Ripples of the Past Read online

  Nothing happened for a couple of seconds and then a loud ringing sounded from several directions at once. Almost immediately it was accompanied by raised voices from the ward.

  Isaac sprinted back down the corridor and into the stairwell before anyone arrived. Instead of descending, he continued to climb. The only thing above him was the roof, the door to which was always kept locked. It was, however, one of the few places no one would think to look in the event of a fire. He squeezed himself into the recessed doorway, from which he had a restricted view of the landing on the floor below.

  A minute or so passed before the first people began to make their way down from the Hoover Ward, mainly patients deemed fit enough to walk unaided. They were followed by several others, each accompanied by a member of the staff. Finally the fire warden, an anaesthetist named Hobbs, emerged and made his way down too.

  Isaac gave it another minute just in case anyone was straggling behind, then descended the three flights to the Lincoln Ward. As he’d been counting on, the main desk was now unattended. He left the stairwell and hurried over, the memory of watching Apollo 11 touch down from the very same spot briefly flashing through his mind. With a wistful shake of his head, he stepped through the door of the office behind the desk; he was here for a purpose, and there was no time for reminiscing.

  Patient records were stored in several tall filing cabinets at the far end of the room. The first two were reserved for current patients, so Isaac headed straight to the third, where he lowered his bag and pulled out his hunting knife.

  Over the last two years he had conducted numerous dissections, moving on from the brains of cattle acquired at abattoirs to those of humans, a good source of which had been found in an undertaker of questionable morals in Nebraska. Unfortunately, these experiments had all confirmed only one thing: without Michael’s medical records, there was no chance of recreating his brain injury and therefore no hope of understanding and thus blocking his ability. And those records were stored in one of the cabinets in the office of the Lincoln Ward, where they were supposed to remain for seven years after a patient’s discharge – or, in Michael’s case, escape – before being transferred to a central vault in the city. That would happen in just over one week’s time, after which any chance of recovering them would be lost, prompting Isaac’s belated homecoming in spite of the dangers involved.

  With the fire alarm still ringing loudly around him, he unsheathed his hunting knife, slid the blade into the gap above the top drawer and jimmied the lock until it popped open. After placing the knife on the cabinet, he began flicking through the files within. They were organised primarily by date, with subject dividers denoting the year of discharge, and then subdivided alphabetically according to the patient’s last name.

  Isaac worked his way through the third cabinet and moved onto the forth, once again jimmying the lock with his knife. Located in the second-to-bottom drawer was a divider marked 1969. He sifted through the individual files until he reached a section marked H. Close to the back was a file with the name HUMBOLDT, M in the top left-hand corner.

  He pulled it out and opened it, a smile spreading. Everything was there, from the field report written by the doctor who’d operated on Michael in Vietnam right down to Lara’s last update, completed just a few days before Michael’s escape.

  Isaac withdrew the field doctor’s report and skimmed through the text. A third of the way down were the words, ‘…fragment of metal, approximately half an inch in length, embedded in basal ganglia region of brain. Extensive damage to body of caudate nucleus. Initial attempts to remove foreign object successful, however resulted in heavy bleeding and the likely formation of extensive scar tissue. Chances of full recovery: minimal to non-existent…’

  He moved on to Lara’s initial report, completed on Michael’s arrival at Stribe Lyndhurst just a week later. ‘…it may have taken three visits, but the patient has finally allowed me to examine his wounds, and the rate of tissue regeneration around the incisions at the base of his skull is phenomenal, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve double-checked the attached field doctor’s report, and can only assume the date of surgery must have been recorded incorrectly, since such extensive healing could not possibly have taken place in only one week…’

  He closed the file and, lifting the back of his coat, slid it behind the waistband of his pants. Could it be that Michael had survived an injury that would have killed an ordinary person, and the resulting scar tissue had somehow altered the way his brain processed the passage of time?

