‘Well, Cory?’ asked Saskia, her love.
He watched snow crystals stir in the draught beneath the door. Questions burned. Was this fiction? If so, was it designed to misdirect him? Why would Saskia want him to give up the idea of the diamond? He considered the advantage this might lend her. If she was also in pursuit of it, then the advantage was considerable. It would leave her free to obtain it. But Cory did not view Saskia as a competitor. She was a bystander, or a player late to the game. And she was from the past. She had travelled in time fifty years before him. Had she lost her will too? Like Jackson?
Think, Georgia. Is she telling the truth?
Cory shifted his grip on the gun. If she is telling the truth… He would not permit that thought to complete. Its implication might undo him.
‘What now?’ asked Danny.
‘You know what,’ said Saskia.
‘He’s going to kill us?’
‘According to him, we’re already dead.’
Cory smiled. ‘You’re getting with the programme, finally.’
‘The paradox,’ said Saskia, straightening her back. ‘Test it.’
Cory drank the data from her body. She was serious. He switched his gun from Jem to Saskia. The answer to his unspoken question—can Saskia be killed?—came in the utter calm of her expression and the absence of any physiological changes that should have accompanied the threat of the gun. Yet he paused. If he killed Saskia with a bullet to the head, would the ichor he had donated be sufficient to rebuild her? He didn’t think so. He pointed at her head. And if this did not kill her, what then? Did that mean her entire story was correct? Was Cory a patsy? The impact of the truth of her words was too much.
He cut off his thoughts by squeezing the trigger.
The weapon did not discharge. Instead, it flexed like a muscle and jumped from his hand. Cory felt the psychic frisson of the smart matter’s software as it crashed. The mishandled kinetic energy split the device in two and its spinning halves clattered to the floor.
So she is connected to Jennifer. So she really is the second time traveller. What would she care about the Cullinan Zero?
Saskia grinned. Her remaining teeth were cracked, bloody.
‘Well, what now?’ she asked.
The wooden floor amplified her footsteps—heel-toe, heel-toe—until Saskia stood within the reach of his fist. The uncertainty churned within him. But he did not strike. Saskia raised her gun. Still he did nothing.
‘I can shoot most of what matters out of your skull,’ she said. ‘Maybe you’ll be rebuilt by your nanomachines, but it won’t be you.’
‘I’ll know your intention before you do. You aren’t fast enough.’
‘Begin at the beginning. Think. Jennifer sent you back to recapture an item, but the item was not her prize. She wanted Harkes. She wanted revenge. Think back, whoever you are.’
He looked at the men and considered their murders once more. Then he looked at the broken factor.
‘When I was young,’ he began, ‘my father called me ‘the Ghost’. He was blind, and I crept around the house because I was scared of him. Kind of funny, because I became a spook. My father was right. I spent my life elsewhere. My physical body is here, at the turn of the century, but my soul could not cross the bridge.’
Chapter Thirty-One
August, 1947, Buenos Aires
Cory walked to the airport at Morón. Once, an intellectual called Jurado had taken him through the difficulties of selecting the correct verb for travelling on foot through The Great Village, as he called Buenos Aires. Callejear must be rejected. That was clear. Pasear would not do. Never in life. One must plump for vagar, to wander. One wanders the labyrinth. One considers the changing street names as the retelling of Argentine history. These are golden threads to be plucked as strings to the past.
Cory, vagabundeo, arrived at the drab industrial estate just as the early afternoon sky was darkening. The offices of the British South American Airways Corporation was an unremarkable block with a striking emblem: an art deco star man. It reminded Cory of Hermes. Ancient Greek god of boundaries and those who cross them. Of the orator, the poet, and the shepherd. Of the core of thieves: their cunning.
He removed his hat and touched his forehead with a handkerchief. On the forecourt, a glorious, cream-coloured Packard was being washed by a chauffeur. Cory used his best Rioplatense Spanish to compliment the Packard. The two spoke for five minutes, during which Cory discovered that the Packard would be parked here until the early evening, and thus perfectly placed for hijack.
He raised his hat to the man and walked into the offices. He felt alive and happy. His grip was about to close on Harkes. The crushing sensation would be sweetness itself.
The waiting room outside the office of Air Vice-Marshal Bennett was empty. Cory sat in a low leather chair with his hat on his knee. He looked at the wall opposite. There was a painting of a tiny gaucho riding across a stylised representation of the South American continent. An aircraft-shaped shadow had fallen across him. He had turned his face upwards. The strapline read: ‘In South America To-Morrow!’
The window was north-facing and dull. To his right, in the office, two men were talking. Cory was looking at his knees, but he was listening to the men.
The younger man said, ‘About this weather, sir. We’re clear out to Mendoza, but it’ll be no fun over the bumps. The visibility is zero.’
The older man replied, ‘You’ve got the top seat. Tell me what you need.’
‘I should like to up the fuel load. Thirteen-hundred gallons would give us a cushion.’
‘Very well. What will that make your weight?’
‘A whisker off fifty-one thousand.’
‘Tell Pilkington I gave the word. Then tell him he can even put some fuel in the aircraft, instead of peeing it halfway across the hangar floor. But Reggo?’
‘Sir?’
‘This isn’t BOAC. Keep that juice for a rainy day.’
‘Sir.’
The door opened and the younger man emerged. He was no older than thirty and had a lightness in his movement. He wore a captain’s uniform and carried a clipboard. In an instant, Cory read all he could from the topmost sheet. The information was not useful. Just some figures and statistics associated with the flight plan. It was not, crucially, the passenger manifest.
The man smiled from the corner of his mouth and said, ‘How do you do?’
As Constantin Wittenbacher, Cory smiled back and said, ‘Very well, thank you.’
Then the young pilot was gone and Bennett called, ‘Mr Wittenbacher, is it? Do come in.’
The Air Vice-Marshal’s office was bright and spacious. The window overlooked the runway. An Avro Lancastrian was chocked up and gleaming in the sun. Men were standing on its wings. In groups of three, they were directing a fuel hose into the tanks.
Don Bennett was a short man who wore a suit with slightly baggy trousers, the English style. He was underweight, too, and Cory had no difficulty imagining him as an anxious and strict director. As Cory approached, Bennett switched from placing his knuckles on his desk to putting his hands on his hips until finally he reached out to shake hands. He was about forty, but his eyes were cynical and the constant motion of his body suggested a man bothered by time.
‘Constantin Wittenbacher,’ said Cory. ‘I am entirely at your service, Air Vice-Marshal.’