Written in Time

415 Pages·2011·1.75 MB·English

by  Ahern Jerry

A PICTURE WORTH A HUNDRED YEARS

Ellen opened the envelope. There was a copy of a photograph, just a Xerox, but
remarkably clear. It was a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Naile and their two
(unnamed) children.
“This has to be an elaborate practical joke, Jack.”
“Lemme see, princess.”
She handed it to him. Despite the age of the photograph and the fact that it was
a Xerox, the resemblance between the Naile family of nine decades ago and the
Naile family of today was enough to make her want to throw up.
She’d been looking out the Suburban’s open window but now focused on the
other items in the envelope. There was a summary of its contents, typed on an
old-seeming machine, Arthur Beach’s name scrawled at the bottom.
“The Naile family arrived in town in 1896. They were apparently on their way
to California for some new business when their wagon suffered an accident and
was destroyed. Reduced to only a few personal belongings, the Nailes seemingly
had considerable financial resources. There is no material yet available to me
mentioning the fate of their descendants, nor concerning how or when Mr. and
Mrs. Naile eventually died. The county medical examiner’s office burned to the
ground in the 1940s, all death certificates archived there destroyed. I’ll keep
looking.’”
“Holy—”
“Tell him to stop looking, Jack!”
“Startling resemblance, that photograph. I’ll say that.”
“Jack, it’s you and me and David and Elizabeth, and the picture was taken
almost a hundred years ago!”
WRITTEN IN TIME This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictional, and any resemblance to real persons and/or business/corporate entities is purely coincidental and
unintentional. Copyright © 2010 by Jerry Ahern and Sharon Ahern A Baen Books Original Baen Publishing
Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 www.baen.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3399-6 First printing, November 2010 Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For our children and our children’s children and our nephew; in
family, there is strength.
PROLOGUE
John Naile turned the Cadillac off the county highway and onto the black
pavement of a pine-flanked single lane road. Not yet that familiar with his latest
vehicular acquisition, he took his eyes off the road and glanced at the wood-
accented dashboard in order to find the cigar lighter. He found the lighter and
pushed it in. There was a half-filled package of Luckies in the cigarette pocket of
his single-breasted gray suit. He started to reach for a cigarette.
“You should try being pregnant sometime, John.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that, sweetheart,” Naile replied,
looking over at his wife in the front seat beside him. Audrey was nearing the end
of what she called her “first trimester,” but hardly looked pregnant at all. The A-
line skirt of her maroon suit barely showed a bulge, even when she was sitting.
“No, what I mean is these seats. I don’t know what it was about the ‘63. I
mean, John, I really didn’t notice it until I got pregnant. But there was no back
support!”
“I think it’s more your back than it was the seats, babe. The New Yorker was a
comfortable car.” He’d gone through two Chryslers, one Lincoln, a Mercedes
and a Ford Country Squire in search of the perfect car for his wife, all because
his father wouldn’t buy anything but a Cadillac. When the ‘64 model year was
announced, John Naile surrendered to fate and ordered one.
But John Naile had no intention, however, of abandoning his longtime personal
car, the red Thunderbird. He was vice-president of Horizon Industries, the family
business. He was married to the girl of his dreams and the arrival of their first
child was only six months away. Behind the wheel of the T-Bird, its top off, the
sound of its exhaust when he changed gears as throaty as Peggy Lee’s singing—
sometimes that sporty little roadster was the only way of reminding himself that
he wasn’t yet thirty.
Adulthood had gotten him used to driving vehicles the size of a sport boat on
wheels, but he didn’t have to like them.
“You want me to try the radio, John, and see how it picks up out here?”
“Sure, honey.”
Audrey apparently found WLS at 89 on the AM band from Chicago, or at least
it sounded like she had; it was an Elvis Presley song playing. “Do you think
Elvis will last, John? Like Sinatra?”
“I don’t know, Audrey. He’s got a good set of pipes, though.”
“Okay. What was the first movie you ever took me to, John Naile?”
“We saw Elvis in King Creole five years ago, one of the theaters in the Loop,
and afterward we went to that deli next to the Chicago Theater and we both had
hot pastrami. How’s that for being romantic and remembering stuff? Huh?”
“And you ate most of my pickle.” Audrey laughed softly, sliding over a little
closer to him, resting her head against his shoulder. John Naile still had the
“lover’s knob” mounted on the wheel of the Thunderbird, but didn’t need one to
drive the Cadillac one-handed. Maybe cars like this did have their merits. He
folded his right arm around his wife. Despite her Jackie Kennedy-esque pillbox
hat, he could still kiss his wife’s hair. He touched his lips to her forehead. The
scent of her hair, her perfume and the new-car smell of the Cadillac’s leather
seats all mingled very pleasantly. He’d forgotten to light his cigarette and didn’t
want to at the moment; the smoke would dispel the ambience.
“Glad you married me?” Naile asked.
