Time Riders

CHAPTER 15

2066, New York

It’s down here somewhere in the dark, Paul. Can’tyou feel destiny tugging at your sleeve?

He didn’t. What he felt were the eyes of Karl and his men upon him, anxiously,impatiently, watching him thumbing through his little black notebook.

Through the open door, leading on to the stairwell up to the main hall, he could hear themuted echo of a loudhailer coming from outside. Apparently they already had a negotiator outfront trying to establish contact. If he wasn’t so preoccupied down here, it would havebeen fun to be upstairs in the museum’s main hall watching the growing circus buildingup out there.

‘Sir,’ Karl prompted under his breath, ‘there’s only half an hourleft of your deadline. They will surely come in soon if they think negotiation isn’tgetting them anywhere.’

‘I know,’ he replied, looking down at the pages of his scrawled handwriting.‘It’ll take just a moment.’

Karl looked around the basement. It was filled to the high ceiling with crate after woodencrate of varying shapes and sizes, each stamped with a unique catalogue number. There werehundreds, no, thousands of them stacked down here on long rows of metal brackets andwooden-slat shelving.

Kramer looked up and noticed the concern on Karl’s face.

‘Karl, these boxes are all categorized. It may appear random, but theywere very careful when they closed down the museum to store the exhibits by department, bysub-department, by genus, by species.’

Kramer waved the black book in front of Haas. ‘He wanted to be able to locate iteasily, quickly — not have to sift through a thousand wooden cases.’ Kramer lookedaround. ‘We’ll find exactly where it’s located,’ he added. ‘Theanswer’s in this little notebook. Trust me.’

Kramer flicked through a few pages, finally running his finger down a page filled with fadinghandwriting.

‘And here it is. CRM, three-zero-nine, one-five-six-seven,two-zero-five-one.’

Karl Haas turned to inspect the nearest crates, but Kramer grabbed his arm.

‘We don’t have the time to check every box. We canwork out where to start looking from the number.’

‘How?’

‘CRM is the prefix code for the scientific exhibits. Three-zero-nine is thepalaeontology department.’ Kramer turned round and approached the huddled securityguards.

‘Tell me, gentlemen, where are the dinosaur exhibits stored?’

They shook their heads nervously. One of them, a frail old snowy-haired man who looked tenyears past retirement age, nodded towards a nearby wall.

‘Th-there’s a chart just th-there.’

Kramer smiled. ‘Ah yes… I see, thank you.’

He stepped over, tore it off the wall and examined it quickly. ‘Right. It’s downthere, I think.’ He pointed along an aisle that faded away into darkness. He pulled atorch out of his backpack and switched it on, heading at a swift trot into the narrowpassageway flanked on either side by shelves laden with wooden and cardboard boxes of allshapes and sizes.

After a minute he stopped and checked the code stamp on the box nearest him.‘Two-zero-seven, we’re getting closer,’ he whispered to himself, and set offagain at a trot.

Footsteps behind him.

He turned to see Karl, his torch a swinging beam of light lancing out in front of him.‘Sir? Can I help?’

Kramer stopped. ‘Yes. Get the men to bring the Porta-Gen down this way. As soon as welocate this thing, we’ll need that generator cranked and ready to go.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Kramer continued into the darkness a while further, then once more drew up and checked thecatalogue stamp on a nearby box.

‘Three-zero-six,’ he wheezed, winded by the exertion.

Geology… very close now.

He walked swiftly, panning his torch across boxes that were increasing in size, from smallshoeboxes to crates that could fit an armchair, and even larger ones in which one might fit asmall car… or even a dinosaur.

He grinned. This was it, palaeontology.

It’s got to be somewhere here.

Kramer checked his watch. They had about twenty minutes left until the deadline he’dgiven expired. There was no guarantee the police were going to hold back until then, ofcourse. But he suspected they probably would, and then stall a while longer after that,fine-tuning their plans to storm the museum and take down the terrorists inside with theminimum amount of damage to the nation’s treasures.

He swung his torch from one box to the next, quickly scanning the catalogue numbers.

Getting close.

He clambered up on to the lowest crate and swiped the beam of his torch across the onesstacked on the shelf above.

‘Come on, come on,’ he found himself hissing, ‘where thehell is it?’

His eyes darted from one number to the next. ‘It’s got to be heresomewhere.’

It is, have faith.

As if in answer to a prayer, his torch spilled across a CRM-309 number. He quickly swung thetorch back and read the next four digits.

‘One… five… six… seven…’

He looked down at his notebook.

CRM-309-1567-2051.

He looked up at the crate again and his lean face creased with relief that the old man,Waldstein, had been smart enough not to smash up his machine as he’d publiclyclaimed… but instead to have secretly arranged to hide it down here while the museum wasbeing mothballed.

There, didn’t I say have faith?

Kramer nodded. His instinct always seemed spot on.