastards.

  Margie Tanner, my beautiful daughter-in-law, drove me to Nigel Blake’s company in Lake Success. I’ve been there before, but I can never get over the size of the place. It looks as much like a university campus as a defense company.

  A young man met Margie and me at the door and escorted us down a long corridor to Nigel’s office. When he opened the door, two blond furry streaks of tail wagging excitement came bounding our way. I had met them before, Carnegie and Rockefeller, the two craziest Golden Retrievers I’d ever seen. Both Margie and I like dogs, which was a good thing, because Carnegie and Rockefeller seemed to think that they were our personal welcome committee.

  At the end of his gigantic office stood Nigel Blake himself, arms extended and face lit up by a broad smile.

  “Margie and Sylvia, my loveys. Please come in.”

  An assistant led the dogs out of the office, but not before Rockefeller slurped every inch of both of my hands.

  Margie excused herself and said she’d be back to pick me up later.

  ***

  Nigel pressed a button – he simply pressed a button – and two men came into the office wearing lab coats, looking like doctors.

  Sylvia, it’s my pleasure to introduce Bill Howell and Jim Agransky, two of the smartest physicists you’ll ever meet.

  “Mrs. Tanner,” Howell said, “It’s an honor to meet you. I read your paper a few years back in the Journal of Mathematics. You’re an amazing woman.” Agransky nodded in agreement.

  “And here is what you folks will be working on.”

  Nigel reached down and lifted a Black Box off the floor.

  “This,” said Nigel with a twinkle in his eyes, “is the Flight Data Recorder from Ashley Patterson’s F-18. You’ll notice it’s not black but orange, but for some reason they call it a Black Box.”

  “How did you get that?” I asked.

  “Ashley and Jack gave it to me. Our objective is to read the data contained on this instrument.”

  “Oh, no problem, Nigel,” I said. “All we need is a digital computer and a few transistors, none of which exist.”

  Ikey tells me all the time that I shouldn’t be so sarcastic, but I can’t help myself.

  “So you’re asking a poor little old lady to bang her brains out on a scientific problem nobody has been able to solve?”

  Blake threw back his head and bellowed with laughter.

  “Sylvia, darling. Your ‘poor little old lady from Brooklyn’ act is adorable. But I can tell from the look on your face that you feel like a little girl again, a brilliant little girl.”

  Then I laughed. Nigel’s right. This could be the most exciting project I’ve ever worked on in my life. But I had to get in one last shot.

  “Just don’t yell at me. I’m a sensitive woman.”

  “I’ve spoken to your son, Admiral Tanner, and it’s perfectly okay with him if you move here onto Blake headquarters for a few months. We have a lovely apartment picked out for you, with a view of the pond.”

  “So Nigel,” I said, “you’re going through all of this just to help a nice couple of time travelers to get home.”

  “Well, of course, but I do have some ancillary motives.”

  “Such as?” I asked.

  “Blake Industries will own the patents to some of the greatest technological breakthroughs of the century. And, as always, my policy is that the patents will be co-owned by the designers. That would be you, Bill Howell, and Jim Agransky. You will all become quite wealthy.”

  “At my age I don’t need much wealth, but I love the idea of passing it on to my Ikey and his wife. This project may kill me, but I’ll die happy.”

  After Nigel and I said our goodbyes, I walked down the hall with my two young new friends.

  Chapter 59

  On Wednesday, December 4, Jack and I went to William Donovan’s office, where he and Buster waited for us. At 9 AM we were ready for our meeting. My first impression of Donovan confirmed what Buster told us. He’s savvy, obviously bright, with a great sense of humor. He seems like a guy who takes things seriously, but not necessarily himself. He also strikes me as a person who doesn’t stand for bullshit, which is fine by me. Neither do I.

  Jack and I sat next to each other, holding hands. Jack softly let go of my hand, patting it after he did. Jack didn’t want us to appear as a love struck married couple. He was right, as usual. But I just love being next to him, love touching him. Actually there isn’t anything I don’t enjoy doing with Jack. Did I mention that Jack and I are growing closer with every day? Okay, stop. It’s time to act like an admiral.

  “So Buster tells me that he’s a spy from the future, and that you two are deputy spies,” said Donovan with a hearty laugh. “In a short while we’re going to visit the site of Empire State Building disaster, but I want to go over a few things first. I completely agree with Buster that you two will be in on everything that happens. I will assume, operationally and factually, that you both have a need to know. Although I don’t yet have the formal title, I will soon be the director of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, which, according to Buster, will become the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, general,” I said, “why did the president find it necessary to create another agency?”

  “The name’s Bill, please, and I’ll be happy to answer your question. Ashley, if I may.”

  I nodded politely.

  “It finally became apparent that we have too many intelligence operations going on at the same time – Treasury, War, Navy, etcetera. People were starting to trip over their own shoelaces, and even worse than
that, the heads of all these agencies treated their intelligence data as private records. Simply put, there’s bickering and a lack of coordination of intelligence. I suppose, with the CIA in the future, all that stuff finally goes away.”

  The three of us laughed and filled Donovan in on what happened just before 9/11, how the CIA, FBI, ONI and other agencies failed to share information, resulting in a disaster.

  “Things improved after 9/11, General Bill, but what we call turf wars still continue in 2016.”

  “Turf wars?”

  “Yes, people battling to protect their piece of ground or turf.”

  “God, how I love the way you 2016 people talk,” said Donovan, with another laugh.

  “Before we go, a couple of matters. Buster explained to me how you all got here. I find this wormhole story quite unbelievable, but I can’t come up with an alternate explanation, so I’m believing it on a provisional basis. I hope you understand my skepticism.”

  “We understand completely, Bill,” I said. “I know I speak for all of us when I say that we find it unbelievable too. If you find another explanation, please share it with us.”

  “But since the Empire State Building incident,” I said, “we’re more confused than ever. When we realized that we came through a wormhole, and determined that we were in the year 1940, we figured our main goal was to warn the authorities and then try to figure out how to get the hell out of here and go back to 2016. I know Buster gave you a rundown on our ‘upcoming’ history, a history that we thought we knew about, because we came from the future. With the Empire State Building disaster that idea went out the window. So all of the things Buster told you about, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, the Normandy Invasion, up to and including the Allied victory over both Japan and Germany – all of that stuff is up in the air as far as we’re concerned. If the Empire State Building bombing didn’t happen, according to us, then what the hell else happened, or didn’t happen. We’re stumped. Jack here (I squeezed his knee – I have to stop doing this in public.) is considered by many to be an expert in the crazy phenomenon called time travel. Margie Tanner, Admiral Tanner’s wife, is also an expert on the phenomenon. She wrote a book that Jack relied on heavily for the book he wrote in 2010. We know a lot about time travel, and at the same time, we know nothing about time travel.”