36: A Novel (43 page)

51

“Send me back!” 

I began shouting the instant I arrived on the dais.  It had been an excruciating wait for the return to real time, hiding in the hotel room.  I’d spent several hours with Julie’s body cradled in my arms.  Working through the anger and emotion.  Trying to get it under control so I could operate effectively when I had the opportunity.

Ray had assured me he would get the room cleaned up, removing any evidence of the presence of any persons other than Julie and Cummins.  There was nothing we could do with their bodies, and if I couldn’t change past events, they would have to be left for housekeeping to discover.

I wasn’t happy.  Not at all.  Wasn’t thinking clearly.  Thankfully, Ray had sat me down and calmed me.  Or at least focused me.  Got me ready for the task ahead. 

Pounding on the curved glass in impatience, I squeezed through and sprinted for the door as soon as it began opening.  The two Marine guards looked at me in surprise as I raced past them, heading for the control room.

Bursting in, I ran to where Dr. Anholts and Carpenter stood.  Both of them stared at me, taken aback at my entrance. 

“Send me back to DC!  Now!”  I screamed at them.

“What happened?”  Carpenter asked.

“Johnson killed someone I have to save,” I said, trying to calm myself.  “I stopped the assassination, but lost some people.  I can go back, save them, and get Johnson.”

“What assassination?”  Carpenter asked.

“The President,” I shouted.  “Sorry.  It’s on my chip, but we don’t have time.  You’ve got to send me back.”

“We need you to save the director,” Dr. Anholts said.  “Agent Johnson killed him before leaving.  Ray went after him, but we haven’t heard from him.”

“I just left Ray,” I said in a rush.  “He didn’t find Johnson.  Our only chance is to go back and I’ll stop him.”

“Wait.  Slow down,” Carpenter said, holding both hands up.  “The director is the priority.”

“Bullshit!”

I snarled and moved forward.  Carpenter saw the expression on my face and took a step back.

“Mr. Whitman.  Please,” Dr. Anholts stepped between us and looked me in the eye.  “You’re not thinking clearly.  If we send you back to a point where you can save the director, you can stop Agent Johnson before he leaves the facility.  If he never leaves the facility, he can’t harm the people you’re trying to save.”

I stared at her, processing what she’d said.  Letting out a long breath, I nodded my head when I realized she was right.  If Johnson never left the rig, he couldn’t hurt Julie.

“OK, fine.  Let’s go,” I said, impatient.

“You should watch the recording,” Carpenter said, stepping closer now that I didn’t seem to want to rip his throat out.  “See what happened so you know what you’re walking into.”

After a moment I nodded in agreement.  Impulsiveness and lack of preparation had gotten me into enough messes in my life.  Maybe it was time to start acting like an adult.

I followed Dr. Anholts and Carpenter to the conference room.  Nervous energy made me want to pace while he queued up the surveillance video, but I forced myself to take a seat. 

Sitting there, all I could think about was Julie.  The last kiss we’d shared before I set out to stop the murder of the President.  Then another thought occurred to me that chilled me to the bone.

“There are cameras everywhere in the facility.  Right?”

“Yes,” Carpenter answered.  “With the exception of the director’s private quarters, the entire facility is under constant surveillance.”

“Johnson would know this?”

Carpenter stopped tapping keys on his laptop as he and Dr. Anholts turned to look at me.

“Of course,” she said.  “What’s your point?”

“Think about it,” I said.  “He kills the director, knowing it will be captured on video.  Knowing he’s sitting in a facility that houses a time machine.  Whatever he is, he isn’t stupid.  Do you really think he doesn’t expect me to come back and stop him?  Why would he make it so easy for us?”

They sat there staring at me.  Thinking about what I’d just said.

“I must confess I’ve had similar concerns,” Dr. Anholts said.  “And I’ve known Agent Johnson for a long time.  This is completely out of character for him.”

“Doctor, you’ve seen the footage,” Carpenter said, exasperation clear in his tone.  “There’s no other explanation.”

She glared at him for a time before looking down at her lap.

“Show me the video,” I said after a minute of silence.

Carpenter turned back to his laptop and finished loading the file.  A moment later an image of the corridor outside the director’s office and quarters appeared on the large screen at the front of the room.  I watched as Johnson, looking as dapper as ever, approached the office door and knocked. 

