The Whitehall Syndicate: A time travel conspiracy thriller (7 page)

“I'll try,” he replied, in a playful, mocking voice. His eyes were still closed but somehow he knew she was smiling. Then he felt her warm lips on his forehead as she kissed him to sleep.

Anisha walked back out of the room and tiptoed down the stairs before casually yelling, “So who was at the door?” She came into the living room to find Jack and Gina looking stunned. In between them was an elderly man with wispy white stubble and a sizeable bald patch on his crown.

She paused, waiting for him to introduce himself. “Hello my dear,”
he finally said, his voice slightly weak but full of charm. “I'm Michael Green. I've come from the future.”

Kim walked into the quiet car park. It was the basement level and the low ceilings and fleeting shadows conjured up a claustrophobic edge to the darkness. A few vehicles remained parked but the majority were gone by now. As she walked to her car she could hear her heels resonating against the hard floor. The car park was chilly and the delicate hairs on her arms stood on end. She listened to her heels. Click Clickety Click Clickety Click Clickety Click. The rhythmic sound was almost soothing. Click Clickety Click Clickety Thud Thud.

She stopped dead in her tracks and listened intently. Another pair of shoes walked a few more steps before stopping too. Snapping her head right and left, her gaze swept over the giant concrete structure. There were a few cars obscuring her view but it appeared empty. She was just paranoid. Nobody knew she was here. She wasn't going to get caught.

Walking again, she heard nothing further except her own feet. It must have been her imagination. Even so, she found her frayed nerves had her pacing more rapidly. Reaching Dr Lewis' car she plunged into her pocket and fished out the keys she had swiped off his desk a few minutes ago. Her nerves were taut as piano wire now, and the cocktail of excitement and fear was making her giddy.

She glimpsed around one more time and, convinced she was alone, yanked opened the door. Reaching into his car she pulled out a bundle of paper scraps from his glove compartment. Hopefully this was what she was after. With a step back, she placed the stack of paper on the roof and used it as a counter-top to sort through them. Most were unpaid parking tickets, newspaper articles or other irrelevant titbits. Then a red-paged document caught her eye, with the title: MICHAEL GREEN PROJECT.

She reached over to grab it but her hand only got halfway. With a flash of black sinking across both eyes, a piece of fishing line whipped round her throat without obstruction, pressing down violently on her soft skin. A jagged, burning pain took hold of her throat and she felt herself gagging. Floundering her hands around, she trying desperately to tear off the wire or hit whoever was behind her.

Her body was aching now, being leached of oxygen. Her head was light and she felt like giving up. Flailing like a fish on a hook she began to taste blood in her mouth. It felt oddly sweet on her aching, smouldering throat, the friction becoming scorching. As small streams of brilliant red drooled from her mouth, her muscles relinquished all energy and her eyes glazed over. Her limp body, released of its hold, sagged lifelessly to the ground.

Michael Green senior sat on the couch, the trio of cohorts staring at him confusedly. Now that his long trench coat was off, they could clearly see a metallic object intimately attached to his skin. The macabre item was flat and rectangular, running down from his neck to somewhere inside his shirt, and it seemed to be riveted to his flesh.

“I realise this must be a shock for you,” he began grandly, “But I assure you I
am
Michael Green.”

“How can we be certain?” pressed Jack.

“Do what you like. DNA, Retinal, fingerprints. I have nothing to hide.” His clandestine look of caution jarred against his words. Jack left the girls for a second and retreated to the corner of the room. Getting out his mobile, an antique by contemporary standards, he sent a message to his brother. Ever since the incident at his work, he had told Bob to stay away from him, for his own safety. As expected, Bob had vehemently objected and Jack was hoping that meant he would reply to the message.

According to Anisha, there was a certain list of high-risk people across the country whose personal security was considered paramount. It included all MPs and a large handful of other miscellaneous government officials. This special list didn't require access clearance so if Bob agreed to help, he could send Anisha a copy of Michael Green's fingerprints. Jack waited for an incredibly long minute, and finally his phone beeped with a reply. Concise and not revealing too much, just as
he had requested, it simply said 'I'm sending it now'.

Jack told Anisha to ready her phone for a transfer and within a few minutes she had the file. The senior Michael, who had been waiting with impressive patience, stuck out his hands, eager to get the task out of the way. One by one, Anisha printed each of his fingers. Finally when it was complete she pushed a few buttons and exhaled with a smile, announcing, “It's a match.” An expression of relief crossed Green senior's face and, finding a room full of eager faces, he realised he now  had the floor.

“Excellent. That proves that I'm definitely me. I'm sure you have a host of questions but first let me say my piece. Hopefully that should answer most of them.” He was greeted by unanimous nods of approval. “It must seem like,” he said looking at Jack, “your life has taken quite a peculiar turn recently. People blackmailing you, threatening you, boxes of dead fingers and so on. I'm here to try and help us both. You see, in my time, the future to you, time travel has become much more strictly regulated. For technical reasons, I'm afraid I can't impart too much information on the matter. I can however, tell you what's going to happen unless you're smart.” Jack stirred restlessly. So far this speech wasn't proving too helpful.

“If you try and kill me, you're going to fail. You're going to stab me in the neck and leave thinking you've done the job. Even when you do, the people threatening you are going to kill you to keep you quiet. Meanwhile I'm going to spend the next five years slowly recovering from spinal neuro-degeneration and,” he paused pointing to the metal object, “I'll have this grotesque thing plastered onto me for the rest of my life.”

Jack sat up and paid closer attention now, the talk suddenly taking on personal relevance. “The only way we can both get out of this is to find the men responsible, and the only way to do that is by tricking them into thinking you've killed me.”

“I don't follow,” said Anisha, clearly voicing what everyone else was thinking.

