The Whitehall Syndicate: A time travel conspiracy thriller Page 5

  Expecting another overprotective lecture on how dangerous it was, instead she simply nodded and replied, “I know, but be careful”. He looked at her with a crooked half smile then turned away and down the path to the street, his boots crunching beneath the gravel as he went. He forced himself not to turn back.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when Jack reached the hotel. He wandered back through the familiar lobby and again rode up the escalator. Getting out he found everything calm, the way he expected it should be. Breezy hotel corridors funnelling echoes and mutterings from their busy guests. For a fleeting moment the urgency was lost. Shaking his head, and with renewed vim, he headed to the hotel room. Trying the door he found it unlocked. This time he expected it and wasn't fazed.

  He knew whoever had broken into his room was probably long gone, and so without hesitation he entered. On the large velvet bed lay a simple leather briefcase, opened and prominently displaying its contents. Jack edged closer to it and saw that inside were floor plans, schematics, sketches and documents. Everything he might need to kill an MP. Hovering over it now he also saw a knife resting behind one of the documents. It had a smooth ivory finish above the coiled metal grip, with a wide, complex blade maybe six inches in length.

  He picked up a small booklet with the words SECURITY DETAIL written on it and flicked through. There were numerous pages of information, outlining Michael's Green's expected public appearances over the next twelve days, and the level of security assigned to each. Dropping that for now, he rummaged deeper and picked up another one: a small olive green combat guide. It was full of black and white diagrams and showed a number of simple moves to quickly disable a range of opponents.

  Stopping for a second, Jack closed his eyes to soak up the scene. He felt strange being in this room again. It made his skin itchy and his scalp tingle. There was something about this room that filled him with unease. He'd already found out that Gina's flat wasn't much safer and now neither was Anisha's, not with Pete around. He considered where else was left. Since nothing came to mind, it seemed Gina's was as good a place as any. He grabbed a medium sized travel bag off the floor, still unpacked, and zipped it open.

  Looking across at the shoebox on the bed he wondered if he wanted to mix his nice clean clothes, clothes that he had to wear, with something like that. Rancid and bloody and once alive. He didn't really have much choice so he placed the sullied box inside. Hooking the bag over his shoulder he closed the briefcase and took a deep calming breath, before walking out of the room with it, locking the door only out of habit.

  Gina and Anisha sat on the couch, chatting excitedly about what had happened at the office. “We were this close to being completely caught. Then Bob sneezed and it was like Oh My God! I thought it was over.”

  “But you must've got away in the end.”

  “Yeah we finally managed it but I've never been so scared in my life. It was like being a professional cat burglar or something.”

  “God, I'm glad I was at work.” A small pause hung over them. “So what are we going to do about this Pete creep?”

  “I don't know. But all of this suddenly happening and then Pete's name like that. It doesn’t seem like its random. It seems like you meeting Jack after all these years can’t have been a co-incidence; it must’ve been forced. Pete has to be involved in what’s going on. If only we could work out how.”

  They were interrupted by Jack knocking on the door. Exercising her newfound caution, Gina checked through the side-window before letting him in. With a dry voice he proclaimed, “I've got the fingers.” Anisha was waiting with her mobile, which was now loaded with the correct format of Jack's fingerprints. It identified certain characteristics in the image that then made a quick match detectable, even from a partial print. They all moved into the living room and slumped to the floor.

  From the moody atmosphere and the shifty look the girls were trading, Jack could tell they'd been talking about Pete. It was a problem that everyone had put to the side for now. The proverbial elephant in the room. As the mobile beeped to show it was ready everybody avoided eye contact. Eventually Jack whispered, “One of us has to fingerprint the fingers.”

  “They're your fingers,” retorted Gina, and Anisha nodded in agreement.

  Jack sighed. He knew they were perfectly right but it didn't make the task any more pleasant. His stomach began to reflux at the thought of touching the bloody stumps. A quick scan of the room revealed some tissues and grabbing out a wad in one go he draped them over each of the five fingers.

  As he worked, the girls watching him intently; almost with morbid fascination. Jack now began pressing each tissue on the surface of a finger, checking it was thick enough to stop any unwanted juices from leaking through. Finally he picked up the first finger and pressed it on the screen.

  Anisha squinted in disgust. Her phone was never going to be clean again. Soldiering on, Jack picked up the next one to print and then did the same with the third and fourth fingers. At times he felt his grip on the digits loosening and it took all his willpower not to drop them completely. He finished with the thumb, which was smaller and more awkward. Placing it on the pad it beeped, as the full set was complete.

  Wasting no time, Jack dropped the last of the fingers back into the shoebox and wiped the screen with a left over tissue before running off to wash his hands until they were red and sore. Returning into the living room a few minutes later, all eyes fell on Anisha. Now it was her turn to get involved.

  Her fingers glided over the keys effortlessly, every now and then the phone beeping. After a few seconds some results came up. Jack and Gina waited for Anisha with baited breath. “According to this, the four fingers are all a one hundred percent match with yours.”

