Bob shrugged. ‘That is not information I have. I have, however, heard Maddy make that speculation.’
‘Is she right, do you think?’
‘This is possible. Waldstein campaigns against time travel. Waldstein also has access to the resources and technology to have set up this agency.’
‘But you’re saying it’s also Waldstein’s clones that were trying to kill us?’
‘Affirmative.’
She settled down beside him, letting her feet drift in the cool water. ‘So…’ She frowned. ‘Does that mean he wants us dead now? Why? If he went to all the trouble of recruiting me, Maddy and Liam… huh?’
‘I do not have that information. It is possible they were units that were acquired and programmed by some other organization.’
That made more sense to her. ‘I thought we were top secret, though. That no one else knows about us?’
‘It is possible, Saleena, that you are no longer a secret agency. Remember, Liam mentioned that man Locke?’
‘The Templar Knight?’
‘Correct. If he is to be believed, there are people who are aware of the existence of this agency. Whether they actually know for cert-’
She looked up at him, momentarily frozen. ‘Bob? Are you getting a
…?’
‘Particles. Yes.’ He returned her gaze. ‘It appears that Rashim was correct. Today is the day.’
CHAPTER 81
AD 54, outside Rome
Maddy and Liam watched the young man in silent dismay. Long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, sunglasses, a checked shirt and jeans. She turned round to see Rashim, staring out, wide-eyed and trembling.
‘My God! That’s you?’
He nodded, his fingers absently probing the sunken contours of his old face.
‘But he’s so young!’ whispered Liam.
‘Yeah,’ said Maddy, ‘he… he looks, like, twenty-something?’
‘Twenty-seven,’ said Rashim wistfully. ‘Twenty-seven.’
It didn’t make sense to Maddy. Rashim said the Exodus group had overshot by seventeen years; that he’d been stuck here for just seventeen years. That made him just forty-four? She turned and studied his feeble frame again. Not old age, that wasn’t why he looked like this… but abuse, malnutrition. Borderline starvation… and the sheer terror of being Caligula’s caged pet.
‘What’s that yellow thing?’ whispered Liam.
She saw something about a yard high, box-like, waddling through the tall grass behind the young man as he paced across the field, several metal rods under his arm.
‘It looks like…’ She giggled a little manically. ‘No, surely…’
‘What?’
Am Ilosing my freakin’ mind? Is that what’s happening?
‘Maddy? You all right there?’
‘Liam, it looks like…’ She shook her head. ‘It looks exactly like a stupid cartoon character I used to watch on cable.’
The old man’s face split with a nostalgic gummy smile. ‘ SpongeBubba! ’ he crooned softly. ‘My little SpongeBubba!’
They watched as the young Rashim stopped pacing across the field, pulled one of the iron rods out from under his arm and rammed it into the hard-baked earth. He squatted down beside it, as the SpongeBob-like robot joined him. She saw him talking to it, listening as its goofy plastic mouth flexed an answer, and then fiddling with something on the rod — a touch-screen or a keypad. The top of the rod began to blink green, like a navigation light.
From behind she heard the careful placing of approaching feet. She turned to see Bob and Sal quietly creeping forward under the low branches of the bush to join them.
‘Who’s that?’ hissed Sal.
‘Him.’ Liam nodded at the quivering older Rashim.
‘And SpongeBob SquarePants,’ added Maddy, not quite believing she was saying that.
‘So what do we do, Maddy?’ asked Liam.
‘I guess one of us has to go out there and talk to him. Let’s try not to totally freak him out, though. We don’t want him to run away.’ She looked at the others. Rashim looked like a wild, completely insane hermit. Bob, thoroughly intimidating, still spattered with dots of dried blood. And Liam and Sal were looking at her expectantly.
‘I guess it’s me, then.’
Rashim squatted down in front of the second translation array marker and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the cuff of his shirt. He was torn between getting this job done quickly, getting the hell back home to the twenty-first century… and taking the time to breathe in this clean air, to savour that rich blue sky untainted by pollutants. To take a moment and really drink in the sensation of actually existing in history; actually standing on a hilltop in Italy
… a mere fifty-four years after the birth of Christ!
He was entirely alone out here. His decision. The less mass to transmit, the higher the safety margin. It was just him and his lab unit. A five-minute errand into ancient history to deploy and test the translation array markers. That’s all.
He kept looking anxiously over his shoulder, for some reason half expecting an entire Roman legion to descend on him at any moment with horns blaring. Silly really, he noted, the cliches one associates with well- branded history.
‘Give me the reference sequence again, will you? I need to check it offsets correctly.’
‘Righto, skippa!’ SpongeBubba said enthusiastically. ‘The sequence is… are you ready, Rashim?’
‘I’m ready. Fire away.’
‘Nine. Zero. Seven. Two. Two. Three.’
Rashim tapped those into the rod’s touch-screen. ‘Go on.’
‘Two. Nine. Seven…’
A pause. He looked at his lab unit. ‘Yeah, I’m waiting… go on.’
‘Uhhh… Rashim?’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a person coming towards us.’
‘Uh?’ Rashim stood up and saw a young woman in a burgundy-coloured tunic and with a mane of frizzy strawberry-blonde hair striding through the grass towards them. He cursed under his breath. They’d checked this hilltop hundreds of times over for passing density shifts. Apart from signals that might be the occasional bird, or a passing goat… no one came here. Ever. Until now apparently.
Dammit.
He’d learned a smattering of Latin — a requirement for all the Exodus candidates. He quickly removed his sunglasses before she got too close, wincing at the brightness of the day. The clothes and his bright-yellow lab unit he couldn’t do anything about. As she drew up in front of him, he offered the young woman his most charming smile.
‘Uh… Salve.’ He was pretty sure he’d just mangled up the pronunciation right there.
And then, rather belatedly, he realized she was wearing glasses. ‘Hey,’ she replied with a casual wave. ‘How’s it going… Dr Rashim Anwar?’
Rashim’s jaw swung open and hung there uselessly.
