Prologue (60 page)

Natasha shrugged.
“So much for PC mail now-a-days.
Vladimir
is my handler in the resistance. And he is also in the CA.”

“A boyfriend?”
Pamela asked.

“I wouldn’t think so,” Ginter said. “He’s listed as an astrophysicist at Karl Marx and is older, much older. He would have to be in order to be senior enough in the CA to be sure Natasha got sent to
Boston
.”

Ginter turned back to Natasha. “Who is Vladimir Romanov?”

“He’s my husband,” Amanda said in a flat voice from the other side of the circle. “And Natasha’s uncle.
Her mother’s brother.”

The four turned to stare at Dr. Hutch.

Natasha started to speak but Amanda silenced her with a wave. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Natasha, what’s done is done,” she said.

She turned to Ginter. “Natasha is only trying to protect me but now”-she waved her arms around-“what difference does it make?”

Paul started shaking. “Amanda, you told me you were divorced.”

She smiled at him. “Actually, I told you I was twice married. You just assumed I had divorced my European husband. After my visa expired I married him to stay in
Leipzig
so we could finish training for this.”

She turned back to Ginter. “When Vodkaville began getting suspicious of Paul researching time travel, they passed that information up the line to Vlad since he was the chief physicist with the Agency. And he learned from Paul’s file about us in
Ithaca
. And it wasn’t hard for him to figure out my true leanings,” she added with a smile. “Even over there.

“He came and asked if I would help,” Amanda continued, facing the group.

She turned to deVere directly. “As soon as he explained it I knew you would do it, Paul. If anyone in this universe could have made this time thing work you could.”

She paused, and her soft gaze lingered on his face.

“But I also knew that you probably didn’t have what it took to get it done at this end,” she said abruptly, turning back to the others. “Technology is not enough, no matter how advanced.”

She turned to Ginter. “And military prowess wasn’t enough. To affect the type of political and historical change that we were all talking about that had to come from within. For me, I’d do anything for what I want. But for you it was just personal.”

Paul swallowed hard. “Peter,” he said.

Amanda scoffed, and the gesture took Paul by surprise.

“Is that what you tell yourself?” she asked.
“Or just others?
Maybe Peter is part of it, but it’s more personal than that. It’s really you, isn’t it, Paul?”

Paul blanched, and then reddened.

“If you can undo the Soviet takeover then maybe things that went wrong get undone, not only in the country but in your own life,” Amanda said. “You become a different person. The person you might have become if the whole world had never flipped over on us.”

Amanda looked back at Ginter. “I didn’t know you, Lewis, and Vlad didn’t have a good read on you either, so we couldn’t count on you to pull it off.

“But Natasha has the fire to do what it took,” Amanda continued. “And Vlad has that same fire. He got Natasha assigned to this project. He even cleaned her personnel file so there was no link back to him.”

She turned to Ginter. “What gave it away?”

Ginter smiled. “You did. You told Paul in the lab that you had to go back and get your purse. He told me that you had said it was a bad time of the month or some such.”

“Yeah, so what?”
Paul asked.

“Our friend Amanda is a cancer survivor. Ovarian,
surgery, and then chemo, correct
?”

Amanda nodded and Paul detected a faint smile on her face.

“And that meant instant menopause,” Amanda finished. “Good listening, Lewis. I see that your outside knowledge extends beyond antique automobiles.”

“But what does that have to do with anything?” Paul asked.

“There had to be something else in the pocketbook,” Lewis answered.
“Something important to go back for.
What could she possibly need? I assume it was some sort of radio and Natasha had the sibling?”

Amanda shrugged. “I’ve since thrown it away.”

“So you told Natasha I was in
Dallas
running an op with a defector from
Russia
that would involve Kennedy. You both assumed that meant that the defector was a Russian. That’s why she came down and was asking the wrong questions in the émigré community,” Ginter said. “And after we met on Tuesday, you told her about my plan.
Except you had determined that Kennedy should be shot for real, and my plan gave you two the perfect cover.”

