The Fourth Rome

by David Drake

  The revisionist hadn’t been cruel. He simply hadn’t cared. A choking baby wasn’t a reason to get out of bed.

  Pauli drove the horses ahead of him down the narrow track. The cow had finally stopped bawling. One of the women must have milked some of the pressure out of the swollen udder. The corpse no longer lay beside the door.

  Gerd had begun questioning their captive. In better light the pickups would have looked like brass beads; now they were vagrant gleams on Istvan’s scalp. The drugged revisionist couldn’t speak, but the pickups transmitted his mind’s unshielded responses to the sensor pack where an AI converted them. The analyst listened to the processed data through an earpiece.

  Pauli tethered the horses again. His pistol wasn’t on the ground. Beckie must have picked up the weapon he’d forgotten. Leaving the analyst to his business, he walked around the hut.

  The German woman was digging with a pointed stick in the small clearing. The corpses lay nearby. The corral’s walls were branches woven around vertical posts every few feet. There were six cows within.

  Beckie straightened into view behind the fence, holding a bucket made of bark bound with willow splits. “Have some?” she offered.

  “Thanks,” Pauli said as he took the bucket. The milk was still at body temperature. The cow’s diet gave the drink a musky odor he didn’t recognize. If the milk had been poisonous, the German family wouldn’t have been around for Istvan to kill.

  She handed him his microwave pistol. “Do you want the submachine gun?” she asked.

  One of the guns. “I may as well carry it,” Pauli said. He slung the belt and holster over his shoulder, then drank more. The milk helped settle his stomach despite its odd taste. His eyes were on the woman digging.

  “She was cooking dinner on the outside hearth yesterday evening,” Beckie said. She nodded to a fire pit and clay oven under a bark roof. “Istvan must have smelled the smoke. She heard her husband speak and went to the front to see what he’d said. He was still standing. She saw a stranger, Istvan. Her husband was patting at his chest. Suddenly he fell down. There wasn’t a fight. Istvan shot him without even speaking.”

  Beckie nodded toward the woman. “Her name’s Grita. She ran but she’d left the baby beside the cooking fire. When she paused to get him the stranger caught her and hit her over the head. He tied her ankles but left her hands free to cook for him. Then he tied her hands as well.”

  The cow lowed and pushed Beckie with her broad forehead for attention. Beckie took the bucket and returned to her business.

  “They’re Cherusci but not from Hermann’s clan,” Beckie continued as her fingers stripped milk from the four teats in sequence. Pauli wondered where she’d learned the technique. It wasn’t a common skill in the America of her day. “Her husband might have joined the attack, but the child was only three weeks old. He decided to stay with Grita. It was a boy.”

  “I have the information we need,” Gerd announced. The analyst used the headband intercom to speak without shouting. There was a risk someone would stumble into the vicinity while the sensor pack was occupied with the interrogation.

  “We’re coming,” Pauli said. Beckie brought the bucket out of the corral with her.

  Grita was using a wooden shake to lift the loosened dirt. She didn’t look up as the ARC Riders returned to the front of the dwelling.

  The revisionist lay flaccid, but his chest rose and fell with the rhythm of normal breathing. Beckie walked over to him and closed his eyes. Her face was without expression.

  “The remaining revisionists are in Xanten, that is Vetera, on the Rhine,” Gerd said. He smiled vaguely as he manipulated a keyboard that existed only in his mind. “Istvan believes they are, at any rate. Their names are Boris Kiknadze—”

  The pack projected the image of a heavyset man, then focused on his flat, swarthy face. Kiknadze had coarse black hair and a sparse beard. The puckered scars on his right cheek were probably the result of bullets. He looked as solid as a tank.

  “Istvan considers Kiknadze a stupid Tatar,” Gerd said. “Istvan doesn’t respect him.”

  “I respect him,” Pauli said. “When we hit Kiknadze, we’d better hit him with everything we have. I’d drop a building on him if I knew a way to do it.”

  “Yes,” Gerd said, smiling as he typed. “I thought you’d say that. Istvan bases many of his judgments on class and race, and I’m afraid he also has an overly high opinion of the merits of raw intelligence.”

