Henry nodded. That was how bureaucracies functioned; they were set up to hammer information into a few acceptable categories, and they did just that—no matter how much violence got done to the data in the process. He'd seen enough men die in Vietnam because the raw intelligence conflicted with the approved version of reality.
"Okay," he said quietly, "we've got
National Enquirer
stuff here, only for real. Does that mean the spooks are right? We should back off and let official channels handle it? Concealing the information we've got is almost certainly an indictable offense."
Jesus Rodriguez spoke. "Like the lady said, I think they'll be looking for the wrong thing. And
patron
—the stakes are high."
Chen looked up. "The . . . whatever it was . . . came armed. They killed and killed again. That doesn't argue for 'we come in peace,' Henry."
Her face went extremely blank. "And I don't care to be blackmailed. That sort of thing was what my parents took a very risky boat trip to avoid. So I'm not altogether convinced of the unarguable wisdom of the duly constituted authorities, right now."
Finch winced slightly. "Since Andrews and Debrowski came back from the Bahamas," she said, looking down at her hands, "there's been a fair amount of traffic that way. At a much higher level. Not those two. Whole delegations."
You didn't send wet-work specialists to negotiate, really. Even the sort of fairly sophisticated wet-workers involved, Amcits and on the official payroll. The accountants must have taken over, and the Government's tame scientists.
"They've clamped down harder than ever, and Dowding's been warned from higher in the Bureau not to even
think
about complaining again. They did some sort of deal, and they're excited about it. Very excited. And scared."
Carmaggio sipped his coffee. "Oh, lovely. Ms. Ingolfsson has become the goose that lays the golden eggs. She's teachers pet."
"Right," he went on. "Now, let's see what we've got and where it gets us. There's that posse warrior with his head blown off at the eyebrows. Weapons are a hobby of mine, and there's nothing that could do it. Some sort of energy gun might. That's what the spooks said. They also said you'd need an eighteen-wheeler load of equipment. Our suspect had something no bigger than a rifle. From the later reports, I'd say it was the size of a handgun, small enough to carry concealed."
Chen pursed her lips. "I can think of several technologies that could produce a knife as thin and sharp and rigid as the one that inflicted the injuries in the warehouse," she said. "And was used to dismember Stephen Fischer. None of them available today, or will be for some time."
"When we've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true,"
Finch said. Henry looked at her blankly. "Classical reference, sorry. What I mean is, I don't think it's aliens here. The—not exactly the MO—the stuff surrounding the incident is wrong. And the genetic material is human. Human, and animals from Earth."
"We sure of that?"
Chen tapped her own folder. "Extremely. Henry, the odds of a separate evolution producing that type of genetic correspondence is . . . well, getting hit by lightning is a dead certainty, compared to that."
"Time traveler," Finch said.
The words lay heavy in the pause that followed. Henry sighed deeply and ran a hand over his scalp, acutely conscious of the thinning hairs.
"Oh, shit," he said. He held up a hand. "Yeah, I know it's logical, I know it's probably
true,
but we've just bought ourselves a ticket to the funny farm if this ever leaks out to our respective superiors."
The idea lay like lead in his mind.
I've been chasing my own ass on this for three and a half
years,
he thought. There simply wasn't any other explanation, nada, zip. Either he forgot the whole thing, or he went with this. And he just couldn't walk away from it. Like Jesus said, the stakes were too high.
"Something else," he said thoughtfully. "Okay, we've got a time traveler." He held up his copy of the Canadian RCMP fax. "A woman. One woman, armed, calling herself Gwendolyn Ingolfsson. And we got the arm of some
thing
with her. What's that suggest?"
"Something went wrong," Jesus said, flicking at his teeth with a thumbnail. "Accident, fuckup,
de
nada.
"
"Not a woman," Chen corrected. "A female, yes. Related species, but not human. Probably from, ah, the future."
Henry sighed and loosened his tie. "Whatever."
"And she responded with a killing frenzy," Finch said. "That tells us something about the, the time and place she came from."