  After a final glance around the office, Isaac closed the cabinet, sheathed his knife and made his way back to the emergency stairwell. He descended to the ground floor and stepped out into the same corridor through which he’d entered, pausing to unfold his cane and put his sunglasses on before following the signs to the nearest fire exit and emerging into a bright sunlight and a sea of people.

  The first fire truck had already arrived on the scene, and several fire fighters were working their way toward the building. Tilting his head to the sky, Isaac started tapping his cane again as he circumnavigated the crowd. Along the way he could make out snippets of conversation:

  I can’t see any smoke, can you?

  Gus told me he was going to the bathroom just before the alarm sounded. You don’t think he’s still in there, do you?

  My shift finished ten minutes ago, you know. You think I’ll get paid overtime?

  Isaac rounded the corner of the building and reached the path that led down to the gates and out onto the street beyond. Stopping to glance back one last time, he saw something that suddenly rendered him immobile: Lara McHayden, the woman who could have been his wife if things had panned out differently, was standing at the edge of the crowd, talking to a male doctor whom Isaac failed to recognise.

  He lowered his dark glasses and stared, his beggar’s disguise forgotten. Apart from a sad, slightly jaded look to her eyes, she appeared the same as ever, and his heart skipped a beat as a thousand emotions swept over him in the same instant. What was Lara doing back here after all these years? She had, as far as Isaac was aware, returned to Britain in 1970 after her visa expired. It made no sense, but then he remembered reading about a memorial service last month that his parents had arranged in his honour. Lara would have been invited, of course, so it was entirely possible she had opted to stay on in California for a few weeks afterward.

  Without intending to do so, he found himself retracing his steps toward her. What would she do if he revealed himself? Would her reaction be one of joy, relief, anger or some hybrid of the three?

  But no. Patting the file hidden down the back of his pants, Isaac reminded himself that he had a purpose that transcended his personal feelings. And if he was ever to win Lara back, not to mention everything else that had been taken from him, stopping Michael Humboldt was the first step.

  He stood watching her a moment longer, drinking in the sight of the woman he loved, and then turned back toward the gate.

  ‘Isaac? Isaac Barclay?’

  Betty Mclean, one of the nurses on the Lincoln Ward, was standing a couple of yards farther down the path, watching him with a stunned expression on her heavily made-up face. Isaac stared back, then cleared his throat, slid his dark glasses on and continued on his way.

  ‘Isaac?’ Betty repeated, suddenly by his side. ‘It is you! I’d recognise those eyes anywhere.’ She paused as the incongruity of his bum’s outfit dawned on her. ‘Hey, what happened to you anyway?’

  ‘Must have me confused with someone else,’ Isaac muttered, and strode away.

  He only glanced back at the gate. Betty was still standing where he’d left her, watching him with that same stunned expression.

  3

  Michael leaned back in his chair at the head table in the banqueting hall of the newly constructed Sandstone Springs Resort and surveyed the three hundred guests quaffing his champagne and filling their bellies with his food. Among their number were several prominent local
businessmen, the drummer from a fading rock band, a minor movie starlet and the politician whose palm he’d needed to grease in order to secure planning permission for the development; a hotel, golf course, spa and casino complex set across two hundred acres of Nevada desert.

  As the brass band struck up a rendition of Ritchie Valens’ La Bamba, Lynette, the latest in a long line of girlfriends, leaned over from the chair beside him and held out a miniature pancake with a mound of caviar balanced on top.

  ‘What is this stuff?’ she asked. ‘It smells kinda funky.’

  ‘It’s caviar,’ Michael explained. ‘They’re fish eggs. Sturgeon, I believe.’

  She eyed her caviar with disgust. ‘Fish eggs? You are kidding me, right?’

  ‘No, princess. They’re a delicacy.’

  ‘You mean all those icky black balls come outta a fish’s butt?’

  ‘Not its butt, technically. And those “icky black balls” cost over a hundred bucks per pound. Why don’t you give it a try? I promise, you won’t regret it.’

