Prologue (44 page)

Amanda explained the plan to get them into the Oval Office.

“Do you know how risky that is?” Ginter asked in amazement. “You might get arrested. If you do get in to see Kennedy why would he believe you any more than
Salisbury
did?”

“We’re thinking we can tell Kennedy about his girlfriend as proof we’re time travelers,” she said simply, but even from thousands of miles away Ginter could sense her own doubt.

“Unless you have something better?” she demanded.

He considered a moment. What difference did it make?
he
asked himself. Why the secrecy? No one seemed to be making any progress anyway.

“Maybe,” he said.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve been working on a plan involving a defector from
Russia
,” he said. “I’ve still got some stuff to do. It may work out O.K. I’m going down to
Mexico
. If it all works out I may be able to change some part of history. Then if it really works out I might get the guy to come back up to Dallas and I’ve got a plan involving Kennedy, maybe something that will convince him to change his mind on
Cuba
.”

Ginter paused. He suspected that Amanda thought that he sounded vague.

“O.K.,” was all she said. “Is Pamela involved in this? What is she doing?”

“I can’t involve her much,” he said. “I can’t even be seen with her without running the risk of getting rousted by the cops. I, I never really knew...” Ginter’s voice trailed off.

“I understand, Lewis,” Amanda said sympathetically. “So, she’s not going to
Mexico
with you?”

“She can’t. She’s got no identification to get back in the country. She’s O.K. checking into motels but not crossing borders.”

“When we will hear from you again?” Amanda asked.

“When I get back.
Stay at the Waldorf,” he instructed her.

“Lewis,” she asked, “did you end up with Kennedy’s itinerary?”

“I have it,” he answered.

He heard a sigh of relief from the other end. “I was afraid it had gotten lost,” she said. “Can you make another copy?”

“I will,” he promised. “I’ll send it to you at the Waldorf.” She gave him the address.

“And make sure to say ‘hi’ to Paul for me, will you?” Ginter asked before hanging up.

In New York Amanda rolled over on her bed and replaced the receiver. “Say ‘hi’ to Paul for me,” Lewis had said.

Funny, if things had worked differently, she’d have heard that said hundreds of times over the last 28 years, whenever a friend of theirs called.

Instead, 28 years ago she had left him at the
Ithaca
bus station, or
rather,
he had left her, late as he had been to get back to teach a class.

“Are you sure you’re O.K.?” he had asked her in the bus station. “You look like you don’t feel so well.”

“I’m fine, how are you doing?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’m sick about this, Amanda. I’m just sick. This morning I thought I was going to throw up. I wolfed about five antacid tablets.”

“But you didn’t get sick,” she laughed. “You’re just projecting your own feelings on to me.”

Paul nodded glumly and looked back over his shoulder toward the clock on the far wall.

“You think they’re following me?” Amanda teased. “You think I’m that big a radical they’d have an agent tail me around, make sure I go to
Leipzig
?”

Paul flushed and looked down. “No,” he said, his face reddening as he stared at the floor. “No, I don’t think that, it’s just…”

Amanda nodded and touched his shoulder.

“I know,” she whispered. “I know. These are sucky times. The whole world has turned upside down and it’s like you and I have fallen off. Some crackpots blow things up and everyone is afraid, so damn afraid.”

Paul looked up and Amanda panicked that she had said too much. But then he nodded, and she relaxed. She took his arm and guided him across the room.

“How many antacids did you have this morning?” she teased.

“Five,” he said. “I’m really sick about this, Amanda, about you going just because the bastards are making you.”

She patted his arm.

“You’ll be fine. Hey, I’m not sick over it. Even if I didn’t have to, I might have chosen to study abroad. It gives one a new perspective.”

They walked to the candy counter, arm in arm, and bought two Snickers, their favorites. Paul peeled back the wrapping while Amanda dropped hers in her purse.

“For the trip,” she said.

“You sure you’ll make the connection in Boston O.K.?”

