“Is that all?” Griffin asked. “Suspicion, innuendo, and a complete lack of physical evidence?”
“Sir, there’s a pattern here!” Molly squirted up the remaining dates, then faded them down so that the time line was dominated by the series of dark red question marks. “There’s a Ranch-shaped gap in our boy’s life. Every summer, every break, he disappears from the records. Do you have any idea how difficult that is? He doesn’t use a credit card. He doesn’t write checks. Where is he?”
“He’s on retreat,” Amy Cho said excitedly. “He’s just spent nine months in the belly of Great Satan Academia, his soul in constant mortal peril from humanism and scientific rationalism. The very first thing they’d want to do is to offer prayers of thanks for his safe return. They’d kill the fatted calf. Followed by fasting and purification. Imagine how filthy the poor boy must feel, pretending to be one of the Devil’s lackeys. Then, when he’s cleansed and rested…”
“A few of the lads would take him out for a bit of Christian rage,” Jimmy Boyle said. “They’d beat up a drug dealer or two, some faggots, maybe an abortionist if they’ve got one lined up. Just to keep the edge on him.”
“I take it this is undocumented as well,” Griffin said.
“It’s what I’d do if I were running him. It’s what anybody would do.”
She had them now, everybody but Griffin. Unfortunately, she was running up against the end of her trail. This was the tricky part. She was not allowed to look very deeply into his post-recruitment history nor at any part of that history in any great detail.
She drew a thick slash across the time line. “Here’s where we recruit him. We could hardly have avoided it. He’d been very carefully prepped. He had skills that we particularly wanted. He looked like a very attractive candidate.
“So what became of him? Almost immediately, he faded into obscurity. He made a competent but unimpressive job of the stratigraphic work that was expected of him. Transferred to Carnival Station and kept the animal register for a time. Transferred to Bohemia Station and ran the bird colony. Transferred to Mjolnir Station and spent a few months preparing skeletons for exhibitions. That’s tedious work. Transferred to Origin Station and prepped tissue specimens. Even more tedious. Transferred to Sundance Station and maintained the boats. Transferred to Survival Station, where he now runs the commissary, stows supplies, and has complete access to the time funnel.
“That’s a lot of transfers, and a lot of wasted potential. But in less than two years, personal time, it’s got him exactly where he wants to be.”
Time for the big wrapup. Molly took a deep breath. “Sir, we’re requesting—”
Griffin held out a hand to stop her.
“It’s not good enough,” he said. “There is no judge anywhere I can take this to and get a warrant from.”
“I’m not requesting a warrant, just permission to run a proper investigation. Let me ask a few questions. Get the FBI to put a tracer on him one of those summers, see exactly where he goes. We know he’s our mole. I’m just asking that you let me prove it.”
“I’m afraid that can’t be done.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not the way it was done. Jimmy? If you would.”
While Molly tidied her papers into a pile, Jimmy Boyle placed one black binder before everybody’s place. Then, almost ritually, he helped Amy Cho back into her seat.
They all opened their binders.
Griffin took Molly’s pointer and erased everything from the whiteboard. He pulled up a new time line. “This is two years and three months of Robo Boy’s life, from his own perspective. During this time, he bounces all over the Mesozoic, but we’re ignoring that. Here to the left, it begins with his being recruited to join our merry little band of pranksters. To the right, at the end of our examined period, while he was working at Hilltop Station, is the date the opal man, Tubal-Cain or whoever it was supposed to be, was shipped. Okay? Robo Boy never picked it up. We had people watching, but he never came close to it. Something scared him off.
“Here, just before his transfer to Hilltop, is where our second sting is being placed. We’ve baited a trap with Salley and Leyster. He’s going to strand them in the Maastrichtian. We’re going to investigate. Again, there won’t be the physical evidence to prove he was at fault. But three months later, when we yank the expedition back, we can use their testimony to convict him.”
“Wait,” Tom said. “Why would you place a second sting just before the first? No wonder Robo Boy was spooked.”
“We already knew the first sting didn’t work,” Griffin said testily. “So we’re placing the second sting as early as possible in order to minimize the time available to him. We want to get him out of our hair as quickly as possible, remember?”
Molly flipped through the material in the binder, scanning the headings and subheadings, reading the captions. The final page was a casualty list.
She looked up. “Five deaths?”
“A terrible thing,” Griffin said. “But unavoidable.”
“Five deaths? Unavoidable?”
“They all knew the risks.” Griffin turned a page in his binder. “Tom, Molly, your part in this operation will be to—”
She stood so fast the chair toppled over behind her. “This isn’t what I took this job to accomplish. I refuse to be a part of it.”
“According to our files, you play your part as directed.” He tapped his binder impatiently. “So, please, spare us this display of histrionics.”
Jimmy Boyle’s face was like stone. Amy Cho looked alarmed. Tom Navarro had raised his hands and was shaking his head. Calm down, he meant. Choose your fights carefully. Never do anything irrevocable when you’re angry.
She ignored them all.
“You don’t intimidate me, and you can’t con me either. All this I-have-the-files-and-I-know-the-future bullshit doesn’t cut it. I’m not going to go along with your filthy little plan. I’m going over your head. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll quit. So your files are wrong. One way or the other, they’re wrong.”
Griffin made an elaborately bored grimace and flicked his fingers toward the door. “Go. See how much good it does you.”
In a rage, she left the room.
She stormed down the hall to the Old Man’s office. Normally, the door was closed and the office was dark. But on her first day here, the Old Man had promised that the door would be open, “anytime you need to see me.”
The door was open for her.
She went in.
The Old Man looked up from his work. It was uncanny how much he looked like Griffin while somehow feeling like a completely different person. More solitary, in a wolfish sort of way. More deeply scarred.
The fingertips of one hand lightly stroked the skull he kept on his desk. Involuntarily, she remembered the half-facetious rumor that it was a trophy from a hated enemy he had somehow defeated. “Come in,” he said. “Close the door, have a seat. I’ve been expecting you.”
She obeyed.
It was like entering an ogre’s den. Thick curtains kept out the sunlight. Heavy wooden furniture held a clutter of mementos and framed photographs. He even had an Quetzalcoatlus skull propped up in the corner. It was as if he dwelt within his own hindbrain.
“Sir, I—”
He held up a hand. “I know why you’re here. Give me credit for—” He stifled a yawn. “Give me that much credit, anyway. You’re hoping that age has mellowed me. But if it hasn’t, you think you’re prepared to quit.
“Alas, it simply isn’t that easy. Your Griffin made the decisions he did because I told him to. He didn’t like it any more than you do. But he understood the necessity.”
Molly’s heart sank. She prided herself on being able to see deeper into a face than most, but the man was unreadable. He might be a saint or a devil. She honestly couldn’t tell which. Looking into his eyes was like staring down a lightless road at midnight. There was no telling what might be down there. Those eyes had seen things she could not imagine.