Valentines Day

by Bob Mayer

  “And have Hannah send someone from the Cellar to visit me?” Ivar asked. “Perhaps Roland’s girlfriend, Neeley? Hell, Roland would do me in himself if you told him to. Not too many original ideas in his head. The two of them could make it a play date, then go have lunch.”

  “You could work for us in the present,” Dane said. “Continue your research into the Turing Time Computer. Try to discern what the Shadow’s plan is. Maybe even figure out where they’ll strike next before they start to open their bubble.”

  “Wouldn’t that be looking into the future?”

  “It would be giving us intelligence on possibilities,” Dane said.

  Ivar leaned back in the hard wooden chair. “I’ve never been a part of,” he finally said.

  Dane waited.

  “This team is all I have,” Ivar said. “The closest I’ve got to family. You know I have no one back in the present; assuming we’re not in the present here and I seriously doubt that we are. If I’d had any strong ties I wouldn’t have been asked to join. No one on the team has anyone back there in the world. Hell, Mrs. Jones would’ve never brought me into the Nightstalkers if she hadn’t been sure I’d sign on. I don’t think many people said no to her.” He stood. “I’m here to stay. I’ll go on missions. I’ll work on the Turing when I’m here in the Palace or back in our time. But I don’t think we know all we think we know. I don’t think you know all. There’s more to all this. And I’m keeping my eyes open for it.”

  “An open mind is fine,” Dane said, “as long as you adhere to the rules of the Time Patrol.”

  Ivar leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. “Let me ask you something. We’ve been on the run ever since we got recruited. But there’s something that’s been bugging me. That no one else has brought up. Maybe they’ve blocked it out. Maybe it doesn’t matter. But when the Nightstalkers were initially alerted, we were told we were looking for the Time Patrol. The team before us. But then, once we took out the Ratnik, we were told that it was just a recruitment test. But there was another team before us, wasn’t there? There had to be. This place just wasn’t sitting here, waiting for us to show up.”

  Dane didn’t respond.

  “And you’re not going to tell me what happened to the team before us, are you?”

  “You don’t have a need to know,” Dane said. “Do you have any plans for your time off?”

  “Are you asking if I’m going to Chile?” Ivar asked. “Visit where I did my last mission, like the others do?”

  “I was being friendly,” Dane said, which elicited a look of disbelief from Ivar.

  “No point in going to Chile,” Ivar said, “if Foreman brought Dominic here. There’s nothing there for me. I’m going to meet up with Doc in New York City. I’ve got a theory that might help with the Turing Time Computer I need to discuss with him.”

  Dane raised an eyebrow. “What is that?”

  “Math.”

  Nine-Eleven Memorial, New York City.

  It is never easy to commemorate the dead. Over his years of service, Eagle had attended numerous ceremonies and conducted eulogies for fallen comrades. Too many.

  He’d carved names into the table in the Den while the team was the Nightstalkers and had added names to the table in their Time Patrol team room inside the Possibility Palace.

  The solemn aura of this place was palpable, seven stories below Manhattan street level. People spoke in hushed whispers. No one was taking selfies.

  Eagle stood in front of a wall covered with 2,983 individual paper watercolors in different shades of blue. Each one paid tribute to a person who’d died on 9-11 or in the 1993 Trade Center bombing.

  Beyond the wall was the private repository of over 8,000 human remains.

  Inscribed on the wall were letters forged in steel recovered from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. The letters were fifteen inches tall and highlighted by subtle spotlights.

  Eagle read the quote once more, processing the words:

  No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time

  Virgil

  Eagle, who’s been recruited into the Nightstalkers not only because of his superb skills as a pilot and soldier, but also for his prodigious memory, knew exactly where the quote came from. Book IX of the Aeneid by Virgil. He was shaking his head.

  “I know.” Standing next to Eagle was Edith Frobish, the team’s art historian and finder of artifacts. While her memory wasn’t as extensive as his, her advanced education and occupation, working ostensibly as a historian in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, allowed her to converse on a relatively level intellectual playing field with him. “Not quite right.”

