TIME QUAKE (33 page)

Alice thought for a moment. Now it was her turn to be guarded. ‘He’s into American history. And I’m an historian . . . That’s it.’

‘There’s nothing else that you can think of?’

‘No . . . but, Inspector Wheeler . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘At the risk of sounding foolish, I’d be grateful if
you
could answer one question for
me
.

‘What question might that be, Miss Stacey?’

‘Can you tell me, categorically, that this is not a man from the
eighteenth century who has come to the future with a particular purpose in mind?’

There was a pause on the other end of the line just long enough to make Alice’s heart miss a beat.

‘I will do my best to answer all your questions on Saturday afternoon. In the meantime, I think it might be best if you avoided speaking or meeting with him.’

Alice replaced the receiver with a click and clutched her face with her hands. He had not laughed at her suggestion! He had not dismissed the idea as the most ludicrous thing he had ever heard. She staggered to the window of her aunt’s Upper West Side apartment as if she had received a blow to the stomach.

The roof garden of the Met was bathed in the golden sunshine of a summer afternoon. Couples were draped over the rails looking out at the stunning views of Central Park against its backdrop of midtown skyscrapers. There was the hum of conversation and laughter as people milled around the deck edged with green hedges. Alice sat at a small table drinking tea with her three new acquaintances. While Detective Inspector Wheeler fitted Alice’s preconception of an aging Scottish policeman, she was surprised when she was introduced to his so-called colleagues. The boy, she felt, could have been cast as one of Fagin’s boys in
Oliver Twist
, and she did not yet know what to make of the tall Frenchman with the impressive title.

Inspector Wheeler sensed the young woman’s anxiety straight away. She looked as if she had not slept and she could not keep still, crossing and uncrossing her legs and running her hands repeatedly through her hair.

‘Inspector, are you able to tell me who Lord Luxon is?’

‘All in good time, Miss Stacey. I’d prefer it if you would first
tell me what made you contact NASA? What aroused your suspicions?’

Alice slid a pair of large-framed sunglasses onto her nose. ‘Lord Luxon asked me for an opinion – on an historical event – and I gave it. Why wouldn’t I? I’m an historian – it’s what I do for a living. But afterwards certain things that I observed about him prompted me to make . . . some assumptions. And although I had no firm evidence to go on, those – admittedly far-fetched – assumptions made me wish that I had been less free with my advice.’

‘Could you be a little clearer, Miss Stacey – what advice are we talking about here? What assumptions have you made?’

Alice opened her mouth to speak but the words would not come out. Whether this was due to guilt or to a fear of ridicule she was not quite sure.

‘
Courage
,
chère mademoiselle
,’ Montfaron said to Alice. ‘Upon my word, whatever you might have told the fellow, we have come here to help you – and to reason with Lord Luxon.’

‘
Upon my word!
’ Alice repeated. She looked at the Marquis de Montfaron and her eyes widened. She stared at his ponytail and then at Tom’s less than perfect teeth. Suddenly she leaned over towards Tom, and practically spat out a question.

‘I’ve forgotten the name of King George III’s wife. What is it?’

Tom looked startled. ‘Qu . . . Queen Charlotte, madam.’

‘And their son, their eldest son, how old is he now?’

‘George is but a babe in arms . . .’

Alice shot up in horror. Inspector Wheeler raised his eyes to heaven.

‘What year are you from?’ she said to Tom. ‘1762? 1763?’

‘Can I please ask you to stay calm, Miss Stacey . . .’

Alice was pointing her finger at Montfaron and Tom. ‘They . . . they . . .’

‘Yes,’ replied Inspector Wheeler quickly. ‘They are, but let’s not shout it from the rooftops.’

‘But if
they
are, then Lord Luxon is, too!’ cried Alice, looking around her at the crowds on the roof terrace. ‘Just how many visitors
are
there from another century?’

‘To the best of my knowledge, three. And very shortly all three of them should be congregated here, on the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum.’

‘So the streets aren’t teeming with them, then?’

