The Fourth Rome

by David Drake

  Roebeck phoned the desk to see if either Etkin or Chun had left a message there for them.

  “Nothing from Chun or Etkin,” Roebeck told him in an emotionless voice. “Your Matsak’s down there waiting, though.”

  Grainger ignored her last words. “Etkin’s not worried about maintaining any fiction of cooperation at this point. I should have known,” he said. He couldn’t think what to do. He just stood there in the middle of the room, his own gearbag at his feet. “Of course, Etkin would try this stunt. I would have. Same mission parameters. Remove the opposing force from play on this horizon. We’ve got the same game plan, don’t you see? And now he’s got one of us…” If he went near any physical thing, a wall, a piece of furniture, he’d wreak havoc on whatever came to hand. “How stupid can you get?”

  “Stop this. You’ve got a Russian waiting for you. I’m going back to get the TC. I want Chun back. Everything else is on hold.”

  “Bullshit. We’ll get her back. Everything gets done. Plan B.” He put a finger to his lips and grabbed a Metropole notepad. He wrote quickly, under cover of his left hand: We can track her if she’s still got her gear. He tore the top three sheets from the pad, folded the notepaper, and handed the sheets to Roebeck.

  Then he checked the pad to make sure there was no impression of the handwriting on the remaining papeir before he threw the pad in the wastebasket.

  She nodded. “All right. Plan B, with a little improvisation. But the TC’s location is at risk. I’ve got to move it staL” As she talked, she walked out of Chun’s empty room.

  Grainger hefted his gearbag and followed her. They had to move fast. Or Chun would be irretrievably lost to them. You couldn’t step twice into the same venue. Matsak was waiting downstairs. Roebeck had to relocate the TC or they’d all be lost—here or in a changed future Up The Line didn’t matter.

  “Hey, boss. Wait up.” Roebeck was moving so fast Grainger had to run to keep up. Same war, different day.

  When they got downstairs, not only Matsak but Zotov were waiting for them.

  Matsak strode right up to Grainger, Zotov in tow. The Ministry official said, “The Tim! Oh, this is well! We have bolshoi problema.”

  “Bolshoi problema!” Zotov echoed, his face working so that every fleshy growth on it wriggled.

  Grainger said, “Yop t’voyu problema.” Fuck your big problem. “I’ve got a bolshoi problema of my own, Sasha.”

  “So sorry, Tim,” said Matsak, stroking his beard. “In my opinion, these problems may be one and the same. Or at least connected.”

  Grainger was aware of Roebeck brushing by them, rushing off to secure the TC. Plan B was under way.

  “Da, da, da,” agreed Zotov. “The one and the same.”

  “Okay, I’ll accept that hypothesis—for now,” Grainger said. “Then we’d all better pile into that Science Ministry car of yours or go somewhere we can talk openly. I don’t have much time.” Ball in your court, Matsak. It was time to find out where Matsak stood. With Grainger, against Matsak’s local enemies. On the fence. Or in Etkin’s pocket. “Chun’s gone. Your KGB buddy’s got her. And I want her back. Now.”

  It was a risk, here in the lobby. But less in the open space than elsewhere, including Matsak’s car. Put your cards on the table, Matsak. Are you a player or what?

  Matsak was all fire and ice, a smithy gauging the temper of a blade in the forge. “You know where they have gone?”

  Grainger nodded. “I think so. FILL”

  “In my opinion,” the Ministry of Science general said with an almost sensual slowness, “it will be ahb-so-lute-ly my pleasure to help you with this problem. My bolshoi pleasure.” He squinted out the door through which Roebeck had gone. “To be successful, we must avoid awaking the entire sleeping US Embassy bureaucracy to this situation, da?”

  Matsak didn’t miss a trick. He was more interested in what Roebeck, who was out of his sight, might do than what Grainger, who was offering to cooperate, might do.

  “It’s your country, tovarisch. But I accept your condition. We’ll keep the US out of it—not a problem.” Calling a Russian “comrade” wasn’t quite the same as calling him “friend.” Not here. Not now. Not ever.

