Fate (Wilton's Gold #3) (9 page)

She was starting to get a little animated, so he tried to calm it down with humor. “Maybe some of that amnesia would come in handy,” he said.

“Jeff, I’d pay anything right now,” she said. “There has to be an answer.”

He sighed. He didn’t want to care, but he found himself caring. Not for her because of any romantic story she had from the past few years, but as a colleague and someone he could see being a friend. As long as she kept her distance, he determined he would try to help. With time travel, there was always a way. Probably not a sure-fire way, but there was at least hope. For now, though, he had to keep things in perspective – and help her to do the same. “Victoria, you have to accept the possibility that there is no answer. It might be something you have to deal with and move on from. Just like any other break-up. Just like any other loss.”

“I know,” she said. “Unfortunately, I was just getting to that point, then here you come into my life.”

“I understand, and I’m sorry about how that affected you. Believe me, I have my own issues. Try missing three years of your life and having everyone you care about think you’re dead.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I’ve made this about me, but there’s so much more to the situation. If only-”

Jeff’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he held up a finger, not knowing if she could see him in the darkness. He took the phone from his pocket and checked the screen. Dexter. “Hello?”

“We’re shut down,” he said.

“Who’s shut down?”

“We are. No more Kane mission.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just got a call. We’ll talk when you get back.” Jeff hung up.

“What’s going on?” Victoria asked.

“Dexter says we’re not going back to get Kane. Said the mission was shut down.”

He could see her nodding in the hotel lights. “Yeah, I had a feeling that might happen,” she said.

December 12, 2018

Dexter stood up dramatically, pushing the chair he’d been sitting over backward. It was more aggressive than he’d intended the motion to be, but he didn’t regret it. He paced for a moment toward the enormous window peering out over the USTP’s sculptured grounds, then turned. “If we follow the Time Program’s rules that we’ve laid out and everyone’s agreed upon, there is no way we shouldn’t go back and fix this.”

Dr. Bremner looked up at him from the other side of his big desk, remaining stoic despite Dexter’s animation. The orders had been given – they had no choice but to follow them. “Dexter, you need to separate your emotions here. We haven’t come up against a circumstance like this, so it would have been impossible for us to predict it enough to put rules in place.”

“Then why do we have rules in the first place?” He moved back toward his chair and picked it up off the ground. Bremner’s office was the epitome of government overspending, ostentatiously decorated and peppered with photos of the doctor standing with a wide array of Beltway dignitaries and celebrities. As expected, it was a corner office, though one window looked down onto the USTP atrium, the other to the outside.

Dexter’s frustration was not wholly due to their mission to fix the Kane situation being called off. It was also how it had happened. Apparently, as they’d found out when they returned from Florida, as soon as they’d left Kane’s house, the decrepit old man had made a call to the highest levels.
The
highest levels. While Jeff and Victoria had been out walking on the beach, Bremner, who had sent them to Florida in the first place, had gotten a cease-and-desist call from the White House, nixing the Kane mission. Bremner had taken it to heart.

“Dexter, I understand your concerns,” Bremner said. Though Jeff and Victoria were standing behind him, Dexter was the only one that he’d addressed so far. “But you are the only one who knows what Kane did in the other reality. The only person on Earth. Even these two don’t know. We cannot justify upending the current history – that everyone’s a part of except you – just so you can clear your conscience. Understand?”

“Then the rules need to be rewritten,” Jeff said from behind him. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d arrived at the campus. Dexter turned to look at him.

Bremner hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Well, yes. You’re probably right.”

“But they need to be rewritten to protect this from ever happening again,” Jeff said. He was solemn – he was putting out an image that Dexter hadn’t seen since he’d created this new toy called time travel. It wasn’t even scientific. It was cautious. Apprehensive. He immediately wondered where he was going with this line of thinking. “What happened with Kane is a learning experience, and, I’m sorry, Dexter, I agree with Dr. Bremner. We shouldn’t go back and fix it. This Kane that we met today is an honorable man, and we shouldn’t take that away from him. However, we must do whatever we can to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”

“What do you suggest?” Bremner asked. Dexter was now standing behind his chair, leaning on its back and unable to speak from his frustration. Especially because he’d thought he and Jeff were on the same page.

Jeff shook his head. “I can’t say. I haven’t been through the program yet. I need to learn how everything works. Then, based on my own experiences and now this situation, I would feel comfortable making recommendations.”