‘No, Miss Stacey, and they never will be if we have anything to do with it. Now will you please tell us what he wanted to know.’

Alice took a deep breath. ‘Lord Luxon wanted to know how to sabotage the Revolutionary War – so that Britain would emerge victorious and America would never win her independence.’

Inspector Wheeler raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘You’re not serious! The man wants to win back America for Britain? He’s vain and foolish enough to have ambitions to overturn –
all this
?’ Inspector Wheeler gestured to Manhattan rising up all around them. ‘He’s mad!’ Inspector Wheeler observed Alice’s face, creased with foreboding. ‘Isn’t he?’

‘Does Lord Luxon have the means to travel back to 1776?’ asked Alice.

‘It’s a possibility – yes.’

‘Oh no . . .’

The colour drained from Alice’s cheeks as the significance of Inspector Wheeler’s response sank in. Her three companions watched her in silence as she took some deep breaths to calm herself.

‘Let’s not lose our sense of perspective, eh, Miss Stacey?’ said Inspector Wheeler. ‘After all, how could one man change all of this? It defies belief, surely?’

Alice looked at the policeman. ‘Do you know what he said the
very first time I met him? He said that he would have ordered the British redcoats to trample our sainted General Washington into the dirt – and I thought he was joking! How was I to know he’d escaped from his own century? But Lord Luxon means to reclaim America for King George III. And the really terrifying thing is that – if he does what I suggested – I reckon he stands a pretty good chance of succeeding.’

Alice’s speech wiped the smile off Inspector Wheeler’s face. He exchanged glances with Montfaron.

‘You see,’ continued Alice, ‘from the questions he’s been asking me, I believe that he plans to prevent Washington crossing the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776. It was a pivotal moment in the Revolutionary War. It is perfectly possible that a British victory at that point could have changed
everything
. . .’ Imitating Inspector Wheeler, she gestured to Manhattan rising up around them. ‘Would all of
this
still be here if Washington had failed? I don’t know the answer but I’d rather not find out.’

Inspector Wheeler reflected for a moment. ‘Jumping to hasty conclusions isn’t going to help matters. We don’t yet know if the man we’re interested in and your friend are one and the same person. If he’s
not
, we’ll all feel very foolish . . .’

‘Or very relieved,’ said Alice.

‘Ay, well, that is why I’ve brought along young Tom here. He’s my witness. In 1763, Tom was Lord Luxon’s footman.’

Alice looked in wonder at the scrawny, shy teenager. ‘And this gentleman?’

‘This, Miss Stacey, is the Marquis de Montfaron, formerly of Arras, who was in frequent attendance at the Court of Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution. He came to us from 1792. I’m no scholar, but even I have heard of many of his acquaintances – Rousseau, Diderot, Benjamin Franklin, Marie-Antoinette . . .’

Alice’s eyes grew very round and shivers ran up and down her spine. She had no idea what to say. ‘Wow!’ was the only response that came to the young Princeton historian. ‘And I’m guessing I’m not allowed to write this up or talk to anyone about this encounter . . .’

‘No,’ said Inspector Wheeler bluntly. ‘But rest assured you wouldn’t do your career any good if you did.’

Inspector Wheeler and Tom took up position close to the entrance of the roof terrace, on the lookout for Lord Luxon. Alice, meanwhile, begged for the opportunity to talk for as long as she could with the Marquis de Montfaron. She knew that in her career as a historian, no conversation in her life had or would come anywhere close to this one. She couldn’t even record it. Alice tried to clear her mind – she would soak up everything he said like a sponge. She would remember every precious word. The two of them stood in the mellow, evening light, silhouetted against the green of Central Park. Alice, her eyes alight, peered up at this tall progeny of the Enlightenment and question after question poured out of her, making her forget, at least for a few minutes, the trying circumstances of their meeting. And Montfaron, who had, all his life, put his faith in reason and knowledge in the hope that, one day, ignorance and evil would be erased from the earth, was more than happy to answer each one of them – and more. Soon Alice realised that, irrespective of which century he came from, she was in the presence of a remarkable man: one whose intellect was tempered with great heart, and whose bright, chestnut eyes displayed the depth of his curiosity about the universe as well as an unquenchable optimism. They were so wrapped up in their discussion, that neither noticed the cluster of redcoats gathering under a clump of trees below them, not a hundred yards from the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

