Chronospace (14 page)

Which was the very reason why the nascent German resistance movement had sought to place a bomb aboard. For all their ruthless authority, the Gestapo had been helpless to prevent this. The bomb was already concealed next to a gas bag in the airship’s aft section, just beneath the swastika painted on its upper vertical stabilizer. And three days from now, it would detonate, killing thirty-seven passengers and crew . . .

Franc felt something clutch his stomach. For an instant he had the urge to walk away from the
Hindenburg
as fast as he could. Lea must have noticed the look on his face, for she peered at him closely. “Something wrong, dear?” she murmured.

“Just a touch of indigestion.” This wasn’t a good time to contemplate history. “I’ll be better once we reach our cabin.”

They joined the line of passengers making their way up the gangways folded down from the airship’s belly. Franc didn’t allow himself another moment of hesitancy; he followed Lea up the stairs. They passed B Deck, which contained the crew quarters and galley, and emerged on the landing of A Deck, where another steward met them just in front of the bronze bust of Marshal von Hindenburg.

“
Herr
Pannes,
Frau
Pannes, welcome aboard.” He turned to lead them down a narrow corridor running amidships along the keel. “You’re in Cabin 12. This way, please . . .”

Their cabin was surprisingly small: a pair of double-decker bunks, a compact aluminum desk and a miniature sink which folded down from the bulkhead, a little closet in which their baggage had already been stowed. Somehow, Franc had expected something a little more spacious; the
Oberon’
s passenger compartment was larger than this. The steward showed them where everything was, told them that the lavatories were located below them on B Deck, and sternly reminded them that
rauchen
was
verboten
outside the smoking room. Then he wished them a good flight, and left them in privacy.

Franc climbed the aluminum ladder to the upper bunk, sat down on its thin mattress, patted its handkerchief-size pillow. When he tried to sit up straight, his head touched the ceiling. He looked down at Lea and grinned. “I think we’re going to have to invent some new positions,” he said.

“Think of something else.” She gave him a brief scowl as she opened the cabin door. “They’re going to raise ship anytime now. I don’t want to miss this.”

The promenade on A Deck was crowded by the time they got there. A steward handed them glasses of champagne, then they found a vacant place near the starboard windows. On the ground below, they could see men holding on to the taut mooring cables. Twilight was beginning to set over the airfield; the rain had stopped, and rays of green-hued sunlight were slanting down through the heavy clouds.

The band struck up
“Deutschland Uber Alles,”
and after seemingly endless recitals of its refrain, the ground crew released the cables, then rushed forward to push away the control car. And then—slowly, ever so ponderously—the
Hindenburg
began to rise from the airfield.

Franc put his right arm around Lea’s waist. After a moment, she nestled her head against his shoulder. “We’re on our way,” she said softly, as they watched Germany fall below them. “Next stop, New Jersey.”

He nodded, then ducked his head to give her a kiss on the cheek. “The next stop is history,” he whispered in her ear.

He didn’t mean his remark to be ominous, yet she took it as such. He knew she did, for he felt her tremble.

W
hen the Center Hill Lake affair was over, after all the reports were filed with the appropriate agencies and various subcommittees had held closed-door hearings, when everyone with proper clearance had been reassured that the situation, although not completely resolved, at least was no longer critical . . . only then, looking back on the course of events, did Murphy come to realize that it really started the night before, in the Bullfinch on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Bullfinch was a venerable Capitol Hill watering hole, located about three blocks from the Rayburn Building in one direction and within walking distance of one of Washington’s more crime-ridden neighborhoods in the other. It was a favorite lunch spot for congressional aides and journalists who invaded it during happy hour, but by evening it became the after-hours hangout of federal employees from a dozen different departments and agencies. Coming off twelve-hour workdays, their shirts stained with sweat, their guts full of junk food, they emerged from Commerce and Agriculture and Justice and made their way
to the Bullfinch for a few rounds with the boys before stumbling to Capitol South station to catch the next Metro out to the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.

