Annum Guard: Blackout Part 28

I turn around. There's a uniformed man staring at me. No name tag. He's older, with silver-flecked hair and a face full of laugh lines. His smile is polite, not distrusting, and he's looking at my dress with a smile, like it brings back pleasant memories. I instantly read him as not being a threat.

But still, do I tell him I work for Joe? If it gets back to Joe that someone claiming to be an a.s.sistant is loitering around, I'm done for. No, I need something more subtle. "Yes, hi. I'm with"-it's 1985-"the phone company. I'm here about adding new lines for the Internet." Even though we're about ten years too early for that.

"What's the Internet?"

"It's the wave of the future. Management wants to run the phone line through that room." I point at the Saltonstall.

"Oh no, I'm sorry. There's a private meeting going on in there. It just started, and I'm not sure how long it will last. They've requested the utmost privacy"-he says the word British-style with a short i-"so I cannot allow you access."

I look at the room. The ladies room shares a wall, but I'm sure it's pretty well insulated.

"I could let you see the pantry. It's where we keep place settings and linens, but it's adjacent to the Saltonstall Room. Would that work?"

"Yes!" d.a.m.n, I sound too eager. "That would be acceptable."

"Only for a minute," the man says.

I'll take it.

He leads me around a corner and into the pantry. Shelves of plates, bowls, and gla.s.ses line the walls. There's a pocket door leading into the Saltonstall, and I can hear the murmuring of voices.

I walk over to the corner, underneath three windows, and drop to my knees, pretending to look for something. "I won't be long."

I don't hear the man's footsteps leaving, so I look up to smile at him. "I just need to take a few measurements and test the signal in here." I'm talking total nonsense, but I can tell the man doesn't know enough to call me out.

He nods once. "Very well. Please take care not to disturb anything."

"You got it." I smile at him again. "Thank you very much."

And then he's gone. I don't waste any time. I scoot over to the pocket door and slide it open an inch. Just enough to peer inside. Joe sits at the head of the table. He's so young, barely older than Colton is in the present. Their resemblance is scary.

To Joe's right is-my heart skips a beat. It's Joe's Secret Service agent. He's much younger, obviously, but I recognize the bulky frame, the lack of neck. And then it clicks. He's the man who took Bonner. Of course.

There are two other men. One of them is unfamiliar, but I a.s.sume he's a high-up government official, just based on his presence here. The other-I swallow the lump in my throat-is Zeta. Joe is speaking. "I've put together a list of potential targets." He slides a paper across the table at Zeta, and I crouch lower on the ground.

Zeta clears his throat. "You do realize this is a little premature. What you're talking about will take years to hurdle the red tape."

Joe jerks his head toward the paper. "As I was saying, that's a short list I've come up with."

Zeta looks down. "David Berkowitz. John Wayne Gacy. Ted Bundy." He looks up. "Gacy and Bundy are both sitting on death row. Surely you know this. They'll answer for their crimes."

"They will, but how many bodies did they leave in their wake? How many men, women, and children raped, tortured, and terrorized?" His voice is rushed, even pained. "There's one more name on that list."

"Albert DeSalvo." Zeta sets the paper down. "Mr. Caldwell, I'm aware of your personal history. However, and forgive me for being blunt, I'm not interested in leading Annum Guard on a course of vigilante justice because you harbor a vendetta."

"Well, forgive me for being blunt, Mr. Masters." I inhale sharply through my nose. Joe knows Zeta's real name. "But the last I knew, you weren't even in the running for the new leaders.h.i.+p position. I reached out to you, but I can go above your head. You boys even organized yet?" He chuckles, and I realize that the second generation of Annum Guard hasn't started yet.

Something else clicks. My father quit the Naval Academy in 1985, and suddenly I realize why. Second generation is about to begin. I bet Joe goes to Alpha and Alpha goes to my dad, and BOOM, my dad starts a life of crime at twenty-one.

