SIX
September 24, 1888, London, England
The next morning an older maid woke me up with tea—hot for a change—some crisp toast held upright in a silver toast rack, and the news that I was wanted downstairs as soon as I could dress. I’m not sure why, but a hot cup of tea, and the thought of someone—even assholes—waiting for me, restored my confidence.
“Outrageous! Do you hear me? It is bloody outrageous, and I will not bloody have it. I will not!!”
I paused in the doorway, glanced around the office, and saw three red-faced junior officers at rigid attention—with Gordon the reddest of them all—in front of the ranting older officer. I recognized the two others with Gordon as the men I had taken for detectives the day before. Thomson sat in a chair in the corner, puffing on his pipe and lost in thought. He noticed me at the door and took the pipe from his mouth to wave me in.
The tall, stout officer turned his ferocious glare on me. His eyes narrowed and his gray moustache bristled like the whiskers on a walrus.
“So, the mysterious Mr. Fargo joins us. Because of you they said my ‘talents’ were needed here, in the Intelligence Department. They’re bringing that doddering old fool Baker back from India to give him my seat on the Army Board. That was Wood’s handiwork, I’ll wager. Well damn Wood, damn the Board, damn Rossbank for getting himself killed, and damn all of these fools for not dying in place of him!”
“Don’t forget to damn me,” I said.
“Damn you, sir!”
“Fargo, allow me to introduce the new director of military intelligence,” Thomson said from his chair. “Major General Sir Redvers Buller, VC. General, as you correctly deduced, this is Professor James Fargo of the University of Chicago.”
VC after his name meant Buller had the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for heroism, the equivalent of our Medal of Honor.
“University of Chicago?” Buller said. “Never heard of it.”
“Be patient,” I answered. “It wasn’t founded until 1890, but we managed to make a name for ourselves fairly quickly. Redvers. Do your friends call you ‘Red’?”
“Damn you, sir, they do not. Americans must prize a particularly thick sort of professor. Just what did you intend by taking on two armed assailants?”
“I intended not to go with them.”
“Damned foolish, if you ask me,” he said.
“Well, you guys have been so nice to me, I couldn’t bear to leave.”
“‘Better the enemy you know’ was more likely your motive,” Buller muttered.
There was more than a little truth to that.
“I think this ‘Old Man’ may be the only one who can get me back to my time,” I said. “I want to have a nice long talk with him about that, but not as his prisoner. So I’m going to need some help.”
Buller stood there for a moment and stared at me.
“Indeed,” he said finally. “And you expect us to provide that help?”
“Yup. You want him, and I appear to be the key to getting him, or at least bringing him out into the open. His henchman said as much. So you need me for bait, and I need you for muscle. It’s a match made in heaven.”
Buller snorted and looked to Thomson, who simply raised his eyebrows in reply.
“And I suppose I’m to trust you because you turned on your captors,” Buller said. “But you did not raise a finger until after Tyndall and Rossbank were dead. How do I know the entire episode wasn’t staged just to put you in our good graces?”
“You’re director of military intelligence. In my time I’d know what that means. Here, not so much. Is this just another assignment, or have you actually done this stuff before?”
“‘Done this stuff before?’ Listen to this fellow, Thomson. You actually believe he is a professor of anything? He talks like a guttersnipe.”
“Well, he is American,” Thomson answered.
“Hummph. I was chief of intelligence in the Ashanti campaign and again in the Sudan in ‘82, so, yes, I have ‘done this stuff’ before. What of it?”
“You’d give a lot to have a source inside the highest level of your enemy’s counsels, right? Sure you would,” I said. “But once you had it, would you risk it just to get a second one?”
“What are you insinuating, Fargo?” Gordon demanded.
Buller turned on him.
“Found your voice, have you, Captain? He is insinuating nothing; he is stating the obvious. We already have a viper in our midst. How else could they have found out about both Fargo and the artifact? As I’d say you were the principal suspect, your outburst is hardly surprising.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you,” Buller answered. “I must say, Gordon, for a serving officer that was a remarkably unconvincing display of marksmanship. You put pistol bullets all over the place, missed almost everything you aimed at, but your very first shot hit the henchman square in the back. Or should I say square in the body armor?”
The color drained from Gordon’s face, and he shook his head.
“No, sir. It wasn’t like that!”
