Prologue (22 page)

“It’s just safer,” deVere insisted. “We can’t just jump into this. We have to be careful.”

Ginter’s snicker turned into a full laugh. “Careful?
Careful about what?
If we actually do what we’re hoping to do the whole damn world is changed to we don’t know what. How the hell careful is
that
?”

DeVere flinched. “Do we have the fuel?” he asked.

“You mean to go?” Ginter asked.

“No, for a test run.
Do we have enough for more experiments?”

Ginter shook his head forcefully.
“No way.
Right now we have enough to open one more wormhole and do a big send-off and of course the return opens automatically. But we don’t have enough to do more experiments and also a send-off.”

“Can we get more?
Enough of it?”

Ginter shook his head again. “Not without more money. And the Descendants seem pretty adamant on this.
No more money unless they are brought in to see what they’re buying.”

“What about Lorrie?” deVere asked.

“Lorrie too,” Ginter answered. “But she had no choice. Eckleburg won’t give her the money unless this Pamela Rhodes person is shown what we’re doing and reports back to them. Eckleburg wants to see all.”

“Why her?”

“They still think
it’s
explosives. She’s the boom expert.”

“I thought she was a printer.
Pamphlets or something.”
DeVere was confused.

“That too.
But she’s also some sort of explosives expert. Or so she says. They picked her to check us out.
Or rather, to check
you
out.
Unless she says O.K. there’s no more money and without the dough we can’t get any more fuel.”

“What about a legit purchase?
Through the school?
Most of our work is already done anyhow.”

“No way,” Ginter answered. “We need too much and
Arnold
would get suspicious. Plus, he’s such a tightwad he’d never O.K. it. We have to buy it off-market. It’s risky, and expensive.”

DeVere frowned. “We’re going to have to bring her in. Show her what we’re doing.”

“Why?” Ginter asked, making a face. “She doesn’t know anything about time travel. She’s a freakin’ bomb expert. Besides, if Eckleburg finds out he’d go ballistic. They all would. I say we just go. Screw Pamela Rhodes. Screw ‘em all. Crank it up September first and off we go.
You, me, and Hutch.”
Ginter paused. “That is, if you still want to take her,” he added, glancing back at the house.

DeVere looked down at the ground. The lawn hadn’t been mowed in almost two weeks. It was starting to go to seed in some places. He wondered why Valerie hadn’t started nagging him about it. Maybe she just doesn’t care anymore.

“We need Amanda,” deVere said. “We’ll need her there. She knows the history. She’s been getting the 1962 stuff loaded into her laptop. No one is suspicious about that. That’s her field of study.”

Ginter nodded noncommittally. “We can still just go. The three of us, just go.”

“No!” deVere said forcefully and turned squarely to Ginter. “It’s too risky. If we all go and end up dead, or unable to interact with the physical world, there’ll be no one to take our place and try again. We have to be sure it’ll work on humans and that whoever is sent back can actually interact. Not just float around. Let me go someplace first. That way, if it fails you and Amanda can try again.”

Ginter turned sideways on the bench. He raised his right leg and hunched forward over his knee. He cast his gaze to the house and then back at deVere.

“What do you think of her plan?” deVere asked.

“I don’t know,” Ginter answered carefully. “She’s the historian and all. But I always thought the big screw up was at
Yalta
.
When
Roosevelt
gave away
Eastern Europe
.
If I thought we could land on the navy cruiser
Quincy
in January of 1945, as it transported FDR to
Yalta
, we’d convince him to stand firm. Without that toehold in
Eastern Europe
the Sovs may not have gone anyplace. But of course we could never get a wormhole targeted on a moving ship. How could we ever figure out its location at a given moment in time?

“Or else we could stop Ché Guevara in
Bolivia
when they damn near had him. If we could just undo that...” Ginter let his voice trail off.

He paused and looked at deVere. “Why, what do you think of her plan?”

