FIVE
September 23, 1888, London, England
The dagger wasn’t meant for me. I heard Bonseller cry out in pain and fear, and that shocked me into action. I staggered away from the door, my feet clumsy, balance screwed up. Nothing around me made sense, because my heart rate had gone through the roof and a lot of frontal brain functions were shutting down, but I remembered enough to start tactical breathing. Inhale for a five count, hold it for a five count, exhale for a five count, wait for a five count, start again.
Someone grabbed me by the right arm, one of the men from the door. He wore some sort of black coverall and a black cap. His mouth twisted open in a grimace showing me yellow and black jack-o’-lantern teeth, and his breath came as a physical shock almost as potent as the thrown knife. A blade flashed toward my face, and I tried to twist away, but his grip was strong. The knife stopped millimeters from my throat.
“Come wi’ us or you’re a dead ’un,” he growled.
I nodded mutely.
Exhale for five, hold for five . . .
Three serving-platter-sized metallic spiders scrabbled past my feet, making whirring, clicking noises.
What the hell?
The other man in black yanked down the big drapes from the window, pulling the curtain rod and mounts away from the ceiling in a small shower of plaster dust. Light exploded in through the large window, and I saw a smoky rectangle of the London skyline. He kicked at the window, and glass shattered.
“Where’s the bleedin’ coin?” the man holding me shouted as he pulled me toward the window.
“I . . . I don’t—” I stammered.
“Here!” someone yelled. I recognized Meredith’s voice. His plump hand appeared from behind the overturned writing desk, holding a melted slug of clear plastic.
Inhale for five, hold for five. Vision came into sharper focus, legs grew steadier. Around the periphery of my vision the old blackness crept, the blackness I thought gone forever.
Where was Gordon and his revolver? Tyndall’s pistol was in his coat pocket on the floor. No time to get it. The man at the window had his back to me as he used his fist to knock out the remaining broken shards of glass. The thug holding me shoved me toward the window and let go to reach out to grab the coin.
Action without thought. Two long steps to launch myself into the air, catch the man at the window with both of my feet squarely in his back. Kick hard to transfer momentum to him, come down in a crouch as he plunged screaming out the window. Anticipation, experience, memory—indistinguishable.
With neither thought nor emotion I rose and turned to the other thug and I knew my face was as empty as the abyss. Did I know it then or know it later? There was no then or later. He hesitated, his knife held wrong for a throw.
“Halt in the name of the crown! Hands up!”
Gordon!
Face white, pistol raised and shaking, Gordon stood at the double paneled door through which Bonseller had entered. The thug didn’t even glance back at him. Instead, his eyes flickered to the open window behind me. He licked his lips, calculated, then lunged toward me.
I sidestepped, Gordon’s pistol fired, the sound exploding like thunder in the confined space of the room. The man staggered forward and fell against the window sill, then straightened, put his foot on the sill, and jumped.
Through the window, I saw the thug swinging from a rope ladder a dozen feet from the building, and as I watched, he rose up and away, and the blackness behind my eyes fled with him.
I stuck my head out farther and looked up—some sort of elongated powered balloon. The chugging engine rose in volume as the balloon gained speed and disappeared up and into the mists. Thoughts returned.
What the hell was going on?
The pistol barked again, and a slug slammed into the windowsill above my head, throwing splinters of wood and glass into my scalp. I flinched to the side and then dove for cover behind a heavy leather sofa. Thomson was already there, kicking one of the metal spiders away.
“Nicely done, laddie,” he said.
“Tell that to Gordon.”
The pistol fired again, and a slug blew through the back of the couch, showering us with horse-hair furniture entrails.
“Captain Gordon!” Thomson shouted. “Cease fire, ya great bloody idiot! I’m back here, and Fargo is on our side, not theirs.”
“Yes, for God’s sake stop shooting.” That was Bonseller’s voice. He sounded weak, but he wasn’t dead. I helped Thomson to his feet and then hurried over to Bonseller’s prone form. Gordon stood in the doorway uncertainly, pistol drooping. A mechanical spider scrambled toward him, he fired his revolver, knocked wood from the floor six inches to the side, fired again, and then again, finally hitting it.
“Damn,” he muttered. Several men in suits pushed past him from behind.
I knelt beside Bonseller. He was trying to sit up but having a hard time. Blood soaked his left sleeve around the hilt of a throwing knife that was buried in his arm above the elbow. I grabbed his upper bicep in my left hand, my thumb on the pressure point to cut off the blood flow.
