The Amber Rooms

by Ian Hocking

  ‘I wish to know the situation,’ said the clerk. He looked from Draganov to the gendarmes as he said this. ‘Identify yourself, Colonel. Why are you and your soldiers here?’

  The gendarme raised his pistol and pointed it at Draganov.

  ‘Yes, something strange is happening here,’ continued the clerk, as though confirming his intuition. ‘I suggest that we wait for more officers of the Fourth Squadron who can verify your position.’

  Draganov folded his arms and approached the clerk. There was a considerable difference in their height. The clerk was still looking up in anger when Draganov headbutted him. The small man crumpled. Draganov turned towards the shocked gendarme and struck him with a haymaker punch to the side of his head. Saskia guessed that he was unconscious before he spilled across the floor. Draganov had not finished. Still turning, he kicked out at the open door to the Portrait Hall, closing it on the masked faces of the guests who had gathered there. He wedged a chair beneath its handles.

  The Hussar near the door to the Apartments aimed his rifle at Draganov and said, ‘That’s enough, sir. I, too, would like to know your role here. You are not with the Imperial Convoy.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Draganov replied, reaching inside his jacket. ‘I am an officer of the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order, Special Section.’

  The reply of the Hussar was interrupted by a movement from the middle of the room: Pasha’s foot kicked. At the same time, Saskia almost collapsed with dizziness. Her breath shuddered and there was a sharp pain behind her left eye. She looked hard at Pasha and noticed black dots on his face and chest. His chest expanded, held, then shrank as an inhuman, sibilant breath escaped his mouth. The breath was white.

  ‘Mother of God,’ said one of the Hussars holding her. His grip weakened and he fell forward, unconscious. The second Hussar fell a moment later.

  Saskia nodded. Her message to the i-Core had been received. The last words of Pavel Eduardovitch in the parallel Geneva had been: O Lord, revive me, for Your name’s sake. For Your righteousness, deliver my soul from danger.

  She fought to remain upright. She swayed as she looked around the room. All the Hussars had collapsed, though the Hussar near the door to the Apartments was kneeling and still held his weapon. His eyes were narrow but not closed. Only Saskia and Draganov could stand. She staggered towards him.

  ‘What happened to my men?’ he asked.

  ‘Oxygen, heat, everything, is being pulled into Pasha so that he may live. We’re being spared the worst effects.’

  ‘Come,’ he said, putting an arm around her shoulders and leading her towards the central door, ‘we’ll get out through the Maria Fyodorovna Apartments.’

  He opened the door onto a sumptuous room. Saskia was glad to find it empty. The next breath she took was like the first after breaking the surface of Baikal those years ago; her mind resumed its edge, and her back straightened. She allowed Draganov to steer her towards a second door, which was simple by the standards of the Summer Palace. It opened onto a light-green room richly ornamented with wooden wainscot. In the corner was the metal staircase. As they hurried down, the shouts of alarms, bootfalls and whistles grew louder. No doubt the soldiers of the many barracks in the Tsar’s Village were being mobilised, not to mention the police—both secret and ordinary.

  The stairs ended in a storage room. Draganov pointed to a brass bucket near the door. Saskia looked inside and saw the neatly folded uniform of a cleaning maid: a navy-blue dress and white pinafore. She wasted no time. She pulled away the telephone wires from her costume, slipped the dress from her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor. Draganov, meanwhile, removed his scarlet coat and took a second uniform jacket from beneath a dust sheet.

  ‘You are my patient. Understood?’

  Saskia nodded. She fastened the dress and pulled the pinafore over her head. Draganov buttoned the back. When she reached for the left sleeve of her dress to tie it up, he said, ‘No, leave that.’ He took a jar from a shelf, unscrewed the top, and smeared its contents on her stump. ‘Food colouring.’

  Saskia looked at him as he worked.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Thank me when you’ve left Russia for the last time. Understand? Stop for no one once we’re underway. Leave Russia somehow and don’t come back.’

  He put the jar back on the shelf.

  ‘Who are you, Draganov?’

