TimeSplash (17 page)

“With the gigarange formula, timesplashers can hugely increase the length of their journeys back in time. All that limits them now is the energy required for the lob. Like most things connected with this technology, the energy requirements for a lob increase exponentially with its length. However, it is now believed that a lob of one hundred and fifty years or thereabouts is quite feasible.

“What happened in Beijing was, without doubt, the first application of this new formula. Preliminary reports from a group at Cambridge University tasked with analysing the event, suggest that the temporal distance travelled in Beijing was approximately one hundred and forty years.

Given this and the obvious size of the anomaly they created, our best guess is that they took the opportunity to assassinate the then twenty-five-year-old Mao Tse-dung when he travelled to Beijing to attend a student rally on the fourth of May, 1919.”

A murmur went around the room.

“Going after targets such as the future Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, a man believed to be among the most influential people of the twentieth century, is the kind of attack we now face. This new range would easily include major figures in World Wars I and II—think Hitler, Churchill, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Emperor Shōwa, Woodrow Wilson—and many others whose influence on history have been profound—Gandhi, Albert Einstein, John Logie Baird, Henry Ford…”

He threw up his hands to signify the enormity of what he was saying. “We have suddenly become extremely vulnerable. The assassination of any of these people—or their parents, or of others they relied on—before they became the globally influential people we know, would have the same kind of effect as the assassination of the young Mao in Beijing. Bricks are making plans right now to devastate major cities using precisely these tactics. I don’t have to remind you of how far stock markets have plummeted since Beijing. A few more attacks like this and we will be plunged into another depression—one that will make the Adjustment look like a minor hiccough.”

He leaned on his podium, scouring the audience with his deep, dark eyes. Behind him, injured people crawled through the rubble of Beijing, crying for help.

“I do not exaggerate. For a price that many terrorist groups, organised crime gangs, rogue governments, and even wealthy individuals can afford, you can now devastate a major city as effectively as if you’d set off a nuclear bomb there. How many cities would need to be nuked before a country could no longer recover? How many would it take to bring down our whole civilisation?

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is the threat we face.”

* * * *

The truck came to a halt with a massive screech as it dumped energy to its flywheels, followed by an explosive hiss from its air-brakes. For a moment it juddered and settled on its shock absorbers, and then it was silent except for the hum of its big electric motors. It was standing in a long, broad lay-by—a big pull-off beside the Autobahn. To the left, separating the lay-by from the main road, was a row of tall shrubs. To the right were open fields. Ahead of the truck, blocking its exit, was a green and white police car. Beyond that, a silver Mercedes. Beside the truck, the motorcycle policeman who had flagged it down pulled in and dismounted.

Sniper, looking smart in a fake Berliner Polizei uniform, stepped up to the cab and called for the driver to get out.

Instead of complying, the man leaned out of his window and shouted to Sniper in German,

“What’s the problem, officer? I wasn’t speeding.”

Frowning at the man from under his peaked crash helmet, Sniper summoned him with a peremptory wave of the hand and said, in a tone that would brook no discussion of the matter, “I’d like you to step down from your vehicle please, sir.”

Reluctantly, the driver threw open his door and climbed down to the ground. Without another word, Sniper drew his QSZ-99 handgun and shot the man through the temple, making sure the blood spattered away from the truck. Klaatu and another teknik ran out from the police car and went to the back of the truck.

Sniper could hear them opening the big door and clambering in. It was a quiet stretch of road and the lay-by was sheltered by the shrubbery, but there were still too many cars and trucks going by to leave a dead man lying there for long. Moving quickly, Sniper opened the pannier on his police bike and took out a folded cloth. He flicked it open and threw it over the body. The cloth, a smart fabric, took light striking it from the sides and carried it laterally, releasing it from the opposite side. The effect was a kind of camouflage. When you looked at the cloth, you didn’t see the cloth but a blurred image of what was beside it. Sniper squinted at the strange, disturbing effect, stepping away from it toward the road. Instead of a dead body, he saw a curious distortion, a bump in the tarmac, perhaps, or an odd reflection from the truck’s paintwork. Good enough, he decided, and went to join the others.