Thursday was beer night for the Office of Paranormal Sciences. Murphy skipped these bull sessions more often than not, preferring to spend his evenings at home in Arlington with his wife and son. Donna was still mourning her mother’s death just before Christmas, though, and Steve seemed to be more interested these days in Magic cards than his father, so when Harry Cummisky tapped on his door shortly after eight and asked if he wanted to grab a couple of brewskis with the boys, Murphy decided to go along. It had been a long time since he had given himself a break; if he came home an hour late with Budweiser on his breath, then so be it. Donna would burrow into her side of the bed anyway, and Steven wouldn’t care so long as Dad took him to the comics shop on Saturday.

So he shut down the computer, locked up his office, and joined Harry and Kent Morris on a five-block trudge through sleet and slush to the Bullfinch. They were the last of the OPS regulars to arrive; several tables had already been pushed together in the back room, and an overworked waitress had already set the group up with pitchers of beer and bowls of popcorn. Although everyone was mildly surprised to see him, they quickly made room at the table. Murphy was aware of his button-down rep; he loosened his tie, admonished a wide-eyed Yale intern to stop addressing him as Sir and call him Zack instead, and poured the first of what he initially promised himself would be only two beers. A couple of drinks with the gang, a few laughs, then he would head home.

But that was not to be. It was a cold, damp night, and he was in a warm, dry bar. Gas flames hissed beneath fake logs in the nearby hearth, and firelight reflected off the panes of framed sports photos on the wood-paneled walls. Conversation was light, ranging from next week’s Super
Bowl to current movies to the latest Hill gossip. The waitress’s name was Cindy, and although she wore an engagement ring she seemed to enjoy flirting with the OPS guys. Every time his mug was half-empty, Kent or Harry or someone else would quickly top it off. After his second trip to the john, Zack stepped into a phone booth and called home to tell Donna not to wait up for him. No, he wasn’t drunk; just a little tired, that’s all. No, he wouldn’t drive; he’d leave his car in the garage and take a cab. Yes, dear. No, dear. I love you, too. Sweet dreams, good night. And then he sailed back to the table, where Orson was regaling Cindy with the joke about the Texas senator, the prostitute, and the longhorn steer.

Before he realized it, the hour was late and the barroom was half-empty. One by one, the chairs had been vacated as the boys polished off their drinks, shrugged into their parkas and overcoats, and moseyed back out into the clammy night. Where there had once been nearly a dozen, now there were only three—Kent, Harry, and himself—teetering on that uncertain precipice between insobriety and inarticulate stupor. Cindy had long since ceased being amused and was now merely disgusted; she cleared away the empty mugs, delivered a pitcher that she firmly told them would be their last, and asked who needed a cab. Murphy managed to tell her that, yes ma’am, a cab would be a mighty fine idea, thank you very much, before he returned to the discussion at hand. Which, coincidentally enough, happened to be time travel.

Perhaps it wasn’t so odd. Although time travel was a subject usually addressed in the more obscure books on theoretical physics, OPS people were acutely interested in the bizarre; they had to be, for that was the nature of their business. So it didn’t seem strange that Murphy would find himself discussing something like this with Kent and Harry; it was late, they were drunk, and that was all there was to it.

“So imagine . . .” Harry belched into his fist. “’S’cuse me, sorry . . . well, imagine if time travel was possible. I mean, le’s say it’s possible to go past to the past, y’know . . .”

“You can’t do it,” Kent said flatly.

“Sure, sure, I know.” Harry waved his hand back and forth. “I know it can’t be done, I know that, okay? But le’s jus’ pretend . . .”

“You can’t do it, I’m tellin’ ya. It can’t be done. I’ve read the same books, too, y’know, and I’m tellin’ ya it’s impossible. Nobody can do it. Nobody has the technology . . .”

“I’m not talkin’ ’bout
now,
dammit. I’m talkin’ ’bout sometime in the
future.
Couple’a hundred thousand years from now, thass what I’m . . . that’s what I’m tryin’ to get at, y’know.”

