“Did he say why he chose you?” Lewis asked.
Pamela shook her head. “No. The meeting was real short. He kept looking at the door as if he were expecting his nurse to tell him he had a patient waiting. It was a Friday afternoon and I figured he wanted to get out of there for the weekend.”
Paul shook his head. “But even if you’re right, that still doesn’t put Collinson and Pomeroy back here. I don’t think that Eckleburg or Maddox or Gonzalez could possibly know what we were doing. And even if they did how could they build something to send someone back? Pomeroy disappeared in, what…?”
“July,” Ginter answered. “Right after the fourth.” He looked at Pamela who nodded in agreement.
“And Ralph?” deVere asked.
Ginter shrugged. “I don’t know. I only heard about it at Lorrie’s house. When was the last time you saw him at the coffee shop?”
DeVere squinted his eyes, and then moved away from the window. He leaned back against the writing desk.
“It was the evening I found the canister,” he said quietly. “That was on June 22. I stopped off on the way to the bridge to kill some time. There was a guy who said that Ralph had Sox tickets. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Were you good friends?” Amanda asked softly.
Paul shook his head. “I’d stop in sometimes and have a coffee. We’d chitchat, you know, politics, whatever. I certainly never told him I was working on something. I didn’t know he was even picked up until after Lewis’ meeting in Newton.”
“Did you know he was active?” Ginter asked.
“I knew how he thought but that’s not something you ask about,” Paul answered.
“So why would they disappear?” Amanda asked. “Where would they go?”
“Not back here,” Paul answered. “Heck, we didn’t even know where and when we were coming to until the last minute.” Paul deVere threw up his hands. “The whole thing is nuts. If anyone had come back and changed history we’d know it. It would have become our history.”
“Could they have done it while we were in the wormhole itself?”
Startled, Paul deVere turned to look at the speaker. Pamela Rhodes gazed stoically back at him.
“Pardon?” deVere asked.
“The wormhole,” she repeated. “You said that if they had changed history we would have already lived a different history and we’d know that history. But what if they changed history while we were in the wormhole? Then we wouldn’t know it. How long were we in the wormhole?”
Ginter and deVere exchanged glances.
“Pamela? Is that your name?” deVere asked.
The woman nodded.
“What do you do for work? I mean in Portland, your day job?”
“Insurance,” she answered simply. “I’m an adjustor for State Farm.”
DeVere nodded. “Well, there’s no answer to your question. One could argue that we were in the wormhole a negative sixty-three years but that really makes no sense since time has no meaning in a wormhole, which just connects two times and places. Lewis?”
Ginter nodded. “I think that is the only accurate answer to the question.”
Amanda jumped in. “But what if after we left in 2026 someone else left and went to an earlier time, say 1960? Then history could have been changed before we arrived back here.”
Ginter scoffed and shook his head forcefully. “If someone changed history then it changed for everyone, including us, so we would have known the revised history before we left.”
“Huh?” Pamela asked.
“But what if we failed?” Amanda persisted, ignoring Pamela. “Could someone have left after us and arrived before us to try to make sure we succeeded?”
“Maybe that’s what Eckleburg was doing,” Pamela said.
“And is that why these helpers sent the cops after us?” Ginter asked sarcastically.
“Look,” Pamela continued. “This conversation is going nowhere. We can’t figure out from here what anyone else was up to in 2026. And we can’t go back until December. So, what difference does it make? We’re going to have to figure out what we can do now.”
“She’s right,” Ginter added. “All we can do is what we can do. Nothing more.”
He turned to Paul. “Eckleburg said he was suspicious that you might be a squisher. But if he was just scamming the others maybe he knew you really could be trusted.”
“Lewis,” Paul began, “I never met Eckleburg. I don’t know why he’d suspect me.”
“Maybe not personally,” Ginter continued. “Maybe it was not you Eckleburg was suspicious of but someone around you.” He kept his eyes on Paul.
“Like you?” Pamela asked, turning toward Ginter. “You think Eckleburg suspected you?”
Ginter shook his head forcefully. “Why would he ask me to a meeting to tell me he was suspicious if I were the suspect?”
“Why does it matter?” Amanda asked. “We’re here, he’s not, and like Pamela said, what we’ve got to do is just try something.”
“Such as?” Ginter asked. “How can we convince Kennedy to invade Cuba now?”
“What?” Amanda asked. “Lewis, there’s no way. The time to have invaded Cuba was last year when the United States was threatened with weapons of mass destruction 90 miles away. I know you think it’s my fault we’re a year too late but I’m sorry. We’ve lost that chance. Kennedy will never invade Cuba now. He stared down Khrushchev and Khrushchev blinked—all without a war. The missiles are gone. Kennedy won—there’s no need for a war now.”
“He has to,” Ginter said coldly. “Don’t tell me it’s too late. Cuba will start exporting revolution before the end of this decade. Ché Guevara will march through Bolivia and up through Central America and they’ll have this country by the throat. Those chemical weapons and that dirty bomb will come from right over the border.”
Amanda shook her head. “I understand all that, but Kennedy will never invade now. John Kennedy was a hero in World War II. He’s seen its horrors. He’s not going to start a war when he’s already won a stand-off.”
Amanda shifted to face Ginter squarely. “But we still may be able to convince him to stay in Vietnam. That may be our best chance now.”
“When is that decision going to be made?” Ginter asked.
Amanda pulled out her itinerary papers and flipped through them. “Ah, here we are. Kennedy will meet with his advisors in a special Sunday meeting at the end of November, 1963.” She grabbed the calendar from the desk.
“November 24,” she said. “Within our window since we are here until what, December 8th?”
“Where’s the meeting?” Ginter asked.
“In D.C.,” Amanda answered. “There has to be some way of postponing or canceling that meeting. There has to be somewhere in here we can impress upon him the danger of a pullout.”
Ginter took the sheaf from her. “Right, why don’t we just call the White House and arrange lunch?” he asked sarcastically. “How do you think we’re going to convince the President?”
Lewis threw the sheaf of papers onto the table. “Invading Cuba means we stop Guevara. But there’s more than one way to do that. Today is August 5th, 1963. I’m not going to spend the next month waiting for the editor of The Times to return calls to do lunch.”
“Hey,” deVere said, breaking the tension. “Speaking of lunch. I haven’t eaten in a negative 63 years and I’m hungry.”
Paul checked his watch. “I set it by the clock in the lobby. It’s 11:06. Perfect time for an early lunch. There’s a restaurant on the ground floor. And I want to try that crank machine. Let’s eat and try to come up with a new plan.”
“I guess we could tackle this better on a full stomach,” Amanda said.
“Wonder if they’ve invented the salad yet,” Paul said, grabbing his key from the writing desk.