Time Travel in Rock: 1984, page 14
She scanned three stony faces. When she registered that none of us believed her, she sighed and released a little more of the truth.
“Okay. Everything I just said is accurate but… not perhaps the whole truth. Photography is my passion, but that is not the reason I was sent here. The ISD know who I am, and they do nothing except take my pesetas. Even the most ardent communist countries will always whore for hard currency. They watch me, and I allow myself to be seen. We do the same with ISD assets in Madrid.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Because we are professionals.”
“So you’re a–”
Zudge never completed her sentence. Terry grabbed her hand and gripped hard. His face was trembling, sweating. “It is… confusing, how I should advise, correct, or sabotage your efforts, ma’am. But I feel obliged to point out that this woman represents the interests of her state, and Spain is ruled by a fascist regime.”
He released his grip.
“That means nothing,” I said. “As far as you’re concerned, Terry, anyone who fails to say fifty Hail Marx’s before breakfast is a screaming fascist. Let me tell you, I’ve met Hitler in the flesh, and this lady looks nothing like him.”
“It’s no laughing matter, Stiletto.” Terry sounded angrier than I’d ever heard him. “The Spanish state is openly fascist. There are many regimes that decline to wear the label of fascism and yet adopt much of its ideology: Taiwan, Argentina, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, even some would say modern-day China. But in 2029, the last openly fascist state is Spain.”
The Spaniard wrinkled her pretty face. Her only answer was a derisive snort.
“You don’t deny it, then.” Terry felt that he’d won this debate, but the woman didn’t give off a defeated vibe.
“Why would I waste time denying the ranting of a delusional idiot?” she said. “Our country follows the Progressive March Movement.”
“That’s right, darling. Another name for the fascists.”
Terry’s darling rolled her dark eyes. “The Falange movement died out in the 1980s. El Caudillo, Generalissimo Franco, abandoned fascist ideology in favor of technocratic pragmatism. After his death, the technocrats eventually lost their way. But now we have a renewed dynamic vision with the Progressive March Movement.”
“Let me ask you a question,” Terry retorted. I rolled my eyes while Terry carefully marshaled the right words. Somehow, I’d stumbled into the ideological equivalent of a gladiatorial arena. Terry fancied himself as the guy armed with trident, loin cloth, and net. He was picking his moment to throw. “What would happen to a Spaniard if they criticized their government?”
His opponent narrowed her eyes, catlike. She wasn’t a gladiator, I decided. She was a lithe and deadly panther. “They would be advised to stop,” she said contemptuously. “They may be offered advice and correction. Continued public criticism will eventually lead to a fine. If the fine wasn’t enough, it would eventually lead to imprisonment.”
“Torture? Execution?”
“No. Executions are reserved for the most heinous of treasons. It is very rare.”
Having evaded Terry’s net, the Spanish panther counter- attacked. “And you think your society is so perfect? If you criticize the ruling party in England, you will be interrogated, beaten, your family punished. You will be sent to a labor battalion, prison, or lie face down in a shallow grave with a bullet in the back of the neck.”
“Bored now!” I declared and slapped my hand on the table. “This is not a helpful conversation to have in public.”
I grabbed them both by the wrist and added in a whisper, “But for the record” – I nodded at Terry – “I’m with him on this. I wasn’t a fan of National Socialism, and I don’t like your thing either, lady.”
“Like I care,” she replied, pulling her arm away. “But your allegedly tamed ISD dog is with me on this. You’re amateurs. If you flush a tag, they will withdraw. For a while – and then try again. But if you confront the tag, there’s a good chance someone will be killed. And then more people will be killed in retaliation. And then more deaths in retaliation for that. There are rules in this game. Learn them!”
Tag. I remembered that one. Zudge and I had been reading Cold War espionage novels and a ‘tag’ was a member of the home team who followed an enemy spy.
“It has been… informative.” She picked up a stylish velvet green handbag and smiled. “Thank you, Stiletto Caldwell… and your menagerie of followers.”