Paul deVere slumped to the ground and put his head in his hands. “I just can’t believe this,” he said quietly. Amanda kneeled next to him and put her arm around his shoulders.

Paul looked up. “So, Natasha, why’d you set off the fire alarm? Is the lab on fire?”

“I’m going to guess not,” Lewis answered for her. “That also threw me off. I assumed there either was a fire or someone wanted to make us think there was one. But what you really wanted,
Natasha,
was to summon firefighters and District cops to force us to use the wormhole before they arrived and arrested us.”

“Yes,” Natasha said. “And I also needed to cover the noise of scraping along over the ceiling to that back area. Amanda is right, Professor Ginter. We underestimated you.”

Ginter nodded. “You’re not the first Russian to have done that.”

Paul shook his head. “You should see how he is with girlfriends who lie to him.”

“I’m going to guess again,” Ginter continued. “You knew from Romanov’s parallel research that
August 8, 2026
would open a wormhole to 1963, prior to Kennedy’s decision to pull out of
Southeast Asia
. And you let your Russian friend...?”

“Igor Rostov,” Natasha answered helpfully.

“...
Rostov
, hack into Amanda’s computer knowing it would trip an alarm because you had told her that her home computer was safe. And you knew that
Rostov
wouldn’t call for additional help because he was doing this solo to make himself look good.”

“That was Vlad’s plan,” Natasha answered simply. She turned to Amanda. “I’m sorry, but it had to look good. You had to look panicked.”

Paul roused himself from his hunched position. “So, are Collinson and Pomeroy still alive?”

Ginter slowly shook his head. “Technically, they’re not born yet. But back there they were probably both in custody. Or rather they will be.”

“But if no squisher came back,” Paul asked, “if it was just Natasha and she had the same goals as us, how’d they get caught?”

Ginter looked at Natasha and held her gaze for a fraction of a second longer than necessary. She seemed to nod imperceptibly just before Ginter broke off eye contact to answer Paul’s question. Natasha slumped down next to Paul and squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“I didn’t say no squisher had come back,” Ginter said. “I think we’ve been joined in our recent journey by either a squisher or a pathological liar-from
Portland
.”

This time when Ginter turned toward Pamela three other sets of eyes moved with his.

“What, what, do you mean?” Pamela stammered.

“Eckleburg didn’t miss much. I never knew him to screw up. Why would he send someone who knew nothing about explosives to check out a bomb project?”

“Yeah, so?”
Pamela said, regaining a bit of her composure. “Maybe someone else screwed up?”

“Or maybe he didn’t screw up. Maybe he thought you were a bomb expert because you are one.”

“That’s ridiculous!” she exclaimed defiantly. “I told you, Arthur was the bomb expert.”

“Whose bombs always
failed.
Didn’t they, Pamela?” Ginter asked.
“The civil administrator in
Portland
, the CA recruiting center in
Bangor
?
All failures.
There wouldn’t have been enough C-4 to sink any ship in
Portland
Harbor
. You designed those bombs, not Pomeroy. And when they did go off no one was ever injured because they had been tipped off.”

“So, Arthur wasn’t that good at it,”
Rhodes
challenged defiantly. “He was a drunk. You’re connecting dots that aren’t related.”

“Am I?” Ginter challenged. “Tell us all what you told me about how you met Arthur. You said that you had spent a weekend at your brother’s one-week time-share in
New Hampshire
and you met Arthur at a bar. You had driven up on a Friday and back on Sunday?”

Pamela had a disgusted look on her face.
“Yeah, so?”

“I told you my niece had a time share at
Loon
Mountain
.
Hated it.
Bad investment.
A one-week time-share runs from Saturday to Saturday. You wouldn’t have been up there for a full weekend.”

Pamela looked incredulously from one to another. “
Are you believing
this? You’re talking six years ago, Lewis! How the hell am I supposed to remember how long I was in some lousy condo in
New Hampshire
? Do you forget that I was engaged to a resister? Did you forget that? Or do you believe that I was responsible for the cops showing up early at that Chase job?”