Déjà Vu: A Technothriller (43 page)

They entered the foyer. Her boots were silent. The same chandelier; the same green felt; fewer paintings but each, when viewed as an individual, was still the odd one out.

A man emerged from the left. She disliked him after two steps. He was similar to Garrel. He had grey hair, bleached blue eyes and a pencil-thin moustache. He was handsome and intimidating.

“Can I help you, miss?”

Saskia’s smile was blinding. She pushed some hair behind her ear. “Ja, ja. Ich habe mich verlaufen. So. I am lost. Understand, ja?”

His mouth twitched. “You’re German.”

“Ja. Genau.”

He stepped forward and offered his hand. “My name is Harrison McWhirter. I’m in charge of the hotel.” He turned to the guards. “Back to your duties.” They fell away. The foyer was suddenly empty but for herself and McWhirter, whose body was undergoing a autopsy at the time of her last visit.

She shook his hand. Her right heel raised slightly from the floor. She was thinking fast. There were two certainties: first, she was destined to get into the research centre; second, she was destined to stop Hartfield. She realised that they might have made a wrong assumption about the man’s objective. Yes, he had a new nanotechnology treatment, but it was not necessarily the case that it needed to be administered before the first dose. The treatment may repair. Perhaps nanotechnology was being developed in the West Lothian Centre.

No; that didn’t work. Why should Hartfield choose to arrive on the day of the bombing? He would have little time to achieve anything. Was Hartfield here to plant the bomb? Absolutely not. He would have nothing gain and much to lose.

She released McWhirter’s hand.

Hartfield wanted to foil the bombers. The man was insane. The bomb would explode because it had already exploded. There was no way to stop something that had already happened.

“My name is Adler. Sabine Adler.”

McWhirter nodded. “Perhaps you could tell me how you came to be parachuting into my hotel.”

“I am with a – how do you call it – ‘parachute school’? I have lost my friends.”

“I’ll get you a phone so that you can call them,” he said.

“Thank you.”

She held her left wrist as though it were injured.

He walked around the reception desk and lifted the receiver on the courtesy phone. When he offered it to his visitor, she was gone. He snorted. He reached for the red security button beneath the desk. There was movement on the edge of his vision. He paused and a figure in glass swept towards him. Something struck his throat and groin simultaneously. He lost his breath. His head found the edge of the desk. He heard the sound quite objectivity – a mallet on a tent peg – and faded to his knees.

Saskia became visible again. She switched off the hood. The space beneath the desk was large enough to hide McWhirter’s body if she folded it, so she did. She wondered if this was the correct action. McWhirter was sure to remember her when he awoke. But nothing could be changed; she could do nothing wrong.

There were ten minutes until Hartfield arrived.

“Good afternoon,” said a cheerful voice.

The hood flicked up. Saskia became transparent and motionless. The camouflage worked by capturing light on one side and sending it out the other. But her eyes needed those light rays, needed to stop them dead at the retina. She was blind.

She heard the man’s footsteps stop. “I must say that you’re looking well today, Colonel McWhirter.” Saskia could hear the smile. Only a blind man would compliment an empty desk.

His footsteps moved away.

Saskia switched off her transparency and followed. He headed for the cloakroom that Garrel would show her twenty years later. She checked for cameras. None. A guard walked by. She became transparent and curled into a ball behind a plant. She held her breath. The guard walked past.

One corner before the cloak room, the man stopped. He turned. His eyes roamed. He had high cheekbones and a restless, smiling mouth. Saskia was not surprised at his youthful appearance. Inside the computer, realised as a twenty-one-yearold, he would be no different.

“Hello,” he said. “I believe we’re walking the same way.” He held out a hand. “My name’s Bruce.”

“I’m Saskia,” she said. It was a mistake to offer her true name. She was not just visiting the year 2003. She was permanent resident. She needed to enter the research centre, but she needed to escape it too.

Bruce frowned. “Gloves? Aren’t you too warm?”

“I have a skin condition.”

“You’re new here.” His expression did not change.

“Yes. How can you tell?”

“Your footsteps. I listen to feet. Plus, you’re German. We don’t have any German scientists here.”

Saskia opened her mouth. It remained open for a few seconds as she selected the words to fill it. She decided to change her approach. “Can we be overheard?”

