COLD OPEN:

EXT TOKYO TOWER - ESTABLISHING SHOT into MCU

Night-time Tokyo, shot from the N.W. to frame the Tower against Tokyo Bay. The Tower is stark, glowing dimly from internal luminescence but otherwise unlit. About half the total volume has been replaced by sickly-looking organic growths of a dark green-brown; much of the rest shows obvious damage. The effect is not of a quiet ruin left over from a previous battle; instead it is an active, ominous, and above all alien presence looming over the city below.

The sound of a HELICOPTER is heard, along with distant sirens. A spotlight plays briefly against the transformed structure. A moment later, SAILOR V enters FOV from left, and turns in MCU to look over her shoulder at the tower, forming a 2-shot with it. She is in full UNIFORM, including the red spectacles-like mask over her eyes. Her expression is quiet and serious, giving little away.

MATCH CUT TO:

EXT TOWER OF LONDON - CRANE SHOT

SUBTITLE: "London, two months earlier."

A sunny weekday in mid-May. The shot begins framing the BYWARD TOWER against the sky, then OPEN and LOWER to show the tourists and other traffic on the causeway over the dry moat from the tourist entrance.

AINO MINAKO enters from below camera and pauses in MEDIUM to take a picture. She is wearing white high-tops, pale stone-washed jeans, an oversized t-shirt with a hip belt over it, and a Yomiuri Giants baseball jacket (open). Sunglasses with red frames are pushed up on top of her head and a tourist brochure is in one hand.

CUT TO:

CU - MINAKO

From the same direction as previous, as MINAKO lowers the camera. Although she is in 7/8 profile, it is possible to see her expression is more serious than one would expect from a tourist. This is an echo of the previous Tokyo shot but in CU. PUSH IN on this expression and HOLD for a beat.

BEGIN TITLES.

The Search for the Moon Princess

Episode 20 : Traitor's Gate

It was crowded inside the inner ward of the Tower of London. Crowded, but not crazy. Interest in central London's extensive collection of historical buildings had increased in the growing Millennial Fever. Which itself was a bit odd, considering it was only 1995 as yet - the millennium was still several years off. For all of that, though, John Major already had a number of civic projects under consideration for the big millennial bash. A big dome of some kind near Greenwich. A new bridge or two over the Thames. Merchants were already gearing up with the usual t-shirts and cups and so forth and the talk in the town seemed to be all "Millennial this, millennial that."

And then there was the Millennium Star Diamond. De Beers had finally managed to get the stone out of war-torn Zaire, and it was being cut by some of the best laser-weilders of the Steinmetz Diamond Group. It would not be seen in public until the actual Millennium came along. It was said to be spectacular.

However, a second stone purchased at the same time WAS being exhibited as a small preview of the Millennial Diamond Exhibition. The Heart of Eternity was a mere 27.64 carat stone, but not only was it one of the extremely rare blue diamonds, it was the only flawless example of a "Fancy Vivid Blue" ever discovered. It would be in the public view for only one week, under the same tight security (and in the same rooms) as the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.

To Mina's experienced eyes, security around the Waterloo Barracks had been beefed up. And not just Yeoman Warders and Coldstream Guards, but what looked suspiciously like a few plainclothes men from the Metropolitan Police. But then, this was almost certainly just lingering remnants of the heightened security in several nations after the recent terrorist bombings in Oaklahoma City.

The crowd seemed about equally split between native British and foreigners like herself. There were quite a few children, but unlike back home in Japan no sign of the squads of little ones with identical back packs and colored baseball hats that made up the "ensoku" or school-run tour.

Mina pulled aside from the flock que'ing up dutifully in a line that meandered across the Broad Walk and ended at the tourist entrance to the Jewel House. She moved towards the curtain wall and made a bench out of a rusted iron cannon. One finger tapped the fabric choker she wore, right over the tiny gold crescent.

"You there, Arty?" she murmured. "I'm in."

An aggrieved voice came back over the earbud. "And you are breaking radio silence, why?"

"Oh, come on, Arty. You are as paranoid as if WE were jewel thieves. You know we have friends on the police force."

"ONE friend. If you could call him that. Besides, it isn't the cops overhearing us that I'm worried about. Not on these new gigahertz transceivers. It's whatever is in the White Tower that alarms me. There are some strange signals coming out of that building and it stinks of top-secret government agency to me. And those are exactly the kind of people you don't want to be found sneaking around."

