by Bob Mayer
And that was it. Doc was on his own. “Shut it down,” he said to Hamid.
“The General wished me to switch programs,” Hamid said.
Doc raised his rifle. “If you access the vault door override, I’ll kill you.”
“I’m sure you will. The General wished to talk with you face-to-face, or as much as seeing each other via computer will facilitate.”
The screen cleared, and a new image appeared. The video wasn’t the greatest quality, but Doc had to remind himself that it was 1998. Cell phones were still just phones, not smartphones, and computer technology had a way to go.
General Raju was seated behind a large desk, the edges of which weren’t even in the image. He was glaring at the camera. “I can see you, Doctor Ghatar. I see you are stained with the blood of one our brave soldiers. That is an act of war for which you will pay the price.”
There was a loud clang from the vault door, and Doc looked that way.
“What you are hearing,” Raju said, “is my engineers breaching the door. They assure me they can do it. It will take some time, but you are going nowhere. If you open the door now, I promise you a swift execution. If you do not, I promise you extended misery and pain before the mercy of death.”
“Has the international incident with India been resolved?” Doc asked. “Was it Indian commandos who attacked the Prime Minister’s motorcade?”
“That is of no consequence in this discussion between the two of us,” Raju said.
Another loud clang, then a vibration rumbled through the floor and continued.
Hamid nodded in understanding. “They’re drilling into the locking mechanism.”
“How long?” Doc asked him.
He shrugged. “I have no idea. I am not a mechanical engineer.”
Doc wondered if his time would be up before they found out. Checking his watch, he saw that it was one-thirty in the morning here, which meant he’d only been in the bubble for about six hours.
All he needed now was time.
The download informed him there were four pins holding the door shut. It didn’t have the information on current drilling techniques and how long it would take to disable all four of them. Edith had missed those details in her preparation.
He’d forgotten Raju was still on the line.
“We will find out how long it will take,” the General said.
“Yes, we shall,” Doc said. He turned the computer monitor off. He gestured with the muzzle of the rifle. “Go over there,” he said, indicating a chair at another console.
Hamid walked over then sat down. Taking a length of rope from his pack, Doc tied him securely to the seat. “This will be over in a bit, and you’ll be fine.”
“I do not think you will be,” Hamid said. “General Raju has a very unsavory disposition. If I were you, I would fear what he will determine to be your fate.”
“Fate?” Doc smiled. “Curious you would use that word. This is what is supposed to be.”
“Who are you?” Hamid asked. “Truly, you are a very strange man.”
Doc went over to the console and sat down. “We must wait now.”
“Wait for what?”
“For the time to pass. For the storm to pass. Whatever we wish to call it. For cooler heads to prevail.”
The phone rang.
And rang.
“Are you going to answer?” Hamid asked.
“No.”
They sat, the floor vibrating from the drilling, the phone ringing. Time passing. After several minutes, the phone stopped ringing. The vibrating didn’t stop.
Doc forced himself to stop checking his watch. It didn’t make the time pass any faster. The phone rang again, continued for a minute, then stopped. For the next several hours, the drilling was continuous, the phone intermittent.
Doubt began to chip away at Doc’s resolve.
Would he be pulled back before the vault door was breached? What should he do if it were breached? He had the rifle and several magazines of ammunition. How long could he hold off an assault force? What if the crisis wasn’t over by the time he was pulled back or the vault door breached? What if the Pakistanis still went through with their intent of a first strike against India?
He resolved that last issue with some logic. If he were pulled back and the door hadn’t been breached, then the Shadow’s bubble would implode, and things would go back to normal history. He hoped.
But that brought its own questions, and since he had nothing other than time and worries, Doc allowed himself to ponder them.
Nada would have told him not to, because as more hours passed, Doc’s confidence was evaporating. There was a very dark side to having too many vagaries of the variables.
“Is there a change in that vibration?” Doc finally asked Hamid as he checked his watch.
“I do not know,” Hamid said. “But I must relieve myself. I would prefer not to wet my pants, if you do not mind.”
Doc realized he had to do the same. He untied Hamid. They walked to an empty spot on the outer wall then urinated.
Done, Hamid went back to his chair. “I promise I will not try to attack you if you do not tie me up. My old limbs need to move.”
Doc knew what Nada would say about that promise. He picked up the rope when the phone rang once more.
“Do you want me to answer it?” Hamid asked.
Doc also knew the correct reply, but his uncertainty trumped his common sense. “Go ahead.”
Hamid walked to the phone, his legs stiff, leaning heavily on his cane.
“This is Hamid.” He cocked his head, listening. “Yes, sir.” A few seconds. “Yes, sir. I will do that.” Then he hung up. He spoke to Doc. “The General insists you talk to him via the video on the computer. He says he will kill someone you know if you do not respond.”
“Kill who?” Doc asked.
“He did not grace me with that information.” Hamid indicated the computer. “Shall I?”
Doc nodded, knowing he’d made a big mistake allowing Hamid to answer and allowing the demon of doubt to win.
The screen came alive. Raju was standing in front of his desk. To his right, on his knees: Sergeant Lockhart. His uniform was muddy and torn. Blood dripped from his mouth. His hands were tied behind his back. His head drooped.
