His Clockwork Canary

CHAPTER 25

CANTERBURY, ENGLAND

“One more time,” Simon said. “From the beginning.”

“Maybe we should sleep on this,” Phin said, elbows on the table, his head in his hands. “We’ve been at it for hours. Swear to God, my brain hurts.”

“I agree with Simon,” Willie said.

“Of course you do,” Phin said.

“We’re close to making some sense of all this,” Willie said. “I feel it. Each time we create a scenario, it jogs another detail of one of the memories I experienced via Filmore or my father.” Willie’s cheeks burned. Her gut twinged. She did indeed feel guilty about time-tracing her father, but she couldn’t focus on that regret just now. Nor could she meet Simon’s gaze. She’d disappointed him. Even though the tracing had been accidental, the fact that she’d willingly gone along for the ride made her question her morals. A new and wretched feeling.

“Right, then,” Phin said. “Another round. But not on an empty stomach. I can only go on coffee for so long and we already missed a midday meal. Go on,” he said as he moved toward a bank of cabinets. “I’m listening.”

Willie straightened in her chair as she gathered her thoughts. Her shoulder felt stiff and her back ached. After this round, she vowed a bracing walk on the main deck. Phin was right. They’d been cooped up in this small, rustic galley for hours. Even so, she wasn’t ready for a break. Not just yet. “Starting with what we know of 1969,” she prompted. “My mother—”

“Agent Mickey Price,” Simon clarified.

“—was a security specialist with Her Majesty’s Mechanics.”

“Formerly with NASA,” Phin said whilst slicing a loaf of bread. “Hence she’d been exposed to advanced aeronautics and the concept of exploring new worlds in the quest to benefit mankind.”

“Logical that she would be assigned to the ‘voyager’ who traveled through time,” Willie said. “A phenomenal endeavor not yet accomplished by the American, British, or Soviet space programs.”

“National treasure, indeed,” Simon said. “Briscoe Darcy was not only the most famous man on the planet at that moment, but also the most wanted. Every national intelligence agency in the world would be keen on unlocking his mind in order to learn his secrets. If the ‘Space Race’ was intense, imagine the motivation to possess the knowledge enabling men to travel into the past and future. Could jumping cosmic dimensions be much farther behind?”

“So Briscoe’s under lock and key,” Phin said, attacking a block of cheese. “And the time machine’s under lock and key. Maybe someone in the Mechanics tried to take it for a test run, but it didn’t work. Maybe Briscoe alone knew how to activate the clockwork propulsion engine.”

“Which brings us to the assumption that my mother, who’d had unlimited access to Briscoe, tricked, coerced, or convinced the Time Voyager to impart her with that vital information.”

“She then helped to coordinate the theft of the engine with the Peace Rebels. We know from things she told you,” Simon said to Willie, “that she had been involved with the underground organization for almost a year.”

“I’m almost certain it was Jefferson Filmore who drew her in,” Willie said. “I think he was some sort of professor and I know he was a fierce peace activist. I’m convinced they were acquainted on an intimate level. I saw them embrace. I felt his affection. In a memory, that is.” That specific knowledge cramped her stomach, made her ache for her father, but at the same time, she sensed the affair had been short-lived.

“Soured on her life in America, she pursued a new existence in the UK,” Simon said, “but things weren’t much better there. The world was careening toward self-destruction and she was desperate to make a difference.”

“Desperate enough to betray Her Majesty’s Mechanics, the British government, and the wrath of every nation who had their eye on Briscoe and his time machine.” Phin set a large platter on the wooden table in between Simon and Willie. “Bread, cheese, dried pork, fruit, and biscuits. It will have to do, as the pantry and icebox are minimally stocked.”

“Difficult to conjure an appetite,” Willie said, “when you’ve just reminded me my mother was a thief and a traitor.”

“Whose objective was to save the world,” Simon said, reaching across the table to give her hand a supportive squeeze.

“So we’re surmising,” she said.

“We’re surmising everything,” Phin said. “Spiced wine,” he announced, pouring them each a generous mug. “Now eat or you’ll hurt my feelings.”

Simon snorted, but even though Phin was being glib, Willie knew deep down that he was indeed a sensitive soul. She helped herself to a small portion of bread and cheese whilst striving to keep the conversation on track. “You’re right, of course, Phin. Nothing we’ve read in the Book of Mods, nothing my mother told me, and, to an extent, not even what I learned whilst time-tracing is a given. Indeed it is most difficult to sort fact from fiction, reality from illusion. I must strive to keep my personal feelings at bay.”