“How long will that take?”

“Why?” Dexter asked.

Bremner was suddenly stern. “We have a line of people waiting to participate in the program. It’s revenue. This research isn’t free. You know how this works.”

“A line of people...” Dexter mumbled. All of his misgivings about the program from the outset were becoming a reality. Though he hadn’t anticipated being handcuffed by politics the way they were. He vowed that, as Jeff created new rules for the Time Program, he’d be in his ear about the importance of integrity over a big pay day. Ironic that they’d reached this point after their initial plans.

“I won’t take long,” Jeff said. “I’m not really looking to time travel, so you can run me through an… expedited process. As long as that works for everyone.” Dexter saw Victoria was nodding, so he nodded himself.

“Can we hold off on running anyone else through the program?” Dexter asked. “For the time being?”

“For a short time,” Bremner said. “Many of them have already paid. Some have begun the process.”

“I’ve interviewed two already,” Victoria said. “No problems so far.”

“Well, we also have to address the issue that Kane himself raised with us,” Jeff said. “The fact that no computer system we can create can determine whether or not there are word-of-mouth stories handed down from generation to generation. That’s a huge hole in the system. Someone with a devious plan could easily be able to figure out how to make it work.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Again, without going through the process, it’s hard to say. On the surface, I think the psychological evaluation needs to be tighter. And I think that, for safety reasons, we can’t expect an academic – no offense, Dexter – to be capable of warding off a threat. Not alone. This was a 70-year-old cancer patient. What if the person was more physically fit and well-trained? I don’t know if it was the other me that put these rules into place, but they’re very reliant on a belief in the general goodness of mankind.”

“I can assure you that the psychological process is tight,” Victoria said, annoyed. Dexter looked at her. He couldn’t remember her retorting to Jeff like that, ever in the past – the old one or this one. Though he’d never said anything to anyone, including Jeff, he’d been fully aware of their personal relationship. He’d inadvertently seen them at a Baltimore-area restaurant one Friday night, sitting across the table gazing at each other romantically, holding hands. Once the idea was planted, it didn’t take much for him to decipher their body language on a daily basis to understand that there really was something going on. Now he was intrigued. This was honestly the first time he’d seen her say something to Jeff that wasn’t glowingly positive or, at the least, supportive.

“Please don’t take it personally,” Jeff said, addressing Victoria while still looking at Bremner. “What needs to happen is less analysis and more profiling. We need to go into every mission not assuming the person is a good guy, but that he or she is a criminal hell-bent on doing harm.” He looked at Dexter. “You got hit over the head with a bottle because Kane’s psych evaluation told you that he wasn’t a risk. You weren’t ready for it. Clearly, he should have been labeled a risk. Had we analyzed him as a risk, we would’ve seen something. But we didn’t. The entire premise of this program is based on a misguided assumption that people are honest and good and mean well.”

Bremner snickered. “I hate to tell you, Dr. Jacobs, but most of this program was designed by you.”

Jeff was shaking his head. “No. That’s not accurate. The me that designed this program hadn’t seen the things that I’ve seen. I’ve seen time travel go very bad very quickly because of one person’s actions. Dexter’s seen the same thing. There’s far too much at risk to take a blasé attitude about this.”

Dexter was pleased that Jeff had mentioned him, and given him credence for his position. “Anything we can do to make the program safer,” he said, jumping in, “we should do. And we shouldn’t be hasty about it. Let’s do it right.” He looked to Victoria, who was still stewing. She clearly wanted to say something, but couldn’t get it out. So he prompted her, “Victoria?”

“Dr. Jacobs,” she said, ignoring Dexter and turning her attention directly toward Jeff, “you sought me out because you wanted this done in a specific way. I did exactly what you wanted in a way that was true to the science of psychology, despite the fact that what we’re trying to accomplish here is beyond any hope of morality and decency. But we did the best we could. Benjamin Kane was cleared because he checked out across the board. In fact, I’ll have you know, Kane scored higher on his analysis than any other participant in the program to date. Top score. He was the lowest risk out of any candidate. Now if we asked the wrong questions, or didn’t anticipate Kane’s next move, we did so based on a system that you devised. For you to stand here today and tell me that a deficiency in Kane’s psychoanalysis was at fault for his running is pre-”

“Dr. Graham-” Bremner attempted to interject.

