Ming Li preferred to go by the name Jasmine, which had been bestowed upon her by an old ship's captain who frequently came to Lin Tao's apothecary shop for a preparation to ease the pain of his arthritis. Jasmine was the scent she wore and most of Lin Tao's non-Chinese customers called her by that name. She was nineteen years old and very beautiful, with thick, jet black hair that hung down to her hips and a narrow, oval face. She was as slender as a bamboo stalk and her legs were long and exquisitely formed. She had long since learned what most men wanted from her, but she was not as vulnerable as she looked. Although few people knew it, her grandfather, for all his withered appearance, was a master of an ancient Oriental form of combat and he had taught it to his granddaughter. In China, he had once been an important man. It was for that reason they had left, booking passage on a freighter of the Blue Funnel Line. Lin Tao had become too important and too well known. And his age had made him vulnerable to ambitious younger men. He had started anew in London and in Limehouse; he had become a respected man in the Chinese community. A man of authority, A man whose granddaughter no one in the know would touch, because an insult to Ming Li would have meant death. Besides, Jasmine knew how to protect herself. And Jasmine was in love.
The man Jasmine was in love with lived upstairs in a small room above the apothecary shop. He helped her grandfather in the shop and he seemed to know a great deal about the apothecary's art, though his knowledge was of a different sort than Lin Tao's. They often spent long evenings in discussion over tea, sharing their respective knowledge. The man was secretive about his past, but Lin Tao understood that and he had instructed Jasmine not to bother him with questions. He respected his boarder's privacy. He also respected his wisdom. This man had come into the shop two months ago, looking for work. He had been penniless. At first, her grandfather meant to turn away this bearded stranger with the shabby clothes, but it quickly became apparent to him that this man had culture. He also possesed a great deal of unusual knowledge, though he would not say how he came by it. He had proper manners, unusual in an occidental, and he spoke the language of the mandarins as if he had been born in China. He also spoke a number of other languages with equal fluency, a definite advantage in a community of Chinese and Lascars and numerous other foreigners, many from the ships that called at the West India Docks. He said he was a doctor. When Jasmine was alone, she sometimes said his name out loud to herself, enjoying the sound of it. Morro. Dr. Morro.
In her imagination, she had created a romantic past for him, knowing nothing of his real history. He had once been an important man, a man of position, but something terrible had happened, some tragedy which had hurt him deeply, making him turn his back on everything he knew. He kept this secret hurt close to his heart, punishing himself for whatever it was that he had done. He was an older man, old enough to be her father, but Jasmine did not see him in that light. She wondered what it would be like to ease his hurt, to take it from him with her love. to help him find his way to a place of position in the English society as a respected physician, a surgeon perhaps, in one of
London's better hospitals with an office of his own in Harley Street and a fine home in
Grosvenor Square which she would share with him as his wife.
But, although Dr. Morro was always kind to her, his manner towards her was more that of an uncle than a potential lover. He did not look at her as other men did, with desire clearly written in his eyes. And he was often preoccupied, so that sometimes he did not hear her when she spoke to him and she had to raise her voice slightly to break through his train of thought. There were times when he would be sitting with her grandfather, drinking tea and talking quietly, and they would abruptly stop their conversation the moment she came in. Then they would resume it once again, as if casually, but Jasmine knew that they were no longer talking about the same thing. Her curiosity got the best of her and she started to eavesdrop on their conversations. She learned that Dr. Morro was looking for a man, a man he was certain had to be somewhere in London. An evil man. And Jasmine knew that this evil man had somehow been the cause of Dr. Morro's troubles. His name was Drakov. It was not an easy name for her to say. Nikolai Drakov.
The Hotel Metropole on Northumberland Avenue was one of London's newer and more luxurious establishments. The soldiers of the Temporal Corps were gathered in the suite occupied by "Prof." Finn Delaney and his colleague, "Dr." Steiger, under their cover as visiting academic researchers from the States. Their "secretary," Miss Andre Cross, occupied an adjoining suite, since an unmarried woman sharing rooms with two single men would have been considered a highly improper arrangement in this time period. The adjoining suites had become a temporal command post and the frequent comings and goings by the Temporal Corps soldiers stationed at various points in the city were structured to maintain the fiction of an ongoing research project funded by an American foundation, ostensibly the writing of a series of textbooks concerning the social history of England.
Members of the cleaning and maintenance staf had brought in several writing tables and they regularly found the suites cluttered with piles of books and papers which they had been specifically instructed not to disturb. The "student assistants" and "copyists" who supported the research made a point of frequenting several of the local pubs, where they could he observed in animated discussion over pints of bitters, engrossed in arguments about the history of the city and its people. Often, other patrons of the pub would be consulted for their "local expertise" and the word was that these young researchers and their professors were not bad sorts, for Americans; they were polite and enthusiastic about their subject, attentive listeners, full of questions.
No one suspected that these eager young academicians were anything other than what they seemed. In fact, the live young men and two young women were all soldiers from the 27th century, trained by the Temporal Observer Corps and programmed through their cerebral implants with more information about Victorian England than the average citizen could ever hope to possess. They each maintained two separate cover identities, one as members of an academic research team from America and another as British subjects. It was a complicated temporal stakeout which had taken months to set up, but for soldiers of the Temporal Corps, time was a flexible commodity.
Pvt. Scott Neilson had secured a position as a laboratory assistant at the Metropolitan Police crime lab in New Scotland Yard. Cpl. Thomas Davis had found work with The Daily Telegraph as a reporter. Pvt. Richard Larson had obtained employment with The Police Gazette. Pvt. Paul Ransome was a clerk with the Bank of England. Sgt. Anthony Rizzo was at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. Sgt. Christine Brant had found a job as a barmaid at the Cafe Royal. a hotbed of society gossip, and Pvt. Linda Craven was employed at the Haymarket Theatre, where she was an assistant to the wardrobe mistress and in excellent position to monitor the theatre district. They were temporal agents on the trail of a cross-time terrorist, a man named Nikolai Drakov.
"The interview of H. G. Wells did not produce any leads to the whereabouts of Drakov," Steiger was saying as he paced slowly in the sitting room of the suite. The support team was seated all around him, listening attentively. "I am of the opinion that maintaining contact with Wells is too risky. Captain Delaney does not agree. Lieutenant Crass is inclined to support Captain Delaney, but she is in favor of only the most limited contact for the present. Before we go any further with this briefing, I want to hear some feedback on that question. Opinions?"