  Lynette shook her head and returned the pancake to her plate. ‘Uhuh, won’t catch me eating something that’s come outta a fish’s butt, no siree!’

  Michael sighed and waved a passing waiter over to refill his glass. There was no denying that Lynette was beautiful, with a shapely body, long auburn hair and green eyes that sparkled just as his one true love Rachel’s once had, but these assets increasingly failed to compensate for what she lacked between the ears.

  As she continued to speak, he feigned interest, smiling and nodding at the appropriate pauses while his mind drifted off to faraway places. In addition to the completion of the new resort, there was another, more significant reason for today’s celebration; one that only Michael was aware of. Next week would mark the seven-year anniversary of his escape from Stribe Lyndhurst, the day the bird had flown its cage, and he felt a justifiable sense of pride about everything he had accomplished since.

  At twenty-six years of age, Michael Humboldt was already a millionaire several times over. In the first few weeks of 1970, his seizures had returned. Although limited and uncontrolled without Tetradyamide, often dropping him a day or two into the past or future with little prior warning, these episodes had represented his only means of travelling through time. Being a capitalist at heart, it hadn’t taken him long to realise they could be used for his own gain. He had begun studying the sports results in case a seizure came on unexpectedly and he found himself back the day before, where he would place a flurry of bets, and had also adopted the habit of keeping a newspaper close at hand, so that if he suddenly found himself flung into the future, he could then check the sports pages, allowing him to place bets when he returned to the present.

  In this manner he had amassed a small fortune over the first two years of the decade before realising that an even greater source of income could be tapped by applying the same methods to the rise and fall of stocks and shares in the business section of the papers. It wasn’t long before he had set up Harrison Industries under the alias he’d been using since 1969 and, in due course, started taking on a small staff.

  As his earnings spiralled and the company grew, Michael had come to recognise a pattern to his seizures. More often than not they were linked to his emotions, with feelings of anxiety, anger and fear being far and away the most effective triggers. While inducing a seizure remained more of an art than a science, there was, however, a fail-safe, a memory so guaranteed to get his blood boiling it brought one on almost every time. That memory was of the look on Dr Barclay’s face as he had tried to cave in Michael’s head before leaving him for dead in a burning building on the night of New Year’s Eve, 1969. Dr Isaac Barclay, the man who, through his unauthorised testing of Tetradyamide, had given Michael a taste of the power that might be his and then snatched it away. For although the ability to see a day or so into the future or bring knowledge back to a day or so into the past was enough to make a killing on the stock markets and sports results, it was only a fraction of what Michael was truly capable of. As to what might be possible with an unlimited supply of Tetradyamide, he could only speculate, but with the ability to alter the distant past or see weeks, months or even years ahead, he would no longer have to hide in the shadows and use aliases to conceal his true nature; the world would be his for the taking.

  Lynette suddenly giggled at her own joke, jerking Michael’s attention back to the moment. He laughed along rather than ask her to repeat what she’d just said. Perhaps, like the others before her, her time by his side was approaching an end. Still, there would be no shortage of substitutes to take her place; Michael’s scars had improved so much that, with a touch of make-up here and there, it was getting harder and harder to spot them. And besides, if there was one lesson he had learned over the last six years it was that the lure of money and power far outweighed that of good looks.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  He looked up to see Donna, his assistant, standing behind his chair, a frown lining her doughy face beneath a fuzz of brown curls.

  Donna was the first applicant Michael had interviewed when Harrison Industries began taking on staff. In many ways it was a miracle he hadn’t replaced her yet; she was a slow typist, had no head for numbers and couldn’t make a decent cup of coffee to save her life. But what Donna did possess were the two attributes he valued above all else, namely loyalty and a blind eye to his indiscretions.

  ‘Donna!’ he exclaimed, grateful for the interruption. ‘Join the party, why don’t you? Grab a glass of champagne, something to eat.’

  ‘There’s a telephone call for you at reception, sir.’

  ‘Take a message then.’

  ‘I believe the call is rather urgent. It’s Mr Winters.’