  The report was grim. The message was telling the truth. The pictures were real. As the news sank in, Jack's blood seemed to stop flowing for a moment, pooling inside his veins. But Anisha wasn't finished yet. “The thumb print though, was definitely not a match. I don't have a record on my mobile that it matches. It's a dead end.”

  Silence descended once more. Both the girls wanted to console Jack but couldn't quite find the words. They didn't have to; he was more resilient than that. “No match on the thumb?”

  “No sorry. We could try searching the central database. It would mean a trip back to the tower only this time it could last two seconds to two hours. There's no way of knowing how long the search would take.”

  “We'd get caught, no question about it,” he replied. Anisha could see from his eyes, his renewed vigour. It was almost as if the bad news had shocked him awake. “It may not be a dead end yet,” he finished.

  “What do you mean?” asked Gina.

  “I think it's time we paid Pete a little visit.”

  Kim was exhausted. She'd been in the lab for nearly eight straight hours. She shook her small round head and waved her brittle, murky blonde hair to remove anything caught in it. Wiping her forehead she realised wrap around safety goggles still clung to her snow-white skin. Looking back at her desk, the thought of more work made her sigh.

  Everyone in the lab was sanctioned off into specific groups to work on individual experiments and no group was allowed to talk to the others about what they were doing. The whole atmosphere was segregated and alienating. Only the panel overseeing the project had any idea about what the teams were actually investigating.

  When she had agreed to take the job, Kim had assumed it was some sort of important confidential testing and was fine with non-disclosure. But now she was actually working, she found the whole atmosphere of distrust and secrecy ground away at her soul. It actually managed to make her exhausting days even more draining.

  Kim was just one of hundreds of people who had been asked to travel back in time six months and conduct classified research for the government. What they didn't know was that travel of longer than 2 months was almost unheard of and was only authorised at the very highest level of government. As far as they knew, what they were doing
was perfectly normal. Kim didn't realise was that she was just another scientist being used by Michael Green.

  The laws of time said that going back in time couldn't cause major events, but in theory you could speed up an event that was already going to occur anyway. To this end, Green had plans next month to send an entire lab back so that they could carry out the research he needed. To him, in the present, it would seem as if the lab had spontaneously produced results. In reality, they had just been given a six-month advantage.

  To Green this was a necessary exception. Usually he was against this sort of thing, seeing it as yet one more problem with time travel booths. It was true that safeguards prevented people, for example going back after taking exams and retaking them knowing the answers. But lazy children could leach off their rich parents and go back in time, effectively buying extra revision time and giving themselves an advantage over the less well off. Time travel had so many intrinsic flaws it had changed mankind's existence in ways not yet perceivable.

  Kim sat busily documenting chronotron decay rates. After a demanding shift, she was ready to go back to her company flat and just curl up. There was one more task left until she was free. She had to deliver today's findings to the senior staff. As she approached the main office she heard the division heads arguing heatedly. Through the door it was all a murmur but she did make out three or four voices included a deep, booming one: probably Dr. Lewis.

  The words 'outrage' and 'Klaus' were being repeated a lot but she couldn't make much sense of the conversation. Her curiosity peaked and she leaned in to try and eavesdrop. Almost as if the men inside could see her, the door immediately swung open, and Lewis left in a defiant, melodramatic exit.

  “What is it Kim?” enquired an irate Dr Ruhbaker.

  “Today's lab reports.” He grudgingly took them and then glared at her, clearly ordering her to leave. She willingly took the hint. While departing the office she heard a few more words before the door was sealed shut, which left her with a strange feeling. One of the doctors had mentioned 'using it to become more powerful than anyone alive.'

  Heavy knocking vibrated the flimsy wood of the door to the studio apartment. On one side, Pete walked out of the kitchen to answer it, wiping tomato paste off his hands as he went. On the other, a fired up Jack stood impatiently waiting, together with the girls. They had tried talking him out of coming, reminding him it could well provoke his aggressors, but Jack had refused to listen. The door slowly opened and as Pete saw Anisha safe and well a relieved smile crossed his face. A second later and Jack's fist bulldozed forwards, a blunt crunch resonating as Pete’s nose was battered.

  As the photographer stumbled around, mucous-thickened blood slowly bubbled out of his nose, forming sticky lumps. Another crack at his nose and he collapsed to the floor, his eyes swelling with tears. Jack was devoid of any sympathy, only stopping to massage feeling back into his hand. Motionlessly watching the malicious act, Gina felt disgusted. Anisha grimaced. Despite feeling deceived and betrayed, she still had a small urge to help him. He lay there dripping scarlet blood over her pinewood floor, but the wound didn't seem too much worse than a nosebleed.

  Jack stood over him threateningly, still massaging his hand. It was one of the few times he'd ever thrown a real punch and he didn’t remember the last one hurting so much. His hand was bright red and throbbing painfully. Still, Pete was down and clearly scared.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he finally spluttered out. Jack wasn't a natural tough guy. He thought about acting like a menacing thug but decided against it.

  “I'm asking you a few questions,” was his short, confident response. “Why did you delete the surveillance logs at Jenny's café yesterday?”

  “What are you talking about?” With an intimidating glower, Jack kicked him in the gut to refresh his memory. Anisha squeezed her eyes shut and turned away.

