“You don’t have to run out, Mr. Salisbury,” Paul said. “We’re leaving.”
With a nod to Amanda he turned and strode out the rear doors to the Syracuse University quad, Amanda right behind him. As the wooden doors swung shut behind them deVere heard Salisbury laughing softly and muttering, “The Mets in ‘69.”
“I told you,” Amanda hissed as they walked down the steps, “that he’d never believe us.”
“You told me?” he asked incredulously. He stopped and looked at her.
“I now realize,” deVere sighed, turning and continuing his descent, “that it wouldn’t have mattered who I married.”
Chapter 21
Lewis Ginter stepped into the phone booth and closed the louvered door. He dumped his pile of change onto the shelf, lifted the receiver, inserted a dime, and dialed zero. When the machine returned his coin, Lewis added it to the pile.
It had been over a month since he had left Paul and Amanda in Manchester and he had yet to contact them. It should be about 8:00 a.m. in New York, and if they were at the Waldorf, contact should be easy. If they weren’t there…
Lewis almost held his breath as he asked the desk clerk to connect him to Paul deVere’s room. The pause at the other end was maddening but Lewis sighed in relief when the phone began ringing. At least he’s registered there, he thought.
After eight rings, the desk clerk came back on and asked if he wished to leave a message.
He hesitated before asking, “Could you connect me to Amanda Hutch’s room please?”
After a pause the phone began ringing again. He was about to hang up when he heard her voice at the other end.
“Hello?” she said.
He sucked in his breath. “Amanda?”
“Lewis?” Her voice was crackly.
“It’s me. Where’s Paul?” he asked.
“He’s out getting the papers. We read them every morning. Lewis, where the hell have you been? Are you O.K.? Is Pamela with you?”
“I’m fine. Pamela is fine.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
He hesitated. He wished he had reached Paul. “Down south,” he said. “Near Dallas.”
“Texas?” she asked.
“Yeah, Dallas, Texas.”
“Is Pamela still with you?” she asked.
“In a way,” he answered.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Hey, you’re the history professor,” Ginter countered. “I’m staying in a colored motel. And I don’t mean the wall decor. Pamela is staying in one for white people a few miles away. We communicate by telephone and my motel doesn’t have a phone in the room, just cockroaches.”
There was a long pause. “I’m sorry,” Amanda said. She sounded genuinely apologetic. “Be careful.”
“Don’t worry, I have been.”
Lewis looked through the booth’s windows at the surrounding parking lot and scanned the cars coming and going. Nothing suspicious.
“Have you seen our friends?” Ginter asked, annoyed at how stilted this conversation was sounding.
“Friends?”
“Collinson or Pomeroy? Anyone seem not right at the hotel? Anyone following you? Anything not feeling right?”
“Neither one of us has seen anything that seems out of the ordinary, whatever that means,” Amanda said. “But you know, Lewis, neither one of us would know if someone was tailing us, we don’t have that kind of training. How about you?”
For a moment Lewis questioned his decision in leaving Paul and Amanda on their own. Maybe he should have risked circling back for them. If someone else were back here, they were sitting ducks. But whoever came back apparently didn’t want to harm them, at least not yet.
“I haven’t seen any sign of anyone, or anything suspicious.”
He told her about his efforts in New Orleans to discover whether Collinson or Pomeroy had been in contact with the anti-Castro faction.
“Anti-Castro?” Amanda asked. “What does that have to do with anything? I don’t remember them amounting to anything after the Bay of Pigs. And why were you in New Orleans?”
“Just a hunch,” he lied. “The anti-Castro thing is the biggest Cuban angle happening right now. And that’s in Louisiana. There was some sort of paramilitary camp for anti-Castro Cubans right outside of New Orleans that the feds raided a few weeks ago.”
Amanda seemed uninterested. “Lewis, even we weren’t planning on coming back here in 1963 so why would someone else have done that?”
The same thought had been bothering him. It all made no sense. He tried to change the subject, more from embarrassment than anything else.
“So, what are you working on?”
Amanda talked about their unsuccessful approach to Harrison Salisbury and their letter writing campaign.
“I really can’t blame him, can you?” Ginter asked. “I mean, what would you have said a year ago if someone had come up to you with this story?”
“We have another plan,” Amanda said. Ginter could sense the hesitation in her voice.
“Which is?” he demanded.
“We’re going to try to get in to see the President.”
“How?” he asked. “Even back then, I mean back now, security isn’t going to let you do that.”
“Paul and I are going to get Senator Thurmond to get us in to see the President.”
“Why would he do that?” Ginter asked.
Amanda explained the plan to get them into the Oval Office.
“Do you know how risky that is?” Ginter asked in amazement. “You might get arrested. If you do get in to see Kennedy why would he believe you any more than Salisbury did?”
“We’re thinking we can tell Kennedy about his girlfriend as proof we’re time travelers,” she said simply, but even from thousands of miles away Ginter could sense her own doubt.
“Unless you have something better?” she demanded.
He considered a moment. What difference did it make? he asked himself. Why the secrecy? No one seemed to be making any progress anyway.
“Maybe,” he said.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve been working on a plan involving a defector from Russia,” he said. “I’ve still got some stuff to do. It may work out O.K. I’m going down to Mexico. If it all works out I may be able to change some part of history. Then if it really works out I might get the guy to come back up to Dallas and I’ve got a plan involving Kennedy, maybe something that will convince him to change his mind on Cuba.”
Ginter paused. He suspected that Amanda thought that he sounded vague.
“O.K.,” was all she said. “Is Pamela involved in this? What is she doing?”
“I can’t involve her much,” he said. “I can’t even be seen with her without running the risk of getting rousted by the cops. I, I never really knew…” Ginter’s voice trailed off.
“I understand, Lewis,” Amanda said sympathetically. “So, she’s not going to Mexico with you?”
“She can’t. She’s got no identification to get back in the country. She’s O.K. checking into motels but not crossing borders.”
“When we will hear from you again?” Amanda asked.
“When I get back. Stay at the Waldorf,” he instructed her.
“Lewis,” she asked, “did you end up with Kennedy’s itinerary?”
“I have it,” he answered.
He heard a sigh of relief from the other end. “I was afraid it had gotten lost,” she said. “Can you make another copy?”
“I will,” he promised. “I’ll send it to you at the Waldorf.” She gave him the address.
“And make sure to say ‘hi’ to Paul for me, will you?” Ginter asked before hanging up.
In New York Amanda rolled over on her bed and replaced the receiver. “Say ‘hi’ to Paul for me,” Lewis had said.