  “Quite wrong,” Eagle said, “if taken in context of the original text.”

  “Two Trojan soldiers, correct?” Edith asked.

  “Nisus and Euryalus,” Eagle said. “They’re with Aeneas, fleeing Troy after it was sacked. They go to Italy. To found what would become Rome. At least that’s the story inside the story. Their camp is surrounded by enemies, so the two venture out in the dark and kill enemy soldiers while they’re sleeping. They’re captured in the midst of doing this terrible deed, their heads are cut off, and then paraded in front of the Trojan camp. Why would someone think that appropriate for the innocents who died on Nine-Eleven?”

  “Most people don’t know the context,” Edith pointed out. “Standing by itself, it resonates.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Sometimes you have to just look at the microcosm, not the entire system,” Edith said. “This entire place was initiated by tragedy. And then grew amidst controversy. There was no way to please everyone. This is all a compromise in the face of great emotion.”

  “True,” Eagle agreed. “But perhaps something along the lines of Kipling’s lifting from the 44th chapter of Ecclesiastics for the World War I Memorial would have been better. It’s not about soldiers but about those who die having performed great deeds but also obscurely, whose names might not be remembered by history, but will be by their family and friends. ‘Their seed shall remain forever, and their glory shall not be blotted out. Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore’.”

  “Is that how you feel?” Edith asked.

  Eagle raised an eyebrow in question. Off to their left was the remains of the antennae that had once stood so far above the ground on top of the North Tower; now a mangled mass of steel and wires.

  Edith gave a quick glance about to make sure no one was in earshot. “About the Time Patrol? About battling in secrecy but carving their names in the team room? Reciting their true names? No one but the Team knows of their sacrifice?”

  “Sometimes,” Eagle allowed. The ebony skin on the left side of his shaved skull was pockmarked and rippled from an IED explosion suffered in a war that no longer seemed significant, yet still dragged on. He was six feet tall and carried himself with that unique aura that those in elite units simply had.

  Edith matched him in height, with a lean dancer’s body and a prominent, sharp nose. She held a special place in the Time Patrol because it had been learned that one of the greatest recorders of history is art. If the art changes, then history has changed. While the analysts in the Pit toiled away, Edith was in the here and now, headquarters the Met, always checking on the status of art.

  “What I don’t get,” Eagle said, “is why we couldn’t stop this.” In his own time sense, he was just days removed from 9-11-2001, and was uncertain whether what he felt came from this hallowed ground or his recent experience, or a confusing mixture of the two.

  Edith frowned. “Your Nine-Eleven mission? It didn’t have anything to do with what happened here in New York.”

  “I know.” Eagle sighed. “Nothing good came from that terrible day. Not up to our present as far as I can tell. Just endless war and terrorism. Why didn’t we stop it?”

  “We don’t know what the alternatives could have been,” Edith said. “I’m sure there’s at least one timeline where Nine Eleven, as we know it,
didn’t happen. But we don’t know if the variables might have been worse.”

  “We don’t know if it might have been better, either,” Eagle said.

  “We’re here,” Edith said, reverting to the standard justification of the Time Patrol; not one said lightly given all the timelines that no longer existed. “And you stopped the Shadow from getting Tsar Bomba. Who knows what it would have done with that horrible weapon?”

  “I checked,” Eagle said. “There’s no sign of the wreckage of the Shadow Sphere in the Barents Sea. That thing was huge.”

  “Objects out of their timeline collapse when the time bubble implodes,” Edith said. “There shouldn’t be any sign.” She put an arm around his shoulder. “The important thing is you’re here.”

  They remained still, each deep in thought for a little while before Eagle spoke again. “It’s all so strange,” he said. “I don’t feel like I belong here.”

  “The place or time?” Edith asked.

  “Both.”

  Edith indicated the stairs. “Do you want to leave?”

  Eagle nodded.