“Well, I’ve had to put up with a lot, John, you being rich and all, with Horizon
Industries being one of the leading defense contractors and everything, and that
White House dinner when we met President Eisenhower and Dick Nixon. Stuff
like that. And then there’s your mom and dad—they’re so nice to me it’s almost
spooky! The first time I met them, it was as if they expected you to bring me
home and they knew we were going to get married.”
“Get Mom to show you her crystal ball sometime,” Naile laughed. “I never told
you about her Gypsy blood, did I? And was that a yes? About being happy you
married me?”
Audrey turned her face up toward him and kissed his cheek. She whispered,
“Yes, silly.” Her right hand drifted under his jacket, one smooth finger finding an
opening between two shirt buttons.
“Quit that!” He wedged his knee against the steering wheel for a split second
and feigned a slap at her hand.
“Why’d they make such a big deal about us coming up on a weekday?” Audrey
did that sort of thing, picking up a conversation almost randomly. This one dated
from when they’d first gotten into the car almost two hours earlier. “I mean, it’s
always good to see them; I really love your folks. But you said you had a lot of
stuff to do at the office with that new rocket-shooter thing and—”
“Beats me, babe,” he told Audrey honestly. “All Dad said was that nothing
could interfere with us being here this afternoon—not even prototyping the
launcher.”
Although John Naile handled the day-to-day running of Horizon Industries
with a relatively free hand, his father was still president, chairman of the board
and chief executive officer. Why Horizon was developing an inexpensively
produced, disposable rocket launcher without any indication that the Pentagon
was looking for one was something John Naile had never fully understood. With
the apparent rush on the research and development so they could move into
prototyping, wiping out a full day to come up to the estate was even more
enigmatic. “I really don’t know,” he added lamely, “but Dad’ll tell us.”
The weather WLS was reporting for Chicago didn’t match at all what John
Naile saw through the Cadillac’s windshield. Usually, central Wisconsin would
have worse weather this time of year, but on this day at this moment, it was a
classically beautiful November landscape through which they drove. They’d
been on the grounds of the estate since twenty feet or so after leaving the county
highway. And suddenly, he was reminded of the musical “Camelot,” the song
that Richard Burton sang about the sheer perfection of that mythical kingdom’s
climate. This was such a place this day, and John Naile wouldn’t have been too
much surprised to learn that James Naile had decreed it thus.
John Naile glanced at his watch and compared the Rolex to the dashboard
clock; surprisingly, they were in perfect agreement that the time was a few
minutes after noon. “You know, how Dad’s pushing how great Cadlillacs are and
everything? I’ll say one thing—the clock keeps time.”
“I still like the seats, John.”Audrey Naile pulled her legs up under her and
nuzzled her nose against his neck.
“Is that okay for you to sit like that? All scrunched up and everything?”
“I’m not that pregnant, John. It’s still okay for me to do a lot of stuff.”
“Hmm,” John Naile murmured.
“Hmm, indeed. Maybe after we leave your parents’ place, we can—”
“Why don’t we spend the night at Lake Lawn Lodge?” John Naile suggested.
“I don’t have any clothes with me, John.”
“You won’t need any for what I’ve got in mind. Besides, we can buy what we
need, or you can borrow something from Mom.”
“‘Gee, Mary Ann? Could I borrow some stockings and underwear? Your son
and I are going to go misbehave and—’”
“Hush,” he scolded his wife good-naturedly. The road was just about to split at
the driveway leading to the main house, the fork to the left leading deeper into
the property. The turn was a little sharp, and John Naile slowed the Cadillac
before making the right. Audrey sat up and smoothed her dress. She slid over
fully into the passenger side, turned down the visor and began adjusting her hat
and her hair in the vanity mirror. As always, she wore very little makeup; when
she woke up beside him each morning, she looked as perfect as if she’d spent
hours in front of a mirror.
All of this—the very comfortable living he made, the estate which someday he
would inherit, and all the other family investments—was thanks to David Naile,
who founded Horizon Industries in 1914 and never made a bad investment in his
life. Phenomenal business judgment seemed to be a family trait. James Naile,
David’s son and John’s father, bought large blocks of stock in obscure
companies that always grew into dependable profitability. Who would have
figured IBM would have gotten so hot? And why would anyone invest in
Japanese electronics? John Naile shook his head just thinking about it.
“What’s on your mind, besides your fedora, John?”
“I always think about how things got started, every time I drive up here. My
grandfather must have been a genius, you know? He piloted Horizon through the
Depression as if there wasn’t any stock-market crash in ‘29 at all. Horizon’s steel
foundries refused to sell scrap metal to Imperial Japan, and our aircraft and
munitions plants were already working double shifts before Hitler invaded
Poland in ‘39. And Dad seems to have his father’s magic touch. You’d better
hope I’m just a late bloomer, babe.”
“It’s experience, John, and you’re getting that.”
“Maybe.” He nodded soberly. Every once in a while, he’d pick a winner in the
stock market, but not that often and never anything that weird. His father and
late grandfather possessed skill; with him, it was educated dumb luck.
