Rebel in Time

'Any luck?' he asked.

'A lot,' Troy said. 'McCulloch stole the original newspaper record, or at least someone did. But I got hold of a duplicate — here's a copy. With the exact date,'

'A drink?' Roxanne asked, while Kleiman read the clipping. She passed it over. 'Bob caught me before I left for the night, told me what you two had found out. He thinks that you're a better detective than Dick Tracy.'

'I am. Thanks, just what I needed.' Troy drank deep. 'It was just a matter of persistence. McCulloch left a trail — and we followed it.'

'That's easy to say now. But none of this would have been discovered if you hadn't been here. Aside from the McCulloch matter, what you have found out will have the most tremendous impact on our work. I suppose we would have eventually worked out the reverse tau, but we hadn't even scheduled experiments in that direction. What we have here is a whole new ball game. Thanks to you.'

'Please — I'll get a swollen head. I'm glad that this has helped you in your work, but I still have my own to do. McCulloch is a thief and a murderer and I am staying with this until I find him.'

Kleiman handed the copy of the newspaper article to Roxanne. 'Not much chance of that if your quarry has slipped away through time. If he's done that — forget it.'

'Why?'

'Well, for one good reason, if he went back more than fifty years, why then he is surely dead by now and the case is closed.'

'What if he went back only a few years, taking the gold with him? If he did that, why then, he is still out there somewhere. If he is — then I intend to find him. Therefore my next question, the important one. If he did use the machine to move back in time — can you find out exactly how far he went? Do you think that the last big experiment you found in the record, that this was really him?'

'Don't know. I got sidetracked after you left and didn't work out the figures. This whole breakthrough became so important that the reason for the entire investigation vanished from my pointed head. Sorry. I'll get onto it.'

'Finish your drink first,' Roxanne said. 'What's done is done. Part of history. It will wait.'

'True enough,' Troy said. 'But I would still like to know the date. It might reveal the motive.'

'I gave the motive to you, remember?' Kleiman said. 'Shlep that gold back in time, invest it, pop back to the present, then walk around to the bank and collect it and you are an instant millionaire.'

'Wrong,' Roxanne said. 'You're forgetting the most important thing.'

'I am,' Kleiman agreed. 'It won't work, of course. Time travel is a one-way trip. You can go — but you can't get back. Maybe you could if you took all of Lab Nine with you. If you didn't do that, then you are just not going to return. But that still doesn't destroy my theory. Take that amount of gold back to nineteen-thirty, during the Depression when there were no liquid assets, and you would be a rich man. I bet that's what he did.'

Troy shook his head. 'It just doesn't ring true. The motive doesn't fit the man. As far as we can tell McCulloch had everything material that he wanted right here. So the simple explanation of going back in time to be wealthy, that doesn't fit. It doesn't explain the books that he read, or all of the research he did. And what about the stolen blueprints and the gun? He had something in mind, some sort of motive that we have yet to discover.'

'I'm with you now, Sherlock,' Kleiman agreed. 'Find the motive and you'll find the man. Therefore I put my rusty-trusty pocket calculator to work. I've still got the readings here. It could have been a man who was sent back. The mass of the object was ninety-five point four five kilos.'

'The colonel couldn't-have weighed that much,' Roxanne said.

'No,' Troy agreed. 'But that weight would be right if he were carrying a bag — along with a quarter of a million dollars' worth of gold.'

'Of course. Let's see what Bob comes up with.'

'I've got to make a correction first,' Kleiman muttered, working away at the keys. 'The arrival date was a good deal distant from the one that I predicted. So we put the difference into seconds, good enough for a rough estimate now, divide the difference into the time…'

They watched him in silence, each deep in thought. Roxanne Delcourt found it hard to even consider the colonel who had started all this, because the impact of the discovery was too great. The project that she had devoted so much time and energy to was opening out in new and exciting ways.

Troy could not forget McCulloch that easily. A killer. There was a very sick man locked away inside the smooth exterior, hidden so well that no one had ever suspected him. Could he be found and brought to justice? There was no telling. This entire matter was getting too deep.

'Got it,' Kleiman announced, waving the calculator over his head. 'Now this is not exact, since I have rounded out the figures to simplify the equation for the moment. But there can't be more than just a few days error, say a week at the outside, either way. Of that I am pretty sure…'

'Robert,' Roxanne broke in. 'Enough of the lecture. The date, if you please.'

'Yes, sorry. Allowing for the variations I just mentioned, the ninety-five kilogram-plus mass was sent back in time over one hundred and twenty-four years. So, Troy, you don't have to worry about finding Old Snarly any more. He's been long since dead and buried. But that still leaves the basic question.'

'I know,' Troy said. 'Motivation.'

'Absolutely correct. The question that lies behind everything. Why on earth did he want to leave the pleasures, pains and antibiotics of the twentieth century to go back to the year of our Lord, eighteen fifty-eight?'

Chapter 17

The stack of documents that made up the McCulloch file was very impressive. Assembled together they stood at least a foot high. Troy had transferred them all from the house on Massachusetts Avenue to the office in the security building at the lab, the one that had formerly been the colonel's. Now his. It was a far better place to study them, here where McCulloch himself had worked.

Colonel Wesley McCulloch, Wes to his friends. Troy settled himself behind the desk, pulled a ruled yellow pad towards him, and wrote Wes at the top. He wanted to get to know the man, to get inside his skin and really understand him. The clues he was looking for were somewhere in this stack of paper. If he studied them closely enough, learned what made the man really tick — then followed his trail through the documented history of his life — the reason for everything that had happened would surely emerge.

He broke for coffee at eleven o'clock, stretched and rubbed at the small of his back. It was tiring, just sitting there and leaning over the desk. But the yellow pad was filling up and a shadowy picture of the man was beginning to emerge. He hated to leave it. Bringing the coffee back to the office he stood and looked out of the window. Just as McCulloch must have stood and looked numberless times. He must learn to see with that man's eyes. Whatever he looked at now, he wanted to see it just as Wes McCulloch had seen it. A knock at the door cut through his thoughts. He turned about just as it opened.

'My name is Van Diver,' the uniformed man in the doorway said. 'Major Van Diver.'

He walked in and, over his shoulder, Troy could see a number of officers and noncoms in the outer office; then the door closed.

'May I ask just what the hell is going on?' Troy said.

The major nodded, his pink jowls flapping when he moved his head. He had thin blond hair and obviously artificial white teeth; his watery blue eyes blinked from behind steel-rimmed glasses. 'I'm relieving you,' he said. 'Here are the orders. Issued this morning at the Pentagon. Lieutenant…'

He lingered over this last word, a tight little cold smile on his lips — which opened slightly as his teeth peeked out between them, then slipped back. He must have had a badly fitting upper plate; he kept pushing it back and forth with his tongue. Troy ignored this disconcerting sight as he read through the official papers. They seemed very much in order. The wheels of the military were finally grinding on this case and he had been squeezed out. He handed back the orders.