“Yeah. My sergeant didn’t make it. He died this morning.”
“Oh, damn.”
“What the hell is going to happen to us, sir?” said the lieutenant. “What the hell kind of life have we got to look forward to?”
The tiny colonel stared out at a shaft of sunlight coming down from the skylight of the loft. “I don’t know, Lieutenant,” he said. “I honestly don’t know. How are the men doing?”
“About as well as could be expected. They’re getting a little wired. I try to keep the tension down by running the hell out of ‘em all day, setting up obstacle courses and practice maneuvers Lord know we’ve got enough damn room here, but there’s a limit, y’know? They don’t like it here anymore than I do. And losin’ sixteen of the boys on what was supposed to be a training exercise didn’t exactly boost moral.”
The lieutenant threw the knife down angrily and it stuck, quivering, in the wooden floor of the loft.
“I never should’ve called the strike in,” he said, bitterly. “I should’ve waited.”
“The presence of the Observer changed everything,” said the colonel. “You did what you had to do. You might have lost him if you held off.”
“Hell, we lost him anyway. And you know something? I’m not sorry. It eats my guts out that my boys had to die, but I’m not sorry that Gulliver got away. After all we put him through, that poor bastard deserved a decent break. At least somebody got out of this damn nightmare in one piece.”
“I wonder if we will,” the colonel said.
“We will. Count on it. We’ll make it.”
“I wish I could be so sure,” said the colonel. “Tell the men there’s a briefing scheduled for 0600. A target’s been selected. We’re going out tomorrow night.”
I could sure get used to this, thought Hunter, toying with the stem of his wineglass as he stared at the beautiful, elegant blonde sitting across the table from him. She was dressed in a simple, low cut black dress, an expensive designer original that clung to her lush figure, accentuating it with every move she made. The table top was glass, allowing him to appreciate her gorgeous legs, which were crossed in a calculated manner so that the dress would ride up high. Throughout the meal, she’d been leaning forward slightly, inconspicuously matching her physical attitude to his, making little, almost unnoticeable movements, speaking a subtle body language that was almost as blatant in its effect as if she had tom off all her clothes and sprawled out naked on the table. She smiled and her sea green eyes whispered promises. She was good. She was very, very good.
Yes, sir, thought Hunter, I could sure get used to this. Fine clothes, expensive cars, beautiful women … becoming stranded in this timeline could be the best thing that ever happened to him. In a matter of months, he bad effortlessly parlayed the few dollars he bad stolen into a multimillion dollar’ fortune. And that money had opened many doors. And the more doors the money opened, the more money came in. And as more money came in, more doors were opened for him. After a while, it seemed as if the entire process had started to become completely self-sustaining. The warp disc and a little common sense was all it took. I should have done this years ago, he thought.
“Penny for your thoughts,” the blonde said. Her voice had the rich, low contralto tones of a cello by Stradivarius.
“Hmm?”
She smiled a dazzling, slightly crooked smile. “It doesn’t exactly do wonders for a girl’s ego when you drift off like that, you know,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said, with an apologetic smile.
“You seemed so far away. What were you thinking just now?”
“I was just thinking about something I had started out to do.” He gazed out the bay window of her penthouse apartment with the view of Central Park. “At one point, no so very long ago, it seemed terribly important.” He smiled. “I guess I was just trying to remember why.”
The compact disc player automatically segued from Pat Metheny to some mellow, soulful blues by Carlos Santana. The dinner she had cooked for him had been exquisite, the wine was an excellent vintage white Margaux, and there was something very tantalizing about the subtle scent of her perfume. This woman was trouble, Hunter thought, but it was the kind of trouble a man usually walked into with both eyes wide open.
Her name was Krista and they had met at a party hosted by Domenico Manelli, a man who described himself as an investor and a financier. He did invest quite heavily, hut not all of his investments were in blue chip stocks. He also dealt in some commodities that did not appear on the big board. And as for being a financier, well, he did finance certain politicians, a few judges, several entertainers, and a battery of lawyers.
It hadn’t taken Hunter very long to figure out that Krista was on Domenico Manelli’s payroll.
She undoubtedly did not think of herself as a hooker, Hunter thought, because there was a world of difference between Krista and a common prostitute. She was much more than an exclusive call girl, too. Men did not call Krista and pay her exorbitantly for her favors. Few men would have been able to afford the price, either financially or psychologically. Besides, she couldn’t be bought that way. No, Krista was a much more interesting creature. She was a weapon that Domenico Manelli used with careful judgement and restraint. And a weapon like Krista was worth an entire ream of intelligence agents, Hunter thought.
The fact that Krista had approached him meant that Manelli had become interested in him and Hunter had been trying to decide how to react to that. He didn’t quite know what to make of Domenico Manelli. In some ways, the man was astonishingly obvious, while in others he was as complex and devious as a Medici prince. He had taken the twofold path, as all really smart criminals did, establishing himself as a solid, taxpaying citizen with a wide variety of legitimate business interests and community activities while at the same time cleverly furthering his illegal operations, which had provided the seed capital for him to become a respected pillar of the community to begin with.
Manelli functioned on the principle that it was never very smart to become too visibly successful, but that if one did, the thing to do was to create an economic smokescreen. The moment the money became significant—and at the same time, inconveniently inexplicable—he invested it. He invested it legitimately in a manner that allowed for a reasonable return that could then be used to grease the wheels. He used the dirty money to create clean funds that were then used for paying taxes, contributing to various charities and political campaigns, supporting popular causes, starting businesses, creating jobs. . . in other words, buying his way to indispensability to as many people as possible.
In the meantime, he erected barriers between himself and the criminal activities that had financed the whole thing to begin with. He carefully selected subordinates who did not appear to be subordinates and who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut and take the fall if it became necessary, knowing they’d be taken care of for their loyalty. And along the way, the campaign contributions and the community activity gave him access to important people and allowed him to determine which ones to stay away from, which ones could be manipulated, and which ones could be bought outright.
Hunter’s instincts told him to stay away. Getting involved with a man like Manelli could be dangerous, but then if he had wanted to play it safe, he would never have joined the C.I.S. in the first place. The trouble was, Hunter was having a hard time deciding what to do. The odds against his stumbling upon a confluence point all on his own were astronomical, not even worth considering seriously. The odds of his finding a way to contact the Underground were somewhat better, but he had no idea where to start or even if it was what he really wanted to do.
If his goal was to create a significant disruption in this timeline, then the Underground was an ideal place for him to be. He could convince them that he’d deserted from the Temporal Army and infiltrate their organization, using their contacts and their information to achieve his ends, although they’d kill him if they suspected what his plans were. Only were those still his plans?
Why not simply accept things as they were? He was trapped in this universe and chances were that he’d never find his way back home. But then, why should he even try? The life he had created for himself here was infinitely better than the one he had as an agent for the C.I.S. Why fight it? Back home, he never would have dared to try anything like what he had accomplished here. Even if the idea had occurred to him, he’d have resisted partly out of fear of getting caught and partly out of concern that he might somehow disrupt the timestream. Here, what did it matter? It made no difference what he did here, there would always be the fear of getting caught, so why not make the most of his opportunities? And if he did do something that created a disruption further up the timeline, then it would not affect him here and he’d be doing no more than his duty. The warp disc was his protection. He could always escape further into the past. The temptation to do exactly as his twin in this timeline had done and simply opt out was tremendous and Hunter was seeing less and less reason to resist it. The last thing he needed was to bother with someone like Manelli.