TW02 The Timekeeper Conspiracy NEW (11 page)

"There goes one father whose little girl will send him to the poorhouse," Finn said, turning to Lucas.

Lucas was standing on the stairs, looking after the old man and the young woman.

Finn chuckled. "Yes, she's very pretty, but can you stand her fragrance?"

"That's not it," said Lucas, thoughtfully. "That woman. ... I've seen her somewhere, I'm certain of it."

"Probably reminds you of some old flame," said Finn.

"No, I've seen that face before," said Lucas. "But I just can't...." He shook his head.

"Are you sure?" said Finn.

"I'm almost positive. But it just won't click. There's something. ..." He frowned.

"Must be a coincidence," said Finn. "Hell, who do we know in 17th-century Paris?"

"Not in 17th-century Paris," Lucas said, "but somewhere else. I just don't remember where."

"You're not kidding, are you?"

"I'm telling you, Finn,
I know that face!"

"That's good enough for me. Come on, we'll follow them and find out where they go. But just to play it safe, let's keep our distance. Worse comes to worst, we'll just waste an afternoon."

"What if worse doesn't come to worst?" said Lucas.

"You're asking me? You're the one who can't remember faces."

"I never forget a face. That's why this one bothers me. It hasn't been a long time, either." They watched the chests being loaded into a carriage, the old man and the young woman getting in. "Horses,"

Lucas said.

"What?"

"Horses. That face belongs with horses."

"Well, that should narrow it down," said Finn. "We haven't ridden horses in more than ninety percent of our missions."

"Something doesn't fit," said Lucas. "It's the right face, but somehow, it's all wrong."

"Well, I'm glad you cleared that up," said Finn. "Shall we see which way your right-wrong face is heading? I'd hate for this to keep you up all night."

"I have a feeling that it will. I'm not sure what memories go with her face, but I am sure that none of them is good."

"Vacated their rooms, you say?" said Adrian Taylor. "And no sign of Silvera?"

Jimmy Darcy stood uneasily before the terrorist leader. Only a short while ago, Adrian Taylor had been a small, whipcord thin young man with violently blue eyes, a sharp, slightly crooked nose, and a thin, cruel mouth. He knew that Taylor was considerably older than he was, though by how much, he could not say. Taylor had appeared to be, judging by the standards used before the advent of antiagathic drugs, eighteen to twenty years of age. He was, Jimmy knew, at the very least three times that age. Now, however, Taylor was transformed.

The skills of Jack Bennett had reshaped his face, shortening and straightening out his nose and giving it a slight, delicate upward turn. His jawline had been restructured, more gently curved, the sharp planes of his face smoothed out, the cheeks rounded, the soft flesh around the eyes surgically altered to eliminate the beginning signs of age. His mouth was full and soft now, the lips were those of a voluptuary. The ears were small and shapely, without the pronounced lobes they had earlier possessed. A small beauty mark now graced Taylor's right cheek. His adam's apple had been removed and the skin of the throat smoothed out. Taylor's hairline had been depilated to give him a higher forehead. He had round, full breasts now and decidedly and unsettlingly feminine hips. The exten-sive operation had been a masterwork, complete right down to the very last detail. Taylor even had Milady's brand, the harlot's fleur-de-lis, burned into his shoulder.

Transsexual operations had been reversible for many years. The purpose of the procedure had simply been to enable Taylor to become a "woman" for the purpose of the mission. When it was over, Adrian Taylor would be able to have his male organs back, either exactly as they were or redesigned to his own specifications. But it had become much more than an elaborate disguise. Taylor took a perverse pleasure in being as he was now. With each succeeding day, he fell more and more in love with his new aspect.

Of all the Timekeepers, Taylor was the best known. The TIA had an extensive dossier on his activities. He was re-garded as an expert in his field, ruthless, cold, and extremely dangerous. The one thing that no one outside the organization knew was what Taylor really looked like. Few people within the Timekeepers had ever glimpsed Taylor's real face. He changed his appearance almost as frequently as most people changed their style of clothing. Taylor was a true chameleon, but to Jimmy's knowledge, he had never gone so far before. It wasn't Taylor's sexual preferences that bothered Jimmy Darcy. There was nothing unusual in that. What frightened Jimmy Darcy was that Adrian Taylor appeared to have two personalities now. He was both Adrian Taylor
and
Milady. Sometimes he spoke as Adrian Taylor and acted like a man surgically disguised as a woman. Sometimes he spoke as Milady de Winter, living out the role. And sometimes, he spoke as Milady, referring to Adrian Taylor in the second per-son, as though Taylor existed elsewhere, as a separate and distinct being. He did so now.

