Tavish glanced at a clock, looked around at his colleagues, then finally turned to Wilson again. “ Where did you send them?”
Wilson’s smile grew even larger. “A place and time where their talents and proclivities could pose no threat to the locals. I had to be very careful. I had to make certain that I didn’t send them anywhere, or anywhen, where they might alter history, alter our present.”
“Where—when —was that?” Tavish asked.
“The early Cretaceous, Senator, back when the neighborhood bullies were dinosaurs.”
The hearings continued for another week and a half. Dr. Wilson freely answered all of the questions put to him by the committee and by the press before and alter the Senate sessions except in two areas. He steadfastly refused to give any details, even in the broadest form, of the time machine’s construction. And he refused even under threat of contempt of congress to say where the machine, or its components, were currently located. All he would say on the latter subject was, “I disassembled it immediately following the conclusion of the project and moved the parts to other locations.”
Among the things he did not say was that he had since reassembled the apparatus, and that it was now located within a half hour’s drive of the Capitol Building.
There were no hearings scheduled for the day of the President’s State of the Union Address. Wilson spent most of that day in his hotel room, watching television. Late in the afternoon, he left the hotel by a rear entrance, disguised with a navy blue watch cap and a surplus Army overcoat. None of the FBI agents, police, private investigators, or news people watching the hotel spotted him.
He made the drive to the Virginia location where he had reassembled his time machine. That evening, a little after nine o’clock, he turned the machine on.
He had the exact coordinates prepared. The only question in his mind was whether the machine could handle the overload. It had not been designed for anything quite so ... ambitious.
In just a couple of minutes, the computer monitor was showing the same scene as the portable television sitting next to it, the House of Representatives. The chamber was crowded with the Vice President, senators, Supreme Court justices, cabinet members, diplomats, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff all present in addition to the representatives who normally worked in that hall. The President of the United States was introduced and escorted down the aisle to the dais. As soon as the President started his speech, Wilson hit the switch on his machine.
“And that cuts the head off of the rest of organized crime in America,” he whispered as his television showed an empty House. He leaned back and put his feet up. It had been a good day’s work.
The cigar he lit was Cuban, the best handmade rolled in 1929, given to him by Al Capone himself. As soon as he was finished with the cigar, Wilson would use his time machine for the last time. He already had the explosives packed around each piece of equipment. A timer would take care of it all two minutes after Wilson arrived in 1929 Florida.
Mr. Capone had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.