“No, perhaps not,” Buller continued. “Perhaps that shot was as wild as all the rest. Were you really aiming for Fargo, but couldn’t hit him any better than anything else?”
“No, sir. I swear it, upon my honor!”
“If, as I suspect, you are a damned spy, you have no honor, sir, so your oath is hardly reassuring.”
Enjoyable as it was to watch Gordon getting roasted over a fire—and it really was—I knew I had to step in before this careened out of control.
“No, it can’t be Gordon,” I said.
General Buller’s eyebrows went up a little in surprise, and for the first time he looked at me with genuine interest. I learned something about him right then. Everything he’d done up until then had been a deliberate performance, and everything he’d seen and heard had been exactly what he expected, until I came to Gordon’s defense.
“Go on,” he ordered.
“You can fake voluntary reactions, but not involuntary ones. He soiled himself. It’s a common but completely involuntary response to sudden danger. He was as surprised as the rest of us.”
“You didn’t soil yourself,” Buller observed.
“I knew I was in for a long and stressful day, maybe even torture, so I took a tactical dump on the train right before we got to London.”
“And what, pray tell, is a tactical dump?” he demanded.
I told him.
Thomson laughed, and one of the young officers snickered, which made Buller frown all the more fiercely.
“You never filled your trousers in combat, General?” I asked.
His scowl grew even darker and his face reddened.
“Different matter altogether,” he snapped. “Water’s always bad on campaign; a soldier learns to live with dysentery. Not the same thing at all.”
“No, of course not,” I said.
“Damn you, Fargo. How do you explain his convenient marks-manship? Hasn’t it occurred to you he may have been trying to kill you?”
“Yeah, but I decided against it. Use your head, General. If he works for a guy who wants to ‘collect’ me, whatever the hell that means, why would he want to kill me? No, his shooting makes perfect sense. You’ve been in tough combat before or you wouldn’t have a Victoria Cross, so think about it.
“His stress level was through the ceiling, so his hands shook, and he’d lost fine-detail resolution in his vision. He couldn’t see the sight on the end of his pistol. His first shot was pure muscle memory; he raised his hand, and it automatically pointed where his eyes were looking. After that he started thinking about it, trying to aim, and so he put bullets all over the place.”
Buller studied me carefully for a few seconds, and I could almost see the gears turning in his head as he thought it over. He’d probably never heard it explained that way before, but if he really had seen a lot of combat, it would make sense.
“Loss of fine-vision resolution, involuntary responses, muscle memory—how do you know all this?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you some day. But right now you’ve got a more pressing problem, don’t you?”
“Yes, the spy. Well, that’s thin soup, Fargo, but it’s the only soup we have, I’m afraid. Damned if I’m certain why, but I think you’re right. Blast you, Gordon! My life would be a deal easier if you were guilty.”
Buller waved the three rigid officers to ease and sat down behind the large wooden desk. I found a chair.
“I’m a fair suspect myself, I suppose,” Thomson said. “I knew all the details concerning Fargo’s story, and I was on bad terms with Tyndall and the other X Club members.”
The same thing had already occurred to me. I liked Thomson, but that didn’t change the facts.
Buller opened a folder on his desk and studied its contents, frowning in thought.
“Your argument with the X Club was public, Professor, but I hardly consider it a motive for these killings. Your position is rather sensible, if you ask me. All this Origins of Species nonsense the X Club members spouted—I knew my grandfather, by God, and he was no monkey.”
Across the desk I saw Gordon’s face tighten, but he said nothing. Buller turned to me.
“Professor Thomson disproved all that rubbish, you know, but the X Club johnnies still stuck with it. Rather thick of them, if you ask me. Not to speak ill of the dead, of course.”
“Disproved it?” I asked.
Thomson shifted uncomfortably in his chair and cast a guilty look at Gordon.
“I . . . ah . . . calculated the age of the Earth based on its internal temperature and the rate of cooling of its component elements. It is not old enough for the processes Mr. Darwin outlines to have played out . . . at least not in the fashion he describes.”
He looked down and away when he was finished. Maybe he felt uncomfortable bringing up a disagreement with the late lamented Tyndall.
“Right, but that’s hardly a motive for you to go around killing them,” Buller went on. “Rather the other way, I should think. Between Sir Edward’s staff and this department, a dozen men knew or could have known of Fargo and his story. Thomson, did Sir Edward ask you to consult on the Vickers lightning-cannon project?”
