TW03 The Pimpernel Plot NEW by Simon Hawke Read Free Book Online Page A

separated from the neck chains, each containing their respective codes, and inserted them one at a time into a tiny slot in the grid control bank. He waited for a moment, watching the readout screen then nodded.
    “Stand by, sir,” he said to Lucas.
    A couple of seconds passed and the borders of the grid began to glow softly.
    “Staged, “ said the OC. “Good luck, sir.”
    “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Lucas said. “All right, Andre let’s go.”
    They walked forward into the field generated by the grid and disappeared from view.
    Delaney stepped out of limbo and onto soft, damp grass. An old veteran of time travel, the chronoplates did not affect him as profoundly as they did most soldiers, who usually vomited upon arrival and suffered from temporary bouts of vertigo and myoclonus, as well as double vision and ataxia. He did, however, feel slightly disoriented and off balance. He staggered momentarily, taking several uncoordinated steps and swaying in a drunken fashion until he was able to shake off the effects and become orientated to his new surroundings He saw that he was in a small clearing in a forest, more properly, a wood, since he knew that he was not far outside of Paris and he could see the road leading to the city through a clump of trees. The Pathfinders had cut it fairly close with the coordinates. Still, Finn had clocked in with much less room to spare before. One of the nightmares every soldier had from time to time involved a vision of clocking in at the same time and location at which another person or object occupied that space. The Pathfinders were usually extremely efficient at avoiding such occurrences, but there were still the inevitable accidents. The closest Finn had ever come to one was when he clocked into a forest clearing much like the one he now found himself in. The instant before he had materialized, a rabbit had run across the spot. As Finn clocked in, he had stepped forward and his foot had come down upon the running rabbit, crushing it. It gave off a pathetic squeal, a sound strikingly similar to a baby’s cry, and for a horrifying moment, Finn had thought it was an infant. It had been necessary for him to kill the poor animal to put it out of its misery and ever since, he had felt jumpy at the moment of materialization.
    This time, however, it had gone well and as he looked around, he saw the Observer, disguised as a peasant, approaching him. There was nothing to distinguish the Observer from any other peasant of the time; but the fact that he had just seen a man materialize out of thin air and was approaching him purposefully, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, marked him for what he was. He was leading a chestnut mare on a rein as he approached.
    “Major Fitzroy,” he said.
    “Sergeant Delaney.”
    The Observer nodded. “The coach is about two hundred yards down the road, off to the side,” he said. “You can’t miss it. It was stuck, but we’ve taken care of that. Now pay attention, this is where it stands. We’ve removed Corderro’s body. Lady Marguerite Blakeney is all right. The pistol ball grazed her skull, but it was only a scratch and we’ve patched her up. We applied some plastiskin to her forehead and she’ll never know that she was hit. There’s a hole in the inside of the coach where the ball went after passing through the window and skipping off her skull, so if she has any memory of being shot, show her where the ball went and tell her that she must have fainted and struck her head. That will account for any pain that she might feel later when the dope wears off. The coach horses must have bolted when the shot went off, so it’s highly unlikely that she saw what happened to Blakeney, even if she was still conscious at the time. Your story is that you were knocked down by the horse, but only winded. You took the captain’s horse and chased after the coach as soon as you got your breath back.”
    “What about Corderro?” said Delaney.