  “Why did you delete the surveillance logs at Jenny's café yesterday?” After another groan of agony he replied, “I didn't. Look, I was here all of yesterday after work.”

  “The log was deleted some time yesterday night,” Anisha coughed out, her voice raspy.

  “I was here all of yesterday night. I can prove it.” A solemn look ran through Anisha's eyes on realising that he might be innocent.

  “Go on then,” said Jack in a calculated voice.

  Pete picked himself up and walked over to the computer on the oak coffee table, pulling up some files. Anisha watched the screen intently, just in case he was trying to call for help. Eventually he loaded up a low-res movie clip and played it, turning to Anisha with doe eyes. “I'm sorry, I did use your password. I found it in your dresser drawer. I used it to try accessing our cameras yesterday. I missed the start of the match and I was hoping one of the cameras got it. I couldn’t retrieve the file over our computer anyway. All I could get was a low quality preview. See?”

  Jack's innards began to sink as the same thing Anisha had realised hit him as well. He began forwarding through the file to check for sure. Pete was there all night; he'd fallen asleep on the couch. Anisha confirmed that the files were government coded. They were genuine, which meant Jack had just caved in the face of an innocent person. He didn't have to say what he was thinking; his expression said it all.

  Chapter 6

  The horn honked, abruptly waking up Kim. She was sat on a cheap padded seat in the equally cheap and cheerful Cherry Pie nightclub. Not being much for clubbing, and having endured a shattering day at work, she would never have come here were it not for Imran's birthday. The night he'd planned for tomorrow had unexpectedly been cancelled, and desperate to celebrate his advancing years, he had organised this substitute. Considering the short notice, he was more than impressed with the turnout.

  Imran had a thick but soft black beard that was flamboyantly styled into the letter I, which clearly reflected that he was the sort of person who did things merely for the sake of doing them. Today was no exception. He had heard this was the cheesiest club in all of London and despite hating cheesy music, had decided to come here to see if it was true. Bright lights shone down opalescent rays while exotically dressed students danced with the sort of retro moves not seen since the time of land-line phones. It was the sort of place that was embarrassing to go to, but great fun once you arrived.

  Kim wasn't anti social - she liked fun as much as anyone, but for some reason she had a reputation as the boring one of her group. The one who always had an excuse for why she wasn't going to make it out. As she sat in her comfy chair, she wondered if that was such a bad thing.

  A couple of people from the other lab groups had also come along, and were severely inebriated by the look of things. Bleach blonde Adam slipped next to her and with a drunken slur asked her to dance. After politely refusing him, he declared that he would sit there anyway, just to keep her company. He began to say something but the music was so deafening it drowned him out. She didn't care much and nodded anyway, pretending to hear him.

  As they continued to make false conversation, Kim thought back to what she'd heard in the office. She leaned into Adams ear and yelled, “So how's work going?”

  “Not bad,” he yelled, looking a little dizzy.

  “What are you up to these days?”

  “You naughty….,” he began, with a mischievous smile. He followed it with a playful shaking of his head, which only seemed to daze him further. “I can't tell you that.”

  “I won't tell if you don't,” pushed Kim, all the while wearing a sweet smile.

  “Ah, err,” was the only response, and after a pause, “Well it's this thing. Energy on release from chonton, no chron, con crhon-,”

  “Chronotrons”

  “Those.” he exclaimed with a toothy smile. “Oh God,” he moaned and his head thumped against the table, the alcohol having finally got to him.

  Jack and the girls stood in the sterile waiting room of the hospital ward, pacing up and down nervously. Pete was having some emergency procedures carried on his nose a
nd the doctor had just finished. Visitors would be allowed in any moment. IN a moment of guilt, Jack wondered if he should leave, seeing as how he was probably the last person Pete wanted to see.

  What concerned him more was how the incident had affected his relationship with Anisha. He didn't want it to come down to her choosing between them, but something else was also lurking in the back of his mind, something more sinister.

  With all their leads only finding dead ends, he had to entertain the idea of actually killing Green. He only had eleven days left now. In amidst all the days' activity, it was a sobering thought. What did he know about assassinating people? He was just an ordinary man who had been dragged into this extraordinary mess.

  After some more pacing he made the decision that he had been creeping around undecided. The decision on his course of action for the next fortnight. He would continue trying to find out who was responsible for all this and try to keep himself alive that way, but when it came down to seven days remaining, he would switch his attentions. From then on he would work on a way to murder Michael Green.

  Pete's nurse emerged from one of the mottled white corridors of the hospital. The process of re-aligning nasal cartilages and preventing bleeding was only a minor one, but it was still a relief to get the news everything was fine. Anisha was the quickest to head off after her, Gina a short way behind. Jack didn't move.

  A few paces down the corridor Gina also slowed to a halt, freezing midway. From the other end, Jack waited until he saw Anisha walk into the room and then let out a deep breath. After a few seconds to collect his thoughts and control his guilt, he walked over to Gina and asked why she wasn't following.

  “Neesh's one of my best friends and this means a lot to her, but I don't know. I still don't trust him.”