He paused for a moment, then opened it and stepped through.  The video jumped to a shot from inside Patterson’s office.  The office was empty and Johnson crossed the small space and went through another door.

“He went into the director’s quarters,” Carpenter explained.  “No camera in there so we can’t see what happened.”

“No audio?”  I asked.

“No.  It’s in the budget for next year, but the system hasn’t been upgraded yet.”

The video was still rolling.  According to the time stamp in the lower right corner, it was only one and half minutes before Johnson reappeared in the director’s office and passed back out into the hall.  The view kept jumping as multiple camera feeds were spliced together, tracking him as he headed directly to the helipad where a helicopter waited for him.

It was painted red and black with the logo for Texaco prominently showing on the sides.  The engine was apparently already running.  The rotor slowly turned as he walked directly to the aircraft and climbed aboard.  The rotor sped up and it quickly departed.  Carpenter hit a button, closing the file.

“After he left, we tracked the helicopter to an airport where Johnson boarded an FBI jet and flew to Washington DC.” 

“How long after this was the director found?”  I asked.

“His assistant went looking for him when he missed a scheduled conference call with the Department of Defense.  She found him eleven minutes later.  The director was shot in the back of the head at close range.  Johnson must have used a silencer as no one heard the shot.”

“Anyone else in or out of his office or quarters?”

“No,” Carpenter shook his head.  “Half an hour after he was found, we had reviewed the tapes and I asked Ray to go after him.”

“Why Ray?  Why not just call the Department of Justice?  They could have been waiting to scoop him up when he landed.”

“One of Director Patterson’s standing orders is that we, in his words, wash our own laundry.  It is appropriate, considering the sensitive nature of the Athena Project.  We can’t afford to have investigators looking into what happens here in the facility.”

I nodded, understanding.  But it still bothered me that Johnson had apparently been so careless.  He’d made no effort to cover his tracks.  Knew very well that his actions would be discovered and I would be sent back to stop him from killing the director.  Then why did he do it?  How did he think he was going to get away with it?

“Agent Johnson is a very dangerous man,” Carpenter said.  “Perhaps he thinks you couldn’t stop him even if you did come back.  I’ve heard stories.  He was a Marine.  A MARSOC Marine, assigned to one of the Raider battalions.  From what I’ve heard, he is a grade A badass.  When you get back there, you have to put him down immediately, the instant you see him.  You cannot hesitate.”

I looked at Carpenter.  What he said was right.  I couldn’t give Johnson the opportunity to defend himself or fight back.  But the whole thing still bothered me.  Even more so now that I’d learned he was a Marine.  And not just a normal Jarhead, but a Raider.  You don’t get there if you’re not the best of the best.

And one thing I knew about the guys that wound up in Special Forces.  Regardless of whether they were a Marine, SEAL or Green Beret, they were duty bound to a fault.  Despite popular fiction, they didn’t go off and join conspiracies to overthrow the government.  At least not the operators I’d met. 

Of course, they’re still human, and there’s always exceptions.  But I’d never gotten that vibe from Johnson.  He could be annoying.  Rigid.  Certainly had a stick up his ass.  Probably chewed on ground glass for breakfast.  If not for the video I’d carried back, where he ordered my death, I’m not sure I would be convinced.

“We have a distance point calculated for you to arrive five minutes before Agent Johnson enters the director’s office,” Dr. Anholts said.  “We’re ready whenever you are.”

“When is that?”  I asked, still struggling to reconcile the events in my head.

“Nearly twenty-three hours ago,” Dr. Anholts said, checking her iPad.

“If I go back twenty-three hours,” I said, trying to work out the timelines in my head.  “That means that by the point I come back to real time, I’ll have lost the window to save Julie.”

Dr. Anholts began rapidly tapping keys on her iPad.  The screen at the front of the room flared to life and I was looking at a vivid image of the inside of the hotel room in DC.  Ray was sitting on the couch in the living room, looking at me.  She tapped some more keys and the view began running backwards at a very fast rate.

“I’m streaming directly from your data chip, Mr. Whitman,” she explained.  “How much farther back do I need to go?”

