TW02 The Timekeeper Conspiracy NEW (13 page)

To D'Artagnan, she was femininity incarnate. She had soft blue eyes and long dark hair, a pretty turned-up nose and a trim figure with a full bosom and long, slender legs. At twenty-five, she was a little older than he was, but that only served to make her more desirable. True, she was extremely talkative, but then there were advantages to that as well; he would be put to no great strain to supply entertaining conver-sation. And the fact that she seemed to be involved in some matter of questionable legality meant that she would require a protector—and who better suited to the job than he?

As he passed the Rue Cassette, he spied a figure hurrying furtively out of the Rue Servadoni. The wind blew back the hood of the figure's cloak and it was hurriedly pulled back in place, but not before D'Artagnan had seen that the person so stealthily abroad in the darkening streets of Paris was none other than Constance Bonacieux. Having told her that he would return as soon as the errand she had sent him on had been completed, he was puzzled to see her rushing through the streets, obviously intent on something. Keeping at a distance, he followed her through several streets and alleys until she came to the door of a house on the Rue de la Harpe. She knocked three times upon the door, glancing all about her, paused, then knocked three times more. The door was opened and she could be seen to have some words with someone inside the house. D'Artagnan watched, puzzled. A moment later, Constance stepped back and a tall man enveloped in a long cloak and wearing a large hat pulled low over his face ap-peared. He took her arm and together they hurried off into the night.

"So that's it!" thought D'Artagnan. "I am sent on some fool's errand to be got out of the way so that she can run off and see another lover!"

Outraged, D'Artagnan hurried after them. He caught up to them in an alley off the Rue Vaugirard. He passed them at a run, then turned and drew his rapier, blocking their path.

"So!" he said, "This is how I'm treated, is it?"

Constance gasped and backed off a step.

"Monsieur, I do not know you," said the stranger. "It seems that you have taken me for someone else. We have no quarrel. Kindly step aside."

"D'Artagnan, have you gone insane?" said Constance.

"You know this man?" the stranger said.

"Indeed, she knows me very well, Monsieur," D'Artagnan said. "And I would ask how it is that you come to know her."

"D'Artagnan, don't be a fool," said Constance. "This does not concern you."

"Does not concern me!"

"The lady's right," the stranger said, "this is none of your affair. You are interfering in something you know nothing about and it would be well for you to sheathe your sword and continue on your way."

"Sheathe my sword? No, Monsieur, better that you draw yours and give an accounting of yourself!"

"Very well, if you insist," said the stranger, throwing back his cloak and drawing his own rapier.

"Milord, please!" cried Constance.

D'Artagnan frowned.
"Milord?"

"Yes, you fool," said Constance. "Milord, the Duke of Buckingham! And now you'll ruin us all!"

Suddenly, it all became quite clear. For the prime minis-ter of England to be the lover of a lowly lady's maid in Paris was laughable. If he desired a lady's maid, there would be no scarcity of them in London. But if he desired that maid's mistress....

"A thousand pardons, Milord," D'Artagnan said, lowering his sword. "I fear I've made a dreadful error. But I love her, you see, and I was jealous, and I … Please pardon me, Your Grace, and say how I may serve you."

"You are a brave young man," said Buckingham. "You offer me your services and with the same frankness, I accept them. Follow us at a distance of twenty paces to the Louvre and if you see anyone watching us, be a good fellow and slay him."

Buckingham took Constance by the arm once again, having sheathed his sword, and they hurried off toward the Louvre. D'Artagnan kept his sword out, counted out twenty of their paces, and then followed, looking all about him to see if any-one was watching. He did not see anyone. But that was only because he was not very observant.

Finn and Lucas followed the carriage to a house on the Rue St. Honore. It took some effort on their part, because although the carriage could not travel very fast through the crowded streets of Paris, it nevertheless proceeded at a fairly brisk pace. Twice, they almost lost it. As it pulled up in front of the elegant home on the Rue St. Honore, Finn and Lucas watched from an alley across the street, trying to regain their wind.