"Dropping into the middle of Marley Man's posse could send anyone into a frenzy," Henry said thoughtfully. "But the two apartment killings, yeah. Our Ingolfsson is seriously bad in both senses of the word."
Silence fell again. Finch broke it.
"Why buy the warehouse?" she said. "That seems to be important, somehow. Twenty million dollars worth of important. That's more than sentimental-souvenir money."
"We can't tell for sure, but it certainly looks like Ingolfsson
needs
the warehouse somehow."
"I've got—" Henry began.
"—a bad feeling about this,
si
" Jesus completed the sentence. "Unless she just wants to go home."
"Could we count on that?" Henry said. "No, I didn't think so. Let's think about the latest ingredient."
"Mystery Man," Finch said. "He's contacted you several times, me once, and several people at this firm, Primary Belway Securities. He certainly doesn't seem to be operating with Ingolfsson. Trying to screw up her plans, evidently."
"Cop chasing perp?" Jesus said. "They sent someone back here to clean up the accident?"
"That's my gut feeling," Henry agreed. He looked over at Finch; the Medical Examiner wasn't in the same business, but the FBI agent was. "Mystery Man's got some gadgets too."
"Cop is a possibility," Finch said. "Or spook and counter-spook. He isn't necessarily a good guy."
"So far he's made a lot less in the way of footprints," Henry observed thoughtfully. "No trail of bodies, and no fancy gadgets apart from messing with our computers. Assuming he was sent back, you'd expect him to have more fancy stuff."
"But perhaps is more reluctant to use it," Chen said. The others looked at her. "If we have a time traveler, they could be—probably would be—careful about
changing the past.
And we would be the past, to them."
"Ingolfsson doesn't seem too concerned about that," Henry said. "Left a pretty heavy blood trail, and—"
He smacked himself on the forehead. "All that fancy high-tech stuff her company's been selling!
That's
where it came from!"
The future.
The theory was starting to look convincing, not just to his head but to his gut, the place where ideas came from. He didn't know whether to be reassured or frightened.
Either I'm adjusting or
going nuts.
"Perhaps she is some sort of criminal under pursuit, then," Chen said, pulling at her lower lip.
Henry made a chopping gesture. "Let's not let the speculation get completely out of hand," he said.
"You get too many preconceptions, it can foul up your ability to see things that don't agree with the theory you've built."
The others nodded. "What should we do about it?" Finch said.
"First, Mystery Man indicated he's willing to meet. Yes or no?"
Chen started to speak, but Finch cut her off. "Lieutenant, I don't think we can run this as a democracy. I think you should be in charge."
Christ, on point again,
Henry thought. The others nodded.
"All right then. I
will
set up a meet with Mystery Man. When we've got more information from him, you'll all get to know. Which leaves us with the question of what to do about Ingolfsson."
Silence fell. "Right now, we watch," Henry said. "Right now, we can't pin any of the killings on Ingolfsson. Maybe she'll just vanish in the warehouse, maybe Mystery Man will get her, maybe she'll turn into a good citizen."
"And maybe the horse will learn to sing," Finch said.
Henry
did
recognize that one. He shook his head. "No, there'll be more killings, all right. And
then
we move in. Fuck national security; we'll blow this thing wide open and call in the artillery and nail Ms.
Time Traveler to the wall. Fuck the consequences, too. Everyone with me on this?"
A circle of nods. He went on: "You all know what happens to whistle-blowers, don't you? Still willing?"
Nobody spoke. "All right, here's how we'll set it up. We keep everything word-of-mouth; and no more phone calls than we have to. Nothing on computers, absolutely nothing, and that includes notes to ourselves.
"When we move, we'll have to be able to move fast and big. Finch, you get onto your boss and bring him in on this. Chen, get me a list of those friends you've been doing the discreet research with, and we'll talk to a few of them. Jesus and I will sound out a few guys we know in the NYPD. Then we'll—"
***
The other man ducked his head in a nod and extended his hand. "Kenneth Lafarge," he said.
