The Whitehall Syndicate: A time travel conspiracy thriller (28 page)

The roads around the area were complicated, due mainly to the size and flamboyant shapes of the houses. After a lot of walking Kim had finally found the way to the back of Ortega's house. The garage door was locked and there was a man in a suit sat down by the car.

He looked like perhaps he was a chauffeur but he may have been a guard, it was difficult to tell for sure. The back garden was half the size of the front and the trio scrambled around to the sides to get out of view. Jack jumped the back fence and landed in a few bushes, crushing them to the floor. Getting up, he helped the girls down and then the three of them looked around, taking in the surroundings.

The garden was beautifully kept and even in the cool weather managed to evoke feelings of summertime. Seeing the backdoor to the house, Jack skulked over to open it. All of a sudden he felt a searing pain to the side of his head and before he knew it he was on the floor screaming.

His eyes clamped shut from the pain, and he writhed on the floor. Teasing his eyes open a fraction, he saw Anisha trying her best to fight off the same thug who had whacked him. She fared equally badly. Trying to run, Kim was knocked down and hit the dirt with a thud.

The back door swung open and out walked a tanned man in his mid-fifties, dressed in a polo shirt and smart brown trousers. His face resembled the picture of Mario Ortega but there were definite differences.

Two other men came out behind him and loomed over each of the girls. Ortega snapped his fingers and the man that had just attacked Jack pulled out a gun and aimed it at his head. Shaking on the spot, Jack fought back the tears and closed his eyes, preparing himself for his death.

Jack could hear the quiet grinding of the
pistons and cogs clicking. Then came the shearing sound as the man's cruel thumb cocked the gun, followed by a final electric buzzing as the hammer prepared to shock the bullet. There was a long, chilling silence as his finger moved over to the trigger and gently began squeezing. Jack's eyes shut even tighter, preparing for the worst.

All of a sudden there was a crackling sound and Ortega shouted out “Stop for a second.” Jack's eyes opened a fraction and he saw the man fiddling with some buttons on his hands-free speakerphone.

“Sir we just got word from our contact at the police station”

“What is it?”

“Green just phoned in a few minutes ago. They've just analysed his voiceprint and confirmed it. Green is still alive.” Ortega cursed and barked at the man to lower the gun. Before he could say anything else, he was interrupted by the trudging sound of twigs splintering and grass being trampled.

Jack turned round to see two men dragging a beaten, broken Frank up to Ortega. His right eye was covered in blood and he had bruises across his whole face. There were bloodstains on his shirt and some was dribbling from his lower lip. Kim grimaced as she watched the spectacle.

Ortega looked at the four of them for a few moments and Jack's stomach began to churn and bubble, fear taking it’s vice-like grip: he knew how close he was teetering to death. After a few seconds Ortega said, “Okay take them inside, I still need them.”

Jack felt himself being pulled to his feet and he slowly followed the men into the house, being encouraged by a sharp pain in his back from the cold gun barrel.

As he marched like a prisoner, he fantasised of one last escape but they were vastly outnumbered and no one was in any condition to fight. They walked into house and despite the grimness of the situation, Kim nearly gasped at the size of the living room.

The huge room had a small bar in the corner, a huge television screen, a computer to the side and a large cream couch that occupied the centre. Ortega motioned for them to sit down and they crashed onto the comfy cushions, glad to be off their tired feet.

The henchmen were still towering over them with expressionless faces, guns in hand. Somehow, Jack could sense that the mood had changed, and he felt less threatened. The boss walked over now and sat on a small wooden chair opposite the quartet, breaking into a villainous smile. “I think it's time I explained everything to you, right from the beginning.”

Pete and Gina stood in the kitchen, wearing faces soiled with worry. In Pete’s hand was a pen that had nearly been halved by nervous chewing. He tapped it up and down on the kitchen counter, deep in thought. They both knew that they had to resolve the situation.

With the police aware that Green was alive, they were left in a vulnerable situation. Who knows how far the call had been traced. If they began searching apartments in the area, they were done for.

“We have to get rid of him.”

“But what about Jack?”

