“Maybe he wasn’t one of their own people,” Morton suggested.“Maybe we were wrong about him. Maybe he was just an ordinary Roman whom theyused.”
“Then explain the cigarettes we found in his room,” said Maselli.“And the warp disc and the laser he had hidden away. No. Marcian or whoever hereally was had to be either T.I.A. or Underground. We know their TemporalIntelligence agents used contacts in the Underground from time to time. Hell,we’ve done the same thing. So either way, it doesn’t make any sense that theyshould kill him. There’s got to be a part of the picture we’re not seeing. In anycase, it probably doesn’t matter anymore. If they had any doubts about us before,they don’t after tonight. I think it’s time we considered aborting the mission.”
Hollister spun around to face him. “We’re not aborting anything,Maselli! We’ve come too far and we’re too close to give up now! Besides, we’restill holding all the cards. So long as we stick close to Caesar and Cleopatra.they can’t touch us. Not without risking a temporal disruption. They can bringin as many people as they want, an entire fucking army, and it still wouldn’tdo them any good. Caesar’s got to die on the fifteenth and he’s got to bemurdered by Brutus. Cassius. and the other conspirators. Anything they do tochange that would play right into our hands. Even if they figured out some wayto get the conspirators past A team and take out Caesar we’ve still gotCleopatra. And we can still shift our objective to Antony or Octavian. Theirhands are tied by their own temporal continuity. We don’t have to worry aboutthat. do we?”
“No. sir, I guess we don’t,” said Maselli.
“You’re damn right, we don’t. Just about anything we do herecan constitute a disruption, so we stick to the original objective. Morton, youget back to the rest of A team. If Caesar asks about the missing men, tell himthat you sent them out for wine or something and they were set upon and killed.That should make Caesar think twice about discounting the rumors of aconspiracy against him. Maselli. I want you to bring the rest of C team in.From now on, A team sticks to Caesar like glue. B and C teams remain right hereat baseops. If Cleopatra decides to go out, B team stays as close to her aspossible. She’s our insurance. In the meantime, we’ll double the guard here,just in case they’re crazy enough to try anything. And nobody, nobody, getsinside unless they’ve been cleared through me first. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any questions?”
“No, sir. “
“Right. Dismissed.”
They all snapped to attention. Morton and Maselli bothclocked out and the others went back to take their posts. Hollister took hiscigar out of his mouth, spat out a soggy piece of tobacco, and crushed the buttout in a small dish he was using as an ashtray.
Merely a minor setback, Hollister told himself. So they’dlost a few people. They had expected that. They had all volunteered for thisassignment. this mission from which there would be no return, and they had allexpected to die, if not in this temporal scenario, then in some other one they’dclock to after they were finished in Rome. The plan was simple. Cross over andresearch one temporal scenario early in their history as thoroughly aspossible. create a disruption that would have maximum impact, then immediatelyclock ahead to another time period and try to pull off another one. Keep doingthat, building on the domino effect of temporal disruptions in their timelineuntil they were either all killed or until there was no possible chance of theT.I.A. being able to reverse their actions. Then, thought Hollister, their oneremaining chance for survival would be to find some time period that was stillrelatively safe. While the damage escalated of its own momentum elsewhere inthe timestream.
Until tonight, everything had gone off like clockwork. Theone part he hadn’t liked was killing their own Observers, but there was noavoiding it. It had to be done. The poor bastards hadn’t known what was coming,of course. They had thought that they were just sent through to scout atemporal location for a baseops that would serve as a jumping-off point fortemporal assault missions further down the enemy timestream. But at least theywere able to make it quick and painless.
The rest of it was easy. Killing the real Apollodorus andtaking his place had proved no problem. Hollister had been carefully selectedfor the mission so that his body type would correspond with that of Apollodorusand the rest had been accomplished by cosmetic surgery. Cleopatra had neversuspected a thing. The rest of it, getting the others into place, had all beeneasy once he had assumed the identity of Apollodorus. Cleopatra trusted him.Even now. she was sleeping soundly in her bedroom, having had her bones jumpedby the Emperor of Rome, never suspecting that anything was amiss in her household.So long as she was there, she was the perfect hostage. There were guards outsideher door and all around the building and the grounds. Even on the roof. Theystill had a firm lock on the situation.
