TimeSplash (20 page)

“But I’ll be able to come over to visit more often now I’m back in London. I’m thinking of getting a car. Not that I really need one but it might be a bit of a laugh. I could take you and Dad for a run out to the beach at the weekend, or something.”

His mother laughed as if he was still five years old and telling her his plans to build a moon rocket. She handed him another piece of cake. He eyed it queasily and thanked her.

“So did you meet any nice girls over in Europe?” she asked.

He laughed. “Only policewomen and femmes fatales. You wouldn’t like the policewomen because they’re all tougher than me and can drink me under the table. The femmes fatales are great but they’re mostly over thirty and not one of them knows how to make angel cake like you, Mum.”

His mother pulled a face and slapped his arm in mock annoyance. “I’m only interested in how you’re getting on. I know you, you’ll turn up on the doorstep one day with some postpunk girl with a bolt through her neck saying, ‘Mum, meet Eviscerator, she’s your new daughter-in-law.’”

“Well, if that’s how you feel about body piercing, I don’t think I’d better mention the biker chick I’ve been shacked up with for the past six months.”

They chatted on in the same vein for a long, languorous time, neither of them caring much what they talked about. The mention of girls had brought back the memory of Sandra Malone and the thought of her ran in the back of his mind as the conversation meandered about. After that night in Berlin, when she had saved Jay’s life—and Joe’s—he had tried everything he could to find her. He still thought of her as Patty, even though he had quickly discovered her real name. He could still see her appearing like a guardian angel out of the cold November night, reaching out to hold him as he spiralled down into darkness. But she was gone. The bullets from her gun had been tied by forensics to a shooting in London more than ten years ago. Too long ago to be anything to do with her. How she had come to be carrying a weapon with that kind of history he could only guess. What she was doing there, in that street, on that night, he had no idea, but it had to be something to do with Sniper. Had she gone back to him after she’d escaped from the institution? If so, why had she fired at him? Had she really tried to kill her one-time lover, or had she deliberately missed, scaring him off to save Jay?

He had spoken to the police who arrested her in Ommen and the psychiatrist who had treated her in Cornwall, but still had no clear picture of her. Beautiful, intelligent, severely traumatised and probably paranoid, the psychiatrist had said, living in constant fear for her life, dreading the power and evil intent of a man she imagined as a demigod of vengeance and destruction. Not such a bad description of Sniper, Jay thought.

The Mexico City disaster, two months ago, had put so much pressure on the TCU that Jay had had to drop his search for the mysterious Sandra Malone and focus on more pressing investigations. But he still kept looking, quietly, in the background, determined to find her. Reminiscences and conversation both were stopped by the sound of the front doorbell. Jay’s mother got up with a “Who can that be?” and disappeared into the house. She was gone so long that Jay began once more to relax back into simply sitting quietly with nothing to do. The past few months—the past two and a half years!—had been so full-on he had hardly ever had a chance to just sit around and do nothing. Yet, even now, with the gentle English sun warming him and the quiet hum of the bees lulling him, he couldn’t help wondering about the work he’d left behind in Brussels and the assignment that was ahead of him here in London. After that night in Berlin, there had been no sign of Sniper or his teknik. It was impossible to believe that a man like that would have just given up. No, he was out there, somewhere in the world, planning another big splash. Jay had done all he could to track him down, Europol had done all it could too, but, in the end, the trail had gone cold and Sniper had vanished into the ether. Other bricks had been found and other splashes had been thwarted but not the one that mattered, not the one that Sniper must be planning.

And now Jay was back in the UK and someone else was on secondment to Europol. When Jay had asked to stay with the Temporal Crimes Unit, Holbrook had been flattering about what a good job Jay had done and how his talents were needed “on the home front.” Jay had tried to argue that he was of more use staying in Brussels, but it didn’t get him anywhere and here he was, home again.

He heard voices approaching through the house; a man was talking to his mother, a deep-voiced man who must be flattering her atrociously judging from the way she was giggling. Then they emerged into the garden and Jay jumped to his feet immediately.

