The Hangman's Revolution (24 page)

Riley thought he would choke in this love cloud.

“When you two have done with the cooing,” he said, picking up Aldridge’s bowler hat and dragging the coat off his back, “we should quit this lurk before the scoundrel colonel has pennies on all our eyes.”

Malarkey broke contact for a moment. “Just a sec, lad. Be right with you, but when you get older you’ll understand that a man must coo while he can.” And he shook out his hair and went back in for another kiss, leaving Riley to stand there, shifting on his feet like a fellow with a bad dose of worm itch.

Sometimes I feel like people aren’t listening to me. I spend ninety minutes up here talking about the dangers of time travel, advising you to stay the hell away from time travel, and the first question I get is “Do you think time travel will be available commercially?” Then again, I spend every waking hour bent over quantum equations, so I guess I don’t listen to me, either.

—Professor Charles Smart

T
he savior of the world.

Clay Junior.

Colonel Box.

But he hadn’t always been a colonel. That only came after his administration of what used to be quaintly called a “wet work” team, as if the only discomfiting fact about working in that unit was getting water in your boots.

In the early 1980s, Sergeant Clayton Box was part of Operation Bright Star, training with Egyptian forces in the Sinai. He made such an impression with his accurate forecasting of terrorist attacks that he was drafted into a newly minted CIA–Green Beret team that was tasked with counterinsurgence in El Salvador. While there, Box drew up a model that diagrammed terrorist groups and could be applied anywhere in the world—except Scandinavia, where people thought differently. This model was called the Box Parallelogram and was the gold standard for understanding terrorist groups for decades.

Box really could not understand what all the fuss was about. He simply put himself in the insurgent leader’s shoes, imagined himself a little less intelligent than he was, then ran his unit as efficiently as it was possible with his diminished IQ. The results were astounding. Box could predict where rebels would strike. He could predict who was likely to be recruited and where they would be approached, and most important, he could predict with reasonable accuracy which foot soldiers would rise to the top. The CIA liked that last bit. They liked it a lot, and embarked on a series of apparently baffling hits on low-level targets, which, according to Box, were the equivalent of time-traveling assassinations.

Box liked it, too. The system was efficient.

Time-traveling assassinations. The Box Parallelogram earned him his colonel’s wings, and it was whispered in the halls of power that he was being groomed for brigadier general before forty. Almost unheard of.

Box’s phrase
time-traveling assassinations
was catchy and it hung around Command Headquarters; and when the Charles Smart project seemed like it might actually be science fact instead of science fiction, Box was called in for a chat.

Tell me, Colonel,
a man in a plain black uniform asked him.
How could the Box Parallelogram be made more efficient?

And he had answered.
The only way to make my paradigm more efficient would be if my team could actually travel in time.

And just like that, he was transferred to London, leading the WARP detail, and he quickly realized the potential of the time tunnel. Box’s superiors thought that the tunnel could occasionally be appropriated for black ops, but Colonel Box was thinking much bigger. The U.S.–U.K. alliance could be theoretically reverse-engineered to become a global empire.

It would be the most efficient use of the wormhole.

The tipping point came for Box when he returned from a babysitting mission in Victorian London to find that his beloved mother had been run over and killed by a drunk driver. Box was intensely upset by this and, after a quick Internet study, he realized that if he paid a visit to a certain baker in Victorian London, then that baker’s son would never emigrate to America, and the son’s great-grandson would not run over his mother in Texas.

And so, on his next jaunt, Box planned to take time out for a side mission. But, in order to get his tracker log changed, he had no choice but to confide in a technical operator, and the operator passed the log on to the man in the black uniform. Box was called in for another chat and warned off his planned side-op. He was told that the quantum tunnel would be used for the occasional approved target and nothing more.

Box was aghast. Such rampant inefficiency. It was akin to owning an AK-47 and using it once a year to shoot pigeons.

His mother would be saved, he decided. And the tunnel would be used to maximum efficiency.

Colonel Box applied his own parallelogram to the members of his squad, and over the following weeks recruited his own troops to his cause. They would return to the past; they would build an empire. It would be a great machine, run with total efficiency. And while they were there, Box would visit a certain baker.

Box and his men assembled as much technology and information as would fit in a Timepod, and they jumped back to Victorian London, ostensibly to change out agents. When they failed to return, the WARP program assumed that Clayton Box and his team had been compromised or torn apart by the tunnel, when actually they had moved into the catacombs and set about building their empire.

It has been a long road, thought Box now as he stood before his army, assembled in the great hall, eager for blood and battle. But the length of the road is irrelevant. My empire will be the most efficient this world has ever seen.

The only flaw in the plan had become apparent when he visited the house in Clapham where the baker was supposed to have lived and discovered that the records had been mistaken. The man did not live there and never had.

No matter, he had thought. When I am emperor and automobiles become commonplace, I shall make drunk driving punishable by death. And in that way Mother will eventually be saved.

C
AMDEN
C
ATACOMBS
, 1899

Box surveyed his two hundred troops. They were ready, finally. After years for some and decades for others, their weapons were fabricated, their bullets were milled and loaded. How could simple rifles and cannon hope to prevail against trained soldiers in body armor wielding automatic weapons, grenades, and mortar? And once the country was theirs, the munitions factories would be handed new specifications for intercontinental ballistic missiles. Europe’s days were numbered.

Boxstrike.

Box liked the sound of that.

In fact, Box liked everything Vallicose had told him about the future. He had always planned to incorporate religion to some extent, as all the great dictators had, but Vallicose had shown him the way. He must go beyond what he had ever planned and take his lead from the pharaohs by becoming a god himself.