“Take it easy, Bonseller. You’re bleeding a lot. The knife must have nicked an artery. I’m going to put a pressure bandage on it.”
I started to pull open his coat, when a mechanical spider scrabbling across the floor bumped Bonseller’s leg. It stopped and locked steel mandibles on his calf, then made a loud whirring sound, started vibrating, and Bonseller cried out in pain. I felt an electric shock through my thumb and jumped back.
“Son of a bitch!”
I kicked the spider away from Bonseller and grabbed his arm again. He trembled from the shock and groaned but didn’t seem much worse otherwise. He still needed a compression bandage, so I unbuckled his belt and pulled it out as gently as I could.
“Stand away from Sir Edward, Fargo,” Gordon ordered. I hadn’t even noticed him walk up. He raised the shaking revolver, pointed it at my forehead, and cocked the hammer back.
“You’re dry, Gordon,” I told him, “unless that’s a seven-shooter.”
Gordon looked at his revolver in confusion.
“Oh, put the bloody gun down, man,” Thomson ordered. “And where did you get off to, anyway?”
“I went for help,” he explained.
“This may hurt a bit, but I need to get this knife out of the way,” I said. I took the handle in my fist, made sure I was lined up squarely, and slid it up and out of the wound, trying not to make things any worse. Bonseller gasped but made no other signs of pain. More blood oozed out of the slit in the coat, but not much. I wrapped the belt three times around Bonseller’s upper arm over the wound and pulled it tight. He drew in air sharply as I did, but he took it pretty well, all things considered.
“That should hold you until a surgeon can stitch you up. Just make sure you keep the pressure on the wound.”
I looked up as the room filled with excited servants, men who looked like clerks, and two who looked more like police detectives or bodyguards from their grim composure. Meredith, supported by two men, rose weakly from behind the overturned desk. Most of the others clustered around us, but a few checked Tyndall and Colonel Rossbank for signs of life. Gordon drifted over to stand by the silent form of his older friend, his empty revolver dangling limply in his hand.
“A couple of you find something to use for a stretcher,” I ordered, “and get rid of these damned spiders. Somebody else get a carriage, or whatever you use to get people to the hospital. And grab the bad guy I pushed out the window; it’s only two stories down, so he’s probably still alive, and maybe mobile. Hurry!”
The closest ones looked uncertainly from Thomson to Bonseller.
“Yes, yes,” Bonseller said. “Get to it.”
Two of them dashed for the door, and a couple others started looking for lightweight furniture—good luck with that.
“You got a favorite hospital, Sir Eddy?” I asked.
“St. George’s on Grosvenor Place, and damn you for a cheeky bastard. ‘Sir Eddy’ indeed. What of the others? How is Tyndall?”
I was sure Tyndall was dead; the thrown knife had severed his carotid artery. I glanced over to the doorway where Rossbank lay. One of the detective-looking men stood and spread an overcoat over his motionless form. Past them, through the open panel doors, I saw the still form of one of the Bobbies.
“Tyndall and the colonel are both dead, probably both constables as well. Everyone else seems okay.” I sniffed and looked around.
“Someone shit their britches. Was that you, Gordon?”
Publicly humiliating him might cause problems later, but I didn’t care. Survivor’s high does that. Gordon’s already-red face turned a brighter shade, and he shot me a look of hatred and shame all mixed up together.
The truth was all of us who’d been in the room—Bonseller, Thomson, Gordon, and probably me as well—had bright red faces by then. It’s the normal response of the circulatory system to danger; first it chokes off blood to the extremities to concentrate it in the core organs, so the face goes white. Then, when the all-clear sounds, the blood comes pounding back into the skin—instant tomato face. Bonseller’s complexion was the first to start to lose its color again.
“I’m feeling a bit lightheaded.”
“Yeah. You’re probably going to faint,” I told him.
“I dare say. Billy, you are in charge here until I’m back from the hospital. Try to sort all this out, will you? And don’t let Gordon shoot anyone.”
People with purpose bustled in and out of the room, giving reports to Thomson and getting orders. I sat on the leather sofa that had a bullet hole through its back, looked at the small pile of broken mechanical spiders, one of their legs still twitching and clawing the air, and I collected my thoughts.
Thomson came over and sat down heavily on the sofa next to me. He exhaled shakily.
“I’m still a bit overwhelmed by all this,” he said. “But you’re a very cold-blooded fellow, aren’t you?”
In response I held out my hand. It trembled uncontrollably.
“I think I might throw up,” I added.
“If so, do it now, while Gordon is off changing his trousers. You wouldn’t want to give him that satisfaction, would you?”