“Superintendent!”

Bauchet turned his aquiline face to Jay and smiled. “Your charming mother has been telling me all about what a good boy you used to be when you were little.” Jay goggled in alarm at his mother. “I assured her that she can still be just as proud of you.”

Embarrassment grabbed Jay by the throat and left him open-mouthed and speechless. If the sky could have fallen on him right that minute, he would have considered it a blessing. His mother didn’t help matters by standing there beaming at him as if he was her chubby little baby once more.

“Now, if I may, Mrs. Kennedy,” said Bauchet. “I need to have a few words in private with your son. It is important police business, you understand.”

Jay’s mother all but simpered as she assured him it would be all right and bustled away to leave them alone in the garden. Bauchet thanked her profusely and went over to sit opposite Jay. He folded his long body into the wicker chair as if it were something he had never done before and regarded Jay with his usual sombre expression, all smiles gone. Jay felt much more comfortable to see those deep-set eyes regarding him without a twinkle in them. Cautiously, he sat down too.

“Can I get you a drink, sir? Or something?”

“Your mother and I have just had that conversation—at length.”

“Ah. Then…”

“I am sorry for coming here, to your parents’ home, but I needed to talk to you somewhere private, where there would be no bugs. You understand?”

“Bugs? No, I’m afraid…”

“It is important to stop the bricks from launching more attacks,” Bauchet said. “It is the most important matter facing humankind at the moment. Do you not agree?”

Jay tried to weigh it against curing cancer or stopping poverty, ending the Sino-Indian war or beating the latest flu pandemic, but quickly gave up. It was well up there with the rest, wherever its exact place in the running order was. So he said, “I suppose.”

“In the last six months, two major cities have been reduced to rubble. Tens of thousands are dead.” He waited while Jay nodded. “So it is a rather odd time to be taking experienced staff—like you—away from the TCU, is it not?”

“Well, yes. But I was told…”

Bauchet raised a hand. “Yes, yes. It is possible, I suppose, that national governments are becoming scared and they want their people back home, protecting their more narrow interests. But you and I know that this is wrongheaded. This kind of terrorism has worldwide networks of financing and support. The bricks are mobile and flexible. They choose their targets from all over the world and they go where the work is. National intelligence agencies cannot hope to mount adequate defences without strong, effective international coordination and collaboration.”

He paused, meaningfully. “So why am I losing my people, Jay? Why are my new secondees stupid third-rate people who couldn’t find their arses with both hands?” For some reason, Bauchet’s French accent seemed exaggerated and exotic in the context of Jay’s parent’s garden.

“I still don’t…”

“Jay, you know I have had a small team reporting directly to me that has been chasing the money.” Jay nodded. The Super’s right hand man, Colbert, had been running it. “The trail goes round and round in circles and never ends anywhere! We are not looking at criminal gangs and religious nutcases.” He waved his hand as if to dismiss such naïve notions. “I believe only the most sophisticated of organisations could have set up such clever and elaborate paper trails.”

Jay blinked, suddenly realising where this was going. “Governments? You think there are rogue governments behind all this?”

“What they used to call state-sponsored terrorism.”

Jay’s mind was racing. During the Adjustment, many governments collapsed. There were coups and revolutions, sometimes long periods of anarchy. If you were looking for rogues, there was a long list to choose from. “America?” he asked, shocking himself as the possibility dawned.

They had traced the money behind Sniper’s team to a number of religious groups—some of them quite legal or at least tolerated in the USA. Were they just a front for an American government agency, the CIA perhaps?

Bauchet shook his head. “I don’t think so.” Then he shrugged. “Who knows? We have no evidence and I doubt that we will ever have any either way. But we must keep an open mind and not jump to any obvious conclusions. Such a revelation would start a war. It is not something to speculate about idly.”

Jay sat back in his chair, letting the implications go round in his head. Bauchet sat back too, letting him take a moment to adjust to the idea.