  Hand-in-hand they headed for the exit, but then Eagle’s satphone rang, the ringtone familiar: Warren Zevon’s Send Lawyers Guns and Money.

  Fort Meade, Maryland

  Roland had survived numerous ambushes on his various deployments overseas in the Army and his missions in the Nightstalkers and Time Patrol. But as he watched the two women approaching, he was at a loss how to react. Correct procedure, drummed into Roland’s particularly thick skull during Ranger School years ago, was to assault directly into the ambush.

  Attack the attackers.

  Except one of them was Neeley and he could no more ‘attack’ her in any form as run away. A lose-lose scenario. So he stood his ground and braced himself for the unexpected.

  He was standing outside the ‘Puzzle Palace’, the headquarters of the National Security Agency, located on Fort Meade, but separated from the rest of the military installation, surrounded by its own intense cordon of security. The building that the two women were coming out of was covered in one-way black glass which was lined with copper shielding to prevent any unwanted signals or sounds to come in, or, more importantly, out.

  Roland’s I.D. had the highest security clearance possible, but he still sensed eyes on him, both electronic—to be assumed here—and also human. This was one of the most secure places on the planet, but Roland came from a place, the Possibility Palace, that those inside of the Puzzle Palace had no clue existed.

  “Roland,” Neeley said, as the two reached him, “this is Hannah Masterson, my boss. And friend. Hannah, this is my Roland.”

  Roland flushed, not at meeting a woman he’d heard dark stories about, but because Neeley had said ‘my’. He studied the other woman with the frank assessment of a man who viewed everyone as a potential adversary first, possible ally next, or, usually, someone to be disregarded.

  Hannah was over a foot shorter than Roland’s six and a half. Her thick hair had been darkened; Roland now knew about the importance of that after Scout had berated him for not noticing Neeley’s recent attempt to become more fashionable. There were deep worry lines etched around her dark brown eyes, to be expected of someone with her responsibilities. She was trim and appeared fit, something Roland noticed and judged in everyone.

  “I had to meet you, Roland,” Hannah said, extending her hand.

  Roland took it, gingerly, as if touching a delicate vase, but was surprised at her firm grip. He realized anyone who ran the Cellar, the ‘police’ of the covert world, would have to be tough. He just hadn’t expected her to be physically tough since she looked like the suburban housewife that she had, in fact, once been.

  Neeley, on the other hand, resembled both her occupation, assassin, and someone who could hold her own with Roland. Six feet tall, wiry, short black hair, recently darkened, she projected no nonsense.

  “Um, pleased to meet you,” Roland said, his face flushing even darker.

  “Neeley and I go back a while,” Hannah said, “I’m not sure what she’s told you of our past.”

  Roland didn’t think that was a question, because if it was, it was part of the ambush, so he shuffled his feet and said nothing.

  “Hannah, be nice,” Neeley said. “Roland’s clearance is higher than mine.”

  Hannah smiled, but even Roland could feel the lack of warmth. She was assessing him in the same manner he had done her, but with a depth that disconcerted Roland.

  “You and Neeley have worked well together,” Hannah said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Roland said.

  A twitch on the edge of Hanna’s mouth; amusement. “That’s one letter from Madam. I don’t run a whorehouse, Roland. You can call me Hannah.”

  “Yes, ma’—“ Roland began, but caught himself. “All right. Hannah.”

  The three stood awkwardly and then Roland was rescued by a call to action as his phone chimed with Send Lawyers Guns and Money.

  “They’ll wonder where that call came from,” Hannah said, indicating the black-glass building. “Someone in there is trying to figure that out and getting very frustrated. The NSA doesn’t like being frustrated. Of course, they wonder where I come from even though my office is under their building. And I wonder where you come from, so it’s quite the puzzle, wrapped in an enigma.” She suddenly changed, reaching out and putting a hand on Roland’s well-muscled forearm as he pulled the satphone out to answer with his other hand. “You take care of yourself, Roland. You’re important to Neeley and she’s my friend.”

