Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 9

2001, New York

‘Brace yourselves,’ said Maddy. She looked at them across the breakfast table, Liam and Sal sitting beside each other on their threadbare sofa, eyes resting expectantly on her.

They’re not going to like this.

‘Jahulla! Come on, Maddy… what is it?’

‘This agency of ours… it’s, I’m not sure how to say this…’

‘Well, just say it anyway.’ Liam fidgeted impatiently. ‘I’m sure we’ve heard worse already.’

‘Not really.’ She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. ‘The agency is just us.’

The words hung above the table in the space between them. They hung in the stillness of the archway, accompanied by the soft hum of networked computers and the muted rumble of a train running over the Williamsburg Bridge above them.

‘What do you mean just us?’ asked Sal.

‘I mean exactly that, Sal. We’re it. The three of us.’

Liam sat forward, frowning, confused. ‘But… but Foster told us there were other teams, in other places, so he did.’

‘I know he did. But he lied.’

Sal looked past her. One eye lost behind a fringe, the other one just lost. ‘But…’

‘There was that message, Maddy.’ Liam leaned on the table. ‘That message from the future about Edward Chan, so there was…’

‘There is one other person in the agency,’ she replied. ‘It’s that guy Waldstein. Roald Waldstein.’

‘That fella who invented time travel?’

‘That’s him. He’s the one who set this archway up. He’s the guy who recruited Foster and the previous team.’

Sal shook her head, working it through in her mind silently.

Liam slapped a hand on the table. ‘Jay-zus-’n’-Mother-Mary! You know I… I was wondering why it’s always us who was dealing with everything! Why them other teams were too bleedin’ lazy to get off their backsides and help out!’

Maddy splayed her hands. ‘Well, now we know.’

‘But didn’t Foster say this Waldstein was totally against time travel?’ asked Sal. ‘That he, like, campaigned against it or something?’

‘Yes, he did. But he also set this up, secretly, as a back-up plan. I guess he figured that even with international agreements prohibiting the development of time-travel technology, on the sly, every government would be having a go at it.’

Liam laughed softly. ‘I knew it! I just bleedin’ well knew it!’

‘It’s not fair Foster didn’t tell us that,’ said Sal. She looked up at Maddy. ‘Why did he lie to us?’

Maddy shrugged. ‘I guess he didn’t want to overload us. Put too much pressure on us.’

‘Did he just tell you now, Maddy? This morning?’

She nodded. ‘Yup.’

Sal’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

‘Why? What?’

‘Why did he wait till now to tell you?’

‘I guess… I guess he figured from all the stuff I told him we’d been through that we were ready to find out.’

‘ Chutiya! ’ She stood up, biting her lip angrily. ‘He thinks we’re bakra? Stupid? What else is he holding back from us?’

Maddy would have liked to say ‘nothing’, but she wasn’t entirely sure that Foster had given them the whole picture yet. She too was guilty of that, holding truths back from her friends. For example, when exactly was she going to tell Liam that time travel was killing him? Ageing him? That he was going to look exactly like Foster very soon.

A bigger deal than that — that he and Liam were the same person. When the hell was she going to tell him that?

And what did that mean anyway?

Maddy had tried running that little doozy through her mind many times over. Did it mean Liam had been recruited from the Titanic before? Did it mean that this archway existed in a bigger loop of time, that one day Liam was going to be an old man? An old man who had somehow outlived her and Sal and now needed to renew the cycle by revisiting the last moments of their ‘normal’ lives and recruiting them all over again?

‘Maddy?’

She looked up. Sal was sitting on the end of the table. ‘There’s something I’ve seen, but I’ve been keeping to myself.’

Liam looked from her to Maddy. ‘Uh? Hang on! Has everyone here got a bleedin’ secret except me?’

Sal ignored him. ‘This may sound crazy, but… have we been recruited before?’

‘What?!’

Sal ignored him again. Her eyes were on Maddy. ‘Has Foster said anything like that?’

‘Recruited before? How do you mean?’

‘Foster said there was another team before us, right?’

Maddy nodded.

‘That they died. That that ghost thing… that “seeker” killed them.’

Liam cupped his jaw in his hands. ‘Hold on! That’s right! I remember that.’

‘Was that team us, Maddy?’

Sal’s eyes remained resolutely on Maddy, watching her fidget, delay… fudge.

Do I tell them that Liam is Foster? Because if Liam’s been here before… maybe Sal’s right and all three of us have.

‘I’m asking because I’ve seen something I can’t explain,’ said Sal. She looked at Liam. ‘Your uniform from the Titanic.’

He nodded. ‘Aye, you told me you saw one a bit like my — ’

‘No, Liam. No. It IS your tunic.’

Maddy frowned. Her turn to be silenced by a revelation. ‘What?’

‘In that antique shop, the theatre costume shop near us. There’s Liam’s tunic hanging up.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ replied Maddy. She pointed at the rack of clothes hanging just outside their bunk nook. ‘It’s over there!’

‘It’s the same, Maddy. Exactly the same!’

‘How can it be the same one, Sal? How can it be here and in that shop at the same time?’

‘It is. It’s missing the same button. It has exactly the same stain on it. The same shape in the same place!’ She stood up, strode over to the wardrobe beside the nook. She pulled out his white tunic, still on its hanger, and brought it over to the table. She spread it out beneath the light above them.

‘There. See?’

Liam got up and studied it.

‘You got that stain on the Titanic, right? Down the left side. Big stain. What was it… wine or something?’

Liam frowned. ‘I see it. Jayzzz… never even noticed that before.’

Maddy joined them. ‘Me neither. It’s faint.’

He looked at Sal. ‘I… I don’t think I ever spilled wine down me jacket. I don’t remember doing anything like that. Chief Steward would’ve had me guts for garters.’

‘So then it wasn’t you?’

He shook his head. ‘Maybe someone who had the uniform before me?’

‘That’s possible,’ said Maddy.

Sal shook her head irritably. ‘That’s not the important bit. The point is there are two copies of it!’ She looked up at them both. ‘Do you see? Maybe that means Liam’s been here before?’

Liam’s eyes widened. ‘This is…’

‘Messing with your head?’ asked Sal.

He nodded.