After his stint in the army at the end of the Korean War, he’d picked up his
sidetracked life and gone to college. Because he “knew” his destiny—Horizon
Industries— he’d studied business administration, but carried a second major in
music. A certain natural proclivity for the piano and the Naile family jawline
seemed to be his principal genetic inheritances from his grandfather, the natural
business acumen noticeably lacking. He’d begun growing into that, yes, he
supposed, since finishing college in ‘58 and marrying Audrey that same year.
But he had a long way to go.
“Haya Goldsmith was raving about your parents’ place.” Another resurrected
conversation appeared magically out of the blue. “Remember when you and your
dad had that big dinner for everybody in the international divisions last year?
She talked my ear off! Haya loves Tudor; there isn’t a Tudor anywhere in Israel
as far as she knows! Did you ever date Haya?”
“No, she was only thirteen or so when Dad got her dad to start up the Israeli
division for him, and their whole family packed up and left the country.” Then
John Naile remembered something. “I take that back about dating her, though.
The summer before my senior year in high school? Dad took me over to Israel
with him on business,
and I took Haya to a movie once.”
“What movie did you see with Haya?”
John Naile thought about it, but couldn’t remember. It was probably just as
well that he couldn’t, all things considered. Haya was a genuine knockout, the
prettiest comptroller anybody could hope for. Finally he said, “Can’t remember
what movie it was.”
“Right. You’ve got a memory like a steel trap, John.”
“No kidding, Audrey. Something old with Humphrey Bogart, I think.” Horizon
was one of the first companies to pump money into Israel after independence,
and—John Naile had learned only in 1960—had secretly smuggled arms to
Israel while the fledgling Jewish state fought for its very existence after the
British withdrew from Palestine. The man who’d run that clandestine operation
for Horizon was the same man David and James Naile had used to coordinate
intelligence data for Horizon during World War Two. Horizon had provided
Allied Intelligence with a lot of information both the U.S. and Great Britain had
cheerfully—and quietly—accepted. The intelligence data concerning the death
camps, sadly, the Allied governments had largely—and quietly—chosen to
ignore.
Even in late autumn, the landscaping within the immediate vicinity of the main
house and its garage retained a pleasant degree of understated, evergreen
elegance. The driveway looped toward the eight-thousand-square-foot Tudor’s
three front steps. John could see the front door opening and his father and
mother emerging.
Mary Ann Naile was still a pinup-quality beauty, her son thought. He’d seen
plenty of pictures of her from the time when his mom and dad first met and
through the years since before he was born. She had a reasonable amount of gray
in her shoulder length hair, but didn’t dye it. And she still had her figure, too.
There was a heavy cardigan sweater draped over her shoulders, beneath it a silk-
looking blouse of the identical shade of gray above a black knee-length skirt,
sheer stockings and medium black heels. She hadn’t fallen into the First Lady
look that Audrey only occasionally affected.
James Naile was tall and straight as ever. Facially and structurally, he
resembled the great swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in his role opposite
Ronald Coleman in The Prisioner of Zenda—or so it had always seemed to John
Naile. Only, unlike Fairbanks’ character of the dashing swordsman, James Naile
hadn’t a nefarious bone in his body—and he had more gray hair. He wore a
white shirt, blue slacks and black loafers, a pipe—unlit— clenched in the right
side of his mouth.
John Naile stopped the car, turned off the engine and climbed out. Before he
could cross over to the passenger side, his father was already opening Audrey’s
door. “How are you, sweetheart?” James Naile swept Audrey into his arms and
hugged her. “You look great, kid! Feeling okay?”
“Just fine, Jim. Never better.”
“Good! Good!”
John took off his hat, intercepted his mother and touched at her shoulder as he
gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Oh, John! It’s good to see you.”
“What’s the matter, Mom? It’s like we haven’t seen each other for months. But
it’s less than a week since—”
“It’s just that it’s today, and today is a funny day, John. Not funny like funny,
but funny like—well, I don’t know what.”
“Are you guys . . . ?”
“We’re fine, the business is fine. Now, go say hello to your father.” John put his
arm around his mother’s shoulders and she rested her head against him for a split
second, then announced, “Jim! Aren’t you going to say hello to your son?”
“Sure, after I’m through hugging the pretty girl he came in with.” James Naile
turned around and extended his hand. John took it, and his father leaned forward
and kissed him on the cheek. “I like the new car, son.”
“Figured you would, Dad. It’s a Cadillac, as you’ve no doubt noticed.”
They were all mounting the steps, but before entering the house, Mary Ann
said, “Audrey, help me out in the kitchen, will you? We gave everybody the day
off, and after Jim and your husband take care of a little business, I thought we
could have some lunch.”
“Sure, Mary Ann,” Audrey responded. “Let me take off my hat and freshen
up.”
“I’ll meet you in the kitchen, then.”
John Naile caught an odd look in his wife’s eyes as she veered off along the
entrance hall. She paused in front of a gateleg table in the hall, set down her
purse and looked in the mirror, beginning to remove her hat.