They shook hands then, more as old friends than to seal the bargain, but Sonny still looked troubled. Jesse said, “Are you in danger?”
“No more than any of us. Today the highbinders are tying up their queues and sharpening their hatchets. Try to be somewhere else after dark.”
The handshake ended. Sonny turned to Elizabeth and made a curt bow. “Pleased to have made your acquaintance.”
“Likewise,” Elizabeth said.
Jesse left the carriage at a livery stable on Market and walked with Elizabeth to the address they had been given. It was a three-story hotel on Montgomery near Market, just as Sonny Lau had said: not the plush Grand Hotel, which had impressed a younger Jesse as probably the finest hotel in all creation, or the even plusher Palace, which had been constructed in his absence. The Royal, as it was called, was older, less elegant, not exactly shabby but as close as it could get to that description while justifying the price of its rooms. The lobby smelled of oiled wood and boiled cabbage, halfway between a church and a cookhouse. The clerk behind the desk was a bald man with a vast gray beard and pitiless eyes. He looked at Jesse and Elizabeth, and at the calico travel bag in Jesse’s hand, and seemed to find their presence in his domain plausible if not entirely convincing. “A room for you and your lady, sir?”
The price he quoted seemed high, but renting a room was the easiest way to gain access to the upper floors, and in any case it was Kemp’s money they were spending, not their own. Jesse didn’t want to put his true name on the register, so he signed as “John Comstock and Wife.” He was aware of the tension in Elizabeth’s body as she waited, the way she scanned the empty lobby as if it might at any moment fill up with hostile forces, wary as a lioness closing in on her prey.
“So do we knock on the door?” she asked as they climbed the stairs, having waved off a disappointed elderly bellboy. According to Sonny’s information, the room in which Theo and Mercy were staying was on the third floor. Number 316. “Or do we knock the door down?”
“Might as well knock first,” Jesse said. “See where it goes from there. Assuming anybody’s home.”
At the third-floor landing he took a pistol from the travel bag and made sure it was loaded and ready to fire. Elizabeth did the same, keeping the weapon in her hand but concealing it against the billow of her day dress. Outside the door marked 316, Jesse put the bag on the floor within easy reach. He glanced at Elizabeth, who nodded her readiness. Now we come to the cusp of the thing, Jesse thought. He kept the pistol in his left hand and knocked on the door with the knuckles of his right. Four sharp raps.
Long seconds passed. Then the latch rattled and the door opened inward, revealing a young woman. Mercy Kemp. She fit the description and matched all the pictures in the dossier. She was tall, like so many of these twenty-first-century women. She wore a pale yellow dress of no particular distinction. Her blond hair was shorter than most women wore it. Her face was flawlessly symmetrical and her skin was almost supernaturally unblemished. “Yes?”
Jesse said, “Miss Mercy Kemp?”
“You must be from the City.” She turned away and called out, “Theo! They’re here.”
It seemed prudent, as they came inside and closed the door behind them, to keep their weapons visible. But Theo Stromberg offered no resistance. “What were you expecting,” he asked, nodding at Jesse’s pistol, “a fire fight? You won’t need that.”
“I hope not. But I’ll hang on to it for the time being.”
Mercy and Theo stood together by the room’s long window as if framed in a photograph. Theo Stromberg, for all the deviltry he had committed, looked about as menacing as a hummingbird. He was a wiry man, and he gave the impression that there wasn’t quite enough of him to fill his clothes. He was clean-shaven and dark-haired and nervous. Like Mercy, Theo would not have seemed remarkable if you passed him on the street. But put these two together and they looked unmistakably like visitors from the future—unformed, too perfectly made, lacking all the scars and marks that distinguish real people from store-window mannequins.
On top of a bureau was a leather travel bag, open but almost fully packed. Most of what it contained was women’s clothing, presumably Mercy’s wardrobe. “Getting ready to go somewhere?”
“Yeah,” Theo said amicably. “Home.”
It wasn’t clear what he meant by that. Elizabeth said, “We’re here to take you into custody.”
“Fine, good,” Theo said.
Mercy added, “We expected my father to send someone. I’m surprised it took so long. We’re finished here. We’re ready to go with you.”
“Another day and you’d have missed us,” Theo said. “We figured we should head east before the strikes shut down rail service west of the Mississippi.”
Elizabeth said, “You’re telling us you’re willing to go back?”
“We don’t want to be stranded here. That was never part of the plan. So when we heard the news—”
“What news?”
Theo looked at Mercy, Mercy looked at Theo. Theo pointed at a copy of the Chronicle lying on a chair, pages askew. Jesse took his eyes off his nominal captives long enough to spot the pertinent headline at the top of a long column of dense type:
FEDERAL TROOPS BESIEGE CITY OF FUTURITY
Elizabeth didn’t trust the apparent docility of the captives—if Theo had offered even a hint of resistance she would have been happy to put him in wrist restraints—but she left them under Jesse’s surveillance and took the radio into an adjoining room.
She pictured her signal bouncing from Montgomery Street to Oakland, flying across the bay like a weightless bird, outstripping the ferries and freight boats. Radio before Marconi. She guessed Marconi was just an Italian kid in short pants circa 1877, if he had even been born yet. Something else she could Google at her leisure, if she ever got home.
A voice she didn’t recognize answered her call and told her to stay on the air. Then there was an interval of noise, cosmic rays crackling down from distant stars, until Kemp’s voice drowned it out. “Elizabeth? What’s your status?”
“We have her.”
A pause. Then, “Thank God. Oh, Christ. It was a close thing, Elizabeth, I won’t shit you about that.”
“We have Theo, too. They both say they’re willing to come back. No argument.”
“Theo’s a liar. Don’t take him at his word. Especially not as long as my daughter is under his influence.”
“Understood. But I’m assuming you want us to bring them both in.”
“Obviously, but it’s Mercy who matters. Keep that in mind.”
“We will.”
“Okay. Things are a little chaotic here—”
“It was in the papers,” Elizabeth said, “about the siege.”
“We’re dealing with it. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Fucking reporters, half the time they’re just making shit up. It’s true Hayes has an infantry brigade at the gate. Some laid-off local employee told the Chicago papers about the attempt on Grant’s life—Congress and the press are making a big deal of it, on top of everything else. But we still have a few friends in high places. We’ll make it back safely, I promise, but time is tight.”
“So what happens next?”
“We’re dealing with local hostility here on the Oakland side. The City’s docks and property are more or less under police control right now, so we’re working out of private facilities the authorities don’t know about. Getting you out of San Francisco is going to be a little tricky. We should be able to have an unmarked boat for you at the Market Street wharf by nine tonight, but we’re still working out the details. Can you stay where you are for another few hours?”