“Let me ask you this,” Jeff said. “Out of all the candidates who have been selected for the program, how many have been turned away because their evaluation came back negative?” Dexter looked at Victoria. “How many?” Jeff repeated.

“None,” she said. “They’ve all checked out. But you have to understand, participants in the program come from-”

“Did it occur to you that I might’ve written the rules at the behest of someone else in a way that would enable the program to churn out as many missions as possible? How much is a mission again?”

“Minimum of a million,” Dexter said. Why he was helping him make whatever point he was making, he wasn’t quite sure; they might be on the same side when it came to morals, but it still irked him that Jeff wouldn’t side by him when it came to fixing the Kane situation.

“Minimum of a million,” Jeff repeated. “It doesn’t really behoove us to turn many people away, does it?”

Now Victoria walked across the room until she was a foot from Jeff. “Well, if you did that, you’re an idiot.”

Jeff laughed, and now Bremner stood, moving around his desk to usher Victoria to one of the office’s many chairs. “Alright, alright,” he said. “We have some things we need to take care of. Let’s just move forward with running Dr. Jacobs through the program as if he was going to take a mission.”

“I need a mission,” Dexter said.

“Again?” Bremner, en route to his chair, stopped and looked up.

“Where is he going?” Dexter said. “Or, where would he go if he was going somewhere? It plays into the calculations.”

Bremner sighed. “I think Dr. Jacobs can handle coming up with something.” He turned to Victoria. “Dr. Graham, can we have a minute?”

Without a word, Victoria nodded and left the room. Dexter and Jeff sat in the two chairs facing Bremner’s desk while the USTP chief sat down again. “Dr. Jacobs,” he said, “we can’t have episodes like we just had.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Jeff asked.

“When we last talked, you’d assured me that your relationship with Dr. Graham was over.”

Dexter started to stand up. “Dr. Bremner, I can leave for this, too,” he said, motioning to the door with his thumb.

“Stay put,” Bremner said, then turned his attention back to Jeff. “Can I trust we don’t have to have this discussion again?”

Jeff leaned forward in the chair and set his hands on the edge of Bremner’s desk. “Dr. Bremner, if we’re going to all be working together in time travel, eventually we’re going to have to learn to accept the intricacies. The person you had that conversation with is not me. I am not him. The person who was dating Victoria and who had breached protocol in doing so was not me. You – and Victoria – cannot hold me responsible for what happened.”

“Well, there’s nobody else,” Bremner said with a sigh.

Looking at Bremner’s face, Dexter could see that he’d realized he was wrong. “A woman scorned,” he said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Dexter repeated.

“Yeah, well that can’t end up being a problem,” Bremner said. “Dr. Graham is a very talented psychologist, but we can’t have some mysterious one-sided battle going on between the two of you. You’d better make sure it stops.”

“Me?” Jeff said. “How is this possibly my responsibility?”

“Just make it happen,” he said. He pointed to Dexter. “You... You need to see him through this process quickly. I know you have misgivings about Benjamin Kane and I understand that. At least, I think I understand. But I have people higher than me who want to see this program back on track.”

“They’re not worried about the dangers?” Dexter asked.

“Let’s just say that one situation going bad isn’t going to deter them from seeing this program through,” he said. “And don’t challenge me on this, Dr. Murphy. We can spew all the psychobabble we want – you being the only person who believes that Kane murdered that man in the 1930s makes you an overwhelming minority. It would not be very difficult to discredit you.” He paused and took a breath. “But we don’t want to do that, and please understand that that’s not only coming from me. We all just want to get back to work.”

Dexter rubbed his chin in the way only an intellectual could. “Hanging me out to dry, huh?”

Bremner smiled. “I prefer to think of it as protecting you, and making the best use of our resources.”

“Dr. Bremner,” Jeff said, interrupting their moment. “Since I’ve been back, I’ve been running non-stop at the behest of the Time Program. I would like to ask for twenty-four hours so I could compose myself – maybe think about finding somewhere to live? Buy some clothes?”

“Twenty-four hours?”

“Yes. Not tomorrow, but the next morning, I will report here ready to begin. I’ve been through a lot – and that doesn’t even begin to assess the idea that the life I knew before traveling to Russia is gone. I could use a break. But I know you want to get to this, so I won’t waste your time or keep you waiting any longer than necessary.”