  Vetera, Lower Germany

  September 6, 9 AD

  Sorry, soldier,” Pauli Weigand heard the wardsr say. “Nobody sees this prisoner without authorization.”

  Pauli’s cell had sidewalls of concrete, the material at the core of most Roman building projects. The bars at either end were placed too close together for him to get his head through the gap, so he couldn’t see anything but the empty cell directly across the corridor.

  “So I got authorization,” a familiar voice replied. Coins clinked.

  “Look, buddy,” the warder said in obvious distress. “I’d like to take your money, but this guy’s special. Why don’t we just forget you came down here, all right?”

  “Look, I’ll tell you how it is,” the other voice explained. “I was with Varus in the 17th, you see? I hear this jçuy was one of the Fritzes who planned us getting the chop. I want to talk to him.”

  “You want to kill him, you mean?” the warder said. “Buddy, I sympathize, I really do, but he’s going to be the star turn in the games tomorrow. If anything goes wrong with him, I’ll be his replacement.”

  “Nothing like that,” the soldier said. “I just want to talk. Anyway, he’ll be on the other side of the bars, right?”

  “I don’t get it,” the warder said.

  “You don’t have to get it,” the soldier said. Coins clinked again. He went on, “Look, if your buddy gets killed, you get mad about it. If everybody in Vetera but you got killed tomorrow—you wouldn’t get mad. It’s too big. But you’d want to understand what the fuck happened. Trust me. And drink a better grade of wine for the next week on me, right?”

  “You got a few minutes,” the warder muttered. Sandals shuffled away. “But for Hermes’ sake, don’t let anything happen to him or my ghost’ll ride your shoulder till you die!”

  Pauli stood up carefully as hobnails clashed in his direction. The cells beneath the amphitheater weren’t meant for men his height. They weren’t meant for men at all, really: they were beast cages that could double as holding cells for humans when necessary. The animals were more valuable than human prisoners; and in neither case was the stay going to be longer than a day or two.

  “Hello, Flaccus,” Pauli said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

  “There’s a problem with your buddies coming,” the veteran said. “Somebody might remember that because they’d been your slaves, they belonged to the state when you were condemned. Now me, I don’t belong to anybody but the emperor I swear an oath to at the first of each year, so I said I’d come talk to you.”

  Flaccus wore a tunic. Even without armor and his weapons belts, nobody could have doubted he was a soldier. His stance; the long, darkened dent on his forehead where for years a helmet had ridden; the scars on his scalp and all four limbs.

  The fresh gouge over Flaccus’ left eye was healing nicely. That could have been pure good luck, but Pauli suspected some of the luck might have come from a phial of antibiotics in Beckie’s kit.

  “Now, I don’t know who you lot are,” Flaccus continued judiciously, “but I know your buddies aren’t slaves just like I know you didn’t help the Fritzes scrag the lot of us. Thing is, nobody’s going to listen to what a grunt knows; and anyhow, they needed somebody to blame the mess on who’s still alive to execute.”

  Pauli Weigand looked at the soldier and felt ashamed of himself. Marcus Flaccus was no saint: he’d killed and looted and probably raped without the least concern. He was a soldier of an autarchical government bent on world canquest.

  But he was also a simple man who knew Pauli was innocent of aiding in the massacre of Varus and all Flaccus’ tent mates. Knew, and was wrong; because the ARC Rider too was the agent of a power that condoned any imaginable brutality that gained its ends.

  “You know w
hat’s really weird?” Flaccus said, playing with a dimple in his left forearm, a scar that must be more than a decade old. “What I told your keeper about not hating the Fritzes because it’d all been too big. It’s true.”

  His weathered face shifted from musing to a hardness that was more frightening than anger if you knew what you were seeing. “Not that I don’t look forward to going sack across the river with a general who knows what he’s doing. We’ll teach the Fritzes what a real massacre looks like.”

  An ARC Rider couldn’t allow himself to become emotionally involved … but Pauli remembered watching the Germans torture their prisoners and he couldn’t help wondering what would have happened to him and his teammates if they’d been captured alive.

  Of course, Flaccus’ government was about to feed him to wild beasts in the arena.

  “My friends are all right?” Pauli asked, in part to break the mood.