"No sign of Silvera," he said once again, fingering his throat absently. "Adrian won't like that. I think we can safely assume that Silvera is no longer with us. Pity. He must have underestimated the opposition.

You checked? You're certain? There was only Bennett and the woman?"

"They were seen getting into a carriage and driving away," said Jimmy.

"There can be no doubt that she's an agent," Taylor said. "Bennett has betrayed us."

"But he seemed totally committed to the cause," said Jimmy. "God, do you realize what this means?

It's a complete disaster! They know who you are now! We're stopped before we've even started!"

"Not necessarily," said Taylor. He smiled. "That won't stop Adrian at all. Why should it?"

"I don't understand," said Jimmy. "How can we continue now?"

"You're not thinking, Jimmy." He was Adrian again, sud-denly on his feet and pacing nervously.

"Didn't I always tell you to have faith? All right, so they know that I've become Milady. So what? You forget that time is on our side."

"The chronoplate!" said Jimmy. "We can go back in time and outmaneuver them! Of course, we can go back and save Silvera and then—"

"Screw Silvera," Taylor said. "He made a mistake and he's paid for it. No, we don't need the plate, Jimmy, not yet. We can always use it as a last resort if need be, but we're still ahead. The scenario's progressing smoothly. They may know who I am, but for the moment, they don't know
where
I am.

And, after all, we're the ones threatening to change history, remember? They're here to preserve the status quo. If they know that I've become de Winter, then they'll surely know that the real Milady's dead and that's just it. They
need
de Winter. Or, more precisely, they need
a
de Winter to insure that events in this period of history progress as they should. They can plant their own de Winter, but they wouldn't dare to do that as long as I'm around. No, they'd have to take me out first and that won't be so easy."

"But the very fact that they know," said Jimmy, "the fact that they're
here—"

"Only serves to make the game more interesting," said Taylor.

"The game?" said Jimmy.

"Of course. It's a wonderful, fascinating game that just became more challenging. The TIA and I have been playing it for years and now it's reached its climax. They'll have their best people in on this, you can be sure of that. There's more than just the two we've spotted. The one Silvera killed was not one of the first-string or Silvera would not have taken him so easily. The woman, I'm not so sure about, but the man.

. . . He was expendable. Maybe his only purpose was to flush us out. Yes, that would be the way he'd do it," Taylor said, nod-ding his head and smiling.

"Who?"

"My old friend Mongoose," Taylor said. He suddenly seemed very happy.

"Who's Mongoose?"

"We've been playing cat and mouse for years," said Taylor. "He's the TIA's best agent. He's my
doppelganger.
Neither of us knows what the other looks like. Oh, Jimmy, this is going to be fun!

Sometimes I've beaten him, sometimes he's beaten me, but this time,
this
time, I'm going to get him! I'm going to take him, Jimmy. I'm going to take him and I'll keep him for a while, we'll talk about old times, and then I'll kill him. It's going to be wonderful."

There was no doubt in Jimmy Darcy's mind that Adrian Taylor was insane. About everything else, Jimmy had a great deal of doubt. He had joined the Temporal Preservation League because his older brother had died in the time wars. And for what? To protect his family? To defend his home-land? Had Danny's death
anything
to do with protecting his own, with patriotic loyalty, with anything at all that made any sort of sense? No, it had all been part of some grandiose game, wars fought on paper, move a decimal point and another hun-dred people die. Just an endless escalation to keep the machine oiled and running, to feed its momentum until, sooner or later, the inevitable would happen. Man had already split the atom and now he was threatening to split time. The only movement that made any sense at all was that of Albrecht Mensinger. There was no alternative. The time wars had to stop. They were mankind's greatest folly. In his attempts to master nature and his fate, Man had gone too far at last. He had poisoned himself and the environment he lived in, he had stripped the Earth of resources, he had shown contempt for all the works of God. Nor was it enough to imperil his future. Man was now threatening his past.

