The Fourth Rome

by David Drake

  “Then how do you explain the societal failures? This city’s infrastructure is in terrible shape,” Chun demanded, her brow furrowed. “Everything’s old, dirty, patched together. That guy pumping up his tires before he drove away …”

  “They just never understood how to capitalize on what they had, that was all,” Grainger replied. “To win in a capitalist world, they needed marketeers and couldn’t produce them for ideological reasons. Once they lost the Cold War, the Western powers, led by US Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald At-wood, tried real hard to starve them back to the 18th century, so they’d never be a threat again. Meanwhile, the West, the Asians, and the Arabs were stealing them blind through both governmental and private initiatives. The entire technology curve—not just weapons proliferation—of the early 21st century was accelerated by Russian theoretical work exploited by unscrupulous commercializers.”

  He paused to rub the back of his neck and squint through the lowering haze at the city around him. Neither woman commented. Maybe he was getting through to them.

  He hoped he was. “My era was a direct result of that epoch. My whole division was formed to protect the US from competition based on the proliferation of Russian technology to the Pacific Rim nations and the Muslim world. Don’t think there’s nothing here that’s a threat to us just because we’re from their future. And start asking what we’re going to do about it when we find the technology center that’s produced these revisionists. Whatever one group of Russians did, three more groups were also doing. That may hold true for revising the timeline, as well as for titanium alloys or directional acoustics or production of unobtanium.”

  “Unobtanium?” Chun asked archly.

  Okay, so maybe he wasn’t getting through to Chun. Yet. He still had to try. “Sorry. Idiomatic. Russians had so many exotic alloys and materials that certain myths got started about materials and technologies the Russians were with-holding. At their poorest, they still funded twenty percent of their tech base. ‘Unobtanium’ meant literally substances which were so sensitive they couldn’t be obtained by outsiders. Coming into the turn of the century, Western governments were near hysterical at the classified level about what the Russians had, who was getting it, and what it could do. Osmium 187, subatomic explosives, and red mercury were part of a category called unobtanium, along with cold fusion generators, offensive beam weapons, zero cavitation electrical coatings for submarines, psychotronic devices, and scalar wave projectors.”

  “Scalar wave projectors? You mean Tesla coils and all that silliness?” Chun was as deep as Grainger into this turf battle over whose knowledge base was relevant.

  “I’ve seen ball lightning running around laboratory floors in my own time. I’ve seen some nasty magnetic weapons prototypes that came from Russian work. Don’t laugh. Whatever this ’psychic’ temporal generator is, it’s more than somebody’s grandmother moving frogs through time. It’s real. It’s hardware based. And it’s a significant threat to us and what we do, if our failed attempt to stop these revisionists in 9 AD is any sample. If you asked me for an overview of this mission, Nan, which you carefully haven’t done anywhere where we’re on the record, I’d have to tell you …” Grainger stopped. Overviews were strictly Chun’s job, not his. He’d gained a lot of ground with Roebeck today. Best not to push too far and lose it all.

  “Okay, Tim,” Roebeck said. “Let’s have it. I’m asking for your overview.”

  Chun glared at him but said nothing. Russians passing on the sidewalk stared covertly at the Oriental in American clothes.

  “This is our you-bet-your-job mission. If we can’t stop these revisionists, we’re out of business.”

  Nan was still walking, but not looking at the Moscow streets any longer. A truck went by billowing raw blue exhaust that smelled as if it contained all the pollutants of hell.

  When the roar had passed, Chun said, “You know, Tim, I’m glad you’re offering to do my job for me. But if you bothered to read my daily log, you’d see I have already covered the salient parts of that long speech you just gave us. As for the rest of it … Well, you’re not objective, are you?” Chun Quo smiled sweetly. “This looks like the Métropole Hotel. Isn’t that what it says?” she asked innocently. A fleet of small white hotel-owned Mercedes were parked outside, the first decently maintained vehicles they’d seen.

  “Yep. Into the breach, troops.” Roebeck, the ARC Riders’ team leader, squared her shoulders. She took the broad steps in long strides, leading the way into a lobby full of polished brass and dark wood and carpet.