DeVere shrugged. “There’re probably a hundred things we could do. But this Cuban invasion seems as good as anything else. Get Kennedy to invade Cuba, get rid of Castro, stop Ché Guevara and the United States has a decent shot in Southeast Asia and maybe Lindsay will have a shot in Europe.”

Ginter turned his back to deVere. He reached into his pocket and retracted an object. Although deVere could not see the end of Ginter’s arm he knew he had a scanning disk.

“A little late now, isn’t it?” deVere asked.

Ginter waved it around before returning it. “Force of habit, I guess.”

He turned sideways to his host. “Do you trust her?”

DeVere was taken aback by the question. “Valerie?” he asked dumbly. “Do I trust her?”

“Not your wife,” Ginter retorted.
“Hutch.
Do you trust her?”

DeVere reddened. “Yeah,” he answered. “Yeah, I trust her. Don’t you?”

Ginter shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s something about her.”

“Such as?” deVere asked warily.

Ginter swung back around and spoke deliberately. “Didn’t it seem a bit strange to you that she jumped on this whole idea so quickly? We tell her about it, that we’re planning on changing history, and her response was when does she pack for the trip?”

“So?” deVere asked defensively.
“She’s been through a lot. Hey, she’s beaten cancer.
Pretty big surgeries.
Maybe that’s made her realize quicker than the rest of us the value of not wasting time. She’s anti-Soviet. Always has been. Was anti-Soviet in grad school, for Christ
sakes.
”

“
Paul, that
was a long time ago.”

“Lewis, if she were going to turn us in she would have already done so. It’s only you and me. The squishheads would have swooped down and we’d both be in
Guantanamo
now.”

“What do you know about her recently? Paul, you’re 53 years old. You were what, 25 when you last saw her? It was easy to spout anti-Soviet stuff back then. You were both young and rebellious. Times have changed.” Ginter looked steadily at deVere. “People change.”

“Not Amanda,” deVere insisted. “I know her.”

Lewis Ginter shrugged. “You mean you knew her.”

“Hey,” Paul answered angrily. “You’re the one who told me she was anti-Sov before you knew that I knew her, remember?”

Lewis Ginter shook his head. “What I said was that my sources were telling me that she said anti-Soviet stuff. There’s a difference.”

DeVere took a deep breath before continuing. “Is there something in particular that troubles you? I mean other than the fact that she used to be anti-Sov, still says anti-Sov stuff, and is eager to help us?”

Despite the tension Ginter chuckled at the argument. He turned and looked at the woods. “I have nothing concrete. It just seems that she threw in here too quickly. I’m also bothered by where she’s been teaching.
Prague
,
Leningrad
,
Leipzig
.
Seems to have spent some time traipsing around the
Soviet Union
.
Strange places for a fire-eater.”

DeVere was hot now. “She also taught in
North Carolina
. All those places you named have universities. She’s an American history prof, for Christ sakes, Lewis. There were openings there.”

“There’s something else,” Ginter said. “After the second Sino-Soviet War when she was still in
Leipzig
she started traveling to
Moscow
pretty regularly.”

“So?” Paul asked.

“She went there a lot.
An awful lot.
According to my sources she started spending every damn school vacation there. Who the hell vacations in
Moscow
?”

“She could have been doing research,” Paul argued.

“For six or seven years?”
Ginter scoffed.

“Is that all you’ve got?
Just
Moscow
?”
Paul asked angrily.

Ginter shrugged. “Who knows where she went from there? Could have been going to a KGB training center for all I know.”

“That’s just it, Lewis. You don’t fucking know. She’s a history professor. She travels on her breaks. History professors are supposed to travel and do research, aren’t they? Besides, wouldn’t it be more suspicious if she were going there during the semester when she was supposed to be teaching? This was on her free time.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ginter answered, trying to diffuse the rising tension. “Maybe you’re not the only one who’s jumpy.”

DeVere nodded. “So, you’re O.K. with her plan?”

“Hey, I have the coordinates. September first.
Eight oh eight from the lab.
I’ll be ready to go. The money’s printed.
You going
to keep it here?”