The Empire of Time

by David Wingrove

  I could. Only then the Russians might capture him again and we’d be back to square one.

  ‘You see, I thought maybe I could go back. Save the boy.’

  ‘The boy’s already dead.’

  I watch him deflate and wish I’d not had to say that. But it’s probably true. The Russians don’t tolerate indiscipline, after all, and they don’t make idle threats.

  I swallow, my throat suddenly dry, then draw my gun. ‘I’m sorry, Hans.’

  But he hasn’t finished.

  ‘I know about your woman, Otto. The one in Novgorod. Does Hecht know?’

  Hecht doesn’t know. At least, I don’t think he does. Then again, it isn’t Hecht’s business. Not really.

  ‘It’s one thing taking lovers, Hans, another to betray your blood.’

  ‘I didn’t want to, Otto. Urd knows I love you all. But the boy …’

  And now his voice breaks and tears begin to flow. I’m moved, but I still have to kill him. It’s my duty.

  Yet even as I raise my gun, a cry of surprise comes from outside the tent. I turn, then hurry out, just in time to see something small and fleshy vanish from the air.

  Locators! Shit!

  The two guards are standing there, their rifles out before them, as if under attack, but there’s an unnatural fear in their eyes. And little wonder.

  I whirl about, just as another two – no three! – materialise in the air, in a circle, not a metre away from me. Each is a tiny gobbet of flesh, rounded and opaque, like a gouged eye. For a full twenty seconds they hover there, rotating slowly, giving off a hissing, crackling noise, like meat on a spit, and then, with the tiniest pop, they disappear.

  Beside me the two guards moan and cross themselves, their eyes almost bulging out of their heads with fright. But those were no works of witchcraft, those were locators: the means the Russians use to test out a location before sending in a man. Those tiny, ugly gobbets of flesh are expendable. They measure air pressure, temperature, oxygen content. And if they jump into something solid, that’s measured too. Send a man in without first using them, and the likelihood is that he’ll die.

  ‘Shit!’

  I turn and run inside. Taking the knife from my belt, I slice through Gruber’s ropes, then hand him the knife.

  He stares at me as if I’ve gone mad.

  ‘The Russians, Hans. The fucking Russians are coming!’

  It shocks him into action. ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve sent locators.’

  ‘Shit!’

  Yes, deep shit. And I know who they’re after. Not me, and certainly not Gruber. They’re after Frederick.

  I hold Gruber’s upper arms a second and look into his eyes. ‘Help me, Hans. Help me save him and I’ll try my damnedest to help you get the boy back.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘I know what I said. But I don’t know for sure. And you don’t know. And there might be a way. Shit, we’ll find a way …’

  And Gruber nods, and gives me the faintest smile, then turns, even as the first of the bastards comes in through the flap.

  49

  Frederick gets up slowly from beside the second corpse and turns to me.

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Russians,’ I say. ‘The ones who took Gruber.’

  Frederick nods, then looks to his Flugeladjutant, von Gotz, who is standing just behind me. ‘I don’t understand. How did they get through? Did the guards see nothing?’

  ‘They’re very good,’ I say quickly. ‘Three of Bestuzhev’s best.’

  ‘Bestuzhev-Riumin? He’s in charge of security now for the Russians?’

  ‘No, but there’s a special corps …’

  Frederick stares at me a moment, then lets out a sighing breath. ‘Otto, what’s happening? What aren’t you telling me?’

  I hesitate, then decide to tell the truth – or half of it, at least. ‘They were assassins. They meant to kill you.’

  He gives the briefest nod, as if he already knew, then gestures to von Gotz to take the bodies away.

  We were lucky. If I hadn’t stepped outside when I did, they’d have nailed us. As it is, Gruber is hurt, his left arm badly burned.

  But Frederick isn’t finished. ‘This other matter, the manifestation. You saw it, Otto?’

  I shake my head, denying it. ‘I saw nothing. Nothing at all. I can only think—’

  Frederick frowns. ‘What?’

