When the Walls Fell

by Monique Martin

  Max untied the strings to the brown paper and unwrapped a block of Limburger cheese. He shoved it toward the guard who winced and covered his nose with his sleeve.

  “Cover it up,” the guard said. “People actually eat that?”

  “English,” Max said with a nod over his shoulder and a shake of his head.

  The guard seemed to find that an adequate explanation. He nodded and held out his hand. Max greased his palm with another small bribe and the guard left them alone.

  “Who says corruption’s a bad thing?” Max said.

  Elizabeth took the package from him and slipped it through the bars to Simon. “This is for later. When you’re alone.”

  She asked him about his guards, how many there were, when they checked the room. Anything he could tell her about their patterns, numbers and locations. They were lucky in that it appeared the police felt their City Hall jail was inescapable and didn’t guard the prisoners very carefully. And why should they? The outer walls were thick masonry with two layers of bricks.

  Simon said that last night a guard had checked on him around two or three a.m., he couldn’t be sure. And then they didn’t return until after dawn, probably closer to six a.m. That was pushing it, but they could make it work. They had to.

  Other than being cranky about his lack of tea, Simon appeared to be absurdly calm. But she knew him better than that and could see the worry in his eyes. She kissed him and told him not to worry. It was a stupid thing to say. How could either of them not worry? But she said it and he said it back to her and there was some strange comfort in it even if neither really believed what the other was saying.

  The next stop was the Graham’s. She had to try one more time to convince Mary Graham to leave. However, when they arrived the butler told them that his mistress wasn’t at home. She’d received a telephone call early that morning and left without telling anyone where she was going.

  Elizabeth could feel the ball in the pit of stomach start to spin. She knew where she’d gone, just not why, although now it hardly mattered. Madame Petrovka could have threatened her or promised her something and in Mary’s state she might have believed anything.

  But maybe it wasn’t too late. She and Max hurried across town to the Haight and Madame Petrovka’s. If Elizabeth could find out what she wanted maybe she could make a deal for Mary’s life. That is if Mary was still alive. The ball in her stomach dropped at the thought.

  She and Max pounded on the front door and Mr. Stryker invited them inside as if they’d shown up for tea. But when he opened the door to the salon, he blocked Max’s path.

  “You wait here,” he said. “The girl can go in.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.” Max stepped around Stryker, but the small man was fast and jabbed a crooked finger into Max’s chest. “I said, you wait.”

  “It’s all right,” Elizabeth said, knowing it wasn’t.

  “I’ll be right out here,” Max assured her as he shoved Stryker’s hand off his chest.

  Stryker smiled that awful yellow smile of his. “Good lad.”

  Elizabeth walked into the salon and the door closed behind her. Madame Petrovka reclined casually in a large chair rolling a coin in her fingers and then palming it.

  “Where is she?” Elizabeth demanded.

  “Please, sit down.” Madame Petrovka rolled the coin one more time and then it vanished from her hand. She waved it with a flourish. Elizabeth was not impressed.

  “Where is Mary Graham?”

  “She’s safe.” She must have seen the wheels in Elizabeth’s head turning, imagining the layout of the house. “Not here, of course. That would be careless. Now, please sit.”

  Elizabeth sat down stiffly. She tried not to let the relief show on her face. Mary was still alive. Simon still had a chance.

  “So much more civilized. When you’ve experienced what I have, you learn to appreciate the small courtesies.” Madame Petrovka poured tea as she spoke. “Tea?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Just Mary, thanks.”

  Madame Petrovka ignored that remark. “I think it’s only fair since I’ve answered your question, that you should answer one of mine.”

  When Madame Petrovka spoke again, all traces of her Russian accent were gone. She sounded almost like she was from the mid-west. “Why do you care? What are the Graham’s to you?”

  “That’s two questions,” Elizabeth said. “But the answer is the same for both. I don’t like to see someone, anyone, manipulated and abused.”