The leaders of the league were fond of quoting Thomas Jefferson, saying that government was far too important to be left up to the people. The people had demonstrated a stagger-ing irresponsibility, electing leaders whose own criminal stu-pidity surpassed even that of those who put them into office. It was past time for the elite to lead. Someone had to show the way.

There were those within the league who went by the strictest principles set down by Albrecht Mensinger, but there were also those who thought that what the league was doing did not go far enough.

It was to this more militant group that Jimmy Darcy had been attracted. It was from this group that he had been recruited into the Timekeepers.

Jimmy Darcy had a great deal of anger roiling away inside of him. It had fueled his terrorist activities.

He saw no ethical contradiction in using violence to achieve peace. In thousands of years of human history, the passive way had never worked. The ideology of peace was alien to the warmongers.

Violence was all they understood. There were those within the league who believed that the end did not justify the means. Jimmy had once believed that too. Since then, he had become a great deal more pragmatic, more realistic. He understood that it was not up to him to justify the means. His course had been forced upon him by people who remained steadfastly unaffected by any other course of action. Let
them
justify the means, Jimmy had shouted at the doves within the league. They have handed us our tools. Those who are morally right have no need of justifying anything. A resistance leader by the name of Arafat had once said, upon addressing the United Nations, "I come bearing an olive branch in one hand and a machine gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."

The doves within the league held out the olive branch. It was repeatedly ignored. The Timekeepers fired the machine gun. To ignore it was to die.

At the core of his existence, Jimmy Darcy still believed in peace. It was what he fought for. He fought the war machine. When the war machine was beaten, he would be happy to let the machine gun fall from his hand into the dust, never to be fired again. He did not believe that Adrian would do the same. No, Adrian would find another battle, start his own war if need be. Even in the Timekeepers, Adrian was feared because Adrian was always at war, with the world and with himself. Yet they needed Adrian. He was effective.
They have handed us our tools.

"It isn't a game, Adrian," said Jimmy. "It's a struggle for survival. Surely, you can see that, can't you?"

Adrian regarded him with amusement. "Of course I can see that, Jimmy. Can't
you
see that the struggle for survival is the most fascinating game of all? The stakes are high and it's win-ner take all. Life is a game, Jimmy. The idea is to play to win. And we're going to win, because for once, we control the board. We're on the offensive. Milady wrote a letter to an Englishman. Not just any Englishman, mind you. She wrote to George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. It was a love let-ter. It wasn't from Milady, even though she wrote it. Buck-ingham will think it's from the Queen. He'll have received it by now and, doubtless, it will have inflamed his passion for the Queen anew. I do have a way with words, if I say so my-self."

"I don't understand," said Jimmy.

"No, you wouldn't, but Richelieu will and that's what really counts. He was quite pleased about it. In fact, he told me that he wished he had thought of it himself. He'll take the credit, of course, but that's all right. It all fits into the plan."

"I still don't—"

"Be patient, Jimmy, I'll explain it to you. There's a very charming lady here in town by the name of Camille de Bois-Tracy. She just loves intrigue, especially if it has to do with love. She can't resist it. For quite some time now, she's been an intermediary for Buckingham and Anne of Austria, a sort of patron of the heart, a role she dearly loves. Richelieu's been made aware of this, of course. It's brought Milady further into his good graces. When he receives that letter, Bucking-ham will surely come to France. He might be on his way to Paris even as we speak. He will come to Camille de Bois-Tracy and a rendezvous will be arranged. Richelieu, of course, will try to take him, Buckingham being an enemy of France."

"I remember now," said Jimmy. "Buckingham gets away, according to history. Only we're going to change that, right? Yes, it's a brilliant plan. If the musketeers are prevented from helping Buckingham escape, then Richelieu has him. If not, then we can grab him and then we'll have a hostage. They'll have no choice but to listen to us! Either way, they'll have an adjustment on their hands, an adjustment made that much more complicated by our being here to interfere with it."