“Excellent, Ramlet. Excellent.” He raised one hand. “Now, help your king to his feet. It is the least you can do. And don’t think that my brain is too addled to have registered that crybaby comment. Puppy-dog weakness, was it? Quelle sauce, as the French would say.”
Riley reached out a helping hand and had managed to heft his regent half to his feet when a thought struck him and he dropped King Otto to the cobbles.
I have lost my bag.
This was of import not because of the little bag itself, a mere market-stall satchel, but because of the bag’s contents. For in Riley’s bag were the detonators, which were now doubtless in the gullet of some rat.
And without the detonators, the plastique was nothing more than a lump of malleable material.
Their great plan—to flood the Camden Catacombs and use the rising waters as cover to rescue Chevie—was sunk.
And their sack of woe was not yet full.
Six Ram foot soldiers appeared from behind the Regent’s Park trees where they had been skulking and surrounded their erstwhile king and his page.
“’Evening, Otto,” said one, training his rifle on Malarkey’s forehead. “We are what you might call a rear guard.”
Otto closed his eyes.
“Rats,” he said.
It is traditional for fictional antagonists to indulge in a lengthy confrontation toward the climax of their adventure. The villain of the piece will invariably reveal the nuances of his plan, thus arming the heroes with the information needed to foil the plot when they inevitably escape mere seconds before they are due to be executed in some overcomplicated fashion.
This being real life, Malarkey and Riley were not treated to a face-to-face with Colonel Box; instead they were roughly tossed into a cell in the rear of the catacomb labyrinth that was little more than a cave with bars. The floor was compacted mud over stone, and the walls were slick and uneven.
Witmeyer, who usually enjoyed needling captives, was strangely quiet. She stood wordlessly at the bars, simply staring at Otto Malarkey, taking in every inch of him from hair to toe.
It seemed as though she would say something, or do something. In fact, she took a step forward and opened her mouth, but the moment was shattered when the soldier Aldridge tapped her shoulder.
“The colonel wants a report before we set off,” said Corporal Aldridge. “He is a little upset about Farley being dead, and so forth. And you are to double-time it down to the main assembly, where the troops are mustered.”
Witmeyer did not respond; she simply stood staring at Otto. She was bewitched, under the spell of a new emotion that she could not fathom, having nothing to relate it to. She found it difficult to form thoughts or sentences, and Witmeyer did not enjoy this helplessness, as quick-wittedness had long been a forte of hers. And yet, she could not shake this warm feeling that had no place in the heart of a Thundercat.
And it seemed as though this magnificent man felt the same. He approached the bars and stood there, hunched beneath the cell’s low ceiling, and his eyes looked directly at her and also, somehow, somewhere distant.
“Lunka,” he said softly, “we did not part after all.”
“No,” she said. “We did not part.”
What happened next, Aldridge brought upon himself. For just as it is true that a sleepwalker should never be awakened in case he reacts violently, neither should those on either end of a thunderbolt be disturbed in mid-gaze.
“Did you hear me?” he said, tapping Witmeyer’s shoulder. “Let’s go, lady. Double-time.”
Witmeyer’s reaction was pure instinct, and it was over before her conscious mind had time to catch up. She reached up and grabbed Aldridge’s fingers, twisting them until they cracked; then she caught him by the armpit and heaved him high over her shoulder and into the cell bars. That was probably enough to knock the unfortunate soldier unconscious, but just in case, she slammed Aldridge onto the floor and punched him once in the forehead. If he hadn’t been out before, he was out now. Far out.
“Outstanding,” said Malarkey. “What sublime form, eh, Ramlet?”
“Quite,” said Riley, wincing on Aldridge’s behalf.
“Oops,” said Witmeyer as her brain realized what she had done. “Oh.”
Malarkey wrapped his fingers around the bars. “‘Oops, oh.’ Such poetry.”
Riley thought that the two adults had lost their minds, but he was wise enough to keep this notion to himself, as he had no wish to end up like the crushed man on the floor.
“Has the lady switched sides, then?” he asked the mooning Malarkey. “Are we safe to make a break for it?”