She nodded.
“Plenty of time.
I’ll be in
Munich
in the morning.”

She looked at her watch. She knew she had to at some point.

“Oh my goodness, Paul, you’ve got to get back to campus. You have an
eleven o’clock
. I’ll be fine.”

She let his obvious relief pass without comment.

They hugged tightly, and kissed deeply, but she knew. They said all the right things, but she still knew. At her urging, he turned and walked to his car. She stood in the concourse for a full minute before making her way to the ladies room. She entered the first available stall, collapsed on the tile floor, and vomited into the bowl. She wished she too had antacids.

Chapter 22

Lewis Ginter lay staring at the wobbling ceiling fan in his third floor room in
Mexico City
’s
Hotel d’Estes
. It wasn’t helping. He was soaked in sweat.

He had been in
Mexico City
for a week, and the late September temperature had not dropped below 90 degrees. His hotel room, on the south side of the building under tarpaper eaves, did little for his comfort.

Lewis had never liked
Mexico
, and the
Hotel d’Estes
was, even by 1963 standards, a dump. He wondered if the temperature was usual for the city in late September. He would have asked someone-a casual inquiry of a desk clerk perhaps-but he remained wary of unnecessary contact with “63ers” as he had come to think of them. Knowledge of the climatic conditions of a Mexican city was of no benefit to him. He just knew it was hot.

Ginter had driven down from
Laredo
knowing he had to be in
Mexico City
at the end of September. He recalled that it was on a weekend that his efforts would be needed, but was unsure of the specific dates.

As he did several times a day, Ginter mentally checked his body. He began by checking his skin, his muscle reflexes and his joints, and ended with a memory test by asking himself questions about his past. In the seven weeks since the four of them had traversed, Lewis Ginter had discovered no physical ill effects.

Yet mentally, he felt different. Was it the wormhole? He reflected back on the run-up to his departure from
Cambridge
, and chastised himself for lack of preparation. This mission had gone terribly wrong. Last summer-was it last summer or a future summer?-he should have studied more. Maybe he was too old and his military training had faded. Maybe he had relied too much on Hutch’s expertise. The image of them scrambling around the lab with Pamela, Hutch hurriedly gathering up scattered papers, and tumbling into the Accelechron, Plan A already a shambles, sickened him. How could he have allowed the development of such a complex mission without an alternate plan?

But that didn’t matter now. He was in 1963, separated from Hutch and deVere, trying to formulate Plan B on the fly. It was impossible to convince the President not to pull out of
Southeast Asia
. Check that. It was impossible in 1963 for a black man to do it.

But he was not without options. He couldn’t change Southeast Asian military history, but he could change what would happen in
South America
, to stop Ché Guevara. Heck, the guerrilla would have been stopped long before his run north if not for that American turncoat.

Lewis knew the Soviet version. “Hero O.H. Lee used his American Marine training to encircle the reactionary forces with liberation fighters.”

But Ginter also knew the truth. Oswald, or Lee, as he called himself when he defected to Cuba, had screwed up, taken the wrong road, and arrived after Guevara’s force had already been attacked, but in perfect time to counter-attack. The trap had failed, and Guevara, who should have been killed, escaped. Without the charismatic Ché Guevara, Cuban agitation in
South America
might have petered out. And without the Communist threat in
South America
, the
U.S.
could have focused on stopping them elsewhere. And without Lee Harvey Oswald, Ché Guevara would have been killed in that Bolivian jungle.

So now, he had to stop Oswald however he could. He should have shot him in the head in broad daylight in
New Orleans
, and
Rhodes
be
damned. But then he had seen the pathetic, gaunt loser, passing out leaflets. Plan B had hatched. “The perfect patsy,” Ginter had said to himself.

And so Ginter had spent the last sweat-soaked week in the
Hotel d’Estes
, staring at his ceiling fan. He only left the room, his fist full of coins, to call every other cheap hotel to see if Señor Oswald had checked in.