in a confluence effect that rendered even boundaries in time and space irrelevant?
He needed time to think and plan. And in order to do that, he needed money and a place to stay. Once again. it came down to bare essentials. Survival.
Fortunately, he did not look too out of place in the simple green transit fatigues he had picked up at Pendleton Base before he had clocked out again, but he needed other clothing and, most of all, he needed money. And when a soldier was trapped behind enemy lines. he had to improvise as best he could.
He picked out a likely looking prospect and mugged him in the subway, knocking him out with a sharp chop to the neck. It was a quick and efficient hit-and-run. The robbery netted him a brown eel skin wallet containing a driver's license, some credit cards, and forty-five dollars in cash. Not very much, but it would do for a start. He went up the stairs to Pennsylvania Station, sat down at a bar, drank some coffee and perused a copy of the Daily News. After a while, he went to the men's room, locked himself up inside a stall and clocked ahead several hours. Then he left the stall, walked out of the bar with the paper folded up under his arm and headed toward the Off Track Betting counter he had spotted earlier inside the station. He spent a short while there, noted the racing results, went back to the bar, entered the men's room once again and clocked back once more. Then he returned to the Off Track Betting counter and placed several bets. Needless to say, he did very well indeed.
His winnings enabled him to purchase a new suit of clothes and have a satisfying dinner in a Chinese restaurant. He then found a different Off Track Betting parlour and repeated the performance, placing larger bets and spreading them out more.
He slept that night in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, using the name but not the credit cards of the man whose wallet he had stolen. The next morning, he had room service send up breakfast and a copy of The Wall Street Journal.
He spent several hours looking over the stock market and commodities reports, then without leaving the room, clocked ahead one day and went out to pick up that day's copy of The Wall Street Journal, taking care to note the time so that he could avoid encountering himself the following morning. Having picked up the paper, he clocked back to the previous day and spent another several hours in the hotel comparing the performance of the various stocks and commodities. Then he took a cab to a brokerage firm on Wall Street and opened an account with twenty thousand dollars in cash, using the identity of his mugging victim, Charles Forman.
He then took a cab to the public library and spent the rest of the day reading historical survey texts. It was not as efficient as computer learning, but it would do for a beginning.
He returned to the hotel that evening, had dinner, went to bed, and left a wake-up call for seven A.M., early enough to ensure that he could leave the room before he was due to clock in from the previous day. He had breakfast in a coffee shop, then went back and checked out of the hotel. By now, Charles Forman would probably have reported the theft of his credit cards and cash, and if he had the time, he might possibly have gotten around to getting a new driver's license, but it would never have occurred to him that someone might use his name and social security number to open an account. He'd be more concerned with fraudulent charges on his credit cards, which Hunter had avoided doing, merely using the cards to reinforce his position, by allowing the broker to catch a glimpse of the gold American Express card while he was filling out his account application.
By the end of the week, Hunter was living in a suite at the Plaza' Hotel. He had purchased a conservative wardrobe at Brooks Brothers (for visits to the brokerage firm and lunch at '21') and somewhat sleeker, more fashionable suit'! at Bamey's (for the track and dinners in little Italy). He made daily trips to Belmont Park by rented limousine, increasing his cash flow dramatically each time and attracting attention with his unerring instinct and ostentatious style. Some people started to approach him and he made his choices carefully after some initial probing conversation on both sides. He traded tips for information. And for certain services and introductions.
His disbelieving stockbroker had about a million questions, but wouldn't dare to ask-a single one so long as he could make the same investments as his apparently clairvoyant client. The broker didn't want to scare him off. And in order to be helpful, the broker fell all over himself when Hunter requested a few favours, such as certain introductions to certain types of people.
By the end of the month, Hunter had become a multimillionaire with bank accounts in Switzerland and the Bahamas. He had also established a number of different identities for himself, each fully documented and backed up by impeccably forged credentials, enabling him to drop the identity of his mugging victim, leaving the unfortunate Mr. Forman with an interesting tax problem. Hunter was soon on a first name basis with some of the most influential citizens of New York City. Miami and Geneva. as well as some of the most powerful figures in organised crime. He was moving fast. establishing connections, putting out feelers, making inroads.
Surviving. Doing business. And, as the old saying went, sooner or later, everyone does business with everyone. Though Hunter didn't know it, through one of his connections, he had started doing business with the Network.
'What do you mean, you lost him? How the devil could you lose him? Explain yourself!'
The officer in the black beret and combat fatigues stood stiffly at attention atop the mahogany writing table, all six and a half inches of him. His fatigues were crisply pressed and his combat boots were spit shined to a glass- smooth gloss. He looked like a toy soldier, except that this toy soldier was alive.
'It wasn't anything we could have foreseen, sir,' he said, his voice as formally correct as his stiff, military bearing. 'The mission plan was followed to the letter.
Gulliver was released in a manner that allowed him to think he had escaped. We tracked him until he returned to England and then the assault team was clocked out to make the strike. It turned out that Gulliver was not alone at the time of the engagement, a contingency we had prepared for, but there was no way we could have prepared for the target employing a warp disc to escape, sir.'
'He did what?'
The officer winced from the volume of the full-sized voice.
'Used a warp disc to escape, sir.'
'Gulliver? Impossible! Where the hell would he obtain a warp disc? And how would he know how to use one?'
'As I've already stated, sir,' the Lilliputian officer continued, Gulliver was not alone. The advance scouts clocked in first, according to the mission plan, and they established that there was another man with Gulliver. The mission plan called for them to wail until the target was alone before calling in the strike. However, the scouts were able to establish that the man Gulliver was with was a Temporal
Observer and they decided to go ahead and call in the strike. '
'An Observer? Are you sure? How did they know?'
'Gulliver was apparently suffering from a hangover. The man gave him some aspirin. The scouts also observed that he was writing a report.
In shorthand, with a ballpoint pen. '
'Go on,'
'Based on what they saw, the scouts called in the strike and the field commander made the decision to go in. Because the Observer was deemed the greater threat, he was designated the priority target. The intention was to take him out quickly and then take care of Gulliver, but the man was a good soldier. He kept his cool under fire and used his own body to shield Gulliver while he put the warp disc on him and clocked him out. The transition co- ordinates must have been pre-set; he didn't have time to reprogram the disc. The Observer could have escaped himself, but Gulliver had all the information. It was an unexpected move, although a tactically sound one, assuming you don't mind committing suicide.'
'What did they do with the body?'
'The field' commander determined that with the target clocked out, presumably back to the Observer's base, a Search and Retrieve team could be coming through at any time, so they left the body, clocked out the dead and wounded and got the hell out of there. With Gulliver clocked ahead to tell them what happened, destroying the body would have been pointless in any case.
And too time consuming. The risk was deemed unjustifiable. '
'Unjustifiable, indeed! All they did was leave behind incontrovertible evidence to confirm what happened. '
'Even using lasers to dismember the corpse, disposing of a fun-sized human body would have taken hours,' said the colonel. 'And with Gulliver in their hands, they'd already know what happened.'