Mina sighed. Artemis always did have a way of reigning in her more, err, casual approach to investigations. "Okay, boss," she said, putting on a deep sigh. "I'll play nice little tourist and let whatever gadgets you put in my bag do their work."

"Don't call me boss! We're partners, Mina-chan." Artemis sighed. "Keep your eyes open," he said then. "And get off the radio!"

"Whatever you say, boss." Mina turned off the hidden radio with a grin.

"So, what first?" Mina said aloud as she spread the map and brochure open on her knee. "The Armory? Take a walk along the top of the walls? St. John's Chapel? The Bloody Tower?" She found her own location on the map. "Hey," she said. "There's a bit of the Roman city wall right across the grass from here."

She hopped up and strolled that way. She DID enjoy doing the tourist thing. Her family had been in London for eight months now; both were attached to the Japanese Embassy, her mother as a trade attaché and her father as something else that (shallowly) covered up his real role in signals analysis. It was another posting that had helped Mina polish her English. She could carry on a decent conversation in English these days - as long as they stuck to Received Pronunciation, and not the tougher-to-decipher Estuary accent (or worse yet, full-blown Cockney).

She'd done quite a bit of exploring of London already, from visiting the Tate Gallery to taking a Thames river boat out to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and having her picture taken with one foot on either side of the Prime Meridian. And now she was at the Tower of London, in the heart of "The City"; the old part of London. The sun was warm, the people were friendly, she felt good and she knew she looked good, too. That made this a Good Day, even if she found out absolutely nothing about secret government agencies or high-tech jewel thieves.

The Roman wall was barely six feet tall and meandered like a creek, but it was solid and impressive and hardly looked like it was as old as it was supposed to be. Mina pressed her hand against the warm stone, impressed despite herself. Japan had a bit of history to display too, but Roman times was really getting back then. It felt rather peculiar to be able to rest your own hand on something that had been carted there and chipped into shape by someone living 2,000 years before you'd been born.

There was more history on display in the reconstructed living quarters of Sir Walter Raleigh, in the so-called Bloody Tower. And further along, one patch of otherwise undistinguished wall was meticulously labeled with every major revision imposed on its stones in the past eight hundred years; from the expansions made by Edward I to repairs made necessary by cannon fire during the War of the Roses to John Taylor's ruthless stripping of the ill-considered gothic medievalisms imposed on the old structure during the 18th century. It was easy to see where some of the thousands of pounds of Caen stone imported by Oliver Cromwell had been fitted into old gaps. It was also easy to see - because it had been preserved in this one spot - where some particularly horrible Victorian plastering had once covered up the honest stones.

Not that Mina got this from reading all the little signs peppered about. Instead she'd listened in on a nearby tour group. Four well-dressed, older people, led by a small man in spectacles who looked so quintessentially (if not to say stereotypically) British it was a surprise to see he didn't have a bowler hat.

It was something to think about, Mina mused as she worked her way back down the stairs towards the Inner Ward; all these layers of accreted history on a building that had started life in the Norman Conquest (and had a few bits of the even older Roman city wall buried beneath that). It also, Mina reflected, held up a mirror to a people who seemed able to get downright obsessive about their past. It was almost as if they were boasting about having so much history to point at, a sort of; "You can't fool me, Guv - I've been around, I have."

A different obsession was on display out on the sweeping grass with the slight rise in the middle - where the headsman's block had once stood (and was replaced now with a modern reproduction.) Mina was lucky enough (if she understood right what the jovial Beefeater was telling another group of tourists) to see two of the Tower's ravens. They were surprisingly large birds, a deep sooty black and slightly awkward-looking in the air, and the raptor's gleam about beak and eye lent credence to the Beefeater's chuckling claim that the birds were still hanging around the old execution grounds in hope of getting another taste of fresh meat.

That other obsession was made even more clear to her as another of the Yeoman Warders - a pink-cheeked fellow who mopped his brow in the bright sunlight and had obviously eaten his full share of beef over the years - cajoled the passing tourists to follow him down to the lower levels for the next scheduled tour of the cells and torture instruments. He seemed to take a positive glee in his mention of the Rack and the Scavenger's Daughter. As well as, he hinted, the odd assorted manacles, pinchers, and hot irons.