  Up to the long registration desk they went, fake passports, plastic credit card ID, Central-processed visas, and counterfeit currency in hand.

  Sure enough, their passports and visas were taken from them by one of the most beautiful blond girls that Tim Grainger had ever seen. She wore no makeup. Her skin was peaches and cream. Her hair was clean and shining. Lounging behind her was a huge security type with no neck and the build of a bull, watching them closely as they registered.

  The girl dutifully told them in passable English, “Passporta and visa will be returned to you in couple hours. Please call later.” She slid three small booklets across the desk toward them, plus three keys. “This is rooms, and passporta for hotel. You wish porter?”

  Roebeck looked at Grainger. Grainger and the guard were busy recognizing each other as operators. Roebeck touched his arm.

  “Huh? Oh, no. The airport will send our baggage later—if they find it.”

  “Ah,” said the girl with a real but brief smile. “Often they do find these lost baggages. Do not worry. We will inform you if they arrive. Have a nice day.”

  In the lobby there was a giant arrangement of dried flowers, almost as tall as Chun. A live cellist was playing a Bach solo somewhere above their heads. At the elevators they piled into a narrow car whose buttons depressed with a loud snap when one pushed them to choose a floor.

  The elevator stopped at the third floor and its door opened, revealing the cellist and the rest of a string quartet performing in an atrium.

  No one got in, and the elevator closed.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Chun said. “In fact, it’s beautiful.”

  “Thank God,” Roebeck muttered.

  “That’s because we’re rich Amerikanskis,“ Grainger reminded them.

  The hallway of their floor had a reception area of its own, with several couches, tables with ashtrays, chairs. The acrid smell of Russian tobacco permeated the huge open space. Wood and glass double doors separated the hallways from the meeting space.

  Walking through the halls, Grainger was struck by the sheer size of the place, a calculated opulence of scale. Maybe the hotel had been built by claustrophobies. Or giants.

  His room was huge by any standard, and Russian enough to bring back more of his grandfather’s tales of diplomatic derring-do. Beautiful brocade curtains were nailed carelessly to a board over a tall window. Twin platform beds were low, their mattresses thin. On each bed, blankets nearly as thick as the mattresses were covered with linen cases. The cases were pierced by large diamond-shaped holes revealing colored wool blankets inside. The decor was Diplomatic Conservative, to match the curtains. Vaguely 18th-century brocade chairs were arranged under a grand crystal chandelier that Grainger’s security scan revealed to be loaded with rudimentary surveillance equipment. His room was completely bathed in radio frequencies.

  The house phone had a dial, not push buttons. After a few moments of study, he called Roebeck’s room with it. “I’m sitting in an RF bath. How about you?”

  “Do we want to discuss it?” said Nan’s voice, tiny and so full of static it sounded light-years away.

  “Maybe it’s standard and they’ll quit it if they know we know,” he suggested.

  “Maybe. Let’s get something to eat where there’s music or general background noise.”

  They met downstairs in one of the most amazing rooms Grainger had seen anytime, anyplace. Rococo gold columns rose two storie
s to a backlit stained-glass ceiling of great beauty and complexity. A harpist played here. Businessmen were drinking Russian chai, a strong tea, and eating cakes. Various vodkas had already been ordered on several tables. Here, too, the waitresses were extraordinarily beautiful, and the waiters equally handsome in their white shirts and black ties and slacks.

  “This country’s not all bad,” Chun said. “Do you think they all look like that—all the girls?” She touched her black, straight hair.

  “They all look like the people you saw outside. The lucky, the prettiest, the handsomest, the most connected, get these jobs. There’s relatively big money for these kids. Look at the prices on this menu.”

  Their menu was in English. The prices were fabulous—tea and cakes could cost them a hundred of their dollars.

  “Tim was right about needing money,” Roebeck muttered. You didn’t want to have to go back to TC 779 for a reason as trivial as printing more counterfeit.

