Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 5

1906, San Francisco

‘Hey! Don’t turn around yet — I’m not ready,’ snapped Maddy irritably.

Liam stayed where he was, facing the grubby redbrick wall in front of him. The back alley reeked of rotting fish, and he wondered if he lingered too much longer here whether the smell was going to be stuck on him for the rest of the day.

‘Are you not done yet?’ he asked.

Maddy muttered under her breath. ‘It’s all these damned laces and hooks and buttons and things. How the heck did women manage to dress themselves back then?’

He turned his head a little to look up the alley. It seemed to open on to a busy thoroughfare. He saw several horse-drawn carts clatter by, and men dressed like him: formal grey morning coats, buttoned waistcoats, high-collared shirts, with top hats, flat caps and bowler hats. Very much like the better-dressed men in Cork might have worn on a Sunday morning. The clothes they’d found in the back room appeared to be perfectly authentic. There’d been another couple of dusty costumes in there. Sal had said something about them being for the other back-up drop-point — another time, another place.

‘Oh, dammit… this’ll have to do,’ tutted Maddy irritably.

‘Can I turn round now?’

‘Yes… but I look a total doof.’

He turned round. His eyes widened.

‘What?’ she gasped suspiciously. ‘What is it? What’ve I got wrong?’

‘Nothing! It’s nothing… it’s just…’

Maddy scowled at him beneath the wide-brimmed sun hat, topped with a plume of white ostrich feathers. Her slim neck was framed by decorative lace that descended down the front of a tightly drawn and intricately embroidered bodice. Her waist seemed impossibly thin, as the gown flared out beneath and tumbled down to the ground, modestly covering any sign of her legs.

She put her hands — covered in spotless elbow-length white gloves — on her hips. ‘Liam?’

He shook his head. ‘You look so… so…’

‘Spit it out!’

‘Like… well, like a lady, so you do.’

For a moment he thought she was going to step forward and punch his arm, like she was prone to do. Instead, her cheeks coloured ever so slightly. ‘Uh… really?’

‘Aye.’ Liam smiled at her. ‘And me? What about me?’

Maddy grinned. ‘Well, you look like an idiot.’

Liam pulled the top hat off his head. ‘Ah, it’s that, isn’t it? Makes me ears stick out like a pair of jug handles.’

She laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it, Liam. Obviously it’s the fashion over here. You won’t be the only person wearing one.’

‘It was mostly flat caps and forage caps back home. You tried wearing a top hat or a bowler, you were asking for some joker to try an’ knock it off.’

She pointed at him, ignoring the quip, her smile replaced with her let’s-get-down-to-business frown. ‘What time have you got on your clock?’

Liam pulled the ornate timepiece out of his waistcoat pocket. ‘Seven minutes after eleven in the morning.’

‘OK, we should get a move on. The return window here is in four hours’ time.’

‘Right you are. How far is it?’

‘Not far, I think. It’s on to Merrimac Street, then up Fourth Street to Mission Street… short walk up that on to Second Street. Ten minutes… at a guess?’

Liam stepped forward away from the brick wall, the tumbled crates of rubbish and the stench of rotting fish. With a broad cock-sided grin he offered his arm. ‘Shall we, ma’am?’

Her face softened and she threaded one white gloved hand around it. ‘Oh, absolutely, Mr Darcy. A pleasure, I’m sure.’

They emerged out of the gloom of the alley on to Merrimac Street and immediately Maddy found herself gasping.

My God. The realization finally hit her. I’m actually standing IN history.

Merrimac Street was busy with mid-morning foot and wheeled traffic, mostly horse-drawn carts ferrying goods up from the wharf down the far end. She could make out steam ships lined up against the docks, filling the blue sky with columns of coal smoke and steam, and the churning business of freight coming off or being loaded on.

‘Awesome,’ she giggled with delight, ‘this is just like being in a movie. Just like the beginning of Titanic…’

He looked at her, disgusted. ‘They made a movie about it?’

The smile on her face slipped and became a guilty grimace.

Liam tutted and sighed. ‘Good people died an’ all… for what? So they can become part of a flickering peepshow a hundred years later?’

She shrugged. ‘Uh, s’pose… but it was pretty good, though. Fantastic special eff-’

His sideways scowl silenced her.

‘Never mind.’