A Moving Target

In which the Marquis de Montfaron tries to make
Lord Luxon see reason and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art witnesses a death

As Alice listened to the Marquis de Montfaron speaking about the life that he had left, Central Park, the hum of distant traffic and the New York skyline all seemed to ebb away. Instead, Alice found herself in another century, on another continent – and she had no need of a time machine. Their all too brief conversation touched on the excesses of the Court of Versailles, Montfaron’s correspondence with the great minds of the Enlightenment and Benjamin Franklin’s odd taste in hats. When the Marquis mentioned that he happened to be travelling through Paris on 14th July, 1789, the same day that an angry mob stormed a prison called the Bastille, Alice’s excitement knew no bounds. The Marquis had witnessed the beginning of the French Revolution! She begged him to give her a flavour of that fateful day. The Marquis described the terrible clamour of the crowds, his own fear, and his wish that Rousseau or Diderot could have been there to help him understand what he saw, for he felt more at ease with the certainties of science than with
the unpredictable nature of society. He was in the middle of describing the release of a handful of prisoners from the Bastille and how the people were intoxicated with the idea of liberty, when Inspector Wheeler grabbed hold of his arm.

‘He’s on his way, Miss Stacey,’ said Inspector Wheeler to Alice as he pulled the Marquis firmly away. ‘Tom has just confirmed that your Lord Luxon and his former employer are one and the same man. Proceed with caution: we’re counting on him to lead us to what we need to know.’

Alice nodded. ‘I’m ready.’

‘We’ll be watching you closely,’ said Inspector Wheeler. ‘Signal if you need help . . .’

Alice was back in the twenty-first century with a jolt. She watched the heads turn, as they always did, as Lord Luxon strolled slowly towards her with an effortless elegance acquired from a lifetime’s practice. She followed his blond head as he snaked through groups of people spread out on the terrace. They all seemed so happy: raising their glasses, laughing, enjoying their weekend. Alice’s rising panic caused her heart to thump in her chest. It occurred to her that if Lord Luxon had his way, this meeting on the roof garden of the Met could prove to be as pivotal a moment in the history of America as the storming of the Bastille had been a pivotal moment in the history of France. She had become a historian because she believed that it is only by understanding the past that we can understand the present. But how could she deal with a man who intended to change the past in order to create a present which was more to his liking? Oh, how she regretted helping Lord Luxon understand the significance of a tipping point. But it was too late for regrets. What she had to do now was to keep a clear head.

Alice tried to compose her face into an agreeable expression. To stop her hands from trembling, she gripped the handrail of the viewing terrace, assumed as relaxed a posture as she could muster, and feigned taking in the superb view. As she turned to face him, a ray of sun blinded her so that, for an instant, Lord Luxon looked like the negative of a photograph, not human at all, and Alice went cold, as if a jagged fingernail had been drawn down her back.

‘Hi! How have you been?’ she asked.

The breeze blew strands of gold hair across Lord Luxon’s forehead; he was wearing his shoulder-length locks loose today, and, as had become his habit in New York, he was dressed in shades of cream and ivory. A blood-red handkerchief had been artfully arranged in the chest pocket of his linen jacket. ‘Good evening, Alice,’ said the man who would snatch back America from its citizens. ‘A new T-shirt, I see.’

‘Oh . . . yes,’ said Alice, looking down at her T-shirt with its large, asymmetric spirals, white on black. ‘It’s one of Marcel Duchamp’s “Rotoreliefs”.’ She turned around. ‘Look, I’ve got one on my back, too.’

‘It makes you look like a moving target . . .’