When the Frenchman spoke again, it was in a much lighter tone. “You know, when the Unit first started up, all you young Turks from all over Europe were the last thing I wanted. Your governments had forced me to accept representatives of their intelligence agencies so that you could all report back on our progress, give them first-hand intelligence, as it were. It used to drive me crazy, I’ll tell you. But it hasn’t been so bad. There has even been a little competition among you and among the people who sent you that has been to our benefit.” Jay wondered if Bauchet knew about the tip-off Five had given him about Klaatu’s visit to Poland. There was no sign of it in Bauchet’s face, but then how do you read the expression of an eagle?

“Now, I wonder if we might be able to get the same process working in reverse.” He looked hard at Jay as if he’d said something very significant. Jay was struggling to see where the conversation was going. “You know, all you ex-TCU people out there in your national agencies, gathering intelligence, sifting and analysing, hearing this and that. Perhaps now and then you would call your old friends at the Unit and let us know how things are going. It would help everybody in the long run, don’t you think?”

Jay was shocked all over again. This was turning out to be quite a conversation.

“You want me to spy on my own department?”

Bauchet held his gaze steadily and said nothing.

Jay shook his head. “I can’t do that. I’m not a traitor—or a mole, or whatever that would make me.” He stood up, too agitated to stay still. “Anyway, what would be the point? Europol gets whatever we find. There are regular channels, standing protocols. Surely you’re not saying Five is withholding intelligence? What would be the point? Everyone would be losers. It doesn’t make any sense.”

He turned away from Bauchet’s silent gaze, feeling pinned by it, and began to pace the garden. The only advantage Jay’s intel could give Bauchet would be to cross-check it against what was coming down the official channel. But the only reason he would want to do that was if he suspected the official channel was being manipulated somehow. But what reason might the government have to hide anything when it came to information like that?

“Oh my God,” he said, stopping and turning back to Bauchet. “You think the Brits are funding splashteams. You think my government is behind this.” It was outrageous. Impossible.

Bauchet shook his head. “No, that is not what I think. I do not even have any reason to suspect it. But I would like to know who I can trust. As I told you, the money trail suggests a level of skill and organisation well beyond the reach of the groups we have heard about so far. If there is a government—or several governments—behind this, we need to know which ones.”

It all sounded so sane and reasonable when Bauchet said it, but Jay’s heart was pounding and something inside his skull was shouting at him to get the hell out of there and run for cover.

“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head again. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Bauchet sighed and rose to his feet. “And I’m sorry to ask you, Jay. It is only because I trust you that I offer you this burden.” He took a card out of his pocket and laid it on the table beside the cakes and lemonade. “This is a secure netID. Think about it and call me when you are ready. I’ll be in London for the next couple of days and then I go back to Bruxelles. I would not ask you if this were not so important.”

He left, passing through the house. Jay heard him saying good-bye to his mother. Slowly, he reached out and picked up the card. He stared at it for a long time before putting it away in his pocket.

Jay touched the lock on the run-down Canary Wharf apartment block where he lived, and his compatch negotiated with the building security system to let him in. The lock chimed and the door clicked open. The mechanism said, “Welcome home, Mr. Kennedy. You have had—no—visitors. No—messages are waiting for you. Have a pleasant evening.” He barely heard the machine’s chirpy voice. Lost in thought, he shook the rain from his coat and got into the lift. Bauchet’s visit had left him edgy and confused. A long walk had seemed like a good idea, but instead of clearing his head and helping him think, it had just left him cold and wet. The clear skies of the morning had slowly given way to thick cloud and a chill northerly wind. Now his only thought was to get into his flat, turn the heating up full and fall into a hot bath with a six-pack of beer. If he could find something mindless to watch on the vid later, he’d watch it. When he touched the lock to his own door, it opened immediately. It had, after all, been expecting him. Inside, the flat remained in darkness although the lights should have come on. Normally, he would have dismissed this as yet another fault in the building’s ageing systems, but not tonight. His talk with Bauchet had him wound up tight and he was in a mood to distrust anything and everything.