  Roland wasn’t sure if that was a kind gesture or a threat. And he noted that she didn’t say take care of Neeley—the implication, of course, that Neeley was more than capable of doing that.

  The Billop House, Staten Island, New York

  Nothing. Doc felt nothing. No ghostly spirit flitting about, no Fate hovering in the ethereal plane waiting to pass judgment, no mythical Goddess and her Pandora’s box of ill.

  Just cold as the wind whipped along the beach on the Staten Island side of Arthur Kill, the narrow waterway separating it from New Jersey. It also smelled pretty bad, since he was across from the swamps of northern New Jersey and surrounded by the various refineries dotting the shoreline on both sides. He was at the southwest corner of Staten Island.

  Doc turned away from the water and looked at the old Billop House. He reached in a pocket and retrieved a pair of old spectacles. Very old. Doc turned them over, knowing he should have reported them during debrief after the Nine-Eleven mission, but a part of him felt that they were his; earned by saving Benjamin Franklin’s life from the Legion assassin.

  Technically, of course, Doc knew he’d had help. Pandora and Pyrrha.

  And the ghost of Billop House, a young serving girl murdered by the original owner.

  At least the girl was at peace now.

  Doc walked toward the old house, now in the National Register of Historic Places. Here, on 11 September 1776, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Edward Rutledge had met with Admiral Howe to negotiate a possible peace between the Colonies and the Crown.

  The negotiations had failed.

  That much Doc knew to be true.

  He paused, went to one knee, and vomited.

  He’d been assured he was healthy, despite the radiation he’d been bathed in during the D-Day mission in Pakistan. He’d been treated with cutting edge medicine, Atlantean medicine, he’d been told by Dane.

  Was that true? He didn’t feel healthy. Doc knew that the Russian Army used to issue its soldiers pills labeled ‘anti-radiation’. A placebo to keep them fighting through a nuclear wasteland as long as they could.

  Doc stood and continued toward the house. His parents had emigrated from India when he was young, desiring a better life for their offspring. His skin was dark and he wore thick glasses, an anathema on the Team. But the Time Patrol was more than just military. It, and the Nighstalkers they were before, battled on the edge of science and beyond.

  Doc
touched the side of the old house. It was real. But was his experience here real? One had to wonder or one would never wonder at anything.

  Tsar Nicholas and the Tsarina? Anastasia peering at him through a window in the palace as he faced a firing a squad, only to escape at the last second by traveling back to his own time while she was trapped to face her fate? Pakistan and the nukes? Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and the Declaration of Independence and the never revealed Declaration of Emancipation? Then here, for a peace conference that accomplished nothing but could have stopped the Revolution, and the United States, in 1776?

  Doc held up the spectacles. They felt real. The house was real to his touch.

  He remembered the words. Pandora’s word, why she’d kept Elpis, hope, in her pithos, denying it to mankind:

  “Most hope is selfish. It is hope based on the way each person who is hoping envisions the future. Not the way the future should be for everyone, but for himself or herself. It is the cornerstone of many religions where people hope there is a heaven, thus focusing on the future. Hope is not grounded in the here and now. All we have is the here and now.”

  Doc had disagreed but he knew there was a kernel of truth in what she said. Mankind had a marvelous talent for fooling itself. The blindness of irrationality. Of selfishness. Of hoping for the self, not for the greater good.

  He’d seen it in Russia in 1917; in Pakistan in 1998; Philadelphia in 1776 and later that same year here, where Benjamin Franklin and John Adams and Admiral Howe could have prevented the Revolutionary War if they’d had to the authority and the willingness.

  And if Doc hadn’t shown up to make sure that the peace negotiations came to nothing.

  His musings were interrupted:

  Send Lawyers Guns and Money

  He heard a helicopter coming in fast and low. He smiled as Ivar slid open the side door and waved him in. Ivar handed him a headset and Doc put it on as he sat down.

  “Dane send you to pick me up?” Doc asked.

  Ivar shook his head. “Timing. I was just Zevoned while coming to join you.”