She looked at Paul and decided. “Work up a scenario,” she said. “I’ll go get Kelly his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and check on the professor.
Paul exhaled with relief. This just might work, he thought. He had a sudden thrill that he was about to assume that omniscient-like role that he often took when playing one of his war game simulations. Every time he played he realized that he was acting with full knowledge of the history involved, the mistakes and successes of both sides, and the outcome. As a game designer he was always trying to create rules and systems aimed at frustrating or neutralizing the human player’s inherent advantage of historical hindsight. He had played many games where the computer AI was programmed and given special bonus skills to try and offset this advantage, but no computer had been able to beat him yet. His knowledge of the history, combined with good strategy and tactical sense, made him a master of the board. Computers could beat human chess players because the outcome of each new game was completely unknown at the beginning. But Paul knew how this game needed to end, and he was determined to win it, one way or another.
“Let’s get busy, Kelly. Those damn Assassins just messed with the wrong guy.” Paul pulled up a chair, ready for battle. “Now the British knew Bismarck was out. She made stops at Grimstad Fiord and at the Norwegian port of Bergen, where they photographed her earlier. Naturally they kept flying recon missions over those locations to see if she was still there, but the weather was bad, and by the time they got a break Bismarck had already left. They overflew both targets and saw no sign of the Germans, but this was a full thirty hours after Bismarck steamed.”
“So they were late getting orders out to the fleet?”
“Correct. It was no small matter to send thousands of tons of military shipping out, packed to the gills with fuel, ammunition, not to mention thousands of sailors. They would only act on reliable information, and this is our first opportunity to get it to them.”
“Lay it on me,” said Kelly. “What do you suggest?”
“This may be a stretch,” said Paul, “but what if we rigged up a short wave to broadcast, perhaps using Morse code, and also using code words we know were viable at that time given our hindsight on the data. Now we just shift that baby in on a Spook Job—just long enough to broadcast its message—and then we yank it back here.”
“I’ve got some cool radio equipment down in the computer lab,” said Kelly. “One has an audio dock and I can load MP3s into it, and time them for playback.”
“Maeve is going to be a problem on this one,” said Paul. “We’re talking about a solid state component here, with transistors, not tubes, right?”
“And on-board microchips, a gig of RAM, a USB port with MP3 dock, and an account with iTunes,” Kelly smiled. “That’s going to be a real problem with Maeve, believe me.”
“Well it would only be for a very few seconds—in and out. We can select an isolated area as well to prevent any chance of it being seen during those few seconds. Hell, the damn Assassins don’t have these qualms. The Order thinks they have some kind of mobile equipment they can deploy and interface with natural power sources like the Oklo reaction I stumbled upon in Wadi Rumm.”
“Yeah, but we don’t know if they’re taking it back in Time. That was in our era. Remember, Maeve will have to sign off on this, and we’re talking about a woman who fed your apple to her horse and then ate the damn message you sent to make sure nothing would be left behind.”
Paul raised his brows, a pensive expression on his face. “I see what you mean,” he said. “She gave me a pass when I smuggled that .22 rifle in on the Grimwald mission, but she’ll go ballistic if we try to shift in modern equipment like that.”
“Well…” Kelly thought for a minute. “Rantgar made a point of saying it was easy to transmit information through Time. Suppose I set the thing up and we place it just behind the event horizon line in the Arch Bay. Then I open the continuum and we broadcast a coded message—we just send the information through! Hell, if it doesn’t work then we can always fall back on my plan to shift in and send a cable.”
“I’ll bet you’d love to get your hand on a pint or two in a pub,” Paul smiled. “Alright, my friend, can you set this thing up to transmit Morse code?”
“I can transmit it myself, right here from the console. I know the code. All I have to do is plug a Wifi adapter into the USB port on the radio, and we can link it to our system here easily enough.”
“Cool! Let’s do it,” said Paul.
“Then what’s the message?”
“I’ll need to do some research first,” said Paul. “Let’s see if we can call up some records of wartime signals traffic and codes.”
Chapter 12
Nordhausen had been pouring over history files, comparing RAM Bank data to new Golem reports on the altered Meridian they found themselves marooned on now. He was looking at all the Pushpoints in the campaign as Paul had described it, frustrated to find it still so difficult to piece together a coherent picture of events, even these very significant actions from recent modern history.
Facts were jumbling up in his head, and he could see no clear way through them. They stretched out like stepping stones across a fast running stream. He would get one bit of seemingly useful information here, another there. But finding a way to jump from one to the next and cross the stream was proving more difficult than he thought. On more than one occasion he had worked forward from an assumption based on some information he had uncovered, only to find other facts rendered his assumption invalid.
Maeve found him working at the History Module, sipping at a lukewarm cup of coffee and jotting down notes on a lined paper notebook at his side. Even in the computerized world, where everything had its digital expression, he still found something about a good pen and clean white paper to be comforting.
“Any luck, professor?” She came in with a pot of fresh coffee and warmed his mug.
“Thank you—but no, I haven’t come across anything significant yet. As well documented as this campaign was, the waters can still be fairly murky.”
“Paul’s on to something,” she said, telling him about the new tack in their thinking about Resonance and simply working up a scenario by way of offensive operations.
“That’s our war game designer,” said Robert. “I thought Paul would love this mission the minute I found the trail on Kasim al Khafi ended at that raid on Bardia by the Royal Navy Commandos. Finding that service log from the section leader, Thomason, was a stroke of luck I suppose, but suddenly the whole affair is wrapped up in the battle for the North Atlantic. So what is Paul planning?”
“He’s thick as thieves with Kelly on the main console. They must be planning a mission scenario on how we can get key information back safely. I’m going down to wardrobe to see about costuming in the event we need to send anyone through.”
“Well remember, I’m size nine and a half. Find me some decent shoes this time, will you?”
He went back to his computer screen, grateful at least that they had some sense of direction now, and the burden was off his shoulders for a moment. He had carried the ball from the moment he shifted back to meet with Abbot Emmerich at the Abbey of St. Martin, and right on through the discovery of this new plot involving Palma. After digging up Kasim al Khafi and his terrorist son Kenan Tanzir, he somehow felt that he now had to work up some scenario to get rid of them. Yet modern military history was not his forte, and he was thankful that Paul was well engaged.