The Doomsday Box (26 page)

“We want you not to send plague samples back from the Middle Ages,” Opal said. She thought about it, then added, “Or anywhere else.”

“Okay,” Cobra said.

Opal blinked. “Okay?”

Cobra shrugged. “Sure. I won't send back any samples. Anything else while you're here?”

Opal said angrily, “Look, you need to take this seriously. People are dying in our time. It was only a matter of hours before the whole—”

“You really haven't thought this through, have you?” Cobra said soberly. “You're asking me to make a pledge about something that only happened a couple of days ago so far as you're concerned, but it's more than twenty years in the future from my perspective. Sure, you're right: from what you told me, there's no way I'd think of sending through those samples now. But that's now. In twenty years I could have information that would change my mind. I could have decided not to believe you. I could have a mental illness that stops me from behaving rationally. Something's not right here. You're trying to tell me an experienced CIA agent—my son, in this case, but that really doesn't matter—would send you back in time to get me to promise not to do something twenty years later? I don't believe that. There's not an agent in the Company who would take that sort of risk—or miss thinking it through, even in an emergency. Which means that part of your story
doesn't
hold together.” He pushed his chair back from the table. “Which means I'm not sure I believe any of it.”

Danny said quietly, “Your son told me to kill you if I had any suspicion at all you might still send the samples through. He was worried about exactly what you've just been talking about.”

Cobra stared at Danny. “How were you supposed to kill me? Shoot me with that imaginary gun you were waving around earlier?”

Danny shook his head. “Poison.”

Cobra's expression changed. “What sort?”

“Cyanide.”

“He gave you cyanide?”

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

Danny glanced at the others. “They made me flush it down the toilet,” he said sourly.

Cobra kept staring at him intently, his face wooden. “What did it look like?”

“White,” Danny said. “Little granular crystals.”

“Smell?”

“Almonds.” He slipped his hand into his pocket, pulled out the little box, and handed it to Cobra. “I kept it in this.”

Cobra opened the box cautiously. His eyebrows raised as he looked inside. “Good God,” he said, “the poison ring!” He looked at Danny with a new expression on his face. He took the ring from the box and opened its secret compartment without fumbling or hesitation, then sniffed cautiously at the cavity. “Almonds,” he murmured. His eyes returned to Danny. “Looks like you were telling the truth. You really were instructed to kill me.” After a moment, a slow, surprising grin began to crawl across his face. Suddenly he laughed aloud. “That's my boy!” he exclaimed. “So it's up to
me
to convince
you
, not the other way around? Now that's
real
CIA thinking!”

“That may not be the only way,” Fuchsia said.

Opal and Michael cut in together.

“There was no question of—” Michael began.

“We told him he couldn't possibly murder you,” Opal said, glaring at Danny. “That's why we made him flush away the poison.”

“I'm not offended,” Cobra told them. “In fact I'm a bit relieved. The problem is how to convince you.” He hesitated thoughtfully. “And myself.”

“What do you mean?” Danny asked suspiciously. There was a part of him that had sort of taken to Cobra, but he still didn't really know what to make of him.

Cobra shrugged. “You want the truth? I'm not sure I'd trust myself to make a promise twenty years ahead of time. Besides, there are other considerations.”

“What other considerations?” Danny and Opal asked simultaneously.

“Well, the big one is what the hell is going on
here and now
.”

“I don't follow that either,” Danny told him.

Cobra made an expansive gesture and leaned back in his seat. “From what you told me, somebody set you up. This guy Stratford, to be precise.”

“I'm not sure that Mr. Stratford—” Opal began.

“Oh come on!” Cobra cut across her. “Stratford's supposed to be your controller in this time frame. Nobody may have put it to you like that, but it's clear from everything you've said that my boy Gary is your controller in your own time. When you came here, he passed you on to Stratford—standard CIA procedure. I know Stratford slightly, but I didn't know he was—what did you call him? A temporal agent? Anyway, whatever he is, Stratford gets a briefing on your mission, with instructions to set up a meeting with me. Except he
can't
make contact with me because I'm working deep cover. But he doesn't tell you that. Instead he sends you straight into a KGB trap. That's a setup in my book. The question is, why did he do it?” He looked from one face to the other, a single eyebrow raised.

After a moment, Opal said, “I hadn't thought of that.”

“Better think of it now. It could be the real key to your situation. Why would Stratford want you dead?”

Michael sat forward abruptly. “Dead?” he echoed. The surprise in his voice was obvious.

“Sure,” Cobra confirmed. “Dead. This wasn't just a mistake, some understandable error in judgment. He didn't get in touch with me
at all
. He sent you straight to the KGB. Stratford knew I was in Moscow, but he didn't know details of my mission. Couldn't know. Didn't
need to know
, understand what I'm saying? He had no idea I was working undercover as a KGB colonel. Far as he was concerned, he was sending you straight to the KGB for KGB questioning on stuff like psychotronics and time travel—both things you know something about, but neither one, I'm betting, you could give any technical details about. I mean, you couldn't say how any of that stuff works. Am I right?”

Opal nodded soberly. “Yes.”