  Madame Petrovka laughed. “Manipulated and abused?” Her laughter stopped abruptly and her demeanor shifted from curious to intense and more than a little frightening. “You have no idea what those words really mean.”

  Elizabeth wasn’t about to be intimidated. Not now, with everything on the line. “I don’t know what happened to you or what you think happened to you—”

  “Don’t you? I thought everyone in the Council would know by now. Or did Charles lie about that too?”

  Elizabeth’s fingernails dug into the fabric of the sofa cushion and she struggled to keep her voice calm. “The Council?”

  “How did they find me?”

  Sweet Aunt Jabippy. What did Petrovka have to do with the Council? “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Madame Petrovka’s eyes grew unnaturally dark for a moment and Elizabeth could feel the air grow instantly cold. “I saw the watch.”

  Oh, this was not good. Definitely not good. Elizabeth waited until the storm seemed to have passed. Madame Petrovka was either crazy or possessed or both and worse yet, she knew about time travel and the Council. Time for a change of tactics. “How do you know about that?”

  Madame Petrovka huffed impatiently. “The same as you do, my dear. I’m one of them.”

  Elizabeth struggled to maintain her composure. Of all the things Elizabeth had expected that wasn’t one of them. Travers hasn’t said anything about another time traveler. It made her wonder what else he’d conveniently left out.

  “Or at least I was,” Madame Petrovka continued. “Charles Graham and I were partners…and lovers until he betrayed me.”

  Know thy enemy. If it worked for Sun Tzu… “What happened?”

  Madame Petrovka studied her a moment and then leaned back in her chair. “Why not? You actually remind me of myself those many years ago. If you live, this might serve as a cautionary tale of sorts.”

  Elizabeth tried to ignore the “if you live” part. “You and Graham were on an assignment together?”

  “Jack the Ripper,” she said with a disquieting smile. “It was quite the plum. It was going incredibly well until I made two mistakes. The first was that I stupidly lost the watch and that led to my second mistake, trusting that as long as Charles had his, it wouldn’t matter.”

  “He left you behind?”

  “We’d gotten separated right before the eclipse, but he could have stayed. He could have looked for me. But he… he just left me there. Left me there to rot.”

  Madame Petrovka took a sip of tea and narrowed her eyes. “Do you know what 1888 London was like for a woman alone, with no money, no connections?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Not even in your worst nightmares can you imagine it. I was sent to Bedlam. Have you heard of it?”

  Elizabeth nodded. She’d heard horror stories about it. About the barbaric treatments they’d used on the patients.

  “I spent twelve years there. Twelve. Years. They did unspeakable things in the beginning. Anyone who wasn’t mad when they arrived was surely mad when they left. If they left. I found my own way out.”

  It was all starting to make sense now. She couldn’t get her revenge against Charles Graham, but she could on Victor Graham.

  Madame Petrovka took a sip of her tea. “It took years to cultivate my new life. But coming from the future does have its advantages. A few months ago I read about Victor Graham and the rest as they say is history.”

  Elizabeth
felt a flash of pity for the woman, but tamped it down quickly. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, but this won’t change anything. Victor and Mary Graham didn’t do anything to you.”

  “They had a son, who had a son, who had a son.”

  “But murder and torture,” Elizabeth said. “That’s evil. You’re not evil.”

  “No?” she said as she set down her teacup and leaned back in her chair. “You know, most people think evil is something abstracted from man. A demon that crawls out of a pit and takes over some poor man’s soul. They think demons are drawn to places like Bedlam. And, oh yes, they’re quite real, but demons aren’t drawn to places like Bedlam. They’re forged there. They’re created out of the screams and the agony and the hopelessness. Evil is truly man-made.”

  That was a frightening concept and one that Elizabeth didn’t dare think about right now. She needed to stay focused. On Mary. On Simon. Why hadn’t Madame Petrovka simply killed Mary Graham? Assuming she was actually alive. Was she keeping her alive as some sort of bargaining chip? And that’s when she realized what the price for Mary Graham was going to be.

