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“Well, we might be out of your hair before you know it,” Ben says to Quint, triumph turning his sad smile into one more genuine.

For a split second, Quint glances at me—making my heart hammer against my chest. “What did you find?” he asks, breaking the contact.

Ben settles into a chair. “I must say, I’m better at this intelligence thing than I thought.”

“You’re being vague.” Quint leans against the arm of a chair.

Ben laughs. “After spending a few nights in the cold and watching that house, my watch paid off. A man showed up this afternoon.” He reaches into his pocket and pauses, biting his lip. “Hang on to your knickers, Quint. This bit of technology might throw you for a loop.” He pulls out his cigarette case, laying his finger across the indentation on top so it opens, and pulls out his phone.

Quint’s eyes widen as he stares at it, flabbergasted, and shakes his head. “How astonishing…” he says under his breath. “What is it?”

“This?” Ben holds the phone aloft and chuckles. “A portable telephone.” Quint’s jaw drops. “Among other things,” Ben adds with a wink at me. I could’ve hugged him for that small moment of friendship.

I come forward to stare at the picture on Ben’s screen, furrowing my eyebrows at the familiar-looking man in a high-end suit climbing the rickety steps to a house with peeling paint on its wooden siding.

“You recognize him?” Ben asks.

Quint leans closer to scrutinize the picture. “Yes, of course. Lord Bailemore. He works quite high up in the Foreign Office in London—married to an American. And he’s richer than the king. What is he doing in New York?”

“That’s it!” I cry, the name bringing to mind the headline and the pictures from the party. “Ben—” I bounce on my toes, feeling helpful for the first time this trip. “—he was in New York in 1928. He got married that year, here, at the Plaza. It was one of the events in the list Quint and I gave you the day before we, er, left.”

Which explains what Gibbons was doing here then. Ben flicks his fingers over the screen of the phone. “And Bailemore’s certainly not here now to visit his in-laws.”

Wonder reappears on Quint’s face when a video starts. “A movie on that small thing?”

“That’s not all it does, but I’ll try not to scramble your brain.” Ben laughs. “You’d best forget about it. I’d hate to have to come back and stop you from inventing the cell phone several decades too early.”

Quint joins his laughter—the sound nearly melting me into a pool—and then he does as Ben bid him to and leans over to watch the shaky video, taken from behind some kind of wooden shelving unit. I bend over as well to study the video closer, my shoulders now touching both Quint’s and Ben’s as the three of us watch. I squint at the screen, focusing on the video to prevent myself from sliding my fingers into Quint’s, which dangle so close I could brush them by moving a mere centimeter.

The picture zooms in on a man facing Lord Bailemore. I recognize Simon Gibbons.

Quint stiffens, and he turns minutely to Ben, his expression fierce. His tone is accusing when he speaks in a low voice, “You were in the same room with him and didn’t⁠—”

“I couldn’t, as much as I wanted to,” Ben snaps. “Listen and you’ll see.”

Gibbons speaks first. “My lord, Germany will soon force Great Britain to react to their onslaught in Europe.”

Lord Bailemore cuts across him with a sharp sigh. “This is the key to power you promised me ten years ago? Any fool could tell me that, Gibbons.” The man has a drawl to his voice that I dislike.

Gibbons laughs, full of condescension. It makes me tense and remember the cold tone of his voice when he spoke to me before pulling the trigger and shooting me. What would have happened if he hadn’t found me there? Would I have been able to say goodbye to Quint better? Explain why I couldn’t stay, as desperately as I would have liked to?

Gibbons’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts. “Yes, my lord, that is true.” He doesn’t sound offended by Bailemore’s derision. “No. The key to power I promised you is a biological agent so powerful I can wipe out the population of London in a matter of weeks—and all of England within months.”

“Why England?” Quint whispers. He’s leaned over so far and so close to the phone that I have to stand even closer to him to watch.

“You’ll see,” Ben says.

Lord Bailemore doesn’t move, and I can’t see his reaction since his back faces Ben’s camera, but his shoulders straighten almost infinitesimally, proving Gibbons has caught his attention for the moment. I doubt the peer understands the weight of what Gibbons said, unless he knows that Gibbons comes from a technologically advanced future. What has Gibbons brought for Bailemore to use to claim power? Considering Gibbons’s former profession, the possibilities seem even more horrible than we ever considered.

“Can you?” Lord Bailemore answers in a dry tone.

Gibbons turns to someone off the screen. “Bring her in,” he commands.

The camera adjusts, showing a doorway. An accomplice drags a dirty, malnourished woman through the door, dropping her to her knees in front of Gibbons. My chest pinches in pity and worry over what is about to happen. The camera drops slightly, and I hear Ben behind the camera suck in a breath.

“Give it to her,” Gibbons says, waving with his hand.

The accomplice takes a cup from a nearby table. With careless movements, he forces the woman’s head back, ignoring her screams, then gurgles as he pours the substance in. He holds her mouth shut, forcing her to swallow, even as she strains wildly under his tight clutches. The camera jumps the same time the woman begins shaking uncontrollably.