"I just hope this doesn't turn out to be a wild goose chase," Lucas said, breathing heavily. "I'll feel like an awful sap if it turns out to have been nothing more than my memory playing tricks on me."

"I don't think there's anything wrong with your memory," said Finn. "Take a look at what that old man's carrying in his hand."

As the couple got out of the carriage, the old man glanced nervously up and down the street. It was getting late, but there was still enough light for them to see the slim metallic tube that the old man was holding in his hand.

"A laser," Lucas said. "And he's not even trying to hide it. He's holding it out in plain sight."

"Sure, why not?" said Finn. "Who'd know what it was?"

"That's just the point," said Lucas. "Anyone who would know what it was would be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The way he's waving it around, it's as if he
wants
someone to see it. Why would anyone be so obvious with a weapon unless he wanted whoever was watching to know that he was armed? You think maybe he knows we followed him?"

"It's possible," said Finn. "But why wave a laser around to scare off some would-be 17th-century muggers? I just had a rather nasty thought, old buddy."

"You think Mongoose blew our cover already?"

"I'm open to any other explanations."

They watched the chests being carried into the house. "All right," said Lucas, "let's try and think this through. The woman's the one who rang a bell with me, but the old man's got a laser. So that means that both of them aren't what they seem to be. They could be Timekeepers, but then I've never run across any of the Timekeepers before, at least not to my knowledge. I recall that face from a mission, I'm certain of it."

"A renegade soldier?" Finn said. "Right, Darrow said the terrorists made contact with someone in the underground."

"The only person in the underground we know is Hunter," Lucas said.

"That we
know,"
said Finn. "We could've run across someone in the underground and not known it.

Or the woman could be someone we've worked with before who's joined the underground since then.

Or who's joined the Timekeepers. Come on, think, where did you see her face?"

"I just can't place it," Lucas said, exasperated. "It's driv-ing me crazy, but there's something
wrong
about her and I can't figure out just what it is."

"Okay, leave it for now. It'll come to you. Let's get back to Mongoose. If he didn't blow our cover, then why's the old man waving a laser around?"

"Well, he wasn't waving it at us," said Lucas. "I don't think he knows we're watching him. But he thinks
someone's
watching him, someone from the future. Suppose Mongoose didn't blow our cover?

What other explanation can there be?"

"That he blew
his
cover," Finn said. "Or that one of his people got careless and the Timekeepers know that someone's onto them."

"We're going to have to have a serious talk with him," said Lucas.

"Assuming that he's still alive," said Finn. "Damn spooks. They're going to make a mess of it, I just know it. They've got agents all over the place back here and the only one we know is Mongoose. And not only don't we know how to get in touch with him, we don't even know what he really looks like, with those damn disguises. All we can do is go back to the Luxem-bourg and wait to see if he or one of his people gets in touch with us."

"That does seem to be our only course of action," Lucas said.

"Maybe not," said Finn. "We could always push the panic button and see what happens."

The men exchanged glances. Pushing the panic button was always a last resort. It meant activating the implant that would send out a signal to be picked up by any members of the Ob-server Corps who might be in the area. It was standard operat-ing procedure for the referees to send teams of observers out into any time period being used as a battle scenario. These observers, acting as undercover overseers, seldom got involved in direct action themselves. Their duties were primarily opera-tional. They were equipped with chronoplates to enable them to quickly move about in time if need be and they generally functioned as supervisors over the Search and Retrieve teams and as the eyes of the Referee Corps in the field. The only thing was, this wasn't a typical scenario. Officially, it wasn't an adjustment, at least not yet. It was still a TIA mission.

"You're thinking that we'd be in a hell of a mess if we pushed the button and nobody answered," Finn said.

"Actually, that hadn't occurred to me, although now that you mention it, I see where that could be a problem. No, I was thinking that, officially, we still don't have any standing on this mission. If we pushed the panic button, we'd have to come up with some pretty convincing answers and we haven't got any.