  The image shifted to that of a plump man with flowing white hair and beard, bright blue eyes, and the expression of a cheerful saint. “This is the leader of the revisionists, Dr. Kyril Svetlanov,” the analyst continued. “He transported the group to this horizon. The others believe they must be with him to return—in physical contact with him. Istvan’s plan was to hide here for a few days to avoid being caught up in the massacre he failed to prevent, then make his way to Xanten.”

  “You said, ‘They believe,’ “ Pauli said.

  Gerd nodded. “There’s no way back. It’s standard Soviet practice to sacrifice personnel when retrieval would be expensive, though of course the victims are told otherwise.”

  “Why Xanten?” Beckie asked. She knew Gerd would tell them eventually; knew also that “eventually” might be a long time coming.

  The analyst smiled with pride. He didn’t overrate intelligence as he’d accused Istvan of doing; he’d known that Kiknadze was a dangerous opponent. Every other member of Team 79 could outshoot Gerd, and there were circumstances where that skill alone was the margin of the team’s survival.

  But Gerd rated the value of his own intelligence and skills very high. Pauli Weigand would have been the last to say he was wrong.

  “The revisionists’ plan is more complex than Central and I had believed,” Gerd said. “One team was tasked to prevent the destruction of Varus’ army, the tool of expansion, by killing the revolt’s leaders. That would allow the Romans to continue their drive eastward, but it wouldn’t give them the will to do so. Augustus’ successor, his stepson Tiberius, was a cautious man. He avoided military adventures after he became emperor, even though he’d made his name as the foremost general of his day.”

  “Even if the revolt fizzles, Augustus is going to send his top man to the region to take charge of operations,” Pauli said. He drew on the background he’d sleep-learned for this mission—and on his personal experience with crisis management. “Tiberius is sure to arrive at Xanten because it was Varus’ base camp. The revisionists are waiting there to kill him.”

  “If Tiberius dies, Augustus’ grandson Germanicus will succeed,” Gerd said. “A very popular, very active young man. Quite the sort for military heroics. He’ll push a forward policy in Germany as sure as—”

  He looked at Beckie. “As God made little green apples.”

  Beckie managed a smile. Her mind was obviously on the small corpse being buried behind the hut.

  “All right,” Pauli said. “We’ll go to Xanten and neutralize the revisionists. Gerd, are you able to ride tonight? I’d like to get a little way away from here.”

  He didn’t explain why. He didn’t have to.

  “Yes,” the analyst said simply. That might have been macho posturing in another man. Gerd didn’t give bad data.

  “Pauli, what do we do with this one?” Beckie asked. She waved a finger toward the captive revisionist but didn’t look at him.

  “Istvan Korzybski,” Gerd said. The analyst offered the name because he had it, not because there was any need. “He’s actually of Polish extraction, though his family’s lived in western Russia since the 19th century.”

  “He’s practically harmless without his equipment,” Pauli said. He rose to his feet. “We can’t take him with us, so we’ll leave him for now. When the operation’s complete, we’ll pick him up in TC 779.”

  The German woman came around the hut. She looked at the revisionist, helpless though fully aware of his surroundings.

  Pauli Weigand began to
don the equipment he’d hung across his horse’s withers. “If we need to,” he added quietly.

  Moscow, Russia

  March 10, 1992

  The little girl begging beside the iron gates of the Kiev train station couldn’t have been more than three years old. Her eyes were huge in a pinched, dirty face. Her hair had been shaved for lice no more than a month ago, giving her a pixie look. She wore an embroidered red dress, filthy and tattered, but clearly once her best. The matching ethnic cap was in her hand. She came toward Nan Roebeck timidly but with great determination, hopeful, silent, her empty cap outstretched.

  Roebeck fumbled in her pockets for something—anything—to give the little girl. Between the gates and the train station were a number of small wooden and metal kiosks. The stalls displayed Russian cigarettes, trinkets, bottled drinks, and sweets this child could never afford.