It was all rather ghoulish. Mina hadn't read that much history (studying, in general, was something she avoided when possible), but she'd encountered enough of the stuff to decide that the past really wasn't a very nice place. She wasn't sure if people were really that different then - more bloody-minded, or maybe just more indifferent to the pain of their fellow creatures - but she was quite happy to have found herself living in the modern world.

Finally, the day had wended on enough for her to brave the line and visit the Crown Jewels. The security inside was properly impressive. The displays were fronted with over five centimeters of shatter-proof glass. The vault door was a massive Chubb. But more than that, the entire display area was built as a series of nested rooms with thick steel-lined walls. In order to get to the Crown Jewels you would have to penetrate multiple layers of rooms each with their own security system. The general public was ushered through this series at a rather brisk pace; a journey made even more claustrophobic by the low ceilings, dim lighting, and the narrow access corridors - not to mention the hard-eyed, ever-suspicious security people posted in every corner and intersection.

The crowd dutifully let themselves be pushed from airlock to airlock in groups of twenty or less, with just enough time to take in the various displays of lesser jewels and other paraphernalia. The height of the tour - the Crown Jewels themselves - were in free-standing cases past which a moving walkway whisked the viewers at entirely too fast a pace to allow proper admiration of the Imperial State Crown or the Crown of Mary of Modena or St. Edward's Crown (with the distinctive arches and cross that appeared on every official Coat of Arms.) Or, for that matter, the Sceptre with the Dove, the Sovereign's Orb, The Great Sword of State, and any of the other significant treasures that glimmered on French velvet under the piped-in fibre optic lighting. There was really barely time to pay respects to the Koh-i-noor, the Star of Africa, the Black Prince's Ruby or any of the other magnificent gems on display.

At least an eddy or two was allowed in the progression in the final room of the tour, a room given over to what seemed more than anything else an expensive advertisement for the De Beers company. The man without a bowler hat was down here, too, and seemed to have enough pull to have been allowed to pull up his exclusive little tour group in a corner while he lectured them on the long and bloody history of the Koh-i-noor Diamond.

Although, from what tantalizingly little had been published so far, the history of the Heart of Eternity was far stranger. Fewer empires had toppled because of it, but this small blue diamond was said to carry a curse even more deadly than that far more famous stone.

Even from across the room the case seemed to shine with the reflected light of the diamond within - it was that intense a blue. Unfortunately, a party of portly Germans had parked themselves in front of the case and seemed unwilling to move along. A darling little girl in a sundress with straight blond hair under a white straw hat (looking like she had just skipped her way out of a British children's book) stood on tiptoes behind them trying vainly to get a glimpse of the jewel.

Mina rolled her eyes, and tapped the first shoulder she reached in an uncompromising way. To their credit, the German party seemed abashed they had been blocking the display. Mina smiled back at them, then let the little girl go first before moving up close to look into the Heart of Eternity herself.

And it was right then, right at that moment, when a stabbing pain came from somewhere deep in her chest. Mina greyed in an instant as the sturdy concrete room shuddered around her. The diamond flared with light for a moment. Then she was stumbling backwards, her feet refusing to stay under her.

"Thank you," Mina said again.

"It is not a problem," said the dark-skinned Beefeater in words with just the slightest hint of an accent. "Tea?" he asked. He was already preparing a cup for himself from the small serving set and hot plate at one end of the counter. They were in one of the inner rooms of the aid station built in the back of Hospital Block, on the Eastern side of the tower complex.

"I think it was just a faint," Mina said. "Sometimes I forget to eat. And maybe some of the stuff about beheadings and tortures and all was starting to get to me," she went blithely on, before she realized she was talking to someone who lived here as well as worked here. "I, ah..." her hand flew to her head in the Japanese gesture of embarrassment.

"They do lay it on a bit thick," the Yeoman Warder said. "But you can't blame them. The tourists love it. It really got started in the 19th century," he said then. "Blame a fellow named Ainsworth for it. William Harrison Ainsworth. He wrote the first history of the Tower that romanticized the supposed dungeons and torture rooms."

"I got an earful from this little man with glasses that was leading a tour group around," Mina said. "Is he a volunteer docent or something?"