  They ordered, ate, and tipped in cash, leaving dollar bills under their plates. As they left, the waitress who served them scurried over, lifted the plate, and made the dollars disappear. She saw Grainger watching and cast him a grateful, sunny smile.

  Roebeck noticed. “Do you think we overtipped? She can probably live for a week on the economy on those dollars.”

  “Yeah, I think we did. Let’s keep doing it,” Chun said before Tim could answer. Her counterfeit US currency would be as good as gold here, undetectable by any current means. Only the most unlikely of circumstances—two bills with identical serial numbers falling into the hands of a single party—would reveal that one was counterfeit. Even in that case, determining which bill was fake would be impossible in the 20th century. For all intents and purposes, the currency they were passing was good. And the ARC Riders were putting too small a sum into circulation to damage the US economy. So it was a win/win situation, unless you were the US Treasury, in which case the duplicate currency would be an embarrassing mystery best hushed up.

  The team was heading toward the elevators when the beefy security guard intercepted them. Grainger’s hand went reflex-ively to the acoustic pistol in his pocket.

  “Sir,” the guard said in heavily accented, guttural, and painstaking English. “Come, please.”

  Grainger just stared at him.

  “Come where?” Roebeck asked when Tim didn’t respond.

  The guard, frustrated, put a hand on Grainger’s elbow. He was about to shoot down the guard there and then when he saw the pretty desk clerk beckoning. “Passports!” he exclaimed, realizing what was afoot.

  “Da, da, da,” said the guard, nodding vigorously. “Pass-porta.”

  Grainger deftly disengaged the guard’s grip, patting the big man’s arm, twice the width of his own.

  “Passports,” Grainger reiterated to Nan. “They still have our passports.”

  Under the guard’s watchful eye, they went to reclaim their visas and passports.

  The desk clerk handed each one back, but then she frowned. “All—there is—problema.”

  A problem. Terrific. The guard was still watching them.

  “Problem?” Nan and Chun said nearly together. “What kind of problem?”

  “The baggages. Nyet baggages.”

  The ARC Riders exchanged glances.

  “That’s no problem. We’ll make do with what’s in our overnight bags,” Chun assured her.

  Grainger was too tense now to pay attention to the words. Turning his back on the desk clerk, he leaned both elbows on the reception desk, ready to draw on the guard and any number of comrades at the slightest additional provocation.

  “Nyetproblema?” said the desk clerk wonderingly.

  “Nyet problema, “ Nan assured her.

  Tim Grainger’s skin crawled all the way to the elevator. He looked at the passport he got back. There wasn’t a stamp or mark that he could see. The blue-gray paper Russian visa with his picture, however, clearly had been processed.

  As they waited for a car to take them to their floor, he said, “Well, you two are making real strides in the Russian language, anyway. When you find out how to say ‘where’s the bathroom,’ there’ll be no stopping you. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to try my share of Chun’s phone numbers. How about it, Nan? Chun?”

  Each of them had a group of phone numbers to try. Tim’s were at 11 Gorki Street, where the current General Director for Foreign Relations held court in the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Education Policy. Nan had the Foreign Ministry. Chun had the Academy of Sciences. Central had narrowed the field for possible revisionists to those three government departments. But Central also didn’t know whom within those bureaucracies to target. So you picked a number and you took your shot.

  “Let’s go do it. The first one to get somebody who’ll let us buy him dinner, call the others.”

  Within half an hour, each ARC Rider had a dinner date.

  “That’s not good,” Nan said. “I wanted one meeting for all three of us, not three meetings. What time is yours, Tim? Chun?”

  No one had thought it would be so easy to access senior officials. When Tim had called to tell Nan he had a meeting with Alexander Matsak, Deputy Director for Privatization of the Science Ministry, her extension had been busy.

  The same thing had happened when Nan had called Chun to say Nan had arranged a meeting with the Foreign Ministry’s Special Assistant for Proliferation, a Sergey Orlov.

  And Chun had gotten through to a Professor Viktor Etkin of the Academy of Sciences.

  Tim’s meeting was at 1730 hours. Chun’s was at 1700. Nan’s was at 1800.