“That's a sure recipe for torture. They find out you know something and keep prodding for more. You can't give any more, but they don't know that; and frankly they don't care.” He looked at Michael. “What I put you through, Mike, was nothing compared with what the two of you would have gone through if I hadn't intervened. You'd both have been dead inside a week.” He looked around and focused on Danny and Fuchsia. “And don't forget, he sent all four of you into the trap. It was only dumb luck you two managed to avoid it.”

Michael shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Opal looked stunned. Danny found himself frowning as he tried to take in the implications of what Cobra was saying. “If he wanted us dead, why didn't he kill us all in Langley? Why go to all the trouble of sending us to Moscow?”

“Believe me,” Cobra said, “killing somebody isn't as simple as they make out in the movies. Killing four people is a nightmare. Cleaning up afterward, disposing of four bodies . . . We call it
wet work
in the CIA and we have whole teams trained to do it. But Stratford couldn't call in a team, not if this was something personal. He'd have to do all the cleanup himself, and every minute spent on it would increase his chances of being found out. But if he sends you to Moscow, the KGB does all the dirty work for him. Plus he has a built-in cover story. He did what he was asked to do, sent you looking for me, but the KGB got hold of you before he had time to make contact and unfortunately tortured you all to death. Nothing to do with him, he did his job, and you were just a bunch of inexperienced kids anyway.”

“Stratford never saw us before we turned up on his doorstep,” Danny said. “How could it be something personal?”

“That's what we need to figure out,” Cobra said sourly.

D
oes anybody mind if I lie down?” Fuchsia asked.

Danny glanced at her quickly. “You all right?” he asked quietly.

Fuchsia nodded. “Just want to try something.” She left the table and headed for the couch. She was small enough to lie flat on it. Danny watched for a moment while she closed her eyes, but the others ignored her.

“What do we do?” Michael asked Cobra. “Go back to Langley and confront Stratford?”

“I can't go anywhere until I complete my mission,” Cobra said shortly. “Plague wars may be the big bogeyman in your time, but right now we're worrying about something else.” He stopped and looked at them one after another, a strange expression on his face. “Hey, wait a minute. . . .”

“What is it?” Opal asked.

Cobra leaned forward. “You're from the future—right?”

Opal nodded. “We
told
you—”

“You learn history at school?”

“Yes, of course we learn history at school.”

Cobra sat back and licked his lips. He looked both excited and wary. After a moment he said cautiously, “This is a long shot, but any of you kids ever hear anything about . . .” He hesitated, shrugged. “Maybe this is nothing, maybe a big deal, but . . . you ever hear anything about a Russian plan to put nuclear warheads into Cuba?”

“Yes, of course,” Michael told him. “You're referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Cobra stared at him, then said tightly, “Crisis? You mean they put in the rockets?”

“I think so.”

Opal leaned forward slightly. “I'm not sure they got the rockets in, but they certainly started building launch sites. It was all right, though. President Kennedy found out about it and got tough, and the Russians backed down.”

“So there wasn't a nuclear war?”

“Oh, no,” Opal said. “Nothing like that.” She looked at him curiously. “Is this something to do with your mission?”

Cobra nodded. “I was sent to Moscow to check out some intelligence we had about Russian plans for Cuba. What we heard didn't sound likely, and the source wasn't very reliable, but it was too serious to ignore. Put missiles in Cuba, and the risk of nuclear war goes through the roof. You sure they avoided it?”

“We wouldn't be here now if they hadn't,” Opal told him cheerfully.

“Does this mean you can leave Moscow now?” Michael asked.

“I'm not sure . . .” Cobra said uncertainly.

Danny decided to put his oar in before the conversation drifted any farther off track. “Listen,” he said, “
I'm
not sure we need to go back to Langley. I mean, what Stratford did was awful, but that's nothing to do with our mission. We're here to halt a plague. Stratford may have wanted to stop us doing that for some reason, but he hasn't succeeded. We've still managed to meet up with Cobra. He's sitting here with us now. Mission accomplished, or what?”

“You haven't been listening, Danny.” Opal shook her head. “We're trying to find some way all of us can agree Cobra really
won't
send the samples through twenty years from now.” She looked at him coldly. “
Without
you feeding him a lethal dose of cyanide.”

“I think Fuchsia may be sorting that out now,” Danny said.

They all turned to look at Fuchsia. She was stretched out on her back on the couch, eyes shut and eyelids flickering slightly. Twice in succession, her head jerked. After a moment, Opal asked, “What's she doing?”

“My guess is she's checking Cobra's time line,” Danny said.

I
t was so difficult to explain what this was like, Fuchsia thought. Even now, when she was getting at least a little used to it, the whole experience was weird. It started with being able to see with your eyes shut. You sort of looked
around
them, even though that was impossible. The light seemed to come in from a different direction, which she supposed must mean it was coming from a different
time.
But whatever—if she concentrated, she could see everybody in the room. Mr. Cobra, looking puzzled. Danny, dear Danny, looking concerned and protective and a bit proud. And Opal and Michael, just looking. Of course, they'd never seen her do this before, so they were probably wondering what was happening; but Danny would explain. Actually, Danny was already starting to explain.

Watching the others was nearly like watching them with her ordinary sight. Nearly. They were there like they always were, but even when you concentrated on them really tightly, you were still aware of something stretching out behind them, a sort of multiple image, like the trail a runner leaves behind in one of those open-exposure photographs. That had been really confusing the first time she saw it. She knew where they were stretching into now, of course, which made things easier.