"That sounds like Graham," the Yeoman Warder answered. "Graham Thickwicke. He's on the board of directors for Historic Royal Palaces, which means he has a lot of pull. And, yes, he's another Ainsworth. I think he wishes he'd been born in the 15th century."

"So the tower was never really a prison?" Mina asked.

"No, the Tower has been used as a prison. Mostly for high-ranking prisoners. And as a royal dwelling. And for storing ammunition, too. It has had quite a history. Most of the executions you might hear about were performed away from here though, on Tower Hill. And it never really had dungeons. There's only forty-odd recorded cases of any of those torture instruments Brian or some of the other Warders are so eager to show off to the tourists ever being used."

"Still forty times too many," Mina shuddered. "Good thing that was all in the distant past."

"Oh, I do wish," the man said to that. "The spy Josef Jakobs was shot in 1941. They demolished the rifle range in 1969, though. And why am I having a conversation like this with a charming young woman?"

"I don't know either," Mina laughed. "But thank you again for being such a nice host. I feel so much better now."

"Hey, Joey!" The door opened with great brusqueness. One of the other Yeoman Warders loomed in, looking even larger in the heavy black-and-red tunic-like coat. "Back to earning Her Majesty's Silver for you - we've got another rugrat with a skinned knee."

"Johar, please." The response was pained.

"As you like, Sergeant," the newcomer said with a false, overbearing heartiness. "Your customer is waiting."

He still hadn't looked directly at Mina. "She seems all healed up. Send her on her way too." Mina wasn't sure if she was imagining it, but there had been the slightest pause before "her." As if the man had been about to say "that tourist," or even "that foreigner," instead.

The day was gray outside. Mina didn't pay much attention to the sky, though. The fresh air had only made her realize she was feeling unusually tired, and it was time to take a stroll around the White Tower, let Artemis' instruments take a reading on whatever had interested him about this one, and then head back to Embassy Row and her current "home."

There seemed to be more confusion than usual, and not a few tourists were standing around holding their maps and looking bemused. Mina walked briskly down Water Lane, between the walls; past the miniature rifle range with it's pre-fab buildings and through the gate at the Constable's Tower. Ignoring the signs for the Regimental Museum and the tourists milling in confusion in front of the Waterloo Barracks, she headed straight for the north-east corner of the White Tower.

"Pardon me, ma'am," a voice called.

"Sir?" Mina turned to see a tall sandy-haired man supporting himself on a pair of well-worn crutches, with what appeared to be wife and teenage son just behind him. The son gave Mina a friendly - and admiring - smile.

"You look like a gal who has figured out where everything is in this here place," the man said in in what had to be an American accent. "Could you help me and my folks about where the Crown Jewels might be?"

"Sure." Mina smiled. "Big entrance right under that clock-thingy. Just join the line. And..." She looked closer. There was no line anymore. She couldn't see the cubical clock that hung on the face of the building. But there was what looked like an entrance at the WEST of the building. "Ah, I meant..." Her hand flew towards her head again.

Wait. Rifle range? Rifle range?!

She broke away from the Americans with a brief (but cryptic) apology and headed back towards the aid station. "Artemis is not going to like this," she said to herself. She turned on the little radio again and tapped on the throat mic hidden in her choker. "Arty, Arty. Come in, Arty."

No answer. "Isn't that just like a cat?" Mina said aloud. "Can't stay focused on one thing for five minutes." She didn't mean it, though. You didn't ALWAYS have to hit Mina with a volleyball to draw the obvious to her attention. She'd lost communications with her partner. It was growing increasingly hard to ignore that SOMETHING was going on.

The dark-skinned Yeoman Warder was just coming from the direction of the aid station, heading in her general direction. He was back in his full Beefeater coat and hat now, and seemed oddly shrunken within their bulk. "Johar!" she waved. "Sergeant!"

"Yes, miss?" He angled her way. His attitude seemed cooler than it had been - more distant, at least.

"That rifle range...I thought you said it had been torn down years ago?"

"You mean where the most recent spies and traitors were executed?" he answered. "Why would it have been torn down?"

"The most..." Mina echoed. And reacted instantly to a sharp crack of sound behind her. "An explosion?" She looked back at the White Tower. There was no smoke, no sign of what had certainly sounded like an incredibly brief and truncated explosion. But the building was much darker than it had been, covered in generations of grime. And there seemed to be a wooden stair on one side, leading up to the second floor, that she didn't remember having been there before.