Hollister poured himself some wine and walked over to thewindow. The shutters were open to let in the cool night breeze. He looked outat the dark surface of the Tiber, and along its banks, toward the house whereTravers lived.
“Come ahead, you bastards.” he said softly. “Take your bestshot.”
The scene inside the library of the handsome Roman villa ofLucius Septimus was highly incongruous, to say the least. It was three o’clockin the morning. The library door was bolted, just in case any of the householdslaves felt restless in the middle of the night, heard voices in the libraryand decided to investigate. Travers had given strict orders to his householdslaves and they knew that certain rooms in the house were off limits to them,especially the library, but had they glanced inside, what they would have seenwould have astonished them.
Reinforcements had arrived. Finn Delaney, Creed Steiger. AndreCross. and Lucas Priest had all doffed their Roman tunics and were now dressedin black combat fatigues, with lasers holstered at their sides. They had sparecharge packs attached to their belts and combat bowies strapped to theircalves, above their boots. They wore extremely lightweight, black nylon.Balaclava-type hoods over their heads, leaving only the area from the mouth tothe eyebrows exposed, and those parts of their faces had been blackened withcamo stick. There were two dozen other people in the room, all similarlydressed for night fighting. Some of them, in addition to their laser pistols.were armed with night-scoped laser rifles, others with the ugly, mean-lookingdisruptors designed by Dr. Darkness, which looked incredibly innocuous for whatthey were. They resembled a cross between a small riot gun and an antiqueblunderbuss. but they were considerably more sophisticated than either, capableof firing a pulsed neutron beam on either tight focus beam or wide spray. Theirinventor sat comfortably in a carved ivory chair, observing the proceedings.
Lucas and Finn stood over a couple of hastily drawn interiormaps of both Cleopatra’s house and the imperial palace. Seeing Lucas had been ashock for those who had arrived, because they had all believed him dead. But itwas a mark of their professionalism that, stunned as they were, they simplyaccepted his remark that there would be time for explanations later. They wereall bursting with questions. but those questions would have to wait. They had amission to perform.
“All right, let’s go over it again,” said Lucas. “Bryant,you’ll take your team into the palace. Where are the guards’ quarters’?”
“Right here,” said Major Bryant. He pointed to the drawingwith his bowie knife. “There will probably be at least a couple of them postedin the corridor. We’re going to have to get in fast, clocking directly to the transitionpoints that Capt. Travers has supplied, which will put us here, here, here, andhere.”
“Good,” said Lucas. “Now remember, we don’t want any accidents,so be sure that everyone clocks in no closer than three feet away from eachother, Check your final coordinates now.”
He waited while they did so.
“All right. Caesar’s chambers are right here.” He pointed tothe diagram. “He sleeps there with his wife. Be sure to take out the guards athis door right away. And you’ve got to do it without making any noise. Now,these areas marked off here, with stars, are where Roman legionaries areusually stationed. Stay the hell away from them, whatever you do.”
“What if something goes wrong and we accidentally alert anyof the Roman guards?” asked Bryant.
“Make sure you don’t,” Delaney said, staring at him hard. “Ifyou have to, knock them out, but under no circumstances are any of them to befired upon. We can’t afford to raise an alarm in the palace. You’ve got onething going for you. None of the S.O.G. people will be wearing Roman uniforms.As part of their cover, they’ll be dressed as Egyptian soldiers. Either that,or they’ll be in their quarters, asleep. I doubt they’d expect us to tryanything this desperate. So with any luck, you’ll get most of them in bed. Ihope.”
“Yeah, so do I,” said Bryant.
“Use disruptors on all the bodies,” Lucas said. “I want themall to disappear without a trace.”