  The man smiled, as though the answer was a private joke. He reached for the doors to the garden and opened them. On the gravel path was an ambulance. Its horse shuffled at the noise of their approach. A boy in a travelling cloak pinched out his cigarette, tucked it behind his ear, and climbed to the driver’s seat. Draganov and Saskia climbed into the back as the ambulance pulled away.

  ‘Answer my questions,’ said Saskia. She laid herself on a canvas stretcher while Draganov opened a compartment at the head of the carriage.

  He replied using a language that Saskia had never heard before. She felt a part of her mind seize its sounds, mark the phonemes among its phonetics, compute a likely morpheme or two, and place it in a multi-dimensional constellation of all languages. Then the meaning was hers.

  Draganov had said, ‘If I speak this way, do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Old Frankish, though we always called it Lingua Franca.’ Draganov smiled as he took Saskia’s wrist and dressed a wound that was years old, and long healed. ‘First, you want to know about the countdown. It is an automatic behaviour that the band is designed to exhibit. There are specific, known points of escape. The Amber Room is one of them.’

  Saskia frowned. It disturbed her to think of a network of exits connecting this time to the future, and perhaps the past.

  ‘Under what circumstances would the band enter such a mode?’

  Draganov shrugged. He tied a reef knot over her wound. For good measure, he took the jar of food colouring from his jacket pocket and smeared redness over the bandage and her forearm.

  ‘Loss or capture,’ he said. ‘A sense that the wearer is in danger, perhaps.’

  ‘But the band works on its own. I’ve seen it used in that way. If its senses danger, why not make my …’ She trailed off, not finding a word in Old Frankish for “evacuation”. ‘Why not take me home directly?’

  ‘My dear,’ said Draganov, patiently, ‘the band was damaged. Some of its functions still worked. Some did not. I would not mourn its loss if I were you.’

  ‘Its loss means I cannot go home.’

  Draganov sighed. He relaxed against the side of the carriage. ‘What is home?’

  ‘A time more than one hundred years from now. As for the place, I don’t know. I have a good friend called David. It will come to pass that he will disappear. I wish to prevent that, or find out why.’

  The ambulance rocked. Saskia heard a gloved palm slap its side. A shouted threat to shoot at the ambulance faded as they turned a corner. Saskia and Draganov looked at one another. There was something abstract about his expression. It lacked fear.

  Saskia asked, ‘What makes the Amber Room useful as a point of extraction?’

  ‘Some places are like that.’

  ‘Let me speak plainly,’ she said, leaning forward. The ambulance rattled over cobbles and she raised her voice to ask, ‘Did Jennifer Proctor send you back in time?’

  With a playful smile, he said, ‘Who?’

  The frustration was a cramp in her chest. It compounded with her knowledge that the remainder of this journey, and perhaps her liberty, was dwindling.

  ‘How can a man from the future not know Jennifer Proctor, the inventor of time travel?’

  Draganov’s smile only broadened. Something in her question had amused him, and she saw her error with such clarity that when Draganov corrected her, no surprise remained, only wonder.

  ‘I’ve come here across centuries, my friend, across lifetimes of change. I’m not of your future, but your past.’

&nb
sp; Saskia gasped.

  ‘That is …’ but she could not finish the sentence.

  ‘My story is long, but there is not much time to tell it. I was born into nobility near Languedoc in the south of France on Christmas Day, 1098. My family had ties to the Cathari, a learned sect going back generations. I joined the Order of the Temple in my twenty-fourth year. In Jerusalem, something happened to me that took away my faith. Then I learned of the road through time. I took it.’ Draganov inclined his head and made a looping gesture with his palm, the parody of a courtly greeting. ‘Sir Robert of Chappes, of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, at last.’

  ‘You are a Templar Knight,’ said Saskia. As she spoke, she listened to the words. The statement was extraordinary. A trick on the part of Draganov? She did not think so. It suggested a justification for the risk he had taken on her behalf. It explained his fluency in Old Frankish. It would be beyond the powers of an actor to affect the irony in his tone as he introduced himself; to see the hurt underlying his confession that he claimed to be part of a myth, more a fool in motley than a knight.

  ‘The present tense is hardly appropriate,’ he said. There was pain in his eyes. ‘I have broken my vows too many times.’

  ‘Does your Order have anything to do with Meta? Is Meta a synonym for the order?’

