Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 4

2001, Central Park, New York

They walked slowly round the duck pond, kicking the first dry leaves of autumn aside. They watched a young couple rollerblading ahead of them. Maddy smiled sadly, envious of the pair of them, both about her age and seemingly without a solitary care in the world. She watched the young man, tanned, lean, handsome, with long wavy blond hair and a small goatee, leading his unsteady girlfriend by the hands, her feet splaying and weaving uncertainly, laughing at how terrible she was.

To have that moment. Just that one moment.

Foster touched her arm sympathetically. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

‘What?’

‘You’re thinking ignorance is bliss.’

She offered him a confessional shrug. ‘I wish I was someone else, Foster. Anyone else.’ She nodded at the couple, their legs beginning to tangle, the young man laughing along with his giggling girlfriend. ‘Being either of them would be nice.’

‘They’ll never experience anything like you’ll experience. What you’ve experienced already.’

Maddy sighed. ‘But it’s too much. I can’t cope with all of it.’ She looked at his old face, sunken cheeks and eyes framed by a fan of wrinkles, ‘laughter lines’ if one was being kind. ‘Every time I come and visit you… it seems I’ve got more and more to unload on you.’

He cackled. ‘It must get annoying, having to repeat yourself.’

She shrugged that away. That was the deal. That’s how it was. Foster was here at this time in Central Park. Mid-morning, feeding the pigeons, then on his merry way to live out whatever time he had left however he wanted. For him an hour that came and went, but for Maddy — reliving the same two New York days, the 10th and 11th September 2001 — it was a repeated chance to see him again. To get his advice. But every time they met, it would be the first time he’d seen her since walking away from the team and leaving her in charge. So their conversation began with an ever-increasing recap from her of the events she and the others had endured.

‘You guys do seem to have been through quite a lot,’ he said.

‘Tell me about it.’

His face, skin like fine parchment, creased with a grin. ‘Abraham Lincoln sounds a character, so he does. Did he really outrun both your support units?’

‘Oh yeah, the guy can run like a kid chasing an ice-cream van.’

They both laughed.

Foster nodded at a bench beside the path in the shade of a maple tree. ‘Can we sit? My old legs aren’t what they used to be.’

‘Sure.’

She looked at him, wondering how many days he had left, wondering how much life the displacement machine had stolen from him. A couple of meetings ago, here beside this same pond, he’d admitted he was only twenty-seven years old. More than that — something that had rocked her to the core — he’d told her that he was once Liam. He’d not explained how that could be; in fact, he’d refused to explain. But he’d told her because he wanted her to know that every time Liam went back into the past, the process was gradually killing him: ageing him before his time. That he would all too soon end up like him. She alone needed to be the judge of how much his body could take. That’s why she had to know.

They settled down, looking further up the path at the pigeons indignantly puffing themselves up and backing off as several Canadian geese waddled over to take possession of ground littered with scattered breadcrumbs.

‘Foster?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is it you’re not telling me?’

He looked at her, a disarming smile. His best attempt at deflecting her.

‘Come on, Foster… you’ve only given me half what I need to know.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you think you know.’

‘Why are you… why can’t you just tell me everything?’

‘Because I don’t know everything.’

‘You know more than me. You know more than you’ve told me!’

He held her gaze. Eventually he nodded with some regret. ‘All right, yes, that’s true.’

‘Why? Why don’t you tell me all you know? What are you holding back?’

‘Knowledge, Maddy… foreknowledge.’

‘Pandora?’

He shook his head. She’d explained to him about the note she’d discovered. About the specific mention of that particular word in the Voynich Manuscript. ‘I know nothing about Pandora,’ he’d said and she suspected he was being straight with her about that.

‘It’s a message, Foster. A message someone’s trying to get to me. It’s got to be important, right?’

His fingers steepled beneath the wattled flesh of his jaw and he rested his chin on them. ‘Quite possibly, very.’

‘So what do I do about it?’

He watched the pigeons and geese strutting warily round each other, sizing each other up. Finally he spoke. ‘Perhaps you should ask about it.’

‘Ask who?’

His eyebrows arched suggestively.

‘What? You mean call forward? The future? The agency?’

‘Not a tachyon signal,’ he said quickly. ‘You absolutely can not do that. The particles will give you away.’

She knew that already. ‘The drop document?’

Foster had left Maddy a small library of instructions and advice. One entry had been how to communicate with the agency in extreme circumstances. What was actually classified as ‘an extreme circumstance’ had not been made entirely clear. The method of communication was to place a personal advert in the lonely hearts ads of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, beginning with the words ‘ A soul lost in time…’

Someone, somewhere in the future obviously had a yellowing copy of the newspaper and was watching that page for a subtle change. Watching for a gentle ripple in reality that altered nothing but the wording of that one personal ad.

‘Ask,’ he said again finally. ‘Why not?’

‘You really don’t know about Pandora… do you?’

Foster shook his head. She thought she knew him — and Liam for that matter — well enough to spot a lie. They were both completely rubbish at it.

‘Maybe I will,’ said Maddy.

‘And do let me know what he says. I’m just as curious now as you — ’

She turned to look at him. ‘ He? ’

Foster closed his eyes. She realized he’d let slip something he hadn’t wanted to.

‘He? Who? Who is he? The agency?’ She turned in her seat, grabbed his arm. ‘Foster?! Are you saying the agency is what? Just… just one person?’

He said nothing.

‘What about all the other teams?’

The old man’s lips tightened. His gaze flicked away from her.

‘Foster? Tell me! The other teams…?’

‘There are no other teams, Maddy,’ he whispered. His eyes drifted back to hers. ‘I’m so sorry. You’re alone. The agency is you. Just you.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘… And Waldstein.’

She all but missed hearing Waldstein’s name. Her mind was reeling, light-headed with a growing panic.

You’re alone.

The agency is you.