“Interesting binta,” I mused as I watched her leave.
“Stiletto,” Zudge said. “How did she know your name? Did you tell her?”
I frowned. “No.” I turned to Terry. “He did.”
“I only said your first name.”
“Pretty and smart.” I gave a satisfied rumble. “Dangerous too. I want to see more of her.”
“We all do,” said Zudge. “Give me your dragonfly. I’ll follow her.”
Suddenly she stiffened weirdly. “On second thoughts,” she said coldly. “You do it.”
Confused, I nonetheless walked out into the covered market that wasn’t and released my spy drone.
A minute or so later, as I was returning to the Star of Progress, I was surprised to see my two companions walking out.
“Watch the feed from my dragonfly,” Zudge said.
I did. It was on a workbench being pulled apart by a technician. He even wore a white lab coat.
“For the Devil!”
“I re-ran the footage,” she said. “While we’ve been here, a cleaning team went to work on the street level façade of the Ministry of Planning. They spotted the drone and opened it up.”
I saw a scalpel appear, impossibly large in the camera feed. Then the device went dead.
In this era, tiny electronic devices had miniscule signal ranges, which meant the Ministry would soon be flooded with people asking difficult questions. Our gelled targets would never betray us, but our guy with the satchel, Neil Francis, would squeal every last detail about us and then point out our faces in his beloved Ministry’s security camera footage.
“There’s nothing for it,” I said to Zudge. “I’ll have to dye my hair blond, and you need to grow a beard.”
“I’ll get right on it,” she replied. She put her arm around me and stood on tiptoe to whisper into my ear. “You’re thinking about her, aren’t you? The Spanish girl?”
I nodded. “Her name,” I muttered.
“What?”
“I really want to know her name.”
Chapter 27
“I hate you, Stiletto. You do know that, right?”
I chuckled. “You and a thousand others before you. Get to the back of the line. Any particular reason?”
“Because you make me feel like the sensible one.”
I shrugged. “Isn’t that your role?”
While Zudge gathered her words, I watched the slippery señorita slithering through the crowded streets of ILEZ London in the early evening, her newly blonde bob swaying as she slipped between the crush of bodies. I was tracking her from half a kilometer up, peering through the camera on our dragonfly drone as it hovered above the city.
“Sometimes we take it in turns to be dumb together,” Zudge said. “Or smart. But mostly we each take one role and balance each other out.”
I took one last look at the Spaniard, remembering the way her long black hair had framed her face during our last run-in at the Star of Progress. Learning it was a wig had disappointed me. With an aggrieved sigh, I reluctantly gave Zudge my full attention because I hadn’t a clue where she was headed with this.
She squeezed my shoulder – the signal. I palmed the little device showing the dragonfly’s feed and allowed Zudge to settle into a lover’s embrace, just in time for two young women to stroll into our little side street, office workers headed home perhaps. One gave a giggle once she was safely past us. Probably wished she was in Zudge’s shoes.
Our situation was not a good one. When our first spycam had been discovered, it took no time at all for it to end up in a lab, and that meant someone thought it significant. If the ISD put any effort into finding out where that electronic dragonfly had come from, the trail would eventually lead to our rooms above the bakery in Watling Street. We didn’t dare go back. We were walking the streets of London until we either found something or were forced to return to the Kennel.
Or we were discovered, tortured, and killed.
For the moment, that danger was too academic to make my heart race, which meant the concerns that crowded my thoughts were my sore feet and stiff back.
“We’ve been discovered,” Zudge whispered.
“I know.”
“We’re deep in hostile territory and all you want to do is chase a woman of mystery. I don’t know what we should be doing, but it isn’t this.”
“I have a hunch,” I told her. And it was true. I just didn’t know why.
“Is that all you’ve got?” With the girls having safely passed, she pulled away and I could see from her face that she wasn’t angry. She was worried. “Dammit, Stiletto. I sound like your nagging mother.”