“The police already know Green is alive, how long before the public and Ortega find out? We have to stop anyone being able to trace him back here.”

“Okay that makes sense. But what do we do with him?” There was another pause as the grizzly question was proposed.

“Erm, I don't know.”

“Okay well what if we drive him to the docks and dump his body there. Circle around a bit so that when the police ask him how long the drive was it won't lead them to us. How about that?”

“Okay cool. It's still light but I think we should go anyway. Who knows how fast the police are working.” Gina nodded and decided to watch Tomlinson while Pete drove Green.

Grabbing a woven bag they used for carrying vegetables, Pete walked into Green's room. He was still groggy from the beating before and putting the sack over his head was easy. Getting him into the car in broad daylight wouldn't be.

With Gina's help Pete got out a roll of bin bags and began putting them around Green. Green struggled violently and his mumbling became louder and more intense than Gina could bear. Grabbing a shoe from beneath the bed she began smacking him over the head.

It wasn’t subduing him fast enough and looking down, she found a large steel-capped boot and started using that instead. Pete watched queasily until she finally subsided. Green was no longer moving. Gina's hand began shaking, wondering if she had taken the beating too far.

She checked for a pulse but couldn't find one and in a second became frantic. Moving her fingers all over his neck, her heart started to beat louder and louder. She exhaled slowly as she felt his pulse, and double and triple checked before her nerves calmed down. He was okay for now.

They both finished covering him up in the bags and then heaved him off the chair and to the door. Remembering something, Pete dropped Green’s feet for a second and ran into the kitchen to pick up some bleach, which he rammed into his inside jacket pocket. Slowly creeping open the door to the flat, he looked both ways. It looked clear. The silence was pounding and Pete felt all his senses heighten.

With a deep breath, the pair charged down the hall with the body and into the elevator, which opened up straight away. Hitting the ground floor button, Gina dropped his head slowly to the floor and began shaking again. This was just one of a thousand memories she didn't want.

As the small steel cage moved downwards, Pete watched the lights, praying no one else stopped the elevator on the way down. He breathed a sigh of relief as they went all the way down to two and still nothing.

Beads of sweat suddenly ripped through his skin as he saw the Floor One light come on. Someone was about to spot them. Whirling his head around in panic he slammed the emergency stop button and sunk down to the floor as the elevator screeched to a slow halt.

“Jack, you're a difficult man to blackmail. I threaten you with a one hundred percent guarantee of your death and still you don't comply. I'm running out of options now. All I can do is tell you the truth, or however much of it you haven't managed to work out already.”

Jack ran his eyes over the man. Definitely the same face as in the photo Frank had shown him, but much more weathered and aged. Still, as he talked now, the menace of a few minutes ago was gone from his voice, replaced by a softness that made him sound genuine and almost warm. Jack shuffled slightly and could hear Kim breathing gently next to him. All ears were on the man.

“My name is Mario Ortega. Unlike the man Green who you think has been helping you, I actually am from about ten years in the future. I'll get to why this is all happening in a second. But let me start right from the beginning.

Right now, the Mario Ortega in this time is helping Michael Green to build a time altering machine. I am just one of many radical people who wield power and resources in different countries. In my case, that means powerful connections to the American mafia.

We have all chosen to collaborate and build this machine as a solution to the problems that our collective governments, across hundreds of years, have been unable solve.

While everybody else's reality alters, we will have the technology to remain unaffected and watch the fruits of our labour. Michael is supervising the project right now and when the machine is ready he's going to use it to go back in time. By changing the past in a calculated way, we hope to alter the future to specifically avoid certain problems such as war and famine.

Now let me give you some insight from the future. Green planned to alter things to improve everybody's way of life. At first anyway.” There was an ominous pause and Jack's interest began to peak.

“After a few years of avoiding wars and trying to establish a stable international government, Michael started to get selfish, corrupted by power and his own selfish greed.

Every action you alter with the machine has to be carefully considered. One wrong move in the past can alter things inconceivably. Say for example in the past you save a baby from being run over. At the time it will seem like a victory, but in the future that baby may grow up to be a dictator or a warmonger and thus cause millions more deaths. Do you see what I mean?” Jack nodded and saw the others doing the same. He didn't like the complicated logic of time travel but so far it was making sense.