Zeta pushes his chair back. "Do as you like. We're done here." He looks around the room once. "Saltonstall. I haven't been in this room in years. Not since an alumni planning event." I bite my bottom lip at the obvious dig at Joe. Zeta turns to the man I don't recognize. "Jack, it was nice to see you again." Then he turns to the man who took Bonner. "Mr. Hansen, pleasure meeting you."

Hansen.

"I'll walk out with you," Jack says, standing.

Once Zeta and Jack are gone, Joe jumps out of his seat. It's only then that I notice his clothes. I lean back. He's wearing a wrinkled suit made of flimsy, cheap fabric. His watch has a plastic band.

"Smug son of a b.i.t.c.h," Joe mutters. "So I didn't go to an Ivy League school. I still went to college. I work at the Pentagon. My d.a.m.n wife works at the White House. How does he think I even know about his organization? I have the connections, but I'll never be good enough for his type."

There is no Eagle Industries yet. This date. This place. This is where and when Joe decides to form Eagle.

"So we're on to Plan B," Hansen says.

Joe sits back down. "We always knew we were headed toward Plan B." He nods toward the American flag standing in the corner, to the eagle atop the pole. My chest tingles. "Tell me what isn't admirable about what I'm trying to do. Going back in time-erasing serial and ma.s.s murderers before they have a chance to claim victims. Just think of what we could do if we take this global. Hitler. Stalin. Pol Pot. Pinochet."

I lean in closer. Joe's voice is pa.s.sionate, excited. My brain is trying to reconcile this Joe with the Joe I know in the present. The Joe standing before me in this room seems . . . genuine.

"I'm doing this, Adrian. We're doing this."

Adrian Hansen. Gotcha.

"We're gonna build ourselves a pantheon, and you and me'll be the G.o.ds. Just you watch. They're all gonna wors.h.i.+p us. Our names will be part of history."

"And if we make a little side profit, like we discussed?" Adrian says with a sly smile.

"That's the payment we're owed." Joe shuffles all his papers into a neat pile. "Plan B is in effect. You can set up a meeting with Ellis?" Alpha.

"He was two years below me, but I know he's still in contact with our old headmaster. I am, too."

This guy went to Peel? Is he already Secret Service? Or something else? Maybe at the Pentagon.

"Why don't you set up a meeting for all four of us?" Joe says. Then he stands. "This is the start of something. Something big."

"Don't I know it," Adrian says. "What do we do about Masters?"

"Ignore him. You heard him. He thinks we're a joke." Joe pauses and strolls over to the window. "But he'll come to learn."

There are footsteps behind me. I slide the door shut and push up off the ground just in time to see the man who let me in here walk into the pantry.

"Did you get everything you need?" he asks.

I nod. "And then some. You have no idea how helpful you've been, sir." I extend my hand, and he shakes it. I give him a firm squeeze. He has no idea that he's just played a huge role in helping to take down a number of corrupt government officials.

Now there's one more thing I have to do. I have to go to Was.h.i.+ngton. To finally connect the last of the dots. To the Cuban Missile Crisis.

CHAPTER 29.

I project inside the third-floor ladies room at the Harvard Club. I set my watch for a little after four in the morning on October 27, 1962. The Club is dark and deserted as I slip down the stairs. The front door is locked, but there doesn't look to be an alarm, so I unlock it and open it. I start walking, hunching my shoulders and hugging my arms across my chest.

There are delivery trucks rumbling down the street and a few people. Working-cla.s.s men, off to jobs, I a.s.sume. I feel fairly safe, but I don't need to advertise the fact that I have a wad of cash on me.

Joe Caldwell. I wonder how long it took for the corruption to waft, how long before he realized the money he could be making. And then, all of a sudden, I feel sorry for Joe the same way I felt sorry for Alpha. Two men who aren't exactly the pure evil my mind wants them to be.

No. I can't think like that now. Joe is still the enemy.

It takes a few minutes to flag down a cab, and the driver seems surprised I'm asking to go to the airport this early, so I'm going to guess packed 6:00 a.m. flights are a modern thing.