“We’re partners, Zudge. Trust me.”
The spycam showed the Spaniard vanishing down a side street, the drone’s camera just catching the swish of blonde as she slipped out of view.
“Oh, I trust you,” Zudge said. “But only when the blood supply is flowing to your brain. Let a beautiful woman get under your skin and it diverts someplace else. You instantly become a gibbering idiot.”
“I never gibber.”
I sent the cam swooping lower through the London skies, guiding it down the narrow side street, keeping it high enough to avoid detection. At the end of the alley, the girl emerged again, glancing around before stepping onto a busy thoroughfare. She weaved expertly through the crowds, head down, blonde hair obscuring her face. I tracked her progress on the drone’s monitor, struggling to keep sight of her in the press of bodies, but the tag I’d placed under her skin was still registering her even when my eyes weren’t.
“Damn, she’s good,” I muttered.
Then I reminded myself that so was I. Remember when I’d grabbed the spy’s wrist back at the bar? The subcutaneous RF tags Augustine put in our rucks were neat tech to use in more primitive time eras, but it takes finesse to stick them in without your target noticing.
I looked up from the scanner and grinned at my companion. “Hold on a moment. Becoming obsessive around a beautiful woman… isn’t that your thing, Zudgey?”
She pursed her lips in an angry silence.
I rubbed my chin like this blowka I’d seen rubbing a metal lamp in a children’s holo-flick called Aladdin. But instead of summoning a djinn with a wicked scimitar, I released the words that had been bubbling within me for weeks. “Face it, Zudge, we’re both in love with the same woman.”
She shook her head. “My Oxala is not the same as your Ox.”
“Not quite. But damn close, and you knew all that back in 2362. You could have stayed in your timeline, but you came back with my Ox. I like you Zudge. We make a good team. That’s why we need to talk about the Ox.”
She pointed at the monitor. “Don’t lose her.”
The Spanish woman slipped down another alley. Cursing under my breath, I swooped the drone lower, speeding to the alley entrance.
“You’re right,” Zudge said. “We should talk. Now, if you really must. But can it wait until we save history?”
Anger erupted in me. All this talking! Talking never solved anything. You needed action for that. This is what I’d been afraid of. I’d met some good people in the Time Dogz and now they were taming me.
Pocketing the monitor, I grabbed Zudge, more energetically than I had intended. With my hands flat on the sides of her jaw, I tilted her head up so we were looking straight into each other’s eyes.
“Zudge, I swear to you. This Spaniard being so sweet looking is nothing to do with my hunch. We should both trust my instincts more. They’ve served me well.”
“So have mine.” She snatched my ears, drove the nails of her thumbs deep into the lobes – which didn’t hurt much – then gave them a merciless twist – which hurt like hell.
I yelped like a slapped puppy. She released me before I could push her away.
I muttered, “Vicious little spitfire.”
She grinned, pleased with her epithet.
I fished the monitor out, hiding a grin of my own. Me and Zudge had a few wrinkles to iron out, but I’d far rather be with her than a humorless automaton like DeSalle.
My smile vanished. I’d lost visual again. I sent the dragonfly in circles, but other than two men moving smartly away, the alley stood resolutely empty, nothing but overflowing dumpsters, fire escapes, and a/c units.
“What the hell?” I slapped the nearest building in frustration. “How could she just vanish like that?”
Zudge studied the drone footage, eyes narrowed. “There.” She tapped the screen. Near the end of the alley was a manhole cover. The patina of dirt it lay in looked disturbed.
“She went underground,” Zudge said.
“Yeah, I figured.”
“Through the sewers. You follow her underground, Stillo. Man’s job.”
“What? Says who, you sexist minx? You’re tiny, Zudge. And you’ve got the legs of a hairless guinea pig. You’ll fit perfectly in the sewers.”
“Ah, but I’m far too tiny to lift a heavy cover from underneath. That’s a strong man’s job.”