“Michael started getting careless planning his alterations to the time-line. Everybody else was getting worried but no one was brave enough to challenge him. A few weeks ago he made another change and this time …” He stopped for a second as a hard lump formed in his throat. Forcing it down he continued, “This time I awoke to find he had erased my entire family from existence.

After that I knew I had to do something, but it was too late. Green was run over and killed in a car accident, and with him, his memory of the codes to the machine were lost. It seemed impossible to change anything anymore.

I spent the next few weeks searching for the rarest of objects: the Arbao crystal. It is the smallest time crystal ever discovered, and it let me use an ordinary machine to travel back this far.” He paused for a long while, staring at the floor with a look of sadness. Jack cleared his throat slightly and said in a quiet voice, “What does this have to do with me?”

Ortega looked up for a moment then continued.

“I came back to stop Michael from every finishing the machine. He has the most tenacious, undying will of any man I have ever met, and I knew the only way to truly stop his plans was to kill him.

But because I couldn't use the new machines there was no way to kill him myself. I was bound by the principle law of time, just as any other traveller is. You can't cause a major event, only speed one up or slow one down.” Ortega took another pause and with a blank face, turned to Jack.

“That's where you come in. You were the one who was driving the car that day. You were the one who killed Green. Or rather, you're the
one who
will
kill Green. By the laws of time, only you can kill him now. Only you can forever stop the havoc that he will otherwise bring upon the whole world and restore the timeline to how it was before we tampered with it.”

Jack took a gulp and let out a deep breath. With all that had happened he should've been sceptical but it took one look at the broken man to realise that he was telling the truth. It was down to him to save the future of the world. He took another deep breath.

Gina began to feel claustrophobic and chills ran down her spine. They were trapped: confined to this small metal box. Pete massaged his forehead while pacing up and down, and tried to think of a way out of this mess.

Gina silently shook Pete and pointed to the small opening on the roof of the elevator- the emergency hatch. Pete rubbed his face one last time then nodded. He wasn't sure if anybody outside the lift could hear him but just in case, he stayed quiet.

Jumping up and punching the hatch he knocked it open, in the process grating the skin around his knuckles. He motioned for Gina to climb up first and he gave her a boost up. Once she was sat on top of the elevator she reached down and grabbed Green's head. Once again the body was beginning, very slightly, to wriggle. She pulled him up as Pete pushed and they slowly managed to squirm him onto the roof of the lift. There wasn't much space now and she had to be careful where she moved. There were overhanging cables and pieces of metal jutting out everywhere.

Reaching in for Pete, she let out a groan as his weight tugged on her delicate arm. Grabbing onto the sides of the hatch, Pete pulled himself out. Soon the building's maintenances staff would do a remote check, realise it was a prank or false alarm and start the lift up again.

Hopefully they could then ride it until it was empty at the bottom. When that finally happened, it was Pete’s plan to jam the door open while they brought the body back down and out of the door. It was a risky idea but they were getting desperate.

As they sat there in silence, Green began mumbling again and Gina hit him over the head with the side of her fist. As long as he didn't make any noise they would be okay. Just as Pete predicted the lift began to move down again and they had to grab onto the roof to stop from falling over. Gina was still scared about what could happen in the lift shaft. All sorts of things were poking out everywhere, just waiting to impale them.

They had to brace again as it stopped on what Pete reasoned must have been the first floor. At the sound of people shuffling into the elevator underneath them, all of a sudden Green started contorting and writhing, whining as loud as he could through his duct-taped mouth. Instinctively, Gina locked her arms around his neck and squeezed hard, while Pete stabilised his legs, sweat dripping off of his brow again.

They both froze, unsure if anybody below heard them. There was no sound from the passengers in the lift. They were listening out for something. Pete held his breath and Gina tightened her grip on Green's throat.

A beat went by, and conversation gradually began again. The lift reached the ground floor and this time stopped even more abruptly, nearly causing Pete to fall off the sides. He began to pry open the hatch, ready to jump down as soon as the family in the lift left.