This is my fault. Doc gritted his teeth.
“We went up the mountain past where you killed out soldier,” Raju said. “We found this.”
He grabbed Lockhart’s hair and lifted his face to the camera. His eyes were unfocused, and Doc knew Lockhart still was partly out of it from the shot he’d given him. “Look at the man who abandoned you,” Raju said to Lockhart, pointing with the gun at the monitor.
Lockhart blinked several times, but didn’t say anything.
“Open the vault door, or I will kill him.” Raju drew his sidearm then pressed the muzzle of his gun to the back of Lockhart’s head. With the other hand, he held up the note Doc had left with the sergeant. “‘I am sorry. This is for the greater good. Head for the PZ ASAP’.” Raju crumpled it and tossed it aside. “What greater good? The only good you Americans care about is your own. We have reports the Indians have mated their warheads with their platforms. They will attack us, and we have no way to deter them. Millions will die. Millions of my people. What greater good does that serve?”
“They won’t launch,” Doc said. “They’re reacting, too.”
“You know nothing. You have one minute to open the vault.”
Another minute closer to being pulled back and the bubble collapsing, Doc thought.
Raju was staring the camera. “You are not moving.” He shoved the gun into the back of Lockhart’s head, jarring him. “Beg your comrade for your life.”
The sound of an explosion reverberated through the containment facility. Doc looked toward the door. It was intact, but there was a bulge in one part, where the engineers trying to break in had inserted explosive and disabled one of the locking pins.
Raju heard it and
smiled. “They are getting there.” He looked down. “Beg.”
“Screw you,” Lockhart said.
“There’s no point in hurting him,” Doc said. “I have my orders.”
“And what orders are those?” Raju asked. “Your orders were to try to open the Depot for your task force, which is now returning to base. You left your comrade here, unconscious, behind you. You are acting on your own.”
“I’m doing the right thing,” Doc said, as much for himself as Raju.
Hamid was watching him and the screen, back and forth, as if observing a deadly tennis match.
“Your minute is up,” Raju said.
“He will do it,” Hamid whispered harshly.
“You have not moved,” Raju said, “so you have determined his fate.”
“Wait!” Doc yelled.
“You still have not moved,” Raju said. “What am I waiting for?”
“I tell you that it will achieve nothing to—”
Raju pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot echoed out of the speakers. A burst of blood spurted from Lockhart’s mouth, and he toppled forward. The camera panned down to show the dark hole in the rear of his head and the circle of blood slowly spreading on the wooden floor.
Doc turned the monitor off and stepped back, taking deep breaths.
“I warned you,” Hamid said. “General Raju is ruthless.”
“I get that,” Doc said.
“I do not understand what you are doing,” Hamid said. “You are accomplishing only a temporary solution. Once they breach the remaining three pins and open the vault door, they will remove the warheads. Unless, of course, India launches first and destroys us.”
“But what if, by then, India doesn’t launch?” Doc asked. “Wouldn’t that be proof they don’t plan to?”
“Today?” Hamid shrugged. “Yes. But what about tomorrow? And the day after? And the people will not forgive the assassination of the Prime Minister.”
They will if it never happens, Doc thought. “I just need a little time.”
“To do what?” Hamid asked. He spread his hands wide and implored, “Please, open the vault door. My country is at stake.”
“You think launching these weapons against India will save your country?” Doc asked. “You’re a physicist. You know what will happen if Pakistan and India have a nuclear exchange.”
“The goal is deterrence,” Hamid reasoned. “If India finds out we do not have access to our nuclear weapons, then they will launch a preemptive strike.”
“They won’t,” Doc said.
Hamid snorted. “Do you want to know how I am certain they will?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because we would. If India did not have nuclear deterrence, we would have destroyed them long ago.”
Doc quoted, “‘If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass and leaves for a thousand years, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own. The Christians have the bomb, the Jews have the bomb, and now the Hindus have the bomb. Why not the Muslim, too, have the bomb’?”
Hamid nodded. “The People’s Leader, President Zulfikar Bhutto. You know your history. So, you should understand where things stand between my country and your parents’ country.”
“Bhutto was executed,” Doc said. “And his daughter, who is in exile, will return one day. And she will be assassinated.”
“How do you know this?”
“Don’t you see how insane all of this is?” Doc asked. “You need to believe me. Nothing will happen.”
“You are gambling millions of lives on that,” Hamid said.
“Tell me something, Hamid,” Doc said, trying to get the image of the pool of blood around Lockhart’s head out of his mind. “Why would India send a commando team to assassinate your Prime Minister and do nothing else? Not follow through with at least a conventional attack? In fact, such an assassination should be the prelude to a nuclear first strike. Yet that hasn’t happened, has it?”
Hamid stared at him.
“Does any of this make sense?” Doc pressed.
The phone rang. Both Hamid and Doc looked at it as if it were a poisonous snake.
Doc reluctantly answered it.
“Turn the computer back on,” Raju ordered. “There is someone who wants to speak to you.”
“Who? You killed the only person I know here.”
