Viennese Waltz: Preparations
Rose stumbled out of the transport flash, finding herself in a narrow street lined with two-story houses. The roadway was cobbled; the ruts worn into the paving stones betraying their great age. She turned on her heel, gazing all around, caught for a moment by the serene, simple view. The houses were whitewashed stone, with wrought-iron bars on each window above flower boxes overflowing with riots of colorful midsummer blossoms. The place oozed old world charm, even as it obviously wasn't exactly a prosperous neighborhood – as attested to by the clothes hanging between the buildings to dry.
And speaking of which... Rose looked around carefully, but still not a soul was in sight. So she edged over to one of the lines, reached up, and snatched a plain peasant-style blouse and a long, dark skirt. Swiftly skimming them on over her plain white Tshirt and jeans, she found they gave her instant camouflage, and tamped down sharply on the twinge of guilt at the theft. The next line yielded a kerchief to hide her distinctive blonde hair, and her local disguise was complete. (Well, except for her trainers, but she wasn't fussed about them.)
Back in the Hub, Jared had begun to program her time jumper with the target: Sarajevo, Bosnia, on the morning of the assassination, June 28th, 1914. She stopped him in mid-program. "A few days before then, please. So I have time to get acclimated and make a plan." So he'd sent her back five days before, on the 23rd. The handsome Captain had volunteered to come back with her, but she'd refused with a wordless shake of her head. She'd learned to depend on herself, and herself alone, and certainly wasn't going to rely on any strangers she'd only briefly met. Besides, Jared had said the job was an easy one.
She walked slowly through the town, just looking and listening. Most of what she heard she didn't comprehend, figuring it was the local Bosnian language (whatever that was called), but she did catch some snatches of German, familiar to her from her life under the Nazis – and since then. After the American CIA had wrung her dry of information (which happened disconcertingly quickly – she'd thought she would have known more than that), they'd put her to work translating stolen documents and other communications, which had the unexpected side effect of making her even more proficient at that language.
She had to admit, when she stopped for a minute to gaze at the view from one of the many little bridges crossing the Miljacka River that ran right through the center of town, Sarajevo was gorgeous. Nestled into a steep-sided valley, protected from the harsh winter winds by the surrounding mountains, the town's whitewashed houses and many small mosques spread high up the sides of the hills on either side of that river, forming a natural amphitheater that was teeming with happy, relaxed inhabitants. Rose could not remember EVER seeing so many people smiling and laughing freely in her life. She certainly never had – and suddenly she was swamped by a wave of envy for these free spirits, secure in their place in the world.
She was strolling slowly through a lively marketplace when it happened. Right in front of her, a fairly well-dressed man was purchasing a bag of coffee from an open stall, turning away with it while stuffing his fat money clip into an outside pocket. He turned too quickly, however, and almost crashed into a pair of young men walking the other direction – and nearly stepped on Rose's foot when he bounced back. In the confusion, Rose darted her hand into his pocket before she even consciously formed the impulse, and his money clip was into her own pocket in an instant. Then she turned and fled, her cheeks burning in shame for what she'd done – even as she knew she needed some money to survive the next few days. Was this what she'd become? A common thief? Well, it's not that far to fall, according to some people.
Her father's face loomed in her mind, staring at her accusingly, mingled pain, guilt, and she couldn't decipher what all clouding his eyes, before he looked away, like he always did. He can't stand the sight of me, even now. No, things hadn't worked out for the two of them at all.
Well, we'll see what happens when I get home. One more job to do, and then, things will change, one way or another.
Coming to herself again, she found she'd come quite a ways up the hill. It was heading on towards evening, and she needed to find some place to hole up. The hillside above beckoned in the afternoon sunlight, so she kept walking that way, figuring there should be some abandoned shed or something a little ways out of town.
And there was. It wasn't much, a little one-room hut with a dirt floor and a few pieces of rough, rickety wooden furniture, tucked into the corner of an overgrown pasture – probably only used by the shepherd during the winter, when the flocks were down in the valley rather than up on the heights. (Or so she guessed, having no idea whether the local inhabitants even kept sheep, let alone took them on seasonal migrations.) But the view from the door was spectacular – looking down on the town and across towards the sunset.
But now she was hungry. Sighing, she pulled out the money clip, took off the top couple of bills, and found a hiding place for the rest in the hut, tucked behind a loose stone under the bed. (From the looks of it, the hole was regularly used for such safekeeping.) Then she hiked back into town, managed to purchase a loaf of bread and a few other things, including a blanket and some candles, and a wineskin which she filled at the water fountain, and got back to her hut before dark.
She'd brought the book with her, tucking it into her waistband at her back, so she spent that evening and the next two days reading it, catching up on the tangled stories of the various countries and their rulers (both the public, titled rulers, and the officious, power-hungry bureaucrats and secretive spymasters hidden in their grubby lairs), and the interwoven treaties and promises that had all led into Alpha Universe's First World War. She poured over and over the few terse pages that detailed the assassination which would happen on the coming Sunday, until she could have told it in her sleep – and in fact, she did dream about it: dark, violent dreams where the killer's grainy photographed face morphed into Jimmy Stones, laughing while he branded her neck with his cigarette, and then she pulled the trigger of Schultz's gun twice, and the man in the fancy mustache folded over, trying to protect his dying wife, and the car they rode in exploded into a mighty conflagration, and so did the world...
She jerked awake to the sound of thunder. Two days to go, and a downpour was imminent. And she was out of food. Sighing, she wrapped herself in the thin blanket like a shawl and started to let herself out the door to return to town, then stopped, thinking about her hideout. The time jumper was still on her wrist – she wouldn't take it off until she was home again – and on impulse, she unlocked the keypad, then captured the current time – plus ten minutes – and location and locked them into its memory. Then she took a few more bills off the money clip, put it and the book into the "safe", and set out towards town.
She made it just before the rain, and spent two hours sitting in a cafe near the train station, sipping coffee as slowly as she could and staring out the window at the pedestrians. After a while the rain eased and she left the cafe, walking the route the Archduke's car would take along the riverside, and then spent almost an hour at the spot where the fatal shots would be fired, just looking at it from all angles. The town was alive with people after the stormy morning, getting ready for the festival also on Sunday, concurrent with the Archduke's visit. She stumbled on an outdoor cafe overlooking the river, with a menu in German and a waiter who spoke the same, and on impulse treated herself to a good meal, watching the water and the people both, wishing she could relax – but the ever-present knot in her chest, below her heart, would not unclench so easily. Something that had taken a lifetime to build would not be seduced into giving up in an afternoon, no matter how brightly the sun shone from above or how many strangers smiled at her in passing.
After paying for the meal – she wasn't sure what the standard procedure for tipping was, but others had left a few coins on their tables, so she did, too – she got up and walked back through the market again, buying several days' worth of food, then lugged it back up the hill to her hut.
When she went to put the rest of the money away, she found the clip was undisturbed, but the book was gone. She sat on her heels, looking at the empty space, then shrugged. Apparently she had needed the escape hatch after all, and had reason to have removed the book. Nothing to do but wait and find out why. Her excellent memory, honed by those years of spying on her German lover and passing on the information to the Resistance, had settled the coming scenario into her brain as well as if the book were still in her hands.
There didn't seem much that she could do other than station herself outside the little store where Gavrilo Princip would stop for a sandwich, in front of which was the spot where Franz Ferdinand's car would stop, giving the assassin a completely unexpected second chance after the morning's initial disappointment. At least, that's what would happen in Alpha. Rose's plan was, quite simply, to grab his arm and prevent the shots from striking their targets.
What could go wrong?