CHAPTER 16

2001, New York

‘Oh, come on … you’ve gotta be kidding!’ Maddy slammed her hand on the desk, exasperated. ‘You lost him? Both of you? You actually lost him?’

Becks and Bob stood side by side, both still gasping from the aborted pursuit.

‘Abraham Lincoln is very fast,’ said Becks, a hint of shame in her voice.

‘Yes, and you – and numb-nuts here – are both meant to be superhumans! You know? Super-strong? Super-fast? That kinda thing?’

‘His sudden departure was not something that could be predicted,’ muttered Bob, like a scolded schoolboy. ‘He appeared to be unconscious.’

‘Perhaps he was faking it?’ said Sal. ‘Listening to what we were saying?’

Liam nodded. ‘And didn’t fancy going back home.’

‘Well … duh,’ sighed Maddy, removing her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘You really think?’

Liam missed the sarcasm in her voice. ‘Yup, that’s what I think.’

‘Oh crud.’ She slumped down in one of the office chairs. ‘So how’re we going to find him now? He could be anywhere in New York.’

The five of them stood in a silent tableau for a while. In the background several TV stations quietly babbled the evening news to themselves.

‘Why are we so completely rubbish?’ Maddy muttered rhetorically. ‘Super-secret time-travel-prevention agency? I’ll tell you what we are … a freakin’ joke. That’s us. Three clueless kids and a couple of trained monkeys.’ She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes and started massaging away an emerging migraine with the tips of her fingers.

‘Well, to look at it this way,’ said Liam presently, ‘he’s a tall mouthy fella, so he is, wearing clothes from the last century. Someone’s going to notice him soon enough.’

‘And your point is?’

Liam shrugged. ‘He might cause a scene and end up on one of ’em news stations?’

‘Or get himself arrested,’ added Sal. ‘Weirdo like that.’

Maddy shook her head irritably. ‘This is New York, Sal. It’s all weirdos.’

‘But he’s got a mouth on him, so he has,’ said Liam. ‘I fancy that’ll land him in trouble with a policeman soon enough.’

An attitude. He has that all right.

Maddy suddenly opened her eyes. ‘Oh God! And lead the police right here! Right to our door!’

‘Information: we can establish an unencrypted and open link to the NYPD incident-report database,’ said Bob.

‘We could monitor this and respond to any relevant coms traffic,’ added Becks quickly. The pair of them were like two chastised children, both desperately seeking to redeem themselves.

Maddy sat forward, the chair creaking with the sudden lurch of movement. ‘OK, yeah, that’s … that’s something we can do.’

She turned towards the computer monitors and saw computer-Bob was already in the process of establishing a handshake link to the New York Police Department’s computer system.

‘Good boy, computer-Bob.’ She turned back to the others. ‘And maybe we’ll find him anyway, right? I mean he’s got no money so he can’t get a cab or a bus or a train. And he isn’t going to get a room anywhere looking the way he does. Thing is … where might he head?’

‘Over the bridge,’ said Sal. ‘Towards Manhattan … towards the bright lights.’

Liam nodded. ‘It’s what I would’ve done on me first night. You just want to see all that up close.’

‘Yeah …’ Maddy pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘He really did seem to like the big buildings. OK, then. Right, here’s what we do. We’ll split up and search for him. Bob and Sal, you two head over the bridge and go north up Bowery, Fourth and Broadway towards Times Square. Liam and Becks, you head down towards Wall Street. Those are the two glowiest, shiniest parts of town, right? Hopefully, he’ll make like a big dumb moth and head to one of those two places. If we’re lucky.’

She fumbled among the detritus and rubbish on the desk and found what she was looking for. She tossed Liam and Sal a mobile phone each. ‘I’ll monitor the police call-ins here. If we get a likely candidate, I’ll dial it in.’

Liam frowned. ‘Dial it in?’

‘Call you! On the phone … the thing in your hand! I’ll call you on that!’

‘Ahh.’ He nodded. ‘Right you are.’

‘So, is that clear, everyone?’

Four nodding heads.

‘And, Sal, Liam … Bob. Get changed back into your normal clothes. Quick as you can. You look like a convention of Quakers or something.’