She turned, and there was more new activity around the Waterloo Barracks, including what appeared to be excavation into the parade ground in front. All the signage for the Jewel House was gone, now.

"Johar!" she cried. "What's happening?"

Her Beefeater friend wasn't even looking at the White Tower. His attention was in the direction of the river instead. "We have to make ready," he said. He wasn't talking to her. "HE is coming."

Mina felt the first clammy fingertips of dread climbing up her spine. She didn't know what was happening, but she had a strong feeling it wasn't a good thing.

She moved quickly, now, trotting to one of the long stone stairways that led up to the walkways along the outer curtain wall. Her long legs took the steps two at a time.

The sky was grey. Not the grey of overcast, but the grey of a deep, enshrouding fog. What she could see of London was mere shapes of darker grey. Even the sounds off the river were oddly muffled.

The tall American came up behind her. "I don't understand this," he said. He shaded his eyes, as if that would let him penetrate the fog better. "Say, look at the river there. How you can just see the far bank? Shouldn't HMS Belfast be there?"

"Belfast?" Mina asked.

"Royal Navy light cruiser. It's a museum ship now - my family visited it earlier today, before we came here." He looked to his left, orienting himself. "Yes, there's Tower Bridge. The Belfast should be right about there, along that abutment."

Mina said softly, "The Jewel House moved, too. And the White Tower is different now. Something is happening. This whole place seems to be changing around us." She straightened. "We need to get people out of here. This could be dangerous."

"I agree," said the American. His hand went to his head in a way that struck Mina as an oddly Japanese gesture, until she realized he had unconsciously reached to push back a hat he wasn't wearing. "I tried to get the attention of those Beefeater fellows but they don't seem to notice anything is wrong."

"That's..." Mina was about to say, "That's odd," but she realized she'd seen the same thing in Johar. Why? Why could she, or the tourist by her, see it but the people who worked here didn't? Were they pretending not to notice? Was this some sort of complicated plot?

She sensed it was simpler than that. Simpler but a lot more dangerous. "Then we have to do it," she said.

The strangeness and the increasingly dismal look of the place had apparently driven quite a few tourists to seek warmer weather elsewhere. The crowd before what had been the Jewel House had all but dispersed already, and there were few children left. Mina and the American, whose name appeared to be Vic, didn't have to spend much time in pointing and shouting before they'd gathered the large party of Germans, a small flock of young men and women who appeared to be Korean, and several more Americans with them.

By the time they got to the causeway towards the visitor's center, though, the fog had thickened until it rolled out of the passage like a cheap special effect. They found more tourists there, and none of them seemed eager to dare the now dark and forbidding tunnel.

"Wait," Mina cautioned, touching Vic on the arm.

The leading German sniffed at the air. "This is a thing I do not like the look of," he said. Behind him, his friends shifted their feet uneasily.

One Korean girl made a squeaking sound as a tendril of fog lapped out from the stone entryway, and backed into the comforting arms of her friends.

"I'll go first," Mina said firmly.

And she did, before anyone else could move.

Her high-top sneakers were quiet on the damp stone lining the passage through the thick stone wall. Within a few steps the gray fog closed in about her. It was so thick she couldn't see as far as the walls of the passage, and had to navigate by the light that dimly came from the entrance behind her.

Outside sounds were becoming muffled. The fog was chill and wet on her face, and it seemed to get colder as she moved further. There were other sounds within it, though. Barely-heard, distorted sounds, all jumbled together. She thought she heard police sirens - the old type, not the new electronic ones. A confusion of voices with thick British accents. And winding through all of it, the soft lapping of water. For some reason she found the latter the most disturbing.

It was getting harder to move. The fog seemed to pull at her arms and legs now, resisting her efforts to walk forward. She was shivering in the cold. She drew a deep breath and it felt like an icy knife in her lungs. She couldn't hear her own footsteps anymore, couldn't see even the light she had left behind.

She squinted hard, trying to make out anything in the fog ahead, any sign she was close to breaking through. Nothing. She tried one brisk step and it felt like walking into a soft, clinging wall. She pushed, her feet slipping on the damp stones.

