‘My name is Adler. Sabine Adler.’
‘Perhaps you could tell me how you came to be parachuting into our grounds.’
‘I am with a—how do you call it—“parachute school”? I have lost my friends.’
‘I’ll get you a phone,’ he said, turning.
‘Thank you.’
As she moved away, Saskia walked silently in his shadow. When he was behind the desk, she put a hand on his neck and drove his forehead onto the edge of the counter. He sighed and fell slowly, pulling the telephone to the floor. Saskia pushed him into the chair cavity.
She adjusted her watch to match McWhirter’s. There were ten minutes until Hartfield arrived.
‘Good afternoon,’ said a cheerful voice.
Saskia struck her wrist computer and became transparent.
The suit’s camouflage worked by diverting light, but her eyes needed those rays. Without them she was blind. She heard the man stop. ‘I must say that you’re looking particularly handsome today, Colonel McWhirter.’
Who would compliment an empty desk?
His footsteps moved on.
Saskia lost her transparency and followed the man across the foyer, moving from column to column, checking for the sweep of surveillance cameras. A guard walked by. She curled into a ball behind a plant and became transparent once more. She held her breath as the guard passed.
At last corner before the cloak room, the man turned. His eyes roamed. He had high cheekbones and a restless, smiling mouth. Saskia was not surprised at his youthful appearance. Inside the computer, realised as a twenty-one-year-old, he would be no different.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I believe we’re walking the same way.’
‘I’m…new here,’ she said, shaking his offered hand.
‘I know. One, your footsteps. Two, we don’t have any German scientists. Aren’t you warm in gloves?’
Saskia looked for cameras. ‘Can we be overheard?’
‘Not here. Why?’
She pulled him towards the wall. ‘Your name is Bruce Shimoda. During the past few weeks, you’ve been having nightmares about children with no eyes. You have told nobody about them. I know about this and your plan to destroy Onogoro. I am from the future. You need to trust me.’
Bruce’s composure shattered. He released a shuddering breath. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need to get into the research centre.’
‘Security will never let you in.’
‘They will. We have only minutes before a bomb goes off near your laboratory. I have to stop it.’
A lie, but she needed Bruce’s help. They had five minutes until Hartfield arrived. The bomb might detonate at any time.
‘It can’t be ours, can it?’
‘No. This is a second, larger bomb. Let’s go. And remember, security can’t help us. Only I can defuse it.’
The open lift travelled to the lowest level of the centre. Saskia, invisible, heard the bustle and conversation of each floor, but saw nothing. As the lift stopped, Bruce said to the guard, ‘Hello, my friend. Jeremy, right? Is that a new aftershave?’
Saskia dashed to one side. She felt for a wall and crouched. Working by Bruce’s description, she was underneath the sill of the guard’s booth. It was a sheer surface with holes for the guard’s machine gun. To one side was a bombproof door.
She heard Bruce collide with the wall. ‘This wasn’t here yesterday.’
The guard said, ‘Dr Shimoda, please. You’ll hurt yourself.’
She became opaque. She saw a guard enter the reception area and take Bruce by the arm. She grimaced. The guard was less than a metre away. If he turned in her direction, she would be seen.
The guard led Bruce through the doorway. Saskia followed silently. Once through, she kept to the guard’s back and skipped down the corridor to a rack of lab coats. She took one. She deactivated her hood and tousled her hair. The lab coat buttoned easily and she studied a mounted floor plan, which she was too excited to memorise. Bruce touched her arm.
‘Now what?’ he asked.
‘I told you we would get in. I have powerful friends.’
‘Keep your voice down. Where? The lab?’
She looked at her watch. Two minutes until Hartfield arrived.
The corridor stretched ahead in ten-metre sections marked by blue fire doors. Dozens of people passed: friendly, academic, scruffy. Saskia wondered how many would die in the explosion. ‘Where is everybody going?’ she asked.
‘There’s a concert, one of David’s guitar things.’
‘How far to the laboratory?’
‘A couple of minutes. Do you think you’ll have time to disable the device?’
Saskia checked her watch again. She had never intended to reach the laboratory in time. It was 3:04 p.m. Game over. She slowed her pace.
They strolled through the next set of doors. Ahead of them, chatting to a colleague, was Jennifer Proctor. Saskia stopped. Jennifer?
‘What’s wrong?’ Bruce whispered.
‘Nothing. Just a feeling of…’
The woman turned. Her hair was darker, she was older, and she had a grace that had escaped her daughter. This was Helen Proctor. The connections formed. Jennifer’s mother. David’s wife.
‘Never mind that. What about the bomb?’
Saskia was about to answer when the floor shuddered. The lights flickered and extinguished. Then emergency lighting washed the corridor red. Saskia heard the infrastructure groan. Dust fell from new cracks.
‘We’re too late,’ said Bruce.
And then the explosions began. They started as distant firecrackers. Then the corridor was shaken by louder detonations. The smell of burning plastic. Heat. Shouts; some stifled, some ringing out.
The floor dropped an inch and they were thrown from their feet. The air pressure increased. Saskia screamed. She was caught in a giant machine never meant for humans; gaps would appear, only to close. The very walls might chew them. Saskia told herself that she would survive. Her God was Time, and It would protect her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘Saskia,’ Jennifer said, leaning into the microphone. ‘We’re sending you back one half hour before Hartfield. That will give you the best chance of intercepting him.’
David did not hear Saskia’s reply. He was looking at the target details on the main screen. There was something significant about the time. It was so extraordinarily significant that it took him a few moments to handle the thought. ‘My God, Jenny. Look at the time. That’s half an hour before the explosion. The bomb went off at 3:04 p.m.’
The computer beeped. Jennifer looked at him fearfully.
‘We can’t change anything now, Dad. She’s gone.’
‘Damn.’
He heard the footfalls of the approaching personnel. ‘I think the twenty-year mystery of the bombing is solved. Would his arrival be sufficient, you think?’
Jennifer put her hands on her hips. ‘Let’s do the math.’
‘Maths, love,’ David corrected.
‘An object leaves this centrifuge at one hundred and forty-four kilometres per hour. It enters the wormhole at the same speed. For a mass of, say, seventy-five kilograms, that’s a kinetic energy of almost one hundred kilo-Joules, which is more than enough to trigger an explosive chain reaction if the target is selected carefully. Hartfield must have materialised near a power plant.’
‘How very accommodating of him,’ David said. The circular nature of this business was bewildering. After all this, throughout the trial, the accusations, the damage—even the death of his wife—Hartfield had been the true cause. Ah. That was not an accurate statement. The cause could be traced back to the agent who had forced Hartfield to veer so fatally off course. It was Ego who changed the coordinates.