  “You want the watch.”

  Madame Petrovka’s eyes fluttered. “I do.”

  Handing over a time travel device to an insane murderer was generally not a good idea unless you didn’t have any other ideas. “And you’ll give me Mary Graham, unharmed, in exchange?”

  “You have my word.”

  For all that was worth. It was a deal with the Devil, but it was the only deal on the table. And maybe, just maybe, Elizabeth had a trick or two up her own sleeve. “Agreed. But, there are some things I have to take care of first. I’ll need some time.”

  Elizabeth racked her brain for a good meeting place. The middle of the Golden Gate Bridge would have been dramatic, but also stupid considering it wouldn’t be built for another thirty years. She wished she’d done more research into the city before she’d come. While the bridge wouldn’t do, Golden Gate Park would. Open spaces, if they had to ride out the earthquake, and it looked like they would, that was probably their best bet.

  “We’ll meet later,” Elizabeth said, “At the Temple of Music.”

  “Good, when?”

  She was anxious; that was good. “Five.”

  “This evening?”

  “No,” Elizabeth said and knew this part was going to be a tough sell, but she didn’t have any choice. “In the morning.”

  Madame Petrovka shook her head. “Minutes before the earthquake? That’s impossible.”

  “So is time travel,” Elizabeth said. “Without a watch.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Elizabeth picked at her sandwich and pushed it away. She walked over to the fireplace and stared into the flames. All she could do now was wait. And it blew. Teddy was still hard at work on her second project for him and there wasn’t anything she could do to help. The police had accepted their last bribe and she couldn’t even get in to see Simon again.

  She chewed on what was left of her fingernails and wondered if she’d made the right choices. Her conversation with Travers came back to her with stark clarity. Time was changing and now she was beginning to wonder if, ultimately, she was the one responsible.

  It was bad enough that she’d given Teddy the idea for the watches in the first place, now she’d given him an actual watch. Was she responsible for the birth of the Council or would tomorrow show she was responsible for its end?

  Mucking with History: My True Story.

  Or was it something worse than that? Simon had never believed what Travers had told her. And more and more it looked like he’d been right.

  “Idiot!” She pounded her fist down onto the mantle and spun around.

  She really needed to stop trusting people so blindly. She wasn’t a child, she needed to stop acting like one. What if everything that had happened was all part of some Council plan and she was just a willing pawn in all of it?

  The more she thought about it the angrier she got. Angry with the Council for lying to her. No matter what happened, they’d lied by omission at the very least. She’d been fool enough to leap before looking. Simon was here and in prison, all because of her, and unless her half-baked plan worked, she might never see him again. The thought made her truly ill.

  A soft knock on the door brought her back to the present. Mrs. Eldridge poked her inside. “Are you all right, dear?”

  “I’m fine.”

  It was clear she wasn’t and Mrs. Eldridge nodded toward her uneaten sandwich. “You really should eat something. Can’t save the world on an empty stomach, now can you?”

  Elizabeth took the older woman’s hand and drew strength from her. The hand in hers was fragile, but the woman wasn’t. She could only imagine the things Mrs. Eldridge had been through in her life and, yet, she was kind and gentle.

  “I’m not very good at waiting.”

  “No one really is,” Mrs. Eldridge said patting hand. “Some of us are just better at pretending we are.”

  ***

  Simon waited at least a half hour after the last guard had appeared before he set to his task. The light in the cell was dim, but his eyes had adjusted well and he sat down on his bunk and began to unwrap his package.

  The odor was quite pungent and smelled a bit like a moldy, stale room full of dirty socks. And yet, if you could look past the smell, the cheese was really rather good.