No good. She let the fog push her back, turned, and began her retreat. The fog didn't hinder this, it even seemed to be pushing her back out like a cork in a bottle, but she was still stumbling and chilled to the bone before she made it back to the courtyard and the small circle of sombre, troubled civilians.

"With your pardon, now I will try," the German man said. He squared his shoulders like a military man and marched into the fog. He was gone longer than Mina expected; long enough so the small party of trapped people began to have hope. But at last he staggered back, his face grey and sweating even though frost was on his thinning hair.

Mina went to him, helped him back to his feet when he staggered. He shook his head. "I'm a tough old Kraut, my dear. I will survive." He straightened up; more of that military bearing was showing. "We can not get through this way."

The tall American scratched his head again. "It appears the fog will not let us pass."

The German gave him a sharp look. "You must be a scientist," he said. "You are generalizing."

"And you must be an engineer. Vic Armstrong. That's my family back there, with the others."

"Klaus Fuchs," the German shook his hand. "It is a pleasure."

"I'm afraid I didn't get your name," Vic said to Mina then.

"Aino Minako. Just call me Mina. So we might be able to get these people out another way?"

Vic sighed. "We don't know that. Klaus makes a good point, but I think we are not going to be able to force our way through this mysterious fog at this time."

Mina frowned. She turned to Klaus. "There's something here I'm not getting. Why did he say you must be an engineer? And what does that have to do with us getting out of here?"

The German engineer snorted. "Doctor Armstrong, will you?"

The tall American gave a short grin. "The traditional joke is that an engineer won't tell you what color his own socks are without removing his shoes first. He is pointing out we haven't tried everywhere. We are just assuming it is all the same. And call me Vic, please."

Klaus grinned too, teeth together. "What the professor didn't tell you is that a scientist won't make a pronouncement like he did earlier unless he has a working hypothesis. Care to share with us?"

Vic spread his hands out, placating, before returning them to the crutches he rested on. "I do have the germ of one. Doesn't account for the interface, though."

Klaus started to say something. Mina caught his eye. He nodded. She turned back to the American and said, only, "Please."

Vic sighed. "I was hoping to wait. I'm expecting to see something soon. Okay, here's the hat without the cattle. HMS Belfast. Not where we expect it. I don't think it can steam up, not on short notice. And if it didn't move, then something else did."

Mina didn't say anything. The rest of the tourists - they'd collected pretty much every one that had been caught inside when the fog lowered - were still standing in a loose group, subdued. Like they expect us three to solve this, Mina thought. We're the leaders. At least, for the moment.

"White Tower," Vic continued. "I saw on the sign as we were visiting earlier that there was a big clean-up in the 70's. And about the same time there was an explosion in the Mortar Room. People at the time blamed the IRA. Well, the tower looked pretty dirty to me before we walked over here. And there was a wooden staircase that hadn't been there before."

Klaus grinned his thin grin again. He wasn't saying anything, but there was a gleam in his eyes.

"Now, the Jewel Room wasn't always where you found it, Mina. The fancy new display was finished just last year. Before that they were displayed in a basement under the Broad Walk. And before 1967, they weren't even at the Waterloo Barracks."

"Wait," Mina said. "Are you saying..?"

"Ah," Klaus said then. "But what is the rate of change?"

"I just don't know. I wasn't taking notes of all these dates, folks! But there is one I think we can be sure of. I just don't know when..."

They were interrupted by another of those strange, incredibly-shortened explosions. The sky seemed to flicker several time. Mina jumped back, startled. "There's...there's a hole in that wall over there! And over there!"

"We did that," the German grinned tightly. "And now we know the base rate."

Mina looked from one to the other. "What do you mean, you did that? How did YOU blow holes in the walls? What just happened?"

"The Blitz," Vic said somberly. "We just passed through the German air raids of World War II."

He took a deep breath. "The Tower of London is going back in time. And it is taking us with it."

Scribbler's Note:

A big flag warning here for blatant racism. And it is going to get worse. I'm not going to get on a soap box and talk about the very real racism (and other -ism) that we still struggle with in the modern world, but I must emphasize that what is happening in this episode is a magical curse that is trying to program the people under it towards a very specific set of feelings towards the "other."

And fanfic dot net still insists on eating formatting. What is with it that you can't put a double space between scenes? Do they WANT only breathless, run-together writing?