“We pretend to kill the other me, and then when they think I'm dead they'll try and kill you. But with my knowledge of where and when it happens, I can stop it and we can lure them out and take care of them permanently.” His triumphant finish was met by an unsettled mood.

“So you want to use me as bait?” questioned Jack defensively. He shook his head saying, “you don't understand my dear boy.” They're going to try and kill you anyway. If we do it my way then we know when it's going to happen and we have a better chance of stopping it.”

“So when and where is it going to happen?” enquired Gina who, until now, had remained quiet. It was a shrewd question.

“I can't tell you yet I'm afraid.” Jack frowned untrustingly. Green was withholding the most useful piece of information.

“Why can't you tell us anything?” quizzed Anisha accusingly. She was the closest thing they had to an expert on time travel; maybe she could understand.

“The Morrison paradox,” replied Green senior, as if this three-word explanation was more than sufficient.

“I'm not familiar with that particular theory,” responded Anisha, completely confused but thinly attempting to hide it.

“When one travels through time events are invariable altered merely by the presence of the time travelling party. Time is elastic however and the universe has its own adjusting mechanism, which alters events slightly to compensate for the actions of the traveller, thus returning the future to more or less what it was before he or she travelled. Hence I can't tell you too early or else the universe will have more time to re-arrange events against us.” Gina shot Jack a pointed look at the use of the word 'us'.

“I see,” said Anisha slowly, while emphatically nodding.

Jack looked at her to confirm whether or not his explanation has any credibility. She glanced back, appearing slightly unsure but ultimately convinced. Jack stood up now, re-asserting the fact that he was in charge.

“So what I think we should do now, is to spend the next few days looking through the papers in the briefcase and planning a way to falsely kill the other Michael Green.”

He paradoxically looked across at Green senior, simultaneously showing off his authority and seeking his approval. He turned back to the girls now, adding in a sombre voice, “assuming you're still interested
in helping me. I wouldn't blame you if you weren't.” Surprisingly, Gina was the first to answer, seemingly taking offence at the notion.

“You've already saved my life once so far and I get the feeling I'm in just as much danger as you are right now. So I'm in.” Jack allowed himself a smile and after a short pause heard Anisha say,

“Me too.”

There was a creaking sound from the hallway floorboards and with a gust of wind the living room door suddenly swung open, giving Green senior a start. “What's going on here?” asked a groggy and confused Pete.

“But what about the recent allegations in the media regarding the unexpectedly advanced ageing of the British public?”

“Well John, Let me ask you this. Who knows more about the science of these devices: gossip columnists and scaremongers or the inventor; the scientists who work on them every day; the government officials so convinced by the devices that they use them themselves? Let me tell you this: There are only fifteen percent of the population that can afford a trip each year longer than six weeks cumulatively. Of the other eighty five percent, more than three quarters only travel for around three weeks. That's an extra three weeks in fifty-two and a half, a five point seven percent increase. You're hearing talk in the press about people at twenty who are starting to go grey already. Those are an incredibly small number of isolated incidents caused by people travelling too much-”

“But what is too much chancellor? Your party has yet to give the public any clear advice on this. Your official documentation doesn't offer any clear guidelines.”

“Now hold on a minute. I don't agree with that. We have recommendations in booklets and FLDs as well as the information and the publications available in both our public access areas and online.

“Your critics argue that isn't clear enough”

“Well it
is
clear and very straightforward. We have the safe guideline limits for travel durations and the methods of working out the age effects of time travelling. We need the people to start reading them.”

“So are you blaming this on the British people-,”

“No I am not blaming-,”

“And if you were aware of this problem then why has your administration so far failed to tackle it?”

Green had talked himself into a corner and he wasn't sure there was an easy way out. “No we are not blaming the British people. We are saying that there needs to be an established, well instigated and effective interface allowing streamlined communication between the government and the people to efficiently facilitate a scheme of public education. This is something we are very much involved in and dedicated to and I think will play a major role in our policy for the next term.”

Green hated political interviews, especially ones where he got asked questions that the Prime Minister should be addressing. In the absence of 'real' news stories, flailing news networks with plummeting ratings were always using political interviews to peak interest, and with the Prime Minister unavailable, he often found himself playing the stand in. What made today's one even worse was the way he had to passionately defend the administration's views on time travel, despite his own misgivings. If he led the party, things would be a lot different.

Kim woke up from her sterile white desk with a jerk. Her hands were clammy and her pale turquoise top was darkened in a triangle down the back by cold, stale sweat. With the tips of her fingers she gently checked her throat for wounds. The dream had seemed so real. It must have been her sub-conscious warning against her curiosity. But she had the sinking feeling that the research she was doing was being used for some illicit and unsavoury purpose and she didn't want that on her conscience.

Glancing at her watch she saw it was just past six; she had drifted to sleep for almost a couple of hours. Stretching as she stood up, she carelessly shoved some documents in her bag and walked out of the office. This Saturday's workload had been surprisingly light and while she would normally have an additional mountain of work to take home, there were only a few reports left to finish from today, all of which could be done tomorrow.

Thankfully there was no work on Sunday and she resolved to spend most of it sleeping off last night. As she left the building she couldn't help but feel apprehensive about the walk through the car park. Her company car, a silver Ford saloon, was close by. She had no use for a car that size but her small cherry red flat back, was being used by her other self so, to her dismay, it was all she had available.

Briskly pacing through the car park, she saw Dr. Lewis' black Sedan and slowed down. Curiosity getting the better of her, she changed direction and walked up towards it, spontaneously developing a look of guilt and lightly feeling her throat as she approached. With a long glance around the lot, she stopped next to it. The car park was empty, just like in her nightmare. She reached down and tried the door. It was locked. Not wishing to tempt fate any more she straightened up and walked back to her car.