“Like hell it is!”
“And a coating of sewage is going to look less unnatural on an ugly brute like you than on an attractive binta like me.”
She had me there.
* * *
The metal slab thudded into place, shutting off Zudge and the outside world and plunging me into total darkness. Instantly I felt the sewer walls close in on me, the thick stench of the place crushing my lungs. With one hand on the rusting ladder, I fished in my jacket pocket for my flashlight, but stopped when I heard movement.
When I probed the tunnels with my enhanced hearing, I discerned erratic flows of water, splashing, and the movement of tiny feet.
I switched on my flashlight. Its beam caught dark shapes scurrying away, rats disturbed by my arrival. Charmed, I’m sure.
“Too tiny to lift a little metal lid,” I grumbled as I dropped, landing with a splash in ankle-deep muck.
I swept the light around, trying to make sense of my surroundings. I was at a junction point with two tunnels at waist height feeding into a deeper channel. The stink was the worst part. The sight, surprisingly, was… Well, I had to admit the place was well constructed. The brickwork was perfect, the courses for each section of the junction laid at different angles and those that arched overhead were still bright red. I do like a good bit of brickwork and this place had been made by craftsmen with pride in what they did. Far better than most of the buildings I’d encountered in the EPDR.
Where the sewer tributaries fed into the main pipe, the floor deepened and the edges where the walls met were rounded off with thick layers of gray brick, like the sturdy bases of towers in a medieval castle. Opaque water pooled in this junction, but beyond was only the tiniest of flow seeping through a layer of gray sludge several inches thick.
And in that sludge, a single set of footprints led away.
“Gotcha!”
I hurried along the freshly laid trail, but not moving too fast – not after I’d learned the hard way how slippery sewer slime could be and faceplanted in the human manure.
The footprints wound on, leading me deeper into the putrid maze.
Ahead, I heard voices echoing down a side tunnel. I doused my flashlight and crept forward, peering around the corner.
Two men in coveralls stood by an open junction box mounted on the wall, complaining about fatbergs backed up in the sewers. Why they were moaning about that wasn’t clear because their attention was on the cables mounted on the wall that fed into the box. It looked electrical to me.
I slipped past the maintenance workers and continued on, making surprisingly good progress, despite keeping my flashlight doused for fear that it would alert anyone to my presence. I found the powerful lamps the workmen were using sufficient to follow the trail. I quickened my pace, senses tingling (other than my nose which had numbed in protest). I was closing in on her, I could feel it.
Just then, my earpiece crackled to life. “Stiletto!” Zudge’s voice was sharp and urgent. “ISD agents incoming, headed your way underground. They’re looking for a female target. It’s got to be our Spanish girl.”
“How did they track her?”
“Old school. Photos of her, asking passersby if they’ve seen her. Someone spotted her go into the side street, the ISD saw the sewer cover and put two and two together.”
“Are you safe?”
“Err… yeah.” She sounded surprised that I’d asked. “I’m a safe distance from them and I’m using the dragonfly.”
“Then how are you tracking the Spaniard?”
“She’s still in range. Shit! She was. Don’t worry, I’ll reacquire her.”
“Leave the hard work to me, Zudgey. I’m following her tracks. Follow me and you’ll find her.”
“Roger.”
My pulse spiked. No time to waste now. I switched my flashlight back on and broke into a cautious run. I was going to catch her before the ISD did. The game was on.
A few minutes later, Zudge announced that she’d tracked our target down to a service yard. “I saw movement, though,” she admitted. “I think I spooked someone.”
“What? A tiny little thing like you?”
“Remember the ears, Caldwell,” she growled. “I won’t be so gentle next time.”
I laughed.
“Be careful,” she warned. “You’re almost on top of her.”
I turned a corner into another junction like the one where I’d entered the sewers. Again, the water was deeper at the confluence of sewage channels and the footprints disappeared. They did not reappear in any of the tunnels leading away.
