Timewatch (2 page)

The customs official, who greeted him at the door of Papa's private jet, had taken only a cursory look around the inside of the jet and then left. And, as usual, the official had never found—and had never even looked for—what was hidden in the cleverly concealed compartment. The formalities over and the official gone, Carlo retrieved his briefcase from the compartment. Carlo's driver, Juan, had been waiting for him.

After a few pleasantries and the drive through the heavy traffic of San Francisco, they drew up to the stately entrance of the grand dame of Union Square, the St. Francis hotel, where many presidents and celebrities had stayed since its opening in 1904. It was also Carlo's favorite place to stay when he came to the city on Papa's business.

Juan brought the Lincoln to a smooth stop, got out, and took Carlo's bag out of the trunk. “When will you be needing me again, sir?” he asked as he opened the car door for Carlo.

“Not until Monday at eight o'clock when we leave for the airport.”

A broad smile creasing his lined face after accepting Carlo's generous tip, Juan said, “Very good, sir. I'll be waiting here for you.”

At the bottom of the broad flight of steps leading into the hotel, a uniformed doorman was waiting to escort him into the lobby. A new man, Carlo observed
.
He nodded at the doorman and waved him away impatiently.

Striding into the wood-paneled lobby that gave the feel of a men's club, Carlo barely noticed the display of photographs, vintage keys, and other memorabilia hanging on the walls. He briefly noted the time—11:45
A.M.
—on the distinctive master clock hanging over a circular seating area. Time to eat, but first he would check in
.

The lobby host at one of the front-desk stations recognized him and greeted him with a wide smile. “Mr. Hauptman. Welcome. How was your flight?”

“Fine, Miguel, fine.”

“We have your usual suite ready—reserved from yesterday until Monday—in the Landmark wing.”

Carlo nodded, signed the register, and gave his one bag to the bellhop hovering nearby. His briefcase he would carry himself.

After tipping the bellhop, who had shown him to his suite, Carlo walked into the adjoining bedroom and threw his trench coat and briefcase onto the king-size bed. He quickly opened the combination locks and then lifted out the hard-sided case that held the Czech-made Skorpion. Molded compartments held a holster and two curved magazines holding .32 caliber bullets, as well as a pouch for the magazines. While the stock was just over 10 inches long, it could be extended to 20.4 inches. A gun permit made out to him lay on top of the stock.

“Only for an emergency,” Papa had said.

Carlo devoutly hoped that no such emergency would occur. Even though Papa had made him practice with the gun until he could hit a target, he didn't feel comfortable using it. He was good at hunting animals, but he had never killed anyone. Murder was what hired assassins did. And that reminded him that after he had conducted some business here in San Francisco for Papa, he would have to call the men Papa had hired.

Sighing heavily, Carlo picked up the gun and put it in the safe. No point leaving it around for some nosy maid to discover. This trip would definitely not be as fun as his previous ones, but as Papa had emphasized many times, his Plan
must
prevail.

CHAPTER 2

Caleb Morgan found himself walking through a forest of towering oaks. Looking up at their spreading branches, some of which were thicker than the width of a man, he had an uneasy feeling that they were possessed by a kind of awareness. Pagans like the Druids, with their ideas of wood nymphs and gods and goddesses, used to believe that.

His feet dragging on a wet, leaf-strewn path, the realization hit him that he didn't want to go any farther. He wanted to go home. It was quiet, too quiet for his liking, and too dim. The shadows played tricks on you, made you see things that couldn't possibly be there—like the faces he glimpsed peeping out at him from behind the bushes, faces that didn't look human. They had eyes and noses and mouths in the usual places, but something about their features was very different from those of your normal, everyday humans.

A light fog rising from the ground and swirling about him made it hard to see. It was just like one of those old movies where the vampire suddenly leaps out at you. Whoever staged this might have been more original.

It was effective, though. He could feel his nerves twitching and his heart speeding up.