  I laugh, as if embarrassed. ‘That they were enchanted somehow.’

  I almost said mesmerised, but Mesmer is yet to be born and hypnotism is way in the future.

  ‘Enchanted?’ Frederick laughs, amused by the idea. He is a rational man, after all. ‘No matter – but I will find out who’s responsible for letting the bastards through!’

  ‘One thing,’ I say, as two guards enter the tent to take away the first of the bodies. ‘You should burn them.’

  Frederick stares at me, surprised. ‘Burn them?’

  ‘You didn’t see what they did. In one village …’ And I shudder and look away.

  Frederick nods, as if he understands, then looks to von Gotz again. ‘Do as he says, Carl. Burn them.’

  50

  You might ask why. After all, they’re dead. They’re dead and they’re still here. Normally the Russians take their bodies back. So why not this time? My guess is that they planned to wait a while, then call them back and send in live agents in their place. But not if there are no bodies. Not if their foci are destroyed in the flames.

  No. These dead were going to stay dead. Dead for eternity.

  Alone again, I laugh with relief. But it was close, and, if I know Yastryeb, he hasn’t finished with us yet. No. These were only his opening gambits. It is beginning to feel like he’s sounding us out, testing us, looking for our weaknesses, because he knows, just as I do, that Frederick is the key. Not Hitler, nor Peter, nor even Nevsky, but Frederick.

  I walk across and stop, looking down at the dark patch of blood on the sandy ground. Something is nagging at me. Something about the whole situation.

  What was Yastryeb up to? What did he want? When he went to sleep at night, what did he dream?

  In essence, the scheme he had concocted was a simple one. He’d had five chances – five separate possibilities – of getting one of the ‘turned’ agents back on to the platform. Once there he could have had them jump back … to Moscow Central. And then he’d know precisely where we were in Time and Space. Four-Oh would become a number – a grid reference on the Russian map, and once there …

  I laughed, astonished. So that was how …

  If you live with a problem day after day, year after year, eventually you stop looking for an explanation. It’s how things are, and you get on with life. But for years now we have been suffering a prolonged sub-space bombardment, wondering how they knew where we were, when all the time …

  They’ve already done it! They’ve already sent an agent back to the platform. Only …

  I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to work through the logic of it. Only why aren’t we all dead?

  And I laugh once more, amused by the paradox inherent in the answer.

  Because I thought of it just then.

  I jump back and summon Hecht. He comes to the platform and I tell him what I’ve been thinking, and he nods and turns to Zarah.

  And he organises it there and then and sends someone back to when the bombardments first began, along with the blueprints for our defence system. And so we survive.

  Put it down, once more, to the fallacy of inaction theory.

  If I’d not thought of it and told Hecht, then it would never have happened. But I had to, and it did, and here we are.

  I jump back, arriving only seconds after I’d left. Only Gruber is there now, inside the tent, his left arm bandaged, in a sling. He smiles then draws a gun from his waistband.

  51

  ‘Was it true, about the boy?’

  Gruber nods. ‘I’ve a dozen of the little bastards. These R
ussian women …’ He laughs unhealthily. ‘But you know that, don’t you, Otto? They’re like animals in bed.’

  I know nothing of the kind – only that I made a mistake. I should have killed him when I could. Oh, I could jump right now, but I need to stay and find out what’s going on. If I jump, what then? Gruber stays here, armed and within striking distance of Frederick. And so I stay, to keep an eye on him.

  It is the ninth of August and Kunersdorf is three days off. I can’t keep awake that long, not even on what Zarah gave me, but that doesn’t matter. If something doesn’t happen soon, I’ll have to jump back and get some help. That is, if we’re not stretched too thin already.

  Which sets me wondering. Is that Yastryeb’s plan? To keep us busy and stretch us thin, almost to breaking point, while somewhere else, on some other part of the board, he makes the move he’s been thinking of all along?

  It would explain these endless subterfuges, these time-consuming distractions he has thus far thrown into our path. But one thing doesn’t make sense. Why, when he sent that first ‘turned’ agent back to the platform, did he not also send a bomb? It wasn’t difficult to do, and he could have destroyed the platform in an instant.