His question went unanswered, and so Riley reckoned to take a chance on it, as doubtless someone would come to check the chamber soon. He rolled up the leg of his trousers and began to pick at what looked like the flesh of his calf, but it was not flesh—it was a layer of glue, which soon came away from the skin in a flap. Beneath the glue, a burglar’s key sat pressed into the skin of his leg.
“Come on now,” he said, plucking strands of glue from the key’s single tooth. “Don’t let old Riley down today.”
The key was one of Riley’s favorite bettys. A midsize pick that could open anything from manacles to a basic safe. It took a measure of jiggling, but soon the cell door swung open before them. Otto stooped to grab a handful of Aldridge’s shirt, then casually tossed him to the rear of the cell. Now nothing stood between Lunka and Otto.
Lunka, thought Riley. I shall not be voicing my opinion on that particular name.
Malarkey took Witmeyer’s hand in his, and the hands were much the same size.
“Tell me, woman. Are you with us now?”
Witmeyer felt like she was in a dream, and in this dream she was an entirely different person, who didn’t crack skulls unless she felt like it—or the owners of the skulls were blocking her view of Otto Malarkey.
“I am with you, King Otto,” she said.
“I could listen to you call me King forever,” said Otto. “And it makes me want to be king again.”
“I want that too,” said Witmeyer. “You should take back what is rightfully yours. I will fight at your side.”
Otto drew her close. “Together we could take on the world.”
“Together,” agreed Lunka, and they kissed once more.
Riley thought he would choke in this love cloud.
“When you two have done with the cooing,” he said, picking up Aldridge’s bowler hat and dragging the coat off his back, “we should quit this lurk before the scoundrel colonel has pennies on all our eyes.”
Malarkey broke contact for a moment. “Just a sec, lad. Be right with you, but when you get older you’ll understand that a man must coo while he can.” And he shook out his hair and went back in for another kiss, leaving Riley to stand there, shifting on his feet like a fellow with a bad dose of worm itch.
Sometimes I feel like people aren’t listening to me. I spend ninety minutes up here talking about the dangers of time travel, advising you to stay the hell away from time travel, and the first question I get is “Do you think time travel will be available commercially?” Then again, I spend every waking hour bent over quantum equations, so I guess I don’t listen to me, either
.
—Professor Charles Smart
The savior of the world.
Clay Junior.
Colonel Box.
But he hadn’t always been a colonel. That only came after his administration of what used to be quaintly called a “wet work” team, as if the only discomfiting fact about working in that unit was getting water in your boots.
In the early 1980s, Sergeant Clayton Box was part of Operation Bright Star, training with Egyptian forces in the Sinai. He made such an impression with his accurate forecasting of terrorist attacks that he was drafted into a newly minted CIA–Green Beret team that was tasked with counterinsurgence in El Salvador. While there, Box drew up a model that diagrammed terrorist groups and could be applied anywhere in the world—except Scandinavia, where people thought differently. This model was called the Box Parallelogram and was the gold standard for understanding terrorist groups for decades.
Box really could not understand what all the fuss was about. He simply put himself in the insurgent leader’s shoes, imagined himself a little less intelligent than he was, then ran his unit as efficiently as it was possible with his diminished IQ. The results were astounding. Box could predict where rebels would strike. He could predict who was likely to be recruited and where they would be approached, and most important, he could predict with reasonable accuracy which foot soldiers would rise to the top. The CIA liked that last bit. They liked it a lot, and embarked on a series of apparently baffling hits on low-level targets, which, according to Box, were the equivalent of time-traveling assassinations.
Box liked it, too. The system was efficient.
Time-traveling assassinations. The Box Parallelogram earned him his colonel’s wings, and it was whispered in the halls of power that he was being groomed for brigadier general before forty. Almost unheard of.
Box’s phrase time-traveling assassinations was catchy and it hung around Command Headquarters; and when the Charles Smart project seemed like it might actually be science fact instead of science fiction, Box was called in for a chat.
Tell me, Colonel, a man in a plain black uniform asked him. How could the Box Parallelogram be made more efficient?