“I can only imagine what the U.S. response will be to this if we fail to get it fixed. There was a desperate look in that fellow’s eyes—Mr. Graves, I mean. Whatever happened must have been terrible.”
“Let’s hope we never have to know about it. So… It all comes down to an ambush by Lawrence and his Arab freedom fighters at Kilometer 172. I guess it’s time for us to start writing our will across the sky in stars. We had better get busy.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll see if I can narrow that location down. It might help us figure out who this Masaui could be.” He began requesting period map searches from the cartography database while Maeve jumped on a third terminal and started calling up images of typical fashion and dress in the year 1917.
Time passed almost unnoticeably as they worked, each one hot on the trail of some key element that would be needed for the planned mission. It would normally take weeks or months to gather and refine this ‘Approach Data’ as it was called. They had taken five weeks to plan the Globe Theatre mission to 1612. Now, without the luxury of that time, they focused on rooting out the essentials for the mission: where should they go, and what role should they assume in the time they were entering? Beyond that, the problem of how to identify the key moment in time, the Pushpoint, loomed as an ever more daunting obstacle.
Nordhausen was the first to narrow in on some useful data. He was still reading from his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, using a convenient date indexing scheme Lawrence had appended to the pages to aid his search. Soon he managed to locate a reference to Kilometer 172 in the narrative. “Here it is,” he said jubilantly. “It’s on the rail line between Deraa and Amman. Deraa was the lynch pin, of course. The rail line split just above that point and one spur headed for the coast at Haifa while the main line reached up to Damascus and beyond. South of Deraa, the line ran all the way down through the Hejaz region to Medina in Arabia. Here’s a good map, Paul.”
Paul left his terminal and scooted over to Nordhausen’s where the amber gold of a map file was displayed. It was labeled ‘SKETCH MAP: Adapted from War Office material as embodied in G.S.G.S. 2957, by permission of Controller, H.M.S.O.’ Nordhausen was reading quickly through the narrative of his Seven Pillars.
“Apparently this attack was a bit of a fluke,” he said. “Look here, the date is very precise: November 10, 1917. The odd thing is this: when they set out on the operation that resulted in this raid, they had no intention of blowing up a train. They were after a bridge in the Yarmuk Valley, but they were discovered as they approached it and had to flee. After some argument the idea for an attack on the railway grew out of their frustration—almost on the spur of the moment. They seized upon it to salve their failure at the bridge, and it resulted in the destruction of a heavily laden troop train that was heading north from Amman.”
Dorland thought about the situation. “Any reference to Masaui in the narrative?”
“Not a hint,” said Nordhausen, “but he had to be there, on one side or another.”
“Well, that’s an Arabic name,” Maeve added. “Perhaps he was one of Lawrence’s men.”
“A likely conclusion,” said Nordhausen, “but I’m afraid there were thousands of Arab soldiers in the Turkish Army—whole divisions of them, in fact. They were broken up and had their battalions scattered through the ranks after the Arab rebellion began. Masaui could have been a Turkish soldier on the train as well. This is maddening! Even if we solve this first riddle, and figure out which side Masaui was fighting on, how will we find him? Suppose he’s on the train. First we have to find some way of blending in with the Turks. If we somehow manage that, then what will we do: go from train car to train car and call the man’s name?”
“Oh, don’t be foolish.” Maeve chided the professor as she leaned in to take a look at the map. “There could be a way to inquire about the man discreetly. Suppose I go as a foreign nurse, and the two of you get bandaged up as wounded soldiers.”
“But we don’t speak the language!” Nordhausen was being difficult.
“Well, I can manage a bit of German, Robert. Weren’t the Turks allies of the Germans? We could make up a list and put Masaui’s name on it as if he was being selected out of the ranks for some inoculation.”
The professor thought for a moment. “It will be risky. Paul and I will have to play some ruse to keep our mouths shut.”
“I’ll just bandage up your throats or something,” Maeve sketched out her idea. “We can make it look like you’re simply too sick to talk—victims of a gas attack.”
“Good work, Maeve,” said Paul. “But we’re assuming Masaui is on the train. What if he’s with Lawrence?”
“For that matter what if he’s not even there?” Nordhausen folded his arms. “Suppose he’s at Amman selling tickets, or at the terminal destination of the train waiting to meet someone?”
The real difficulty of their situation was growing in Paul’s mind. He wracked his brain with the dizzying possibilities that flowed in from a thousand directions to this one moment. It would be absolutely impossible for them to consider all the contingencies. They had to choose something and get a focus on their mission. It was already well past midnight! The more he thought about the situation the more the weight of impossibility seemed to settle on him. Then the floorboard creaked in his mind and his thinking fell through to an obvious conclusion.
“Wait a minute!” He nearly shouted. “The visitor must have known we would encounter all this potential variation in our target search. We have to rely on the clues in the note. They must have done the research, and the time and location are very specific. What was the outcome? What happened, Robert?”
Nordhausen read a passage from his Seven Pillars. “Here it is,” he quoted: “When the engine was squarely over the mine I pushed down the handle of the exploder. The resulting explosion was even more effective than we had hoped. The old engine was lifted off the tracks, and her boilers were rent open in a cascade of steam and flying metal… Looks like they were successful.” He scanned forward through the narrative. “Many of the cars derailed, and the fire triggered a small ammunition cache causing further havoc. The Arabs attacked and butchered quite a few of the enemy in the confusion before they melted away.”
Dorland rubbed his forehead. “That has to be the event,” he said. “The train was destroyed, and Masaui’s fate was sealed in the resulting chaos. It doesn’t matter who’s side he’s on.”
“Are you suggesting he gets killed in the raid?”
“Most likely, but that doesn’t matter. Whether he lives or dies is not our concern. If they planned this correctly, and I have to believe they did, then the event we need to alter has to be something obvious in the milieu they’ve pointed us to.”
“But I thought you said it would be something utterly insignificant.” Nordhausen was confused.
“Yes,” Paul explained. “It will be. All the Meridians flow into this one Nexus Point. They knew it would be impossible for us to test every time line that feeds this point for a possible intervention. Yet, we have to do something to change the obvious outcome of this time milieu. Whatever it is must be right there in front of us. Think! You’ve been pointing out how impossible it will be for us to interact with the people on the train, or within Lawrence’s camp, to find this man. They must have known that as well. So I reason that we don’t even attempt to find him. To me it looks like the destruction of the train is the key lever here. That’s what we have to prevent. If we change that outcome, then I believe the fate of Masaui will be altered as well. Don’t you see? We can’t possibly figure out what Masaui does, or fails to do, that eventually gives rise to the Palma Event. But I’m willing to stake everything on the chance that this is the lever we have to alter. That train must not be destroyed. Right Maeve?” He looked to Outcomes and Consequences for support.