Ahead in a clearing stood a man of vigorous middle-age, wrapped in a heavy rust-colored cloak reaching just below the tops of his well-worn black boots, his brown hair drawn back in a 17th-century-style queue. He was leaning on a gnarled oak staff. The man from his vision of two nights ago, the man who called himself Jeremy Morgan, his ancestor, born in 1631, or so he had said. Waiting for him.

Reluctantly, Caleb found himself walking into the clearing. Didn't seem to have any control over his damn feet; they just kept walking him right on over to the man looking at him with intense green eyes.

“Greetings, kinsman.”

“It's you again!”

When the man threw back his head and laughed, did the gloom lighten for just a moment? Irritated, Caleb asked, “What's so funny?”

“I beg your pardon, Caleb, but you are a gentleman of uncommon stubbornness.”

“You aren't real! Get lost!” Caleb shouted.

“It does not advance matters for you to be uncivil and disobliging, kinsman. I am not a phantom of your overheated brain. I existed in the seventeenth century and still do. Do you not remember what happened yesterday with the elevator?”

“You did that?”

Jeremy nodded.

The incident was still fresh in Caleb's mind. He had stepped into the elevator in his new building—so new you could still smell the paint—and the elevator had abruptly begun zooming upward. Whoever had heard of an elevator roaring out of control
upward?
After coming to a halt at the 12th floor, the lights had gone out and then the elevator had plunged downward. With his heart hammering in his chest, he had gripped the metal railing as he'd shouted, “Stop, just stop!”

He'd thought he had heard a ghostly laugh; then the elevator had shuddered and stopped gently at the main floor.

“So what do you want, Jeremy?”

“As I said before, I desire you to undertake a task of no small importance. Call your closest blood relatives together immediately.”

“Why should I?”

Jeremy drew his cloak more closely around him. “If you do not heed my words, a cruel oppressor will arise and you will die—all of you Morgans—along with many others. And worse.”

“So let me get this straight: you want me to invite a bunch of strangers to my home, just on your say-so because something terrible will happen if I don't?”

“The present timeline is unstable.”

“And that means?”

“That the present will shift into something altogether different—and nasty—in which none of you Morgans will have been born.”

“Even if I believed your far-fetched story, what can I—we—do about that?”

“On June 21 a window of opportunity opens when you Morgans can fix the present timeline in place.”

Caleb gritted his teeth. Jeremy was worse than that guy who had tried to stall him over a land deal. “So how do we do that?”

“When you and your relatives are gathered together, I shall enlighten you further.”

“Wait!” cried Caleb as fog began wreathing Jeremy from his head to his boots.

As Caleb's hand connected with something, he came out of his vision to find himself sitting in his chair in his library, a glass of wine, which he had just knocked off the table beside him, spilling onto the Chinese rug.

Though the fire in the grate cast a welcome heat, he felt a chill go through him. His hands shaking, Caleb rang for his butler, Cummings, and told him to clean up the mess on the carpet.

Bearing a roll of paper towels and a bottle, Cummings walked with his usual soft tread into the library and silently set to work blotting up the spilled wine.

Abruptly, Caleb asked, “Cummings, do you believe in visions?”

His bald spot gleaming in the soft lamplight, Cummings looked up and said, “I believe there is some biblical precedent for these things, sir, not to mention doctors Freud and Jung, who analyzed dreams and suchlike for the benefit of their patients.”

“Yes, yes, but I'm talking about the sort of thing where you're told to do something.”

Something suspiciously like a smile touched Cummings's mouth fleetingly. “A spirit guide, sir?” Cummings asked, pouring a little white wine on the red stain.

“Not exactly. Cummings, how long have you been with me, fifteen years?”

“Sixteen and a half, sir.”

“Long enough. Would you say I am a man given to strange fancies?”

“No, sir, I would not. You have always appeared to be an eminently sensible, practical man.”

“Thank you, Cummings. Now, I'm going to tell you something in confidence. Will you swear never to tell this to another soul?”

“Very well. I swear it.”

“I've just had another vision of an ancestor of mine, Jeremy Morgan.”

