Chapters (45)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Prologue
- 2046
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- About the Author
‘Phone it in?’ Ben ask.
‘Yeah.’ She shrugs, pulling a face. ‘Phone the police or the Feds or the bloody KGB . . . I don’t know who but . . . the point is it’s not difficult to figure it out.’
‘Exactly,’ Roland says.
‘Exactly,’ Safa says, she sits back and crosses her legs as the room fills with a silence that grows heavier with the air of expectation. She shifts position, uncrossing her right leg from over her left and re-crossing with her left over her right as Harry coughs lightly and Ben stares at her. ‘You want us to do that, then?’ she finally asks.
‘Yes,’ Roland says firmly and very much relieved. The banter and use of humour at such a time of heightened stress is a good sign. It’s what soldiers and professional security people do. Black humour they call it. A way to alleviate the pressure and show an air of non-intimidation. He expected it from Harry and to a certain extent from Safa, but the fact that Ben is also doing it is a very good sign. Plus they haven’t gone mad and beaten him up either.
‘Coffees,’ Malcolm says from the doorway.
‘We eating now?’ Harry asks.
‘I brought some little bread cakes in,’ Konrad says, walking in behind Malcolm with a basket in his hands.
‘Take a few minutes,’ Roland says, standing up and heading for the door. ‘I need to get something.’
Eleven
Eleven
‘Okay.’ Roland comes back into the room, takes a coffee and heads round his desk with a glance to the now empty basket and Harry swallowing the last cake.
‘Did you want one, sir?’ Harry asks with a mouthful of bread cake. Ben and Safa sip their coffees from unpainted earthenware mugs. Both quiet, both pensive and both having just watched Harry demolish the entire basket of bread cakes.
‘No thank you,’ Roland replies in his cultured voice as he takes his seat and rests the large-screen tablet on the desk. ‘Now. I am going to explain the rest. In twenty-one eleven the world has been destroyed.’
‘We got that,’ Safa says.
‘Good. Now it wasn’t like that before . . . when the inventor first went forward fifty years, so we know something has changed but we don’t know what or by who, but we do know there was a replica device made.’
‘By who?’ Ben asks.
‘We don’t know,’ Roland replies. ‘Needless to say the inventor, on realising the danger, took steps to secure the device, which is why we are here. In the Cretaceous period.’
‘I’m lost,’ Safa says. ‘What’s this got to do with dinosaurs?’
‘It hasn’t,’ Roland says, puzzled at the question.
‘It’s, er,’ Ben says quietly, looking at his plain mug, ‘a place to hide?’ He glances at Roland, who nods. ‘The Cretaceous period spanned tens of millions of years.’
‘Got it,’ Safa says. ‘So we’re hiding here?’
‘Yes,’ Roland says.