  “Yeah, they sent this,” Flaccus said. He handed Pauli a headband. Now he could communicate directly with his teammates.

  When Asprenas’ troops took Pauli prisoner they’d stripped him of everything but a single tunic and put a sack over his head. The headband had gone with the rest of his gear, though nobody’d realized it was more than a strip of clotti.

  “They say they’ve got a line on the people you’re looking for,” Flaccus said, prodding at another old scar. “The thing is, they’re wondering—”

  He looked up to meet Pauli’s eyes.

  “—if it might not be better to get you out of here, seeing as Tiberius arrives tonight and you’re for the chop at the games in his honor tomorrow. That’s what they wanted me to ask.”

  “No,” Pauli said. “We’ll all be compromised if I break out. The instant Tiberius arrives there’s risk of events of the sort we’re here to prevent. They’ve got to get on with the job first.”

  Flaccus put his right leg up on the bars and pinched the half moon of scar tissue over his kneecap. He stared at the mark morosely. “Thing is,” he said, head lowered, “there might be some people in this town who’d help them if they did bust you out. Not everybody who came out of the ratfuck with you’s fit, but some of us are.”

  “No,” Pauli said. “No, but thank you.”

  Flaccus nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I don’t guess a magician like you needs a lot of help anyway. Well, anything you want to say to your buddies?”

  “Carry on with the mission so that we can all go home,” Pauli said. He’d repeat the orders over the headband communication shortly, but he wanted no doubt about his decision. “Just tell them that. And Flaccus?”

  The veteran raised an eyebrow.

  “Even a magician needs friends,” said Pauli Weigand.

  Vetera, Lower Germany

  September 6/7, 9 AD

  I believe I’ve found one of them,” said Gerd Barhtuli. Then, “I’ve found one of them!”

  The buildings of Vetera were timber with thatch roofs, but many of the streets had been graveled; proper stone paving was for the future. Rebecca Carnes found it an unexpected pleasure to be able to walk at night without squelching.

  “Any notion whether it’s Svetlanov or Kiknadze?” Rebecca asked. Gerd was facing a building on the other side of the street with the sensor in his hand. Still at this hour Jie shutters of both stories were open, spilling lamplight. The lower level was a tavern.

  “I’ve located a submachine gun, Rebecca,” Gerd said mildly. “It’s only a probability that a revisionist is carrying trie weapon.”

  The sensor pack duplicated a headband’s many functions (though not in as accessible a fashion), so it was Gerd’s headband they’d sent to Pauli. Rebecca pulled her faceshield down to see if light amplification or thermal viewing showed her anything her unaided eyes had missed. No; but the naked woman who leaned on a window ledge for a few moments of relaxation indicated that the building’s upper story was a brothel.

  “He’s down below,” Gerd added. “The gun is.”

  Rebecca checked to be sure her pistol was in the cape lining. The plastic weapon was so light you wouldn’t notice the change if it fell out of the loops. “Let’s take a look,” she said.

  Vetera was a big camp capable of holding three legions in a pinch, though most of the troops had moved into Free Germany with Varus. A very Permanent Change of Station, to use the phrasing of Rebecca’s own day.

  The civil settlement served not only soldiers but the vast logistical tail that followed the troops up the Lippe River. It had a population of ten thousand. Since the team arrived in the city, she and Gerd had been searching street by street for a sign of the revisionists. Carefully metered drugs kept Rebecca alert, but they couldn’t do anything for sheer muscle fatigue.

  There were a dozen men and two middle-aged women in the tavern’s lower room. The doorman was a hulking brute with a broken nose and scars on his sloping forehead; the bartender could have passed for his brother.

  Boris Kiknadze was going up the narrow staircase behind a whore younger than the other two. She wore a shift of thin wool dyed rose and brass spirals around both forearms. The armlets had stained her skin a dingy green.

  “We’ll have some wine and wait,” Rebecca murmured. Gerd nodded. As usual in a new environment, his expression was of sprightly cheerfulness.

  “We’ve got a room open if you’re looking for a place to spend a half hour,” the bartender said as the ARC Riders approached. The other folk in the tavern were eyeing Rebecca speculatively; openly hostile speculation in the case of the women.