“For an old, fat Scotsman you’re pretty observant.”
He chuckled.
“You have a knack for making insults palatable, Fargo, damn me if I understand how.
“We’ve asked you a great many questions today. I’d say you’ve earned some answers of your own. I imagine you have more questions than I can address all at once, so for now, which one is most important to you?”
One question?
Why did the bad guys want Tyndall dead? Why did Tyndall think I was part of that? Why did the bad guys want the coin? Why did they want me? What were those spiders? Why does London have elevated trains instead of a subway? What’s wrong with the air? How did the South win? What the hell holds those flying ironclads up?
“How do I get back to my daughter?” I said.
He leaned back on the sofa and examined me. I could tell he had no answer, but the question interested him.
One of the clerks walked through the door and hurried over to us.
“Professor Thomson, the villain who fell from the window is conscious and his injuries do not seem life-threatening. We have him in a room off the front parlor for now. To where should we have him taken?”
“I think we’ll talk to him there. Find Captain Gordon and have him join us, would you?”
He turned to me as the clerk left.
“Come along, Fargo. I will tell you honestly that I cannot imagine how it is possible to return you to your time, but I know of one man who might help us. First, however, we must attend to this business.”
When we got downstairs, Gordon was already questioning the thug, had already finished in a sense.
“This blackguard won’t tell us anything,” he announced in disgust as soon as we arrived. I glanced over at the fellow—thin in the face, wiry-looking, but a thick torso under his coveralls. His face was skinned up, nose broken, with blood caked around his mouth and chin. He sat on a sofa with his left leg propped up on it.
I walked over and had a look at his leg, touched it below the knee, and he winced in pain. The trouser leg was bloodstained, and the irregular bulge suggested a bone sticking out of the skin.
“Nasty compound fracture you got there. If a doctor doesn’t take care of it, you could end up with gangrene, lose the leg.”
He licked his lips, and sweat trickled down the side of his face.
“So what? Dead’s as dead, either way.”
At least that’s what I thought he said. He dropped almost all the consonants, leaving a series of vowel-like grunts, so it was hard to tell for sure, but I was starting to get the hang of some of the accents and the meter of the speech. I could read and speak Latin, ancient and modern Greek, Aramaic, German, Spanish, French, and a half-dozen Middle-Eastern and Central-Asian languages and dialects. You’d think I could decipher Cockney English.
“He won’t tell us anything,” Gordon repeated.
I ignored him and leaned forward, rapped the fellow lightly on his chest. Under the fabric it was hard, rigid, and made a muffled thunk.
“Thought so. That first shot of yours didn’t miss the other one, Gordon. These guys are wearing some sort of body armor.”
“Body armor?” He came over and leaned forward to rap it himself. “Well, damn me if he ain’t.”
“You tell him you were going to see him swing for this, no matter what?” I asked.
“Of course I did.”
“Yeah, and now he won’t talk. What a shocker.”
“If you think you can do any better, be my guest.”
I couldn’t imagine doing much worse. I pulled over an armchair to face the sofa and noticed Thomson take a chair near the door. Gordon remained standing, pacing back and forth, scowling ferociously. Good. I didn’t know if these guys had come up with Good Cop, Bad Cop yet, but if not, it was about time.
I looked the guy over. Scars on his face and knuckles told the story of a violent life. Hard eyes told it better. Red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes, broken veins on his nose to match—a life of alcohol as well as violence. But he looked strong now, in a lean, ratlike way, and clearheaded. There was life in his eyes—not exactly hope, but defiance and self-respect. This wasn’t a hired tough; this was a man with beliefs.
His pupils were dilated. All mixed up in the smells of sweat and soot, the smells of the man and his world, there was something else, something herbal and smoky. Marijuana? Maybe so.
“What’s your name?” I asked. He hesitated. “What do you want me to call you?”
“Grover’ll do.”
“Would you like a smoke, Grover?” I asked. The question caught him by surprise, but then he shrugged.
“Could do.”
“Captain Gordon, give him one of your cheroots.”
“I’m damned if I will! These bastards killed Tyndall.”
“Just do it, man,” Thomson ordered softly.
Gordon threw the small cigar onto the couch. The prisoner snatched it, put it in his mouth, and grinned.
I took a match from Gordon, struck it, and the prisoner puffed the cheroot to life. The room filled with its aromatic smoke, and he leaned back in relaxed pleasure, his pain and fear momentarily forgotten.