  Sergey Orlov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Special Assistant for Proliferation, stayed her hand. “Please. This child is working for some gang—Russian Mafia. You will not help her. They will take her money and she will be out here again tomorrow.” Orlov’s face was flushed, his embarrassment obvious. “Do not encourage her. These organized beggars are new difficulty for us. We must find new ways to solve problems like her.”

  “I don’t think she’s a problem,” Nan said. Among the swaddled poor lurking in the shadow of the train station, Nan had seen a worried woman watching the child carefully.

  But Roebeck had no roubles. She was afraid to give the child dollars. It might be a reason to arrest her. Orlov’s Foreign Ministry job was focused on showing foreigners only what it desired foreigners to see.

  Clearly, this girl was not what Nan Roebeck should have seen. Roebeck had used her foreign visitor status to object to being whisked off by Ministry car to yet another controlled environment. She’d insisted that Orlov take her for a short walk, show her some of the real Moscow. He’d warned that streets in this city, as in any city, might be dangerous. Now those streets had proved dangerous to his agenda.

  Roebeck knelt down, helpless. She wanted to touch the child, but dared not.

  “Come, please!” Orlov was now thoroughly agitated. “I have roubles. Here.” He handed her three one-hundred-rouble notes. When Nan didn’t close her hand over the currency, he added a two-hundred-rouble note. “This is enough. This is more than enough.”

  Roebeck, rising to her feet, put the notes in the girl’s cap.

  “Now, please, madam, this way.”

  As Orlov hurried Roebeck away, Nan looked back over her shoulder. The child followed Roebeck for a few more steps, cap still outstretched.

  Then the woman in the shadows called out.

  The child fled to the woman.

  Orlov determinedly demanded Roebeck’s attention. As he escorted her to the waiting car, Roebeck looked over her shoulder a second time. The watchful woman had boosted the child onto an empty flatbed, enfolding the girl in her arms. She pulled up the girl’s dress and began changing her clothes. If the girl was a pawn of some Russian Mafia group, then so be it. On the other hand, if she was a refugee fleeing from somewhere to anywhere with her mother, then perhaps those few hundred roubles would help the two of them on their way.

  For the rest of her life, Nan Roebeck would remember the beautiful little beggar girl standing on the empty flatbed, a woman’s hands changing her underpants in the cold shadows of the Kiev station.

  Away from the station yard they went in Orlov’s car. “Now perhaps we will skip the Arbat—the outdoor market, madam. We have spent enough time on trivial matters.”

  Orlov was overtly punishing his American visitor. The Foreign Ministry’s proliferation specialist was still angry. Central had warned that when Russians were embarrassed, they became aggressive and hostile. She wished it could be otherwise, but the child’s fate had touched her deeply. She even considered trying to take the child back with her.

  That, of course, was impossible. Not to mention impolitic to consider.

  As the car sped on its way in response to Orlov’s orders, she couldn’t help but ask about the fate of such children. “What if that woman was the girl’s mother? Are they refugees? From where? Going where? What happens to children such as that?”

  “The State once provided for them.” Orlov shrugged. “Now, if they are from Ukraine, Kiev, a breakaway republic, the ’Stans, who knows? Perhaps they have come to Moscow to—what is the term?—throw in their lots with Mother Russia. The people want privatization. They wish to own, to dominate, to rule their own fates. They say they understand the risks. They have never known unemployment.” Orlov’s expression was haughty. “There is an old Soviet-era saying: ‘We pretend to work and the State pretends to pay us.’ Now many will have no work. They say they understand that unemployment may be the result of this great perestroika. They proclaim that if unemployment is what they need, then unemployment is what they will have. So they will. And we will take care of them the best we can. The Russian Federation is having some problems with Ukraine. Just this week, Ukraine tried to claim the Black Sea Fleet for its own. This lasted twenty-four hours, until we turned off the natural gas to their cities. Then their so-called government came to its senses.”