  “Nothing like that,” she said. “We’ll each have a mug of whatever’s cheap and local.”

  Gerd peered surreptitiously at the sensor pack in his palm. He shook his head minusculely when he caught Rebecca’s eye: he still didn’t have a fix on the other revisionist.

  At some point they’d have to retrieve the advanced gear taken from Pauli. Rebecca wondered whether that pair of submachine guns would confuse their search for Svetlanov’s weapon.

  “That’ll be three bronze,” the bartender said. He placed his hands flat on the stone slab, pointedly refusing to lift the narrow wine-ladle until he’d seen the strangers’ money.

  Rebecca reached for her purse. A woman screamed upstairs.

  The doorman and bartender both grabbed clubs. Before they could get to the stairs, the whore took two steps down. She wore the armlets but she’d lost her shift. There were toothmarks on her right breast.

  Kiknadze appeared behind her and grabbed her by the hair. A switch of false hair pulled out in his hand with a few of the woman’s own ringlets. Half bald, she screamed and pitched the rest of the way to the bracken-strewn floor.

  The bartender started up. Kiknadze tried to kick him in the face. The local man had plenty of experience with both violent patrons and this staircase. He grabbed Kiknadze by the ankle and pulled down. Kiknadze wrapped his left arm around the railing.

  The rail pulled loose. Kiknadze’s right hand dipped under his cape and came out with the Skorpion. The bartender swung his club at the weapon—uncertain of exactly what it was but in no doubt as to what Kiknadze’s general intentions were.

  “Down!” Rebecca shouted to Gerd as she ducked beneath the stone bar.

  The tavern’s only light was a pair of three-wick oil lamps. The submachine gun’s muzzle flashes were bright enough to cast a flickering shadow. One wild round hit a drinker in a booth across the room. He collapsed and slid under his table. The bartender grunted, then lost his grip on both the club and Kiknadze’s leg.

  The bartender fell back, tangling with the doonnan. Kiknadze clubbed the latter twice with the Skorpion’s butt and pushed past the two men. A regular patron stepped in front of the doorway, then jumped back when he saw Kiknadze’s murderous fury.

  The revisionist ran out of the tavern, waving his submachine gun. The bartender stood on all fours, shaking his head groggily and dripping blood on the floor. The doorman was upright again.

  Rebecca waited for Kiknadze to clear the door
way, then followed him. Gerd was only a step behind her. She tugged her faceshield down, brightening the night to apparent daylight levels. The scene had a certain flatness from the loss of the three-dimensional modeling that shadows provide.

  “That’s right, get the bastard!” the doorman cried. He and a half dozen of the tavern’s patrons spilled out after the ARC Riders. “Let’s hang him by the dick!”

  Kiknadze was twenty yards down the street. He glanced over his shoulder. Rebecca flattened against the side of the building. Kiknadze waved his gun but didn’t shoot. Either he couldn’t see targets or he’d emptied the Skorpion inside the tavern. He lurched around a corner.

  Rebecca had the microwave pistol in her hand. If she knocked Kiknadze down the mob would beat him to death. She and Gerd needed to interrogate the revisionist; that, or hope he led them to Svetlanov on his own. Best that Kiknadze run until the locals had lost interest.

  Adjacent buildings had common sidewalls. Kiknadze couldn’t flee down an alley between structures. There were no streetlights and the partial moon was dim help without the ARC faceshield’s advanced technology.

  Rebecca reached the corner, pointed the opposite way from the one Kiknadze had taken, and shouted, “There he goes! See him there?”

  The trick might have worked, but the revisionist tripped in the darkness and whanged his submachine gun against a stone doorstep. It rang like a bell. The locals panting in the middle of the street spun to look for the source of the noise. Kiknadze stood up in front of the only lighted window on the block.

  “There he is!” the doorman cried. He and the twenty-odd locals with him crashed down the street after their quarry. The whore whose cries had started the trouble was among them. She wore sequined sandals and a short cape that covered her to the waist.

  Doors opened; still more people were joining the hunt. Rebecca felt her lips tighten as if she were sucking something sour. All she could do for now was keep up with the mob and hope for the best.