his feelings. his experiences and his warped personality. They were surrogates of himself that he could send out against his father’s agents.
“Priest is right.” said Forrester. “We can’t overlook the possibility that Drakov might have been responsible for those Observers deaths. In which case, your covers will be blown the moment you arrive, because he knows you.”
“I can anticipate you. sir.” said Lucas. “I’d be against our going in for any cosmetic surgery on this mission. Either way, if it’s Drakov or the Network, our being recognized would help draw them into the open. And Scott shouldn’t be the only one to bear the risk.”
“All right.” said Forrester. “It’s your call. I want the three of you to report for mission programming immediately. And then take the rest of tonight to come up with a mission plan. I want you to present it to me by 0900 tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll have Operations select a backup team and I’ll alert Colonel Cooper to stand by with a Ranger strike team, just in case you encounter the S.O.G. in force.”
“He turned to Neilson.” And you get a good night’s sleep,” he said, “then clock back to Tombstone first thing in the morning. Make sure you arrive soon enough after your departure so that you won’t arouse any suspicion.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That will be all, people. Dismissed.”
As Neilson checked into some transient quarters to wash up and get some rest, the others proceeded down to Archives Section and the Mission Programming labs, where they reclined on contoured couches while the technicians pulled the necessary data files, accessed their cerebral implants and programmed them with all the information they would require on their mission, everything that was known about the time sector they would be departing to, as well as the pivotal events and characters in the scenario. They then repaired to the First Division Lounge to discuss their strategy and come up with a mission plan.
It was late, but the First Division Lounge was one place that never closed. It was about the size of a briefing room, with a long bar and round tables with comfortable chairs placed around the room. The entire far wall was one huge floor to ceiling window, looking out over the base from sixty stories up. The lounge did not have the ambience of a bar. There were no hanging ferns or potted plants, no pretentious decor, little in the way of decor at all, in fact. One wall was hung with a large plaque of the division insignia, a number one bisected by the symbol for infinity, which resembled a slightly stretched out, horizontal figure eight. Next to it was another large plaque, solid gold mounted on mahogany, a small replica of the Wall of honor downstairs in the lobby of the building. It listed the names of all those members of the First Division who had died in action. Another plaque had recently been added. It was the insignia of the Temporal Intelligence Agency, the symbol on it represented an infinitely repeating number and, as such, it had been an appropriate selection.
The resources of the T.I.A. indeed seemed infinite, as did the number of its personnel. Its budget had been staggering from the days of its inception and the highly classified nature of the work the agency performed was such that section chiefs had never needed to justify their budgetary requisitions or fully document their subsidiary personnel. Section chiefs often recruited from among the locals in their time sectors, none of whom, of course, knew whom they really worked for. And just as journalists zealously protected their sources and police officers carefully guarded their informers, so did the section chiefs of Temporal Intelligence protect their field agents and collaborators.
Until recently, there had been no way to obtain a complete and accurate listing of all the personnel the agency employed. It was impossible. The section chiefs would not cooperate. Even now, there was no way of knowing if they submitted complete lists or only partial ones, or even if the lists that they submitted were genuine or fabricated. Abuses had been flagrant and frequent. Upon assuming the directorship of the agency, Forrester had discovered that it was like an octopus that had lost count of its tentacles and had no real ability to control them.
Past directors had simply allowed the agency to operate in its own way, to run on its own inertia. And they had not overly concerned themselves with regulations. Though he was hardly a stickler for going by the book himself, Forrester did not work that way. He took firm charge of the agency and the section chiefs who ran their sectors like feudal kingdoms. He was determined to streamline the agency and mold it into a tight, well-disciplined, efficient unit, just as he had done when he had organized the First Division. To weed out the corruption, he had organized the agency’s own internal police force, the Internal Security Division, which had been headed by senior field agent Colonel Creed Steiger.
Forrester had known there were abuses. He had been aware of the corruption. But he had not been prepared for the incredible conspiracy he had uncovered when he found out about the Network. It was a secret agency within a secret agency. The Network made its own rules and was accountable to no one. Its only imperative was profit. The Network went beyond organized crime. It was like a multinational corporation whose influence transcended time. Forrester had been astonished to discover the extent of the Network’s operations. They were involved with organized crime in a large number of temporal sectors and they had extended their influence into politics, as well. The I.S.D. had uncovered Network involvement in large multinational conglomerates of the 20th century, in the 18th-century Moroccan slave trade, in piracy on the Spanish Main during the 1600s, and in diverse smuggling operations throughout the timeline. The potential for profit using time travel was simply staggering, and the resources the Network had amassed were impossible to calculate.
As Forrester had reported to his superiors, it was difficult enough trying to unravel the complicated financial structure of modern, 27th-century corporations. But even using all the considerable investigative resources at his command, it was impossible to trace complex and clandestine financial operations that cross the boundaries of time.
Profits skimmed from the revenues of the Roman Empire could be used to finance bootlegging and gambling operations during America’s Prohibition and the capital that was generated there could be invested on Wall Street in the bear markets of the 20th century, using the knowledge gained from time travel to pull off the ultimate in inside trading. Money skimmed from gambling casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Monte Carlo could be funneled into arms trade in Brussels and profits realized there could finance drug smuggling and prostitution rings operated under the cover of the Mafia. It was impossible to follow the trail of the money unless one or another of those operations were discovered and shut down, the participants taken into custody and interrogated. Even so, the closed cell system that the Network utilized insured that only small portions of its vast, illegal empire could be exposed. And then the trail simply ran out once again.
Unintimidated. Forester had set out to bust the Network and, in so doing, had incurred a price upon his head. Steiger, too, had a contract put out on him by the Network and, on his last mission, he had been assassinated, though he had managed to take his killer with him. Forester’s relentless pursuit of the Network had driven them more deeply underground and his only real hope of stopping them was to find their leaders, the people who would possess the records of all the Network branches and their operations. However, so far, only a few of the Network’s operations had been uncovered. Its leaders remained hidden and unknown.
As a result, the merging of the T.I.A. and the First Division had gone somewhat less than smoothly. There had been considerable resentment for the time commandos among the agents of Temporal Intelligence and the members of the First Division had reciprocated with distrust. For years, the agency had been a lot like a corrupt police division. Not everyone was on the pad, meaning that not everyone was actively involved with the Network, but many of those who weren’t involved had known about it and kept quiet. Indeed, there had been little else that they could do, considering the fact that the former agency director had been a Network man, himself.
Forester had instituted scanning procedures for all agency personnel in an effort to unmask those with Network connections and all the agents, even those who weren’t involved, resented it. Many resigned or transferred out. Others, significantly, simply disappeared. New personnel had been brought in to replace them and, eventually, things began to settle down. But it was significant that none of the old agents from the days before the two units had been merged were present in the First Division Lounge. The newer personnel had no background of camaraderie with the soldiers of the First Division. They, like the older agents, tended to socialize together. Consequently, when Delaney. Cross and Priest entered the lounge, they saw only a few other members of the First Division at the bar and lingering over their drinks at several tables. They nodded greetings to them and took a table of their own, near the back wall.
It was late and the sprawling base below them was all lit up. The glass wall gave a panoramic view of the base and the surrounding countryside. Off in the distance, they could see the lights of traffic on the interstate and,