Simon looked at her with pride and affection whilst sipping his wine. “Let’s jump ahead. However the vital missing knowledge was obtained, however the theft was arranged, the end result was that the PRs installed Briscoe’s clockwork propulsion engine into their psychedelic painted bus and sixty-nine, give or take, twentieth-century radical peace activists—”

“Of various brilliance and professions within the realm of arts and science,” Phin added.

“—successfully hopped dimensions,” Simon said. “Departing in 1969 and traveling in reverse, arriving in 1856, five years after Briscoe made his great escape from Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition in 1851.”

“Houdini,” Willie said, whilst nibbling on cheese. “Daddy said Harry Houdini was, or will be, a famous escape artist. A magician. A showman. According to tales, Briscoe made a show out of his time-traveling launch.”

“It’s true,” Simon said. “My father witnessed the event. Although Briscoe was a distant cousin and several years my father’s senior, they did have an acquaintance and a shared passion for science. My father was but eighteen when he attended Prince Albert’s tribute to technological achievements. Briscoe chose his platform well. He had an audience of thousands. And, after much bloated pomp and circumstance, the man strapped himself into his gleaming self-professed ‘time machine’ and disappeared in a rainbow of brilliant light. At the time many thought it was an optical illusion. A magician’s trick.”

“By a flamboyant showman,” Phin said. “Escaping to another time. An unparalleled stunt of magnificent proportions.”

“A stunt that would have made Houdini proud.” Willie closed her eyes and thought back. Back to Filmore’s memories. “Something about Houdini,” she said.

“We’ve already determined that the Houdinians took their name from Harry Houdini,” Phin said. “Like Houdini and like Briscoe, the Peace Rebels performed a magnificent stunt, escaping back in time.”

“Then we surmise,” Simon said, “that at some point your mother, Filmore, and Rollins conspired to pinch the clockwork propulsion engine—”

“Again,” Phin said.

“—and to secure it somewhere safe in case it became necessary to escape even this century.”

“In order to spread their cautionary tales even earlier in time, say the eighteenth century,” Phin ventured. “Or perhaps to return to their own time. Or, hell, to take a spontaneous holiday. Who knows? Well, aside from Jefferson Filmore and Ollie Rollins. Wherever they are.”

“London.” Willie’s eyes flew open as she slammed her palms to the table. “I think they, or at least Filmore, might be in London.”

Simon and Phin traded a look. “Why?”

“The revolving safe house.”

Brow raised, Simon abandoned his cold pork sandwich. “We’ve been over this several times and that is the first mention of a revolving safe house. Am I right, Phin?” Simon asked without breaking eye contact with Willie.

“Right you are. What does it mean? Where did it come from?”

“One of Filmore’s memories.” Willie sipped her wine, tried to temper her excitement. “When I saw my mother, I was so stunned, I called out. Mother, first. Then Michelle. At once Filmore flashed back to the future. What I saw and heard was so unfamiliar and then all at once he reverted to the past. He was arguing with my mother and Rollins about whether to hide in the west, north, or south. In one of the future memories, my mother made mention of a revolving safe house. It was just one of a few phrases I did not understand and it only came back to me just now as I was trying to slow those memories.”

“Yes, but what is it?” Phin asked. “Is it to be taken literally? A house that is safe?”

“Or perhaps a house where you keep something safe,” Simon said.

Willie’s journalistic mind chugged as she fueled it with more and more conjecture. “In my lifetime, my family lived in three cities. New York City, Edinburgh, and London.”

“West, north, and south,” Simon said.

“In that order?” Phin asked.

“No. London, Edinburgh, America, then back to London. My mother claimed to work for a global security firm, so it would make sense that she would live near whatever she was protecting, aye? She was killed seven years ago whilst living in London—a victim of a hit-and-run accident. We found Filmore in Edinburgh.”

“The revolving safe house,” Phin said. “Three cities. Every so often or whenever they felt threatened, they revolved the engine to one of those three cities.”

“If you follow the pattern as you stated it, Willie, the next safe house would be New York City,” Simon said.

“If you followed the pattern, aye. But there are no longer three Houdinians. Only Filmore and Rollins or Filmore and a mercenary. And they have been protecting that engine for more than thirty years now. You saw Filmore. He had to be close to sixty years old, which would make Rollins seventy or more.” She paused as his younger face flashed in her mind, shivered with a wave of déjà vu.

