Page 87 of The Uprising
Cara picked up the key and held it in the palm of her hand. ‘We can prove our identity. As you see, the key is rusty and may not have worked anyway, but we don’t have the code.’
The clerk looked troubled. ‘I do not wish to seem unhelpful but without the code, my hands are tied. I’m not even authorised to discuss the vault with you any further.’
Cara looked at George. He shrugged his shoulders.
What now?
Chapter 26
Bank of England, London - Present day
Benjamin smoothed his shiny black hair with one hand, and his eyes flitted from Cara to George and back again.
Cara cleared her throat and said, ‘I appreciate your predicament, and I’m sorry for the inconvenience but we’ve been moving around on business and we didn’t receive the code. Would it be possible to give us the address to which the code was sent?’
The clerk pondered for several seconds before slowly rising from his chair, and saying, ‘Please excuse me for a moment. I will liaise with my colleague as this situation is most unusual. I must obtain special permission.’
‘I supposed it would have been too much to expect it would go off without a hitch,’ said George, after the clerk left the room.
‘The key is so rusty I didn’t think it would work, but I imagined they would just validate it somehow,’ said Cara.
‘Things have moved on in two hundred years—even in an establishment steeped in tradition such as the Bank of England,’ he replied.
‘If we can’t get them to give us access this way, we may have to get Eddie to ask Victoriana George to try again,’ Cara said.
‘If only the vortex would come for me, I could whiz back without bothering him.’
Cara checked her phone. There was a follow up message from John, the property agent, asking whether they wanted to move forward. Quantum time wasn’t working in their favour.
She raised her head, and said, ‘But what would you do differently? They gave you the key when you put the painting in the vault, so without being at the right address to receive the code, we’d be none the wiser, would we?’
Benjamin reappeared and said, ‘Thanks for your patience. I’ll need to see some current ID and then I’m permitted to release the address of where the code would have been sent.’
Cara exhaled. ‘Thank you so much, Benjamin, you’re a star.’
George had anticipated needing some form of identification in addition to the key and immediately produced his passport and driving license. As you can see, I bear the same name as the original holder of the vault. Family tradition.’ He channelled the full blast of his irresistible charm at the official.
‘Right, well this all seems to match up.’ Benjamin scrolled through computer records on a hand-held device. ‘Hopefully I can find the details of where the code was sent. I’ll need a few more minutes, please.’
Cara guessed George was as clueless as her about what address would be on record. They were still trying to fill in the blanks of what had happened in the earlier years of the new version of George’s present-day life.
Several minutes later, Benjamin said, ‘I’ve found a note on your account saying that we switched from key to code towards the end of the nineties and we wrote to request that you return your key to us to be destroyed for security reasons.’
‘Okay,’ said George, nodding.
‘There’s no record of it being returned,’ the clerk said, his speech slow as he scrolled.
Cara tried to rein in her impatience. ‘We obviously didn’t return it because we have it with us today.’
Cara and George waited, the tension in the small room was palpable as Benjamin continued to study the device in a mind-numbing meticulous fashion.
‘I’m trying to find the address to which we sent the code. It’s all so long ago,’ he said, glancing at them briefly.
‘How bizarre that it should be safe for centuries, but we can’t access it now due to modern technology,’ said Cara.
More minutes ticked by and Cara fidgeted with the contents of her bag.
‘Ah, here we are. I think this is it,’ he said, finally.