“Captain Gordon has told you that, no matter what, you’ll hang. Well, that’s not much of a surprise, is it? Two constables, a colonel, and one of the most respected scientists in England all dead—hard to imagine they’ll let you off with a warning. My guess is, the time you spend here, smoking that cigar, is probably going to be the best time you have left in your life, so savor it. From here on out it will either be just so-so, or truly horrendous. You understand that, right?”
His smile faded a bit, and his eyes grew thoughtful. After a moment he nodded.
“Okay, good. You probably aren’t going to betray anything important to us, so instead let’s see if you can satisfy our curiosity about some smaller things. Professor Thomson figures he knows who you work for. Who’s that again, Prof?”
“The Old Man,” Thomson said.
I watched the thug’s face. If Thomson was wrong, I’d have seen disdain or triumph. Instead I saw nothing, a wall.
The Old Man. The Old Man of the Mountain? That would explain the smell of cannabis. The timing was about eight hundred years off, though.
“Well, whoever. Here’s what I’m curious about. I get that he’s killing some group of guys, and Tyndall was next on the list. But why did he want me? And why the coin?”
The prisoner took the cheroot from his mouth and studied the ash for a moment, considering his answer.
“Well, ’e’s a collector, see? Go’ to collect all the li’l shiny bits what come frew the ’ole.”
“The hole?”
“The ‘ole in time. ‘E’s already got lots o’ shiny bits. Don’t think you’re the first, do ya?”
The hole in time! I sat up straight and leaned forward.
“I need to find him.”
Grover’s expression clouded over as if he realized he’d said too much. “‘E’ll find you, soon enough.”
“Yeah, well, he’s got his schedule and I’ve got mine. Where is he?”
I figured I knew the answer—Syria. That’s where The Old Man of the Mountain—Shaykh al-Jabal in Arabic—had been based along with his cult of hashshashins—fearless killers, from whom the word assassin derived. The story was they took hashish before a mission to fortify their courage and dull the pain of any wound or injury they might suffer. That had always sounded pretty far-fetched to me, and London was a long way from the cult’s recruiting area, but it wouldn’t be the screwiest thing about this place. Not even close.
Grover’s face tightened, and his eyes narrowed to slits. Everything up until then was bragging—this approached betrayal, and I had the feeling he would never voluntarily betray The Old Man.
“Look,” I said, “if he’s as good as you think he is, you’ll be doing him a favor. I’ll go charging in there, he’ll grab me, and then he’ll have what he wants. Besides, he’ll know we’re coming, right? If he knew about me and the coin, he knows everything going on here.”
We stared at each other, me daring him to talk, him calculating the angles. As I watched, I realized I was seeing the workings of an intelligent and sophisticated, if unschooled, mind. Now he was trying to figure out which play made the most sense, but not for him, for his boss.
“Stuff it,” he finally said.
Here was someone with brains, guts, and loyalty, even honor in his way, and this society had just discarded him. Then along came someone who recognized gemstones, even damaged ones lying in the gutter, and had swept him up. This wasn’t my world, and I was glad it wasn’t, because it was in bad trouble.
I gathered the plan had been to throw me in prison after the interview. Things having turned out as they had, they decided against prison, but that left my domestic arrangements up in the air. It turns out there were bedrooms on the third floor of the house for unexpected guests like me. I also found out the house had a name—Dorset House.
A maid—she couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve—showed me to my room and brought some cold cheese sandwiches and a pot of lukewarm tea. She also pointed out, with much blushing, the commode down the hall, where I was pleasantly surprised to find a functioning flush toilet.
I turned in early but had trouble getting to sleep. I wasn’t used to sleeping in odd places. A hospital, a bed-and-breakfast, that’s different. Those are places with labels, so you know how you’re supposed to feel about them. Dorset House—what kind of place was that? Also, I wasn’t sure when I was going to get a clean change of clothes, so I slept in the raw. The bed was cold and the sheets stiff and scratchy. I could have used a change of bandages on my burned back as well, but that would have to wait.
My thoughts didn’t help me doze off. Sitting in the interview room with Grover, the Cockney hashshashin, for just a moment I’d felt closer to an answer, closer to the way home. But since I’d come to this thoroughly screwed-up place, all I’d seen were hostile faces, violent death, and a London right out of a bad acid trip. I’d played this game of looking for allies, planning my next move—for what? Even if I found some “hole in time,” what then? How much closer would I be to finding what had altered my past and then undoing it? Not one inch. Lying there alone in that cold bed, I felt impossibly far away from anyone and anything I had ever cared about. And in that cold darkness, I couldn’t believe there was a way back to the warmth and light. I just couldn’t.