  Simon picked up the round and felt the ridge of the cuts to the bottom of the rind. Carefully, he popped the bottom out. Embedded inside were four small colored vials and a tiny note that read: Red, then blue. Don’t touch. xoxo

  He held the vials carefully. They were tiny. The acid or whatever it was inside them must be incredibly aggressive for such a small quantity to be able to burn through iron. With great care, Simon put two of the four vials, one red and one blue, back into their hollows in the cheese. He’d initially thought using the cheese was a bit ridiculous, but not only had the odor frightened off any inspection of the package, the cheese itself was a perfect container to cushion and protect the fragile vials.

  He walked to his cell door and felt the plates that covered the lock. The iron was cold and quite substantial under his fingers. He looked down at the two small vials in his hand and knew it was time.

  Very carefully, he broke the tip off the red vial. Sure to keep it upright, he reached through the bars. He had to move slowly or he might spill or, worse yet, drop the vial. It was awkward, but he felt the panel of the lock with his free fingers and then tipped the contents of the vial into the keyhole. He repeated the same process with the blue vial and waited.

  Nothing happened. Of course. Why should anything be that simple.

  Simon was about to reach for the second set of vials when an incredibly acrid smoke began to filter up from the lock casing and then the entire thing burst into a flash of sparks like thermite eating through metal. The fire burned itself out almost as quickly as it had begun.

  Simon approached the cell door cautiously. The area where the lock had been was mottled with sizzling holes. He pushed on the bars above it and the door swung open.

  “Brilliant.”

  He grabbed the other two vials and hurried across the office to the filing cabinet, but it was locked. Thank heaven he had two sets of acid. It would take something just that strong to open it.

  Simon broke the tip of the first vial and was just about to pour it into the keyhole on the cabinet when a voice behind him said, “How did you do that?”

  Simon jumped and nearly dropped the vial, but managed to keep it from slipping from his fingers. Barely. He spun around and didn’t see anyone at first. And then he saw a figure emerge from the darkness of the adjoining cell. The man wrapped his hands around the iron bars and pressed his face between them. “Can you help me?”

  Olaf Karlsson.

  “How long have you been there?” Simon asked. They’d last seen him on the streets in front of the Palace hotel where he’d helped them escape the mob.
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  Olaf shook his head. “It is all blurry. My head is not well.”

  No, Simon thought, probably not. Olaf had taken a good crack to skull that day. And now he was here, stuck in this deathtrap because of it. Of course, he might have been arrested anyway. It wasn’t their fault he was here, was it?

  Simon couldn’t afford to stand there and chat. Who knew when the guards might decide to check on them? He had to move. He had to get the watch and go.

  Simon turned away from Olaf and faced the cabinet. He was just about to use the first vial, but his hand wouldn’t move. This time the little voice in his head wasn’t Elizabeth’s; it was his own.

  “Damnit,” Simon whispered to the darkness. He couldn’t do it.

  With a loud grunt, he stormed over to Olaf. “Stand back.”

  Olaf did as he was told and Simon poured the first and then the second vial into the lock. The iron burned away just as the first had and Simon pulled open the cell door.

  Olaf stared at the hole in the iron where the lock had been in disbelief and stuck out his hand to Simon. “Thank you.”

  Simon shook it quickly. “We need to go. Quietly.”

  Simon cast one last glance at the filing cabinet. He hated leaving the watch behind, but at least Elizabeth had hers. There was nothing to be done for it anyway. He couldn’t break into the cabinet now without trying to smash it to bits. But that would have taken too long and been far too loud. If only it hadn’t been his grandfather’s.

  “Come.” Olaf had opened the door and was poking his head outside. “It is clear.”

  The side door was just where Elizabeth had said it would be and Simon and Olaf slipped out of the building unseen.

  Elizabeth was there, waiting for him, just as she’d promised. He smiled in greeting and she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. “All right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Thank you,” Olaf said.

  Elizabeth pulled back startled. “Where’d he come from? Where’d you come from?”

  Simon interrupted her. They had to get as far away from City Hall as they could. “I’ll explain it to you later. We need to go.”