Encouraged by Cummings's sympathetic nod, Caleb went on. “He insists that I call my Morgan relatives together.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because if I don't, a ‘cruel oppressor' will appear and my relatives and I will die along with a lot of others—whatever that means.”

“Do you know who these relatives are, sir?”

“Not offhand, but I can find out. Last year I hired a firm to look up my family tree. The information should be somewhere here in my library along with a memoir written by this same Jeremy Morgan.”

“Perhaps you might want to contact your relatives and tell them that you wish to hold a family reunion. I daresay they would be most eager to visit an elderly, rich relative.”

“No doubt. But what is this all about? I resent some spirit dictating to me. I won't have it!”

“Would it not be best, sir, to ask your relatives to visit you as Jeremy has suggested twice, so he won't plague you with even more visions? You would lose nothing, but might have some interesting experiences.”

Caleb shifted restlessly in his wing chair. “Perhaps. I'll think about it.”

CHAPTER 3

The next morning Caleb paused in front of his office building to admire the glass-and-steel structure. He had done well as a developer, and this was his crowning achievement. The doorman greeted him and opened the door. Caleb walked over to the elevator and stepped into it.

The door closed. Caleb waited in some trepidation, but nothing untoward happened. After moving sedately up to the 12th floor, the elevator came to an almost soundless stop.

Feeling profoundly relieved, he walked into his outer office where Gloria Stanchon, his secretary, was wearing her usual funeral outfit, a dark suit of a severe cut and a discreet strand of pearls around her neck. She stopped typing long enough to flash him a quick smile, which revealed a set of brilliant white teeth. Then, jerking her head in the general direction of a bundle of letters already neatly sorted and opened for him, she said, “Mail,” and went back to bludgeoning the keyboard.

He had thought briefly about replacing her with some agreeable young thing with a more colorful taste in dress, but he knew he never would because Gloria was too efficient, too altogether necessary to him. She knew exactly what he needed, even before he needed it.

When he'd hired her 20 years ago, he'd been impressed by her blonde, blue-eyed good looks, innocent of makeup, except for a dash of lipstick, and short, neatly cut fingernails with only clear polish on them. The woman was still very attractive, even though at 42 her hair was now showing touches of gray.

She was an enduring sort of woman who would have made some man a fine wife. Why had she never married? She probably scared men off—too strong for most of them. It was their loss, his gain.

Shaking his head, he walked briskly into his office, where he relished the thought of looking over the plans for the new condominiums he was building in Oakland.

Collapsing into his brass-studded, leather chair, he began thinking about the events of the night before. One thing was clear: the trouble lay with Jeremy and not with the elevator. Maybe Cummings was right, that the sensible thing was to do what Jeremy asked. Being stubborn about the matter might bring more trouble.

And there was another reason. Up to now, his work had consumed him. A family would have taken time and energy, so he hadn't bothered to marry. Women were always available to tend to his physical needs.

Once, though, he had met a woman who had really intrigued him—his cousin, Elizabeth Morgan from Winnipeg—some city in central Canada about which he remembered vaguely hearing that the winters there could be brutal. He'd never met anyone like Elizabeth. She was, well, different.

They'd gone into an antique shop where she'd picked up what looked like a folding knife with a worn wooden handle into which were carved the initials
R.G.
She gave a small cry, and her pale complexion went even whiter against her red hair curling in luxuriant waves around her shoulders.

Without thinking, he put an arm around her. “What's the matter?”

With a faraway look on her face she said, “I see a man wearing old-fashioned clothes, standing on the deck of a small ship being fired on. I think he's the captain. He's looking down at a boy lying on the deck.”

He believed her; he didn't know why. Maybe it was a sort of knowingness that infused her words.

The owner had noticed Elizabeth's distress and hustled over to them. A young guy with a neatly trimmed beard and barely concealed admiration in his eyes—no doubt he had been ogling Elizabeth from the time they had arrived—asked, “Is there something I could tell you about this knife, miss?”