  Sergey Orlov was young. His hair was long and pomaded, curling over his collar. His beard was evenly clipped to a manicured shadow, pursuing some fashion of the times. Baby fat still rounded his features. His mouth was soft and petulant. Last evening he had taken Nan Roebeck on a whirlwind tour of privileged Russia. She had met a dozen young bureaucrats. They seemed to run in a pack, like wolves. There were a few women, but the women were treated as assistants or lovers. Or both. The young men had beautiful clothes, fine leather goods. Their women had fur coats that smelled strong but were clearly very expensive.

  The pack had gathered her up and carried her with them, on the excuse of arranged meetings that all must attend. She knew she’d be their excuse for a night of carousing, so she’d insisted on seeing something relevant to her search. Orlov had sworn he could provide it. He and his pack had promised a real science meeting, and delivered. She had been taken to a place called FILI.where nuclear missiles were stored right in downtown Moscow behind high metal walls.

  FILI had a guard house, armed guards, and a courtyard full of expensive Western cars. She saw soon enough why Grainger’s man, Matsak, had warned about becoming embroiled with hard-liners. She’d been greeted in FILI by older bureaucrats, chiefs of divisions, heads of departments. Orlov’s plans for her edification had been contravened by more powerful elders. She’d sat at green-covered tables. With old men she drank pineapple soda water, Czechoslovakian sparkling water, and Russian Pepsi that tasted like carbonated blood with a hint of cinnamon.

  Orlov warned her off the sparkling water. “It tastes like piss—Czechoslovakian piss.”

  For hours, senior officials, including a chief of the Aviation Ministry, wasted her time with impossible plans for privatization, joint cooperation, and scientific exchange.

  She drank tea in glasses set inside chased metal holders. She waited and listened patiently, playing the US government functionary. When finally asked, she explained as vaguely as possible her area of interest. But they weren’t really interested in what she wanted to buy, only in making her buy what they wanted to sell. It soon became clear to her that the older Russians had intervened in Orlov’s plan purposely to short-circuit it. Because they could do so, they dominated the agenda.

  She was merely part of an object lesson those old boys were giving Orlov and his young wolf pack. The young wolves might be eager, but the old ones still controlled the territory.

  It did not take long for the old bureaucrats to become frustrated. This American woman, who would not accede to their wishes or adopt their priorities, flouted their authority in front of Russian youths in need of object lessons.

  A young sycophant of the hard-liners named Lipinsky nearly shouted at her. “Defense conversion,” he lectured her, “so far as my region of m
ilitary production is concerned, means converting excess defense capability to civilian use. Nothing more.”

  Lipinsky stared at her defiantly, as if she should counter this assertion. His glare dared her to accept his challenge. He wanted to further distinguish himself before his old masters. He had a hawk’s face, a prominent Adam’s apple, and English worthy of the US and Canada Institute’s finest.

  But Roebeck wasn’t really representing the US or any time-localized interest. She reiterated that her only interest was in certain experimental geochronometric technology that might have potential for cooperation. Not missiles. Not space programs. Not modernizing the Russian air traffic control system.

  Lipinsky was intent on showing his bosses how to keep Russia’s military-industrial complex intact. He would give no strategic advantage to foreigners. She had a feeling that the young hard-liner’s view of his country’s future would turn out to be the prevailing reality. But then, she had the advantage of Central’s hindsight.

  And Central’s clout. Lipinsky was so abrasive it was hard not to take his behavior personally. When the time came, it would be a pleasure to teach this nasty, perk-conscious young Russian a lesson. Offending people can have long-term consequences, not only for you, but for your faction. Perhaps even for your country. If this little bastard was as deeply involved as she suspected with efforts to revert control of Russia to its former masters, taking out the revisionists might mean taking out Lipinsky as well. Or at least could be construed to mean that.

  Nan Roebeck would love to see Lipinsky’s face if she deposited him in 50K.

  Eventually, Orlov and his friends extricated her from the clutches of the aging elite and their fawning sycophants. Orlov apologized forthrightly for the evening’s debacle. “We are so sad to have wasted your time. Sorry to say that your presence here has excited too much interest from the senior officials of the old regime. Their single hope is to use foreign pressure to reestablish themselves under Yeltsin. This is the only way they may continue just as they have done in the past.”