  Yes, but we would have rebuilt it.

  Maybe. But it would have bought him time. Time in which to make a dozen different moves. A dozen deadly changes to reality.

  I look at Gruber thoughtfully. ‘Was it you, Hans?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Who went back. To the platform.’

  He laughs. ‘Urd, no. That was Krauss. He’s worked for them for years. His father …’

  But I know the story. Krauss’s ‘father’ – that is, the agent Krauss believed to be his father – was abandoned in an alternate time-line. He might have been saved, only, well, it might have cost us three, maybe four agents to get him out, and there was no guarantee we could.

  How simple it is, after all. But no one would have guessed. Not for a moment.

  ‘He killed himself, you know.’

  ‘Did he?’ But Gruber seems unconcerned.

  And it strikes me that he’s waiting for someone. He has been told exactly what to do, and this is part of it. I look into the barrel of his gun and shake my head.

  ‘Put it down, Hans.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The gun. Put it down. You know you won’t use it.’

  ‘Won’t I?’

  ‘No. Because you’d have done it by now. Who’s coming, Hans? Who wants to see me?’

  The surprise in his eyes is almost comical, but I know I’ve guessed right.

  ‘Nemtsov,’ he says. ‘He said to keep you here.’

  ‘I see.’ But the truth is, I don’t. I was expecting Yastryeb himself. Perhaps to gloat and tell me it was all over. But no. It was only Nemtsov. Only the messenger boy.

  ‘What have they promised you, Hans? What was your price?’

  That riles him, but he’s trained well enough not to let it show in his voice.

  ‘I get to live.’

  ‘You’re that confident, then?’

  Gruber laughs, but there’s a hardness in his face now. ‘You’re doomed, Otto. There’s just so many more of them than you, and that’ll count in the end. Because they’re every bit as good as you. And Yastryeb, well, Yastryeb will crush you, you’ll see.’

  ‘And that’s it, is it?’

  Gruber nods, and I laugh and really anger him.

  ‘You’re a fucking fool, Otto. A bloody idealist. Can’t you see we can’t win?’

  ‘We? I thought you were them.’

  The gun trembles, then he lowers it. And as he does, so Nemtsov shivers into being beside him.

  ‘Herr Berr … I’ve heard so much about you.’

  I smile. ‘I’ve killed you, you arsehole. In Berlin.’

  ‘You think you did.’

  And that might be true. After all, there’s no mention in history of a nuclear explosion taking out the centre of eighteenth-century Berlin.

  Nemtsov is a bear of a man, complete with a bushy black beard that seems to sprout from the base of his neck. I imagine, naked, you would not see an inch of flesh on him, only a lush dark growth of hair, like the primeval Russian forest.

  ‘So what do you want?’

  He grins and takes a letter from his pocket. It’s sealed with red wax, like some ancient document. A nice touch, I think, and take it from him.

  ‘For me?’

  ‘No. For Hecht. It’s from Yastryeb.’

  ‘And you want me to give it to him, right?’

  Nemtsov nods.

  I turn the letter, then lift it to my nose and sniff. It smells old and musty, as if it’s been kept in a box for a century or more.

  ‘How can I trust you, comrade? This could be a weapon.’

  ‘It could. But it isn’t.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘Then test it. I’m sure you have ways.’

  He knows we have, and he knows that I’ll deliver it. But I want something more from this exchange.

  ‘What’s he like, your master?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Just that I’m told he has a weakness for young girls.’

  Nemtsov’s eyes widen and his nostrils flare. It’s true what they say about these Russians. They are more passionate than us. But that passion can be a weakness. It can get in the way of clear thought.

  ‘Go fuck yourself, Herr Behr!’ And there’s a kind of mocking, childish sound to the way he pronounces the last two words. But sticks and stones …

  I slip the letter into my pocket, then smile at the two men facing me. ‘So? Is there anything else I should know before I go back? Any other little messages you’d like me to carry with me?’