“This is good,” Klaatu told him as he peered into the gloomy interior. Klaatu and the other teknik had torches and tag-readers. “It’s everything we need.” Despite this, Klaatu’s expression was dark and surly. Robbing a truck in broad daylight, he had told Sniper earlier, stealing components that any cop with half a brain would know were for a displacement field rig, was incredibly stupid. Sniper had shouted him down and shut him up.

“Good. Get the police car shifted, then take the Merc and get lost. I’ll join you at the warehouse. I’ll be at least an hour driving this thing.” He grinned into Klaatu’s face. He knew just how much his teknik resented this. “Cheer up, my gloomy friend. By the time the cops work it out, we’ll have done what we came to do.”

Klaatu said nothing. He pulled another device out of his jacket and went to the truck’s cab to reprogram the vehicle’s ID responder. When it passed the toll points and police checks, it would feed them a false ID and identify its load as farm produce. He gave a quick check that the licence plate displays at front and back had changed to reflect the truck’s new designation and went back to join Sniper.

“You sure that’s going to be okay?” Klaatu asked, glancing at the logo on the side of the truck.

“Don’t worry. There are thousands of these things on the road.” He looked across at the main road. “Half a dozen must have gone past while you’ve been dicking about with the registration.”

Klaatu nodded and set off for the Mercedes. Before he closed the back of the truck, Sniper took one last look at the equipment they had just stolen. It would be soon now. Very soon.

* * * *

No one noticed Joe was missing until the next day. Jay was the first to mention it, worried that something might have happened to him.

“What do you mean, he might have gone out to ask a few questions?” Kappelhoff demanded. Jay struggled with his concern for the young Spaniard’s safety and his unwillingness to get a fellow officer into trouble. “It’s just that, the last time I saw him, he sort of mentioned he might just, you know, pop into a club or two to, well, get a feel for the local scene.”

The Chief Inspector eyed him with a dangerous calm. “And just when did he just mention all this?”

“Yesterday afternoon, sir.”

Kappelhoff looked at his compatch. “And it is now ten fifteen in the morning. And you say you checked with the hotel and he didn’t use his room last night?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you can’t raise him on his compatch?”

“No, sir.”

“So one of my officers has been missing for about eighteen hours and you only just thought you’d come and mention it?”

Jay bridled. “I don’t think that’s fair, sir.”

Kappelhoff lifted the lid on his anger just a fraction. “Oh, really. You let a member of my team—” He paused, staring past Jay. “What the…”

Jay turned too, to see Joe sauntering across the room to his desk.

“What the hell is that boy’s name?” Kappelhoff growled, transferring his anger to Joe. Jay grimaced. “I haven’t quite got it yet, sir. He says it a lot but it’s a bit long.”

Kappelhoff scowled at him. “You!” he bellowed. Every head in the room turned, so that when Kappelhoff pointed at Joe and yelled, “Yes, you! In my office right now!” there was no mistaking whom he meant. As the Chief Inspector set off after Joe, he added in an aside, “You too, DC Kennedy.”

“Where have you been?” he asked Joe as soon as he walked through the door. Joe cast an accusatory frown at Jay. “I have been talking to some local people, sir, trying to get the lie of the land.”

“You report to Detective Inspector Moretti, do you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Moretti order you to go out talking to people?”

“I wasn’t doing anything else, sir. I thought it would be useful if I—”

Kappelhoff raised his voice. “Did Moretti order you to go out talking to people?”

Joe stopped trying to justify himself. “No, sir.”

Kappelhoff simmered down in turn. “No, sir. And you.” He turned to Jay. “You knew he had gone off without explicit orders but you said nothing to anyone?”

“No, sir. I mean, yes, that’s right, sir.”