Henry gave him a once-over. Early thirties, he judged. Close-cut blond hair, blue eyes, a farmboy face—snub-nosed and tanned, square chin. Jock's build, broad shoulders and narrow waist. The hand fit that, slightly callused and very strong. Dressed in a suit and carrying an attache case; sort of like a Norman Rockwell painting of an up-and-coming small town lawyer. Not heeled to Henry's experienced eye . . .
but
he might be carrying a mininuke in a tie clip, for all I know. Christ, I wish I wasn't here.
For that matter, he wished all this wasn't happening, period.
Behind them the Mall was nearly empty, bleak and lifeless with winter. It smelled of wet earth, cold water, and traffic. Carmaggio had never liked Washington much: a marble veneer over a cesspit. Which was, he thought, sort of appropriate, all things considered.
"Detective Lieutenant Henry Carmaggio," he replied.
What do you say to a time traveler?
"Thank you for agreeing to meet me, Detective Carmaggio," the younger man said. "A great deal depends on what we can do."
He spoke ordinary general American, but there was a hint of something underneath it; a formality of phrasing, that indicated it wasn't quite his native speech.
"Yeah," Henry said, hunching his shoulders. They turned and walked beside the gray surface of the Reflecting Pool. "Why here?"
"I'm apprehensive about what capabilities
it
may have in place in New York," Lafarge said. "A little extra caution never hurts."
"Look, let's be upfront." At the other man's lifted eyebrow: "Let's lay our cards on the table. You're from the future, right?"
The words hung heavy in the air.
Me and the Saucer People,
Carmaggio thought.
Lafarge nodded. "In a way."
"In
what
fucking way?"
The other man made a soothing gesture with both hands. "Four-hundred-forty-odd years in the future, yes. But the future of a different past."
"What?" Henry felt a dull ache begin between his shoulderblades and creep up his neck.
"I'm sorry . . . you know the concept? A battle turns out differently, a war, someone important isn't born, and things are changed?"
Henry nodded. "Lee wins the battle of Gettysburg, something like that?" There was no
end
to the weird shit.
"Yes, exactly. In my case . . . the differences start about 1779. By 1900 my world was very different from yours. By the 1990s, unrecognizable."
"What happened in 1779?"
"The Dutch Republic declared war on the British," Lafarge said. He ran a hand over his hair. "It's a long story. The British lost the war against us—against America—at about the same pace they did here, maybe a little slower. But they won the war against the Dutch, and that's where everything started to go wrong. They took the Cape Colony."
"South Africa?" Henry said. He'd done some research on Africa a few years back, when two branches of the Black Muslims had started killing each other over doctrinal points.
"Yes. After the war, they used it to settle the Loyalists—mostly the ones from the Southern colonies—and their Hessian mercenaries. The settlers they sent enslaved the locals. And they grew, and they grew. A century later the Draka—the colony was renamed after Francis Drake—were already a major power. In the Great War they took most of Asia; then in the Eurasian War, something like your World War Two, they took the rest of Asia and Europe. There was a long cold war between them and us, the Alliance for Democracy, the U.S. and South America and the British, the Australasians, some others.
The Final War happened in 1999."
"Wait a minute." Henry squeezed his thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose. "Okay, these .
. . Draka?" Lafarge nodded. "They were seriously bad, right? Sort of like Nazis?"
"Worse. Smarter. In our world, the Nazis were a poor-man's copy of the Domination—the Domination of the Draka, that's what they called themselves. Call themselves." Lafarge shook his head.
"I'm surprised your Nazis were so much like ours. We even had a Hitler, although he didn't look much like yours. Ours was taller, blond, and had an eyepatch . . . never mind."
"Wait a minute," Carmaggio said again. The tension in his neck was worse. "These supernazis, Draka, whatever, they
won
this World War Three, is that what you're saying?"
Lafarge nodded.
"Then who the hell are
you,
the French Resistance?"
"Space travel was commonplace by the time of the Final War," Lafarge said. Henry gritted his teeth at the heavy patience in the younger mans tone. "My ancestors escaped to Alpha Centauri in an experimental interstellar ship—slower than light, of course. There's a habitable planet there, you'll discover it yourselves as soon as you get some really powerful telescopes into orbit."
"Wait a minute—wait right
here,
" Henry said.