“That isn’t quite true, is it, Doctor Ghatar?” The phone clicked dead.
Doc felt a chill sweep over him. He turned the computer on.
Raju was behind his desk. He leaned forward, seeing Doc in his monitor next to the camera. “You have been a fool! You will open the vault door. Now!”
Doc said nothing.
Raju got up then walked around his desk, the camera tracking him. He stopped in front of his desk, where he’d executed Lockhart. There was a dark stain on the floor, but the body was gone.
“Your delay allowed us to learn some things.” He drew his pistol then pointed the muzzle to the right. The camera panned that way. Two soldiers held a frightened young woman. “Do you recognize her?”
Doc had no clue who she was. “No.”
The camera went back to the general. “You do not know your own family, Ghatar? You are a physicist. You are Doctor Ghatar, who taught at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. You emigrated to the United States two years ago. You have turned your back on your country of birth and joined the Western warmongers. You have altered your appearance somewhat, but not enough.”
Doc felt a band of panic constrict his chest. He’d always favored his father’s features. And his father had been a professor at TIFR a little over two years ago.
“It is surprising you do not recognize your cousin, Doctor Ghatar,” Raju said. “Has it been too long since you saw her? Let me reintroduce you, then. Doctor Ghatar, this is your cousin, Zoreed Ghatar.”
The division of India and Pakistan in 1947 had split many families. Not everyone had packed up and gone one way or the other. Doc knew his father had relatives in Pakistan.
“We are tracking down more of your family,” Raju continued. “One of my captains has radioed that he has secured your cousin’s two children. They will be here shortly. Will you open the vault?”
“No.”
General Raju went up to the young woman, and placed the pistol to her forehead. “You are causing me to stain my office once more. Will you open the vault?”
Doc didn’t say anything.
“I will take that as a no.” The sound of the shot was surprisingly loud coming out of the computer’s speakers. The image of the head snapping back, the blossom of blood, skull, and brains blowing out the back was something Doc knew he’d never forget.
Delphi, Greece, 6 June 478 B.C.
“I’m sure there are those who will mourn Pythagoras of Samos,” Pandora said, “but to accuse me of killing him hurts my feelings.”
“You lie,” Cyra said, echoing Scout.
Pandora sighed, pulling the daggers back and taking two steps to the rear. “Face me, my little darlings.”
Scout and Cyra turned.
Pandora sheathed the blades. She held up both hands, empty, palm out. “Use your Sight. Both of you. You have enough to see Truth if I allow you into my head. At least to see my Truth of the past few hours.”
Scout stared into Pandora’s eyes for several seconds. Finally, she said, “You could be fooling us. Presenting us with...” She faltered.
“But my mother saw you,” Cyra said.
“Did you look into her with the Sight?” Pandora asked.
“She’s my mother,” Cyra said. “She’s the Oracle.”
“Reminds me,” Pandora said, turning to Scout. “Figured out the mother thing yet?”
Scout took Pandora’s tactic. “Can’t you see who it is?” she asked. “The assassin?”
“No,” Pandora admitted.
“So much for your great Sight,” Scout said.
“Do you remember Xerxes Dagger?” Pandora said.
“Yes,” Pandora
said.
“You could not see him at first. This one is worse. Whoever it is has shielded himself from me. He is a predator of the highest order. Nasty creature.”
“Then how do you know it’s a he?” Scout asked.
“I can sense a male spirit,” Pandora said. “And these assassins. Their lack is their mark.”
“Lack of what?” Scout asked.
“Humanity.”
“You don’t seem to like men so much,” Scout said. “So why do you care so much about Alexander’s forefathers?”
“Some men are important,” Pandora said.
“You didn’t seem impressed with Alexander the Great’s legacy last time I was here,” Scout said. “Why are you so concerned that he’s born?” She knew Cyra was behind the conversation, confused, with no clue who they were talking about, but Scout “knew” Pandora had not killed Pythagoras, and that she had told the truth: he was not the Pythagoras. The Charioteer of Delphi would never be sculpted, but Scout couldn’t see how that would barely be more than a ripple, although she imagined Edith Frobish would be terribly upset.
Much more was at play here.
“I have my reasons,” Pandora said. “Seems you would care also.”
Scout had checked on it when she returned, and learned that despite the fact the empire Alexander founded had quickly dissolved after his death, his effect on the world was profound: he destroyed the Persian Empire, ensuring that Western civilization would develop; founded Alexandria and the Ptolemy dynasty in Egypt, which would last until some other guy named Caesar put the kibosh on that; Alexander spread Greek culture across a wide swath of the world he passed through, bringing about the flowering of the Hellenistic Age. In essence, he set the stage for the Roman Empire that would follow. He also appeared to be quite a ruthless dick, in Scout’s opinion, slaughtering many who stood in his way, and a lot who were trying to get out of his way.
All of that made Scout wonder what, exactly, were Pandora’s motives in protecting Alexander’s forefathers. Why had the Oracle lied? Why was Scout really here?
Another race was lining up. Scout turned to Pandora. “I don’t know who you are. Where you’re from. When you’re from. You need to tell me more about you before I can even think of trusting you.”