They turned left on to the road, heading up it towards Fourth Street, dodging several piles of horse manure along the way. Fourth Street was a little busier, but nothing compared to Mission Street. The road was a broad thoroughfare, a hundred feet wide, thick with carts and pedestrians and a tram line that rattled with trams laden with passengers inside and hanging precariously on the back, dinging their bells to clear the track ahead.

‘Oh my God, this is so amazing!’ she gushed.

Liam tugged her arm. ‘Shhh… you’re sounding like a tourist.’

Mission Street was flanked with five- and six-storey brick buildings, warehouses, offices, factories, banks and legal firms. She caught sight of a tall building dominating the skyline — fifteen, perhaps twenty storeys high that looked like a small version of the Empire State Building.

‘I didn’t know they had skyscrapers back then… uhh… I mean back now!’

Liam nodded. ‘Nothing like this in Ireland.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘And you’re telling me all this gets totally destroyed?’

‘Uh-huh. Tomorrow morning, April eighteenth, the great Californian earthquake. According to our history database, much of the downtown area is destroyed by the quake… and then the resulting fire destroys most of what was left in this area… the fourth and fifth districts.’

‘Jeeeez… that’s a real shame, so it is.’ Liam locked his brows for a moment. ‘Hang on! Strikes me as a bit stupid that the agency has picked here and now to store our supplies if it’s about to be brought crashing down.’

‘Well, duh!’ said Maddy, making a face and rolling her eyes. ‘Think about it! It makes perfect sense!’ She looked at him as if he’d just put on a pair of shoes the wrong way round. ‘Liam, I thought Foster said you’re meant to be smart?’

He pouted his lip, feigning hurt. ‘Well, Miss Smarty Pants, you’re obviously itching to tell me something, so get on with it.’

She sighed. ‘It’s perfect, because the bank vault where our replacement engineered foetuses are located will be completely destroyed in the fire. Everything. All the safe deposit boxes, their contents, all the client paperwork… everything. No paper trail.’

Liam grinned. ‘Ah, very clever.’

‘Exactly.’

The hubbub on Mission Street was added to by the noisy clatter of a sputtering engine. Its noise blotted out everything as it slowly approached them. They finally saw the vehicle rolling down the middle of the street on flimsy spoked wheels, following a man on foot waving a red warning flag before him.

‘Wow! I didn’t know they had cars then!’ Maddy shouted in his ear.

He shook his head. ‘Now who’s being dumb! Of course we did!’ He watched the vehicle slowly rattle past, steered by a man wearing a cap and goggles. Beside him sat a woman sporting a cloud of ostrich feathers above her head, her gloved hands clasped over her ears at the cacophony.

‘Now I know that’s an Oldsmobile Model R,’ added Liam as the vehicle finally turned right off Mission Street and the laboured clatter of internal combustion allowed them to talk easily once more. ‘There were quite a few of those things dashing about Cork — yes, even Cork — when I left.’

She shook her head. ‘Hardly dashing.’

They walked on another few minutes in silence, Maddy enjoying playing the lady in her own period-piece Hollywood movie and Liam feeling like this was something of a trip home for him. Back to his time, back to a place where he could talk easily with anyone and not be made to feel like a complete moron for not knowing what a digicam was, or that Seven-Up wasn’t some kind of a ball game, or that a Snickers Bar wasn’t some sort of sleazy nightclub.

‘This is it,’ Maddy finally said, pointing to a narrow side street. ‘There… Minna Street.’

They crossed the wide thoroughfare, dodging a tram clanging its way through the bustle of pedestrian traffic and sidestepping several more steaming hillocks of horse manure. They stood in the mouth of the narrow road, only two carts wide and relatively quiet.

‘And that’s the building we want,’ she said, pointing to a formal-looking frontage of brick and granite. ‘Union Commercial Savings Company,’ she added. ‘According to Foster’s “how to” manual, this is the bank’s only premises. After the earthquake, the fire destroys this building and everything inside it. The company was no more. As if it never existed.’ She looked at him. ‘You see? Perfect.’

‘And all our Baby Bobs are in some sort of safe down in its basement?’

‘That’s what Foster says.’

Liam frowned. ‘So, I’m being dumb again… but if there’s a whole load of those little foetus things down there in a safe somewhere, what’s keeping them alive? Would they not die and sort of go off? Is there a refrigerating device down there?’

‘You’ll see.’