Logan is all but abandoned when we pull into the departures area.

"No luggage?" the driver repeats, even though we just had this same conversation when he picked me up. Does he think luggage magically appeared somewhere in the Callahan Tunnel?

"No," I say as I bend over to fish a five out of my bra and hand it to him.

I've never seen the airport like this. All of the ticket windows are closed, and the only other person I see is a woman with a broom and dustpan. I park myself on a chair, lean my head back, and close my eyes.

They're coming, Abe. Green and Violet. I try not to think about how every hour that pa.s.ses means there's a day and a half I won't be able to see Abe. Well, less than that, actually, because I'm in the past, too, so I'm going to have my own catching up to do. I start to do the math-roughly three minutes in the present for every one minute in 1962, so three hours for one hour-and I soon realize that, even if Red finds Abe today, I'm still looking at weeks without him.

d.a.m.n you, Colton. And Joe Caldwell, the one I really need to be focusing on. I need proof. Solid evidence that he's behind Eagle. I know he is, but that meeting I eavesdropped on isn't enough. Colton's confession isn't enough. I need more.

In many ways, I'm going into this mission blind, which gets my heart pounding. I read what I could about October 27, 1962, when I was back at the public library. And by read, I mean skimmed. I'm not feeling confident by any means.

All I really know is that the Soviet Union moved nuclear missiles into Cuba as a threat to the United States. We found out about it and issued a blockade-which was called a quarantine for political reasons-to prevent the Soviets from bringing in more weapons. And then President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev played a game of cat and mouse for thirteen very tense days.

On October 27, 1962, an American pilot was flying a surveillance mission over Cuba and was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. I think of what Ariel told me, how the US responded by launching an airstrike, how the Soviets then launched their nuclear missiles, and how we did the same. How Was.h.i.+ngton, DC, and Moscow were leveled. How fifteen million people were dead. How overnight, the world was plunged into an economic depression worse than the crash of 1929.

But Ariel changed it. He prevented it. And dammit all, I don't know enough of the details. Something about the s.p.a.ce program and a fake telegram, and that's all I've got.

The amount of information I don't know makes me queasy, although I'm not sure if I've ever been fully prepared for an Annum Guard mission. This organization is a little insane. We hold so much power-the power to affect millions of lives-h.e.l.l, the power to screw up millions of lives with one tiny misstep-and so often we blindly jump into the missions with no more than a silent prayer we'll get it right.

The more time I spend as a Guardian, the more I can't help but think that maybe Annum Guard shouldn't be my future. Maybe it shouldn't be anyone's future.

The Pan Am counter opens at seven, and I'm the first one there. I ask for a one-way ticket to Was.h.i.+ngton, DC, on the next available flight.

"Are you traveling . . . alone?" the ticket agent asks in a chirpy voice. She's wearing a skirt that's so short, I'm not sure how she bends over more than a few inches.

"I'm on my way to a funeral," I say, and I remember Tyler's joke. Not to mention, if I somehow screw up this mission, there will be millions of funerals on my conscience.

The woman's hand flies to her mouth. "Oh! Whose?"

"Er, my grandmother." Both of my grandmothers are dead. I never even got a chance to meet my dad's mom. My bunica, my mom's mom, lived with us in Vermont until she died when I was six.

"You poor, poor thing. I'm so sorry. And traveling alone at such a horrible time."

"It's fine," I mumble as I start to slide my ticket off the counter.

But then her hand slaps down on top of my ticket. "Wait a minute, let me see what I can do." I let go, and she takes the ticket, tears it in half, and handwrites another one for me. I glance at it. She has me in first cla.s.s.

"Thank you," I say.

"It's the least I can do. You take care, okay?"

I nod, feeling like c.r.a.p for getting b.u.mped to first cla.s.s on a fake grandparent's death. But it will give me a better chance to focus on a way to infiltrate the White House. I have no idea how I'm going to do this.