  Michael dropped his serviette and pushed his chair back. By the fall of ‘74 he had finally accumulated enough wealth to purchase a controlling stake in Bereck & Hertz Pharmaceuticals. However, it had soon become disappointingly apparent that Barclay had made a remarkably thorough job of his sabotage, the fire at the old head office having destroyed almost all of his research. Undeterred, Michael had continued to pump funds into the project in the hope that one of the chemists on his payroll might be able recreate the lost work, but none so far had demonstrated the necessary skill to fit the pieces of the puzzle together again. Last year he had even set up the Harrison Foundation, a scholarship programme aimed at recruiting the brightest young chemists from across the land, but all to no avail, leading him to the conclusion that his only real hope of recreating Tetradyamide lay in apprehending Barclay. To that end Michael had devoted so much time and effort that the manhunt had turned into something of an obsession. At great expense he’d employed a nationwide network of informants and private investigators but, aside from a false sighting in Alaska a year and a half ago, Barclay had seemingly vanished into thin air.

  Mr Winters was the lead investigator in the search, and a telephone call at a time like this could only mean one thing. Ignoring Lynette’s calls for him to wait up, Michael followed Donna out of the banqueting hall, across a cream-carpeted lobby dominated by a piece of modern art that looked like a giant ball of wool woven from stands of metal and into the office behind a long mahogany reception desk.

  A telephone lay unhooked on one of the tables. Michael snatched up the receiver and, dispensing with formalities, demanded, ‘Barclay, where is he?’

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, then: ‘San Francisco, Mr Harrison. A fire alarm was triggered at Stribe Lyndhurst Military Hospital a little over an hour ago. One of our informants identified him in the crowd.’

  ‘Stribe Lyndhurst? You mean the turkey’s come home to roost?’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘I never dreamt he’d be so stupid. Who was the informant?’

  ‘Nurse Mclean.’

  Michael chuckled, remembering the cruel, po-faced bitch all too well from his time on the Lincoln Ward. ‘Good. And she’s sure it was him?’

  �
�Positive. Although she said he was dressed up like a hobo or something.’

  ‘Figures, the man never did have any sense of style. Make sure Nurse Mclean is suitably rewarded, would you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Michael hung up and turned to Donna, who looked up from wiping her nose on a tissue.

  ‘Good news, sir?’

  ‘You bet your life it is! Listen, Donna, I’m going to need a few minutes alone time, if you catch my drift. Make sure I’m not disturbed, would you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ she said, and backed through the office door, closing it behind her.

  Michael flopped into a cushioned leather chair and shut his eyes. The web he had patiently spun had at long last snared its prey, and the spider was ready to pounce.

  As always when it really mattered, he went with his old faithful, casting his mind back to the look on Barclay’s face as he’d raised a Bunsen burner high into the air. Almost immediately his pulse began to quicken, his cheeks filling with heat. The lights in the room appeared to flicker, but this was no electrical fault.

  Although Michael had no control over the exact time and place a seizure would take him, with experience he had learned that he could influence the direction in which he travelled simply by thinking of times past for backward or a future date, such as his birthday next year, for forward. As the seizure took hold of his body, he summoned childhood memories, happy times with his mother and his brother Eugene – rest their souls – when Pa was already passed out drunk.

  Suddenly he felt himself swept back like flotsam on a wave. He saw himself stand and turn to face the door as Donna came in again. Things got steadily faster, and he briefly glimpsed himself picking up the phone before all detail was lost to a storm of shape and colour. An unconnected moment passed, his mind and body two separate entities, and then the images began to slow before stuttering to an abrupt halt.

  Michael blinked and discovered he was now lying in bed, looking up at the stucco ceiling of the presidential suite on the top floor of the Sandstone Springs Resort. Lynette lay on her stomach beside him, lipstick smeared across the silk pillowcase and her face buried beneath a tangle of hair. A glance at his new, state-of-the-art digital clock revealed that the time was 05:38.