Kappelhoff regarded them sternly. “This is the second time in as many days that you two have been in trouble for a breach of discipline. If it wouldn’t be such a waste of taxpayers’ money, I’d ship you both back to Brussels right now. So, since I’m stuck with you, I’ll have to put you to use, somehow. But I tell you, I don’t like officers who don’t understand basic discipline. Consider yourself warned. Do you understand me?”

They both yessirred in unison and were dismissed.

After they had gone, Moretti wandered into the Chief’s office. “What do you think?” he asked. “A couple of bad ones?”

Kappelhoff shrugged. “I don’t think so. The Spanish boy is a bit too full of himself but his heart’s in the right place. You can’t blame him for being frustrated with all the bureaucracy we’re having to go through. I want to get on with some real police work myself. As for the other one… I don’t know… His only real crime so far seems to be a willingness to get dragged into his friend’s stupid antics.

“Nevertheless, don’t let them think they’ve got away with anything. Pile a lot of grunt work on them for a while. Make them feel they’re being crapped on.”

Moretti smiled. “I was going to do that anyway. The Bundespolizei have done a dump of everything they know about every timesplasher in the whole country. It’ll take a lot of sifting to find any patterns in it.”

* * * *

“So you went and told them about me.” Joe sounded grimly satisfied, as if pleased to have his opinion of Jay validated.

Jay looked up from the stack of reports on his display. “I was worried about you. I assumed, understandably, that you’d done something stupid and you were in trouble. I know now I should have just left you in whatever mess you might have been in.”

“Ha!”

“What do you mean, ‘Ha!’?”

“I mean, ha! That’s what I mean.”

“God, you’re a pain in the arse!”

There was a short silence while both of them fumed over their private thoughts. Joe, of course, was the one to break it.

“I suppose you are wondering what success I had last night.”

Jay snorted. “If you’d had any success, you’d have been crowing it round the office.”

Joe rolled his chair over to Jay’s desk and leaned in to him confidentially. “I met a guy who said there was someone recruiting electrical engineers—electrical power engineers, not electronics engineers. You know the difference, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Then you can tell me. I did not want to ask, you understand.”

Jay sighed. “Power engineers are the guys who rig the overhead cables, substations, power stations, all that. Electronics is all the small stuff.”

Joe nodded. “Excellent!”

“Why is that ex… Oh, I see.” Jay felt very stupid. He should have seen it straight away, would have if he hadn’t been so irritated with Joe. “You think there is a brick out there recruiting tekniks with power engineering skills because they’re wiring together a bloody big power supply?”

“Exactly! I would have offered my services only my electrical skills are a little nonexistent. They’d spot me immediately.”

Jay shook his head in amazement. “It’s a good job you didn’t! Kappelhoff would have carved out your liver and fed it to the crows. Didn’t they train you at all in the Guardia Civil?”

Joe just grinned. “They tried, my friend. They tried.”

It was no use trying to understand him, Jay thought. The man would always be a mystery.

“So why haven’t you passed this on to Moretti, or Kappelhoff? Don’t you think they might like to know?”

Joe’s expression said he wasn’t so sure about that. “I thought I would tell you first,” he said.

“Me? Why tell me? I don’t want to be involved in any more of your nonsense. Just leave me right out—”

An alert from his desk unit interrupted him and both young men turned to look. On the display was a message from one of the many search agents he had set loose on the Bundespolizei databases and local news channels. The software had found an item of interest, using the many complex parameters he had provided it. An armed robbery and murder had just been reported. A truck belonging to RWE.ON, one of Europe’s biggest power companies, had been hijacked and its entire cargo of heavy-duty electrical switches and capacitors had been stolen. As Joe read the display, a big smile spread across his face. “There, you see, my backroom boy! That is why I brought this to you. And there you are, already gathering the evidence I need to confirm my suspicions.” Jay glared at him. “Now we can go and tell Kappelhoff what we know.”