“The what?” Thomson sputtered.
“No, I didn’t think so,” Buller said with a nod. “ There were cases of sabotage, such as the Vickers workshop, which I think are also linked to this spy, whoever he is. You weren’t positioned to assist in those. No, I had already ruled you out. Damn you, Gordon. Why couldn’t you have been the bloody spy?”
“Sorry, sir,” Gordon answered with a hint of sarcasm and Buller glanced up sharply at him.
Buller played the blustering, gobbling British general, but there was clearly more to him than met the eye. Rossbank’s body was hardly cold, Buller had been head of Military Intelligence for probably twelve hours at the outside, and he was already up to speed on the leak and the most likely suspects. I wasn’t crazy about the guy, but that was impressive.
“Carstairs, Burroughs, you are both dismissed,” he said.
The two other officers barked “Sir!” in unison and stamped out of the office. Once the door closed behind them, Buller looked at us.
“Well, that’s it, then. You three are the only ones in this whole business I can trust. Trust is perhaps too strong a word in your case, Fargo. Let’s just say I am certain you are not a spy for the Old Man. The same is true for you, Captain Gordon.”
Buller moved the folder to the side and opened the one under it.
“You are with the Northumberland Fusiliers, I see,” he said after a moment.
“Sir.”
“The First Battalion fought in Afghanistan eight years ago. You were a subaltern then, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good opportunity for a young chap to show what he’s made of. But you stayed in England, exchanged places with a subaltern from the Second Battalion, lad named Collingwood.”
Gordon shifted his weight from one leg to the other and frowned.
“Yes, sir.”
“He was killed in action, I see. Where was that?”
I saw the color come to Gordon’s face. His ears burned cherry red. When he didn’t reply, Buller looked up at him. Gordon licked his lips before answering.
“Kandahar, sir.”
“Yes, that’s right. I missed that show. Down in Zululand, you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then last year your second battalion rotated with the first, got overseas service at last. It’s seeing some lively action out on the Northwest Frontier. You exchanged out again, I see, with a captain named Winthrop. Is he still alive?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lucky chap,” Buller said.
Gordon dropped his hands to his side and came to attention.
“Will that be all, sir?”
“No, damn you, it will not. I know the army is full of worthless young gentlemen who think soldiering is nothing more than hunting foxes in Yorkshire and gambling away their father’s money in London. They exchange out with poorer officers whenever their battalion ships overseas. The poor ones can’t afford the mess dues back in England and so go on campaign, seduced by the prospect of prize money. They end up doing all the bleeding and damn the army for still allowing it. But you, Gordon! You had your chance to prove yourself yesterday, and you ran.”
“I went for help!” Gordon protested.
“Went for help? You ran into the others outside the door and so had to turn around and come back. Otherwise like as not you’d have kept running all the way to Horse Guards.”
“If you believe that—”
“Shut up, damn you!” Buller roared, his searing rage no longer a pretense. Sweat broke out on Gordon’s forehead and he seemed to wilt in the furnace of the general’s contempt.
“I won’t say what I believe,” Buller resumed after a moment. “If I did, I might have no choice but to give you a revolver and some privacy. I can’t afford that. Much as I loathe the idea, you are the only officer in this entire department whom I can trust. Whatever else you are, Gordon, Fargo has convinced me you are not the spy.”
Gordon glanced at me, but there was no gratitude in his eyes.
“You fancy yourself an intelligence officer,” Buller continued. “I will tell you this much: an intelligence officer isn’t worth a box full of backsides unless he’s out in the field. So that is where you are going, all three of you.
“Professor Thomson, I cannot order you, but the Crown would be extremely grateful—”
“Of course I’ll go,” Thomson said. “I owe poor Tyndall that much. We should never have let a scientific disagreement divide us so bitterly all those years.”
“Splendid. Lest there be any misunderstandings, you are in charge of the expedition.”
“Where would you have us go, and to what purpose?” Thomson asked.
Buller looked at each of us in turn.
“Investigate the Somerton site. The police already have done so, and we have their report, but there’s nothing in it. This talk about a ‘hole in time’ is worth looking into, though. The incident at Somerton was not a unique occurrence. We received a cable from our embassy in Berlin which reports another similar detonation in southern Germany—Bavaria, actually—at precisely the same time.