Bruce’s smile widened. “No. Not here. Why?”

She pulled him towards the wall. “Your name is Bruce Shimoda, but your parents christened you Gichin. They called you Bruce because you jumped around like Bruce Lee when you were a child. That was before you were blinded by diabetes. Your father told me this at your funeral. I’m from the future.”

Bruce let out a shuddering breath. “What song did I ask to have played?”

“‘In My Life’ by the Beatles.”

“Don’t tell me the date.”

“I won’t. I need to get into the research centre.”

“You can’t.”

“I must. We have five minutes before a bomb goes off in the centre. I have to stop it.”

A lie, but she needed Bruce’s help. It was five minutes until Hartfield arrived. The bomb might go off at any time. She had no idea.

“Will I die in the blast?” he asked quietly.

Saskia considered her answer. “No.”

Samuel Howell tapped his monitor. This had to happen. He slumped and took a sip of coffee. He was required to check the computer on a random schedule. The computer, for its part, checked the security camera in the lift. If there was any kind of problem, it would cut power to the lift and send out a security alert. Samuel Howell, or a person like him, would come running.

He tapped the screen again. It showed Dr Bruce Shimoda. He knew Bruce well. He was a real character. But the screen displayed the ghostly image of another person standing immediately behind Bruce. Monitor burn.

He dialled the section head. “Houston, we have a problem. There’s a glitch on monitor one. Yes, main entry, the lift cam. Yes.” He glanced back at the screen. Bruce had walked away as expected, but the monitor burn had vanished too. “Bollocks. I’m seeing ghosts. Nothing.”

The lift, which had no door, travelled all the way to the bottom of the shaft. Saskia heard the bustle and conversation of each floor, but she could see nothing. Bruce said nothing. The lift stopped and Bruce said, “Samuel, my friend, what a lovely day. Upstairs the sun is shining…”

Saskia dashed to one side. She felt for a wall and crouched. She should be directly underneath the sill of the guard’s booth. It was a sheer wall with holes large enough for the muzzle of a machine gun. To the left of it was a transparent, bomb-proofed door that could only be opened by the guard. Bruce had quite precise in his description.

She heard him collide with the wall. “Hey, have you been moving things about?”

Another voice said, “Dr Shimoda, please. You’ll hurt yourself.”

She became opaque. The guard emerged into the reception area and took Bruce by the arm. She grimaced. The guard was less than a metre away. If he turned in her direction, he would certainly see her.

The guard led Bruce through the doorway. Saskia followed silently behind. Once through, she kept the guard’s back to her and skipped a few metres down the corridor. There was a rack of lab coats. She took one. She deactivated her hood and tousled her hair. She buttoned the lab coat and busied herself with a mounted floor plan, which she was too excited to read. Bruce touched her arm.

“Saskia?” he asked.

“I told you we’d make it. I have powerful friends.”

“Keep your voice down. Take this.” He plucked the security ID from his lapel. Like the ID she had stolen from Frank to enter the research centre in Nevada, it had no picture. “I’ll say that I lost mine. Where now?”

“Take me to your laboratory.”

She looked at her watch. They had two minutes until Hartfield’s arrival.

Samuel walked back to his booth. Dr Shimoda was quite a character. A flashing red light on the second monitor caught his eye. Some text read:

Unauthorised Personnel in Basement Reception Area

“That was me, shit-for-brains,” he said, cancelling the override.

Samuel downed the rest of his coffee. It was cold. He did not glance at the first monitor. It replayed a blackly-clad woman scuttling through the security door. She went through over and over again.

Saskia struggled to match Bruce’s speed. She knew he was racing to beat the bomb. He was courageous to the last. She checked her watch. It was time.

The corridor stretched ahead in ten-metre sections marked by blue fire doors. Hundreds of people had passed them. Bruce was leading her against the tide. They avoided him. Saskia wondered how many would die in the explosion. “Where’s everybody going?” she asked.

“There’s a concert. David’s organising it.”

“How far to the laboratory?”

“Not far. Two more sets of doors.”

Saskia checked her watch again. It was 3:04 p.m.

They strolled through the next set of doors. Ahead of them, chatting to a colleague, was Jennifer Proctor. Saskia stopped. How did Jennifer get here?