Not to mention the fact that activating the implant signals would enable the Timekeepers to trace us through their chronoplate."

Both men recalled only too well their last mission, when a similar situation, a stolen chronoplate in the hands of the op-position, had resulted in the enemy's being able to trace their movements through their implants. The technology was necessary to be able to trace the movements of Temporal Corps sol-diers in battle scenarios. However, since their last mission, there had been a change in procedure. The implants of soldiers in commando adjustment squads had been modified so that they could not be traced through chronoplates. Commandos on an adjustment mission were completely on their own unless one of two things happened. If a commando was killed, then his implant would automatically be activated, sending out a termination signal that would enable the S&R teams to locate the body, unless it were destroyed and the implant along with it. Otherwise, a commando could "push the panic button," activating the implant to signal the Observers, in which case, as Lucas had pointed out, any chronoplate would be able to pick up the transmission.

"Looks like we're caught between a rock and a hard place," said Finn. "We've had the deck stacked on us again. These people have lasers and a chronoplate and God only knows what else, while we're equipped with nothing but swords and daggers and a couple of horses. Anything else we'd have to draw from Mongoose, only we don't know where he is or if he's still alive. If he is and we act on our own, he blows our cover. If he's bought the farm and we call for help,
we
blow our cover. You know, that still leaves us one other option."

"What's that?"

"Chucking it all and heading for the hills. I hear the Mediterranean is real nice this time of year. Now that we've got these fancy new implants that can't be traced unless we ac-tivate them, we could just disappear and take early retire-ment."

Lucas chuckled. "It's a tempting thought," he said. "There's only one thing wrong with it. Neither you nor I would last a month without going crazy. Besides, suppose the terrorists achieve a split and it turns up a future in which we were never born?"

"Can't happen," Finn said. "We've already been born. Our past is absolute. Mensinger proved—"

"Mensinger didn't prove anything when it came to temporal splits," said Lucas. "All he could do was theorize. No one's ever been affected by a split before. If it's all the same with you, I'd just as soon not be the first."

"Yeah, well, I'm too young to retire anyway," said Finn. "It was just a thought."

"I think our best bet is to head back to the Luxembourg and wait to be contacted," Lucas said.

"There's not much else we can do now, except find out who lives in that house across the street. You never know, we just might learn something."

They learned that the house on the Rue St. Honore was oc-cupied by Doctor Jacques Benoit and his two servants, Marie and "Old Pierre," an elderly married couple. No one seemed to know anything about "the mademoiselle." In fact, the question raised more than a few eyebrows in the neighbor-hood.

Doctor Jacques, it seemed, was a paragon of virtue, the soul of kindness, a giant among physicians. No one had a bad word to say about Doctor Jacques, but their inquiries did yield one or two interesting points.

Unless Doctor Jacques had some secret source of income that no one knew about, he could not possibly be supporting himself as a physician. So far as anyone knew, he did not number anyone of the upper classes among his clientele, serv-ing the common, working citizens of Paris exclusively. His methods of charging for his services were erratic, to say the least. From one man, he took whatever he felt he could afford to pay. From another family who were down on their luck, he took nothing whatsoever. The owner of a local business, whose mother he had treated, was allowed to pay "in trade"

and another man's fee was the princely sum of three chickens. It was widely assumed that Doctor Jacques was independently wealthy as the result of a large inheritance.

From time to time, Doctor Jacques left Paris for parts unknown. Sometimes, he simply left word that he was "going to the country" for a few days. At other times, he left no word at all. During such times, Marie and Pierre filled in for him to the extent that they were able.

Doctor Jacques made house calls. So far as Finn and Lucas were able to ascertain, no one had ever been inside the house on the Rue St. Honore except for the good doctor himself and his two servants.

Except, occasionally, Doctor Jacques received visitors. These visitors seldom stayed for very long. No one had ever seen them before and only rarely were they ever seen again.