“After you’ve learned what you can from the Somerton site, go to Bavaria. I’ll have a Royal Navy flier ready to take you—quickest way and no embarrassing questions from fellow passengers. Contact the Bavarian State Police. They have already agreed to cooperate. You will jointly investigate the reports of the explosion near Kempten, Bavaria, in the Allgäu Alps. Find out what happened and what role this Old Man had in the business. Follow wherever it leads, Thomson, and sort this business out.”
Out in the hallway the three of us paused for a moment, but Gordon stared straight ahead, as if Thomson and I weren’t there. He straightened his tunic and then walked away without a word.
“That lad’s carrying too many rocks in his pockets,” Thomson observed. “Tyndall was his uncle, you know. They were quite close.”
“Well, he better get his shit together or he’ll get us all killed.”
“His shit together?” Thomson chuckled. “Aye, that’s one way to put it. Now, where are you staying?”
“Here I guess.”
“Nonsense. Come along to my club. We’ll have a wee bit of lunch and then see about providing you with some proper clothing.”
“That sounds okay. Some jeans, running shoes, and a couple sweat shirts and I’ll be good to go,” I said with a smile.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it doesn’t sound like proper attire to me. My tailor will kit you out, though, no fear. You’ll have to look your best when we meet Lord Chillingham.”
We started down the broad stairs, and I saw the butler at the bottom holding our coats, calm and emotionless as a robot. I’d only been here a few days, but one of the things which already struck me was how people were so careful about not showing their humanity to anyone of a higher social station. I bet this butler loosened his collar and roared with laughter with his pals, tossing back a pint or two in the pub, but you would never know it to see him here, standing like a statue.
“Who’s Chillingham?” I asked Thomson. “Is he the man you said might help me?”
“Lord Chillingham, and best not forget it, laddie. He won’t find you as amusing as I do. He doesn’t find anything amusing, so far as I can see. No, he’s not the man I mentioned earlier. Lord Chillingham. All the soot and smoke in the air over London—and Manchester and Birmingham are worse—is mostly from Chillingham’s foundries and mills. Ever since he bought up the patents to Henry Bessemer’s process, he’s had a stranglehold on heavy industry. He’s also the Lord Minister Overseas, the real power behind the foreign ministry, colonial affairs, and particularly military intelligence. I imagine that’s the reason the general’s so upset. Buller was Quartermaster General until yesterday, safe and sound on the Army Board. Now he’s at Chillingham’s mercy. Well, we all are now, I suppose.”
I knew at least something about British government, but I’d never heard of a Lord Minister Overseas.
“Aren’t ministers from the House of Commons? What’s with this Lord Minister thing?”
“The Common Cabinet comes from the lower house, but cabinets come and go as Parliament changes. The Lords are—more permanent. Their two ministers—Home and Overseas—well, they’re the ones to worry about.”
“In my time the House of Lords is pretty powerless,” I said.
Thomson slipped into the coat the butler held open for him and looked at me a moment before answering.
“Now, that’s a revolutionary idea,” he said. “Were it mine, I’d keep it to myself.”
“Okay. So who’s the guy who may be able to help?” I asked.
“We’re fortunate he’s even in the country, it’s only a temporary visit. He’s speaking at the Royal Society tomorrow. I’ll send my card and ask him to meet with us afterwards. A remarkable man, especially considering he’s a foreigner of quite humble origins.”
“Yeah, you have to be careful of those foreigners of humble origin,” I said.
He glanced at me to make sure he understood what I meant and then squinted as he smiled. “Aye,” he answered, “present company included. This fellow’s eccentric, of course, perhaps even a bit mad, but only a madman would take your story seriously. His theories are certainly excuse enough for a suite at Bedlam. I suspect it will take some very unconventional thinking to sort out a way to duplicate the event which brought you here.”
That, I thought, was probably an understatement. And simply reversing the event wasn’t enough. I had to figure out a way to go farther back in time, find out what had changed the course of history, undo it without making any other changes, and then get back home. Of course, I couldn’t tell anyone here that was my plan, because it involved undoing this history to restore my own, and they probably wouldn’t like that idea.
So whoever this guy was, he had better be really smart.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Nikola Tesla, although I doubt you’ve heard of him. He’s certainly a very creative thinker, but he doesn’t have the sort of organized, methodical approach likely to leave a lasting mark on the world.”