  “Unless they’re real short meetings, we’re each on our own,” Nan said. “Let’s check these names with Central’s database.” They were in Chun’s room, a virtual double of Tim’s, even to the pictures on the walls. Chun had set up a countermeasures suite that blocked ninety-five percent of EM surveillance and a sound cancellation program that made the area around the twin beds safe for conversation. It would have to do. A live Russian peeking through a pinhole might take verbatim transcript, but the ARC Riders were safe from primitive electronic surveillance. They ran the full names of their dinner companions, found the patronymics in Central’s database, and read historical profiles and cross-references until it was time for Chun to meet her guest downstairs.

  “Won’t this Etkin ring your room?” Nan asked.

  “Evidently not the custom. He asked me how he’d recognize me and gave a pretty good description of himself. He says he’ll be carrying a red umbrella. He must keep it handy for meetings such as this. His English is better than mine.”

  “Ought to be. He’s KGB or whatever they called it this week, if Central’s right. Section 6—Technology. Hold on to your own technology, and don’t leave the hotel without us for any reason,” Roebeck said. Chun wasn’t experienced as a field operator. “After five minutes, ask if we can join you and we’ll come down. I’ve got to meet my guy downstairs, too.”

  Tim’s man, Matsak, had made similar arrangements.

  Chun began disassembling her portable secure facility, reeling antennae into a keeper that she replaced in her bag along with a handheld EM generator. “I’m ready, Nan.”

  Roebeck looked at her chronometer. “I have 1655 local time. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Quo.”

  After Chun had left, counterfeit business cards in hand, Tim eyed Nan until the team leader spoke.

  “Don’t say anything, Tim, okay? Don’t say a word. She’ll do fine. Neither you nor I were going to cut it with some ‘Doctor Professor.’ Central says they have to believe they’re talking to an expert of some parity before they’ll open up.”

  “I don’t think that can happen when a white Russian male meets an Oriental female, no matter how much more she knows than he knows,” Tim said mildly. “But as long as Chun doesn’t get mugged for her handheld, I don’t care. Keeps her out of my way.” Had to be careful what they said now that they had no countermeasures in place.
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  “And you’d like me out of your way as well?”

  Last time they’d gone into the field together, Roebeck had behaved more like a woman and less like a superior officer toward Tim Grainger. This time, it wasn’t happening. Or at least, not yet it wasn’t.

  “I’m going to go shower and change, assuming my readout shows insufficient toxins in the water to be more of a problem than not showering.” Central had warned them about the water, the food, and the pollution-ridden atmosphere, and then loaded them up with vaccinations and a list of additional required immunizations that were circumstance dependent. Presumably, Chun and Roebeck had already complied with the immunization requirement.

  Tim had yet to self-administer his shots. The exact immunization recommendations could only be finalized from site data added to previously stored data. He wasn’t looking forward to it. He could put it off a few hours, but he couldn’t skip it. First he had to take air and water samples to feed to his handheld. Once the handheld analyzed the samples, it would transmit directions to his pharmakit. He had to discharge his pharmakit’s recommended load into his flesh during the first twelve hours of this mission. If he couldn’t show that he’d taken his shots, he’d be quarantined and disciplined when he got back to Central.

  “And take your shots, Grainger,” Nan said as he left the room. “No cheating.” She knew him too well.

  When he got back to his room, he unpacked his handheld, then his pharmakit. He hooked up the sampler and fed samples to his handheld. The handheld transmitted its requirements to his pharmakit. He monitored the process using his comm membrane. His arm was going to hurt for a week. His pharmakit had decided that he needed not only immunization boosters against hepatitis B and C, cholera, and diphtheria, but an antiradiation shot as well. Usually, his standard immunization load was adequate for fieldwork. The antiradiation shot was going to limit his mental agility for at least twenty-four hours. The hepatitis boosters were going to make whichever arm he chose real sore. He dialed everything into one unpleasant cocktail and pressed the pharmakit against his left biceps with his right hand. Then he pulled the trigger and pretended he didn’t mind the pain. He could feel the antiradi-ation drug burning its way into his system.