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just a feeling of…”

The woman turned. It was not Jennifer. Her hair was darker, she was older, and she had an easy walk that escaped her daughter. This was Helen Proctor. The connections formed. Jennifer’s mother. David’s wife.

Bruce leaned in. “Never mind that. What about the bomb?”

Saskia was about to answer when the floor shook. It was not precisely an explosion. It was as though a great tree had fallen nearby. The lights flickered, went out, and emergency lighting washed the corridor red. Saskia heard the infrastructure split. Dust fell from new cracks.

“We’re too late,” said Bruce.

And then the explosions began. They began quietly. Distant firecrackers. Then the structure was shaken by louder explosions. The smell of fire. Heat.

The floor dropped an inch and Saskia screamed. She, Bruce and everybody else were thrown from their feet. The pressure of the air changed: either it increased or dropped, she could not tell. They were caught in some giant machine never meant for humans; gaps would appear, close; the very walls might chew them. Saskia reassured herself that she would survive. Her God was Time, and It would protect her.

“Saskia,” Professor Michaels said, leaning into the microphone. “We’re sending you back one half hour before Hartfield. That is, 2:34 p.m. on the afternoon of May 14th 2003.”

David did not hear Saskia’s reply. There was something significant about the time. It was, in fact, so stunningly significant that it took him a few moments to step back and see the problem. “No, no, that’s half an hour before the bombing!”

Michaels snapped, “What?”

“The bombing,” David said. The ability to form sentences had deserted him. He could hear the far-away shouts of technicians who demanded to know why big brother was turning at such a speed. “The bomb went off at 3:04 p.m. She won’t have time.”

Jennifer was close. She gripped his arm. “But Hartfield went back to 3:04 p.m.”

Michaels smiled grimly. “How very accommodating of him. I already told you that he had intended to travel back to 1999, but the computer altered his exit point to 2003. May 14th 2003. To be precise, 3:04 p.m.”

Jennifer said, “That doesn’t make sense. Why did he do that?”

“Hang on,” David interrupted. He was conscious of the security personnel running towards them. “What would it matter? What does Hartfield have to do with the bomb?”

“A great deal, David. He is the bomb.”

David sagged against the rail. He put his head in his hands. “What the blue blazes are you saying?” he asked quietly.

Jennifer mused, “Objects leave this centrifuge at over seventy miles an hour. They get flung through the wormhole at the same speed. When they impact on an object on the other side, they will release ten thousand kilo-joules of energy. That’s equivalent to one quarter ton of TNT. More than enough to trigger an explosive chain reaction if it is targeted correctly. Trust me, I’ve done the math.”

“Maths, love,” David corrected absently. The circular nature of this business was bewildering. After all this time…the trial, the accusations, the damage. Even the death of his wife. It was Hartfield. Ah. It was not; it was the fault of the agent who had caused Hartfield to veer so fatally off course. “Who changed the computer?”

“That is the question,” Michaels said. Behind him, the computer beeped. “Saskia is long gone. She is now twenty years in our past.”

David bit his nails thoughtfully. He half-noticed that Jennifer was holding his left hand. “What would it take to influence your computer?” he asked.

Michaels said, “Jennifer?”

She shrugged. “We have a closed network here. The hacker would need to link physically. Then insert a program, which acts as a time-bomb – if you’ll pardon the expression – designed to activate at a particular moment or following a particular event. It would then interface with the computer at a stage so critical that it would be too late to undo the changes.”

“This network of yours – is it a radio network?”

“It is wireless, yes.”

David narrowed his eyes. “Ego, I would like a word with you.”

“Any time,” said the voice in his ear.

Someone grabbed his arms. The security personnel had arrived. There was also a crowd of technicians. Michaels, Jennifer and David were led away. Michaels said, “Don’t worry, I’m well connected.” With all that had happened, David could not fire back a witty reply. Jennifer took a deep breath and tried to avoid the questioning eyes of her colleagues.

The hospitality of the Nevada Center impressed David. There was no torture, no real interrogation, and endless supply of tea, coffee and biscuits. Andrew Garrel could learn something. The director of the facility was a woman called Castle. She had taken them to her office, which was underground but nearer the surface, and asked the armed guards to wait outside. They sat around an oval conference table. An original Rembrandt hung nearby. David was tired. He did not try to take charge of the conversation. When asked, he would simply tell the truth.