I mean, I know security is a lot more lax in 1962 than in the present, but it's still the d.a.m.n White House. I doubt I can just break a window and climb in.

I make my way to gate C14, park myself on a seat to wait, and then have to stand up because I'm a bundle of nerves. A bundle of completely exhausted nerves. Since last night, I've been to last February, then 1865, then 1928, then 1962, 1810, 1811-I'm lightheaded thinking about this-the present, 1985, and back to 1962. I hurt. There's not one part of my body that doesn't ache. I'm breaking my body, one projection at a time. My mind is flying in a million directions at once.

Several businessmen head to the gate and immediately open copies of the Boston Globe. I glance at the top headline: REDS RUSH WORK ON CUBA MISSILES; US WARNS OF TOUGH NEW ACTION.

I look closer. The crisis in Cuba fills the entire front page. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I can do this. I have to do this. Focus.

I open my eyes and bounce from my toes to the b.a.l.l.s of my feet and back again. A family walks up to the gate. The father is dressed in a suit and tie, the mother in a gray tweed dress with pantyhose, pumps, and kid gloves. There are two children-a boy and a girl-both wearing their Sunday best. They look like a family on a black-and-white TV show in which children never talk back, money is never an issue, and the mom has dinner on the table every night at five thirty sharp.

The mother ushers her two children into chairs and turns to her husband. "I still think this trip is a mistake."

"Jesus, Helen, I'm not having this conversation again," he says in a hostile whisper that shatters my illusion of their perfect family life.

"I just have this terrible feeling that we shouldn't be leaving home with-" She looks to her children. Her son is engrossed in a Hardy Boys book, and her daughter has pulled out a Yogi Bear coloring book and a yellow box of Crayola crayons. She drops her voice. "With the situation going on. We're traveling right to the center of the storm, Carl."

"Jesus, Helen, it's my brother's wedding. What would you have me do? We're going." And then he drops into a seat opposite his kids, yanks out a newspaper, and snaps it open so that his face is covered.

Helen sighs. I feel her turn in my direction, so I look up to meet her gaze. She stares at me with worried eyes but doesn't say anything.

"It's going to be fine," I tell her with a smile. After all, a.s.suming I don't completely blow the mission, it will be fine.

Helen's expression changes from anxiety to anger. "Oh, you kids all think you're invincible, but you're not. And let me tell you, you won't be smiling when you're running from a nuke. You probably weren't even born for Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. You want your skin to melt off, do you? Like a stick of b.u.t.ter dripping in a hot July sun?"

I blink. Jesus, Helen, I'm sorry for trying to help.

"I . . . okay." It's not worth a fight. I wander over to the ticket counter to wait for boarding. They start with first cla.s.s and, for a moment, I forget that's me. I have to go outside, then climb a set of stairs to board the plane on the tarmac.

I settle into the window seat, lean my head against it, and close my eyes. I feel someone slide in next to me, and I crack my eyes open, then close them again. I need to focus. I need a game plan. I need a way to break into the White House in the middle of the greatest nuclear crisis the world has ever seen. I rack my brain, but I come up empty every time. My best bet seems to be slipping away during a tour, but, one, I have no idea if there even were tours in 1962; two, if there were, I'm going to guess they're suspended right now; and three, it's the White House. You can't just slip away from a tour undetected. I'm screwed.

I open my eyes. There's a businessman next to me with jet-black hair and a sour expression. He nods once in my direction but doesn't ask why I'm traveling alone. He doesn't make any small talk whatsoever, just that one curt nod. It's refres.h.i.+ng.

Although it doesn't change the fact I'm still completely screwed.

We land in DC, and the weather is mild as I step off the plane onto the tarmac. The kind of weather I love to jog in, or to sit under a tree and read a book in. I wish I could be doing either of those things right now. I really should stop in a store and buy a new dress. The one I'm wearing smells faintly of the Charles. But I don't. I hail a cab.

"The White House, please," I tell the driver.

He swivels around in his seat. "The White House? Are you out of your mind?"