“Somebody from the future, coming back here for a visit. That it?” Murphy had read a lot of science fiction when he was a kid, and time travel was a big subject in those stories. He even had a few beat-up old Ace Doubles stashed away in his attic, although he’d never admit that to these guys. Science fiction wasn’t well respected at OPS, unless it was
The X-Files.

“Thass it.” Harry nodded vigorously. “Thass what I’m talkin”bout. Somebody from the future comin’ back here for a visit.”

“Can’t be done,” Kent insisted. “Not in a hundred million years.”

“Yeah, well, maybe not,” Murphy said, “but just for the sake of argument, okay. Le’s pretend someone from the future . . .”

“Not just someone.” Harry reached for the half-empty pitcher, sloshed some more beer into his mug. “A lotta someones . . . a lot of people, comin’ back from the . . . y’know, the future.”

“Yeah, right, okay.” Kent eyed the pitcher with avarice; as soon as Harry put it down, he picked it up and poured much of the rest into his own mug, leaving a half inch at the
bottom of the pitcher. “Simon sez le’s pretend. So where are they?”

“Tha’s it. Tha’s the’ point. Tha’s what summa the phizachists . . . phizzakists . . .”

“Physicists,” Murphy said. “What I am. I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I . . .”

Harry ignored him. “If you can go back in time in the future, come back to here . . .” He jabbed a finger against the table. “. . . then where
are
they? That’s what one of the Brits . . . the guy in the wheelchair, whassisname . . .”

“Hawking.”

“Right, Hawking. Anyway, that’s what he says . . . if time travel is possible, then where’re the time travellers?”

“Yeah, but didn’t somebody say that about aliens?” Kent raised an eyebrow; for an instant, he almost looked sober again. “That other guy . . . whatchamacallit, the Italian, Fermi . . . once said the same thing about aliens. Luggit what we do now . . . look for aliens!”

Murphy was about to add that, out of all the UFO sightings and abductions he had investigated in ten years with the OPS, he had yet to find one which panned out in terms of hard evidence. He had interviewed dozens of people who claimed to be have been taken aboard extraterrestrial spacecraft, and he’d collected enough out-of-focus photos of disc-shaped objects to fill a file cabinet, yet after a decade of government service, he had never found an alien or an alien spacecraft. He let it pass, though; this was not the time or place to be questioning his agency’s mission or methods, nor were these the people to whom he should be expressing his doubts.

“Not the same thing, man. Not the same thing.” Although there was still some beer left in his mug, Harry reached for the pitcher, but Kent snagged it first. “If’n there was time travellers, they’d sway . . . stay hidden. Nobody would know they were there. They’d do it for their own good. Right?”

Kent barked laughter as he poured the last dregs into his mug. “Yeah, sure. Like we got people from the future all ’round us now . . .”

“Well, shit, we
might.
” Harry turned toward some guys seated nearby. “Hey, any of you fuggers from the future?”

They glared at him, but said nothing. Cindy was wiping tables and putting up chairs; she shot them a dark look. It was getting close to last call; she didn’t seem to be happy to have garrulous drunks harassing her last remaining customers. “You wanna cool it?” Kent murmured. “Geez, I didn’t meanta make it a federal case . . .”

“Hey, it
is
a federal case, man! Thass what we do, izzn’it? I say we bust this place for acceptin’ time travellers withoutta . . . withoutta . . . fuck, I dunno, a green card?”

Harry reached into his suit pocket, pulled out his badge holder with the OPS seal engraved on its leatherette cover, started to push back his chair. That was enough for Murphy; he grabbed Harry’s wrist before he could stand up. “Hey, hey, take it easy . . .”

Harry started to pull his hand free, but Murphy hung on. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cindy giving the bartender a discreet hand signal; they were about a second away from being thrown out. “Calm down,” he murmured. “Keep this up and we’re going to land in jail.”