A new gospel is being written.

If Box had had a sense of humor he might have smiled, but he was aware that his occasional foray into bonhomie usually resulted in awkwardness all around. He had tried to be friends with Farley, engaging him in casual conversation as he had seen the other men do, but it had never worked. If anything, it had driven them further apart.

And now Farley is dead, which is very inconvenient, but the schedule is set, and so we must forge ahead.

Spread out on a table before him were the operations maps marked with strike sites and access points. Box folded the maps and, with one step of his long legs, he mounted the table and raised his arms for silence. He was an imposing figure in his black uniform with the newly stitched Boxite crest in gold on the breast, and the group of bristling men fell instantly silent.

Box took a moment to look them over and thought, Look at them, waiting for the traditional pep talk, as though that will increase or decrease their odds of survival. It is ridiculous. The only three words that should be necessary are
Follow the plan
. And yet I must urge them to victory. I must appeal to their basic humanity so that they can pretend they fight for a cause and not cold hard cash.

“The day has come, my warriors.” He began speaking through a futuristic megaphone on a strap around his neck, his amplified voice booming through the arches. “Today we take the first step toward a better world.”

He paused, waiting for the guttural cheers that his behavioral studies assured him would follow, and they did.

So predictable, he thought. So malleable.

“This country has become aimless and godless. Once we were great, but now we bow down to every foreigner with gold in his fist. There are heathens walking our streets, taking our positions of employment, conversing openly with our women, and I say: No more!”

Now they will say
No more!
, Box predicted.

And they did. Shouted it, in fact. Most boisterously.

“For those among you who have joined us from the Battering Rams, welcome, brothers! I know you have many questions. Where do our new comrades come from? For that matter, where do these fabulous weapons come from? Let me answer those questions for you. Our weapons are heaven-sent.” Box spread his arms like wings—a position he had learned from watching videos of Stalin and Jim Morrison—and he held the pose for a full minute before once again taking up the megaphone. “We are avenging angels, and we ask you to bear arms with us and guarantee your place in heaven. Will you join us?”

The roar was deafening and entirely affirmative. Box was a little relieved, as he had thought the heaven-sent bit might be over the top; but no, the men had swallowed it. And they would swallow much more besides if what Vallicose had told him about the future was true. It felt premature to declare himself a god to these men, as many of them had known him for decades and knew just how human he was; but later, when the country was his, he could begin to build the legend.

“Our enemies wait for us,” continued Box. “They are corrupt men, grown fat on the fruits of our labor, and the time has come to knock them from their perches.”

This statement was carefully crafted and contained five of the top fifteen words calculated to incite bloodlust in insurgents:
enemies
,
corrupt
,
fat
,
labor
, and
perch
. Number one on the list was
God
and number two
avenge
, which Box had already ticked off the list.

“After our Emergence, things will never be the same again. Tomorrow the sun rises on a new day.”

More buzz words, more cheering. In truth, Box was growing a little bored, so he decided to skip a few paragraphs and go directly to the fireworks.

“There are those who would stand in our way,” said the colonel. “Would you the faithful care to see what will happen to these unbelievers?”

His soldiers, reliably bloodthirsty, pumped their fists in the air.

Box called over his shoulder. “Sister Vallicose, bring forth the heretic.”

Vallicose emerged right on cue, dragging behind her a limp Chevron Savano.

Box had no interest in public execution in itself, but he did acknowledge the potency of human sacrifice as a form of blessing on a campaign or even a structure. There were legends from ancient Japan about
hitobashira
, or the practice of sacrificing a
human pillar
, in which innocents were
buried alive
at the base of new temples to protect the buildings against attacks from either nature or enemies. And in Homeric legend, Agamemnon was willing to sacrifice his own daughter, Iphigenia, to ensure that the gods would look favorably on his armies during the Trojan War. As for the Aztecs, those guys sacrificed eighty thousand prisoners in four days when consecrating the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan. Eighty thousand in four days! That was one labor-intensive ceremony.

When Savano was executed, the men would not realize that they were cheering on a ritualistic pagan sacrifice, but the sight would touch a primal nerve buried deep in their race memories and spur them on to greater acts of valor.

Idiots, thought Box then. Predictable pawns. They have as little control over their reactions as animals.

Savano had been drugged in order to keep her from whining pathetically and perhaps awakening sympathy in the newcomers. There were always a few squeamish weaklings without the stomach for what needed to be done.

This day we will lay open the entire country’s vital arteries, thought Box. And our endeavors must be baptized in blood.

He pointed a rigid finger at the drooping Savano.

“This is our enemy!” he said. “A spirit from hell come to thwart our holy mission.”

Box allowed his eyes to flare and his voice to shake with emotion.

“Oh, she may seem innocent, brothers. But is that not how the devil always appears?” He turned to Chevron. “Would you deny it, she-devil? Would you deny that the lord of lies himself sent you to spoil God’s plans?”

Chevie, of course, could not deny anything in her state. Box could have accused her of shooting Abraham Lincoln without fear of contradiction.

Even a child could see the girl is drugged, thought Box. And yet these drones are prepared to believe that she is a devil’s minion who refuses to defend herself.

“And there you have it, brothers. Her silence condemns her. String the demoness up, Sister Vallicose.”

Vallicose dragged Chevie through ranks of Rams and soldiers, and most stood aside but some leaned in to poke her with gun barrels, and others spat.

Pigs, thought Box. They are necessary pigs.