I thought about it for a minute, trying to fix the images that were flashing on the screen to some point in the timeline.

“Try twelve hours,” I said.

She tapped some more and the rewind stopped.  There was a blink and I watched as I fired a bullet into the side of my face.  Well, not my face, but the face of the FBI agent that had tried to convince me he was another version of myself.

“Oh,” Dr. Anholts exclaimed, turning a shade of white that didn’t look good.

She froze the image after the camera swung away from the corpse and took a long, slow drink from a bottle of water.

“How?”  I asked, realizing something was wrong.  “How did you record that?  I was wearing this FBI jacket that I put on in the past.  It can’t have cameras.”

She looked at me, obviously trying to come up with an answer.  Finally, she looked down at the table before speaking.

“We haven’t been completely honest with you,” she began.

“Doctor,” Carpenter interrupted, the warning clear in his tone.

“Shhh,” she said.  “He has the right to know.  Mr. Whitman, the reason for the surgery to your eyes wasn’t to change their color.  That can be done with contacts.  It was to implant an interface that allows your data chip to record everything you see.”

“What?  Are you serious?”  I was surprised, but not as much as I would have been before coming to work for these people.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.  Cameras are too unreliable.  Lenses can be damaged, or covered at a crucial moment.  And what if the asset changes clothes?  We would lose the ability to record what happens.”

“Jesus Christ,” I breathed.

I was upset, but recognized I didn’t have the luxury to worry about something that had already happened.  There would be plenty of time to address this little topic once I saved Julie.

“Fine, we’ll deal with this later.  Right now, we need to figure this out.”

“Of course,” Dr. Anholts said, sounding relieved.  She resumed rewinding the video, stopping at an extreme close up of Julie’s face.  The moment I’d kissed her as I left the hotel room.  “This point is eleven hours and forty-five minutes before you returned to real time.  You’ve been back thirty-one minutes.  Twelve hours and sixteen minutes elapsed.”

“And if I go back twenty-three hours to save the director, when I come back to real time that would only leave a forty-four-minute window for me to stop Julie’s killer.  Maybe less.  I don’t know the precise moment when she was murdered.  This was the last time I saw her alive.  I can’t save them both!”

“Yes, you can!”  Carpenter interjected.  “When you stop Agent Johnson, you save the woman!”

“If he’s the one who killed her,” I said.

“Who else?”  Carpenter asked.

I shook my head, unable to answer the question. 

“Will you save the director and put an end to this?”  Dr. Anholts asked after a short silence.

“No.”  I shook my head.  “I won’t take the chance with Julie’s life.  She’s an innocent.  Didn’t go looking to be involved in this.  I know the director didn’t deserve to die, but if there’s even a chance that Agent Johnson didn’t kill her, I can’t risk her life on going back so far I lose the opportunity to save her.”

Dr. Anholts exchanged a look with Carpenter.  After a moment, he nodded and turned back to me.

“Very well, Mr. Whitman.  We will send you back thirteen hours to DC.  But you must be very careful and not come into direct contact with that version of yourself.  The results could be disastrous.”

52

I arrived in a battleship grey, steel corridor.  What the fuck?  Looking around, I nearly screamed in rage.  They had lied to me!  Tricked me.  Instead of sending me to save Julie, I was standing outside of Patterson’s office. 

They had pushed the issue.  Made the decision for me.  Now, I didn’t have a choice.  Had to fully accept that Johnson was the killer.  I couldn’t let him live.  If I did, there was too great of a risk that Julie would die in a few hours.  Goddamn it!

With no options, I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down and think about what I had to do.  Setting my watch for a five-minute countdown, I opened the door without knocking and stepped into the director’s office.  It was empty and I headed for the entrance to his private quarters, pausing when I heard his voice.  It sounded like he was speaking on the phone.

Everything about this was still bothering me.  The pieces of the puzzle fit together, especially with the video ordering Kirkpatrick to terminate me.  Regardless, it felt more like someone had forced some of the jigsaw together with a mallet. 

I paused before proceeding to the director’s quarters, reviewing everything I knew and thought I knew.  All of the evidence pointed at Johnson as part of the conspiracy.  I remembered the mantra Carpenter had kept repeating before I’d been told I was being sent back to save Julie.