Simon touched her forearm. “What is it?”

She shook off the strangeness. “Nothing. Sorry. Just that feeling that I’ve seen Rollins before, but damn, I cannot seem to place him.”

“It’ll come to you,” Phin said, drinking the last of his wine. “Meanwhile we have a vague location. London is a hell of a lot closer than New York City. It would make sense to look there first regardless. But where to start?”

“Underground,” Willie said.

Simon angled his head. “Another vault?”

Willie gulped her own wine now. “Whilst tracing my father, the most vivid and tumultuous memory was one of my mother looking wide-eyed and spooked. My father held her, saying, You spend too much time with the dead.”

“Catacombs,” Simon said. “The coffinlike vault. That is the actual ‘safe house.’ And they shuffle it between the three cities.”

“Three cities with extensive underground passages.” Phin scratched his head. “Good God. London Bridge alone harbors a veritable subterranean city of passages, crypts, and vaults. There’s an entire lattice of catacombs beneath Waterloo. Those are just two possibilities. And what about all of the churches and abbeys? How do we know what we’re dealing with? Where to look?”

“I have a friend,” Simon said. “Montague Lambert. He owns a literary antiquities shop. His map collection is quite extensive. I say we fly back to London tonight, get a good night’s sleep, and meet at Lambert’s tomorrow morning.”

“Right, then,” Phin said, pushing to his feet. “London it is. God, but I love a good adventure,” he added whilst rushing toward the main deck.

Willie tried to stand but couldn’t find the energy. “I must confess, I’m feeling overwhelmed. It’s all somewhat fantastical.”

“Quite the story,” Simon said, shifting to sit beside her. “And we still don’t know the whole of it yet. I have a feeling your editor, Dawson, will sing your praises, indeed kiss your feet, when you submit your serialized account of our adventure.”

Willie’s mouth went dry. “Indeed, this is the sort of sensational reporting that would put the London Informer back on top.”

“And to catapult the Clockwork Canary to celebrity status.”

She cast him a hurt look. “Are you testing me, Simon?”

“No.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Truly I’m not. It is a conundrum even for me. A story like this, it’s bigger than one newspaper. It alters history books. Depending on how things unfold, we could be sitting on a damned fortune.”

“Fortune enough to save your family.”

“And yours.”

She rubbed her temples. “If only it weren’t so personal.”

He kissed the top of her head. “The conundrum.”

She glanced up at him then. “My pressman’s nose smells more trouble. Something foul, Simon. I worry that we’re going to discover something . . . ugly. Remember when I relayed the memory of my mother telling my father, There’s a traitor among us?”

Simon nodded.

“I think . . . I believe it was just days, maybe even hours, before she was killed. Maybe the hit-and-run was not an accident as reported, but a calculated means of making sure every secret she knew died with her. Or perhaps she was distressed and distracted by what she’d learned and that had caused her to unwittingly step in a coach’s path. Either way, I think she died because of that traitor. Someone she knew. Someone close.”

“Do you have someone specific in mind?”

She shook her head. She did not. But she did have a bad feeling.

Simon tucked her shaggy hair behind her ears. “What say you we deal with the mystery as it unfolds? One revelation at a time.”

“Patience has never been one of my better qualities.”

He laughed at that. “Nor mine.” Smiling, he held her close as the Flying Cloud rumbled to life and took to a bumpy flight.

Willie grasped his forearm, licked her lips. “It will be strange returning to London as a woman, let alone a Freak. I’m grappling with the notion of revealing my Freak nature just now. I do not wish to deny my race, Simon. I am beyond that. But I fear it would hinder the progress of this investigation, so to speak. Once my true race is known to Dawson, to my coworkers, to anyone who looks me in my kaleidoscope eyes, I will become a source of fascination and ridicule. I will lose certain freedoms, which will hinder my ability to interact or converse with Vics on an effective level. And,” she said, meeting his gaze with her heart in her eyes, “our existence as a married couple will be under fervent fire.”

Simon smiled a little. “Are you saying you’d appreciate a few days of anonymity in order to fully enjoy our union as man and wife?”

Overwhelmed by their daunting expedition and future, Willie rested her head against Simon’s strong shoulder. “And to acclimate to the challenges of resuming my life in London as a woman.”

“So be it,” Simon said, smoothing his fingers over her cheek. “One revelation at a time.”