Chris stood at Laura’s side, and they watched Thelma’s car until it went down the long driveway and disappeared onto the state route.
Dr. Vladimir Penlovski’s large office suite was on the fourth floor of the institute. When Stefan entered the reception lounge, it was deserted, but he heard voices coming from the next room. He went to the inner door, which was ajar, pushed it all the way open, and saw Penlovski giving dictation to Anna Kaspar, his secretary.
Penlovski looked up, mildly surprised to see Stefan. He must have perceived the tension in Stefan’s face, for he frowned and said, “Is something wrong?”
“Something’s been wrong for a long time,” Stefan said, “but it’ll all be fine now, I think.” Then, as Penlovski’s frown deepened, Stefan pulled the silencer-equipped Colt Commander from the pocket of his lab coat and shot the scientist twice in the chest.
Anna Kaspar sprang up from her chair, dropping her pencil and dictation pad, a scream caught in her throat.
He did not like killing women—he did not like killing anyone— but there was no choice now, so he shot her three times, knocking her backward onto the desk, before the scream could tear free of her.
Dead, she slid off the desk and crumpled to the floor. The shots had been no louder than the hissing of an angry cat, and the sound of the body dropping had been insufficient to draw attention.
Penlovski was slumped in his chair, eyes and mouth open, staring sightlessly. One of the shots must have pierced his heart, for mere was only a small spot of blood on his shirt; his circulation had seen cut off in an instant.
Stefan backed out of the room, closed the door. He crossed the reception lounge and, stepping into the hall, shut the outer door too.
His heart was racing. With those two murders he had cut himself from his own time, his own people. From here on, the only life for him was in Laura’s time. Now there was no turning back.
With his hands—and the gun—jammed in his lab-coat pockets, wn the hall toward Januskaya’s office. As he neared the of his other colleagues came out of it. They said hello as they passed him, and he stopped to see if they were heading for Penlovski ‘s office. If they were, he’d have to kill them too.
He was relieved when they stopped at the elevators. The more corpses he left strewn around, the more likely someone would be to stumble across one of them and sound an alarm that would prevent him from setting the timer on the explosives and escaping by way of the Lightning Road.
He went into Januskaya’s office, which also had a reception area. At the desk, the secretary—provided, as Anna Kaspar had been, by the secret police—looked up and smiled.
“Is Dr. Januskaya here?” Stefan asked.
“No. He’s down in the documents room with Dr. Volkaw.”
Volkaw was the third man whose overview of the project was .-:- enough to require that he be eliminated. It seemed a good omen that he and Wladyslaw Januskaya were conveniently in the same place.
In the documents room, they stored and studied the many books, newspapers, magazines, and other materials that had been brought back from time travelers from scheduled jaunts. These days the men who had conceived of Lightning Road were engaged in an urgent analysis of the key points at which alterations in the natural flow of events could provide the changes in the course of history that they desired.
On the way down in the elevator, Stefan replaced the pistol’s silencer with the unused spare. The first would muffle another dozen shots before its sound baffles were seriously damaged. But he did not want to overuse it. The second silencer was additional insurance. He also quickly exchanged the half-empty magazine for a full one.
The first-floor corridor was a busy place, with people coming and going from one lab and research room to another. He kept his hands in his pockets and went directly to the documents room.
When Stefan entered, Januskaya and Volkaw were standing at an oak table, bent over a copy of a magazine, arguing heatedly but in low voices. They glanced up, then immediately continued their discussion, assuming that he was there for research purposes of his own.