“In any case,” Eversman said, “I mentioned my security because of the main point I want to make.” He turned from the window and faced Dryden and Marnie—but mostly Dryden. It was obvious Marnie had already heard all of this. “I want to do exactly what this other man, Dale Whitcomb, meant to do. These people … the Group … I want to eliminate them.” He frowned, unsatisfied with that wording. “I want to kill them. And I’m damn well on board with erasing this technology, if we can do it. I guess my reasons are obvious enough.”
Dryden nodded. Hard to argue against that.
“Earlier this evening,” Eversman said, “you asked if I knew why these people haven’t tried to kill me in the present. Why they’ve arranged it to happen nine years in the future, instead. I didn’t say it then, but I wonder if it comes down to firepower. Maybe they don’t want to go up against my security resources in the here and now. Maybe they’re worried that even if they got to me, my people would hit them back—which they would. Maybe the future feels safer to them.”
Dryden thought about it. “I don’t know. Still seems like it would be easier to pull off now instead of then, when you’ll have Secret Service protection and the whole world watching you.”
“What do we actually know?” Marnie said. “If you step back from it, we have exactly seven pieces of information. We know there’s one future in which you become president of the United States. And we know there are six different futures in which you’re killed, in the months before the election. There has to be a reason.”
“Any ideas?” Eversman asked.
Marnie could only shake her head. She crossed to one of the chairs near the fireplace and sat, resting forward with her elbows on her knees.
“What if they’re planning to have their own candidate in the running that year?” she said. “On the other ticket. What if your rival in 2024 is one of them, one of the Group, and they set up your assassination, hoping their guy would win in the aftermath?”
“Doesn’t explain why they had to find six different ways to kill me.”
“Actually it might,” Marnie said. “What if they tried it the first time, and their candidate still didn’t win? Say the newspapers from the future still showed their guy losing—to your VP nominee or some other last-minute replacement. If the Group saw that future, well, they could always just change their plan. Kill you a few weeks earlier, then check the headlines again and see if that changed the outcome. They could do it again and again. Maybe the sixth time was the charm.”
Eversman considered it. He looked impressed by the logic.
“You’re talking about a sleeper,” Dryden said. “A member of the Group running for the White House.”
Marnie nodded. “Why not? It’s clear they’re thinking on that scale. And why couldn’t they pull it off, with the advantage they’ve got? Their system.”
“I don’t know if they’d get past the screening,” Dryden said. “It’s not so obvious to most people, watching an election play out, but a major party candidate for president gets a damn thorough once-over by the intelligence community. I knew guys who used to do it. They turn your life inside out looking for flaws. It’s one thing if they learn about an affair with a co-worker ten years back, but if a person had something genuinely bad in their past … like a hidden loyalty … some secret motive for becoming president … the alarms would go off. Believe it. A candidate like that would be in real trouble, I think.”
“Intel really worries about that?” Marnie asked. “A mole running for office?”
“It’s their job,” Dryden said. “And they’re good at it.”
Marnie thought it over, then turned back to the flames. “I agree,” she said. “And I don’t have any other guesses.”
For more than a minute, no one spoke.
“It’s a moot point, if we stop them now,” Eversman said. “None of it would happen anyway.” He laughed dryly. “Maybe an hour before we broke down their door, all their searches would show them a future going back to normal.”
At those words, Dryden looked up sharply. A second later, so did Marnie. Her head spun toward Dryden.
She stared.
He stared back.
“Oh God,” she said. It came out as only a whisper.
Dryden said nothing. Just held her gaze. She had to be thinking exactly the same thing he was. The same idea, triggered by Eversman’s joke.
Marnie started to say something, but couldn’t form the words. All that came out was the same soft interjection as before. “Oh God.”
Eversman looked back and forth between them. “What?”
Marnie looked scared in a way Dryden hadn’t seen until now. He wondered if he looked the same. Maybe.
“What?” Eversman said.
“We have a problem,” Dryden said. “Maybe a big problem.”
Eversman waited.
“Our goal is to kill these people and destroy their system,” Dryden said. “It’s the only way we win. Right?”
Eversman nodded. “Right.”
“But if we figure out how to do that, some plan that would actually work … then they’ll know about it in advance.”
Eversman looked thrown. “I wasn’t serious about the headlines going back to normal. But would they? Is that what you mean?”