  ‘Just this,’ Nemtsov says, and glances at Gruber, a sudden gleeful look in his eyes. ‘We’ll see you in three days …’ And with that, both he and Gruber disappear.

  I stare at the blank space in front of me, shocked. Gruber … has gone.

  ‘Oh shit!’

  And I jump, not knowing what I’ll find.

  52

  The place is silent. Eerily so. There’s no sign of damage, but then, there doesn’t have to be. The mere fact that there’s no one there makes me think the worst, because there’s always someone there, day and night, every day of the year.

  I step down off the platform and look about me. Expecting what? A tiny pile of ash here, another there? But there’s no sign of a struggle, no evidence that anyone’s been here, except …

  That’s it. The absolute silence. The lack of even the slightest tremor. The bombardment has stopped. That constant sub-level trembling has stopped. Gone is that faint pressure in the ears, the ever-present smell of oil and burned plastics, so subtle that it can only really be detected now, in its absence. The desks glow softly, the screens alive and tracking still. I walk across and look at one.

  ‘Otto …’

  My name, uttered in that silence, is enough to make me jump and turn. It’s Hecht. He stands there by the portal, facing me, one hand extended.

  ‘You have a message, I believe.’

  I should know by now not to be surprised by anything Hecht does, but this surprises me. How could he possibly know?

  ‘It stopped,’ he says. ‘Shortly after we acted. Yastryeb must have grown tired of the charade.’

  I stare at him, wondering if that’s really how he views it. After all, if a single one of those nano-worms had penetrated our shields, we’d all be dead.

  I hand him the letter. He unseals it and unfolds it, then gives a brief laugh. ‘The bastard wants us to surrender. He says we’re finished.’

  ‘Then why not finish us?’

  ‘Precisely.’ And Hecht makes a ball of the ancient paper and lets it drop. I ache to read it, to see exactly what Yastryeb has said, even to glimpse his handwriting, but I show no sign.

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Having a rest. It’s about time, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘But …
who’s tracking our agents?’

  ‘No one. They’re back here.’

  ‘All of them?’

  Hecht nods, then gestures for me to follow. We go through, into his room. I sit across from him, cross-legged.

  He’s silent for a moment, contemplating something, and then he looks at me and gives that faint, enigmatic smile of his.

  ‘You want to know what’s going on, don’t you?’

  ‘It might help.’

  ‘It might. Then again …’ He hesitates, then sits forward slightly. ‘As I see it, we’re at something of a stalemate. Anything we do, they undo, and anything they do, we undo. It’s cat and mouse out there, but who’s the cat and who the mouse? Or, to put it another way, Otto, we’re too well matched. This thing could go on for ever.’

  There’s something about the way he says this that makes me curious. ‘What’s happened?’ I ask. ‘I mean, to you.’

  Hecht looks at me admiringly. ‘Very perceptive of you, Otto. I wondered if you’d notice.’

  ‘Well?’

  He folds his hands, then sits back again, closing his eyes. ‘I met myself today. My future self.’

  ‘Ah …’

  ‘Yes, ah …’

  ‘And what did you say to yourself?’

  Hecht’s eyes flick open. ‘Which self would that be, Otto?’

  ‘Your future self. What did he tell you, other than that Yastryeb was full of shit?’

  Hecht laughs. ‘You want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  You see, it isn’t often that we visit our own selves. It’s not encouraged. Our future selves know too much – who died and when, and who did what – and it’s not always best to know that kind of thing. It’s hard enough living with the rest of it, the changes and the dead who aren’t dead. So future-Hecht must have had a damn good reason to visit himself. One hell of a good reason.

  Hecht is smiling that smile again, which makes you think he’s mocking you, but instead of telling me, he shakes his head.

  ‘No, Otto. This once I’ll keep it to myself, if it’s all the same to you.’

  I sigh. Maybe it’s best that I don’t know what’s going to happen. Then again, if Hecht is alive up the line, then things are probably all right.