  Draganov laughed. ‘That would be preposterous. We were betrayed by a weak French king six hundred years ago. We no longer exist.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if the Order exists now, does it? The important thing is that it existed at all.’

  ‘Good, Saskia. I was right to help you.’

  ‘Tell me, what is your age? How do you travel in time? What technologies are available to you?’

  ‘Slowly, slowly, my dear. My age is as you see it, but my family was always youthful and long-lived. I travel in the Gnostic manner: through meditation and the secret given to me in Jerusalem by a mendicant beggar. Do not ask me for the secret. I am bewitched and may not tell it. Technology? I’m just a man. I have nothing more than my physical powers, my wits and what remain of my vows before God.’

  Saskia let her head drop against the folded blanket pillow. She longed to spend time with Draganov. It was not physical attraction. She yearned to speak to a man who was truly an agent in the sense beyond the limited use of the word in revolutionary circles. Draganov was of now, not then. He and she were the same. She felt, despite her rational rejection of the notion, that they alone were capable of choice in this world of clockwork, predetermined movements.

  ‘Why do you work for the Protection?’

  ‘I like to know what’s going on. As one of the okhranniki, I can do that.’

  ‘When we first spoke in the Caucasus, you told me my true name. How did you know these things if you lack future technology?’

  Draganov looked at her sidelong. At length, he nodded.

  ‘Bravo. Yes, there is a device within your body that radiates this information silently. I have what I call my Good Angel, who often whispers in my ear.’ He withdrew a leather wallet from his waistcoat and showed her a black business card. Its text was white, curlicued Cyrillic: Alexei Sergeyevich Draganov, Fontanka 16. As Saskia watched, the letters flattened to a long string. The string swung like a skipping rope for an instant before new letters knotted along its length.

  Guten Abend, Frau Kommissarin.

  Saskia felt unease at this. Slowly, she passed the card back.

  ‘It’s better that the card stay with me,’ he said. ‘That is why I didn’t speak of it.’

  ‘Will it do me harm?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’ He reached towards the tight drapes that blocked the rear window and parted them with a finger. ‘We’re almost there,’ he said. ‘At the hospital, we will part. A doctor called Leontiev has been paid. He will escort you to one of the larger St Petersburg hospitals. From there, you will be on your own. Remember my advice: don’t come back.’

  ‘Thank you, my friend,’ said Saskia. ‘Or do I have your Order to thank, for avowed protection of pilgrims?’

  ‘The Order,’ continued Draganov, ‘is no more. Is it connected to Meta? I doubt it.’

  ‘That is disingenuous. You must work for Meta in some capacity.’

  ‘Meta is not an employer, Saskia,’ said Draganov, in a warning tone. ‘Nor is it a gentleman’s club. Meta is a way of thinking.’

  Saskia gave him an expectant look. She remembered the suspicions of Ego in that parallel universe. Her physical predecessor in that reality had been on a mission.

  ‘What is the Meta way of thinking?’

  ‘Simply, the belief that change is possible.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Saskia said, but her thoughts turned to that yearning for connection once more. She wanted this conversation to continue not only because Draganov had answers, but because he was special among the men of this time. All her conversations for the past three years had been with automata.

  ‘Tell me about a time when you wanted to change something but could not.’

  ‘That describes my whole life,’ she said. His request felt too vague to answer, but still her reply came, surprising her with its confessional cast. ‘There are events in year 2023 that have already taken place. They involve me as an older woman. Whatever happens between now and then, whatever tortures or pains I endure, my life must continue. I am protected by the time paradox that might result in my death.’

  ‘And when you tried to go home, the time band took you through realities where the time paradox did not exist.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Her mind coasted. The physical presence of Draganov, and the shaking ambulance, seemed to bleed out of her perception. ‘I felt that I could make a difference in those places.’

  ‘Do you think it is possible, rationally, that you could make such a difference?’

  ‘Some days I think so. Other days I don’t.’

  ‘There,’ said Draganov. He smiled and this broke whatever spell had distracted her. ‘You would not make a good associate of Meta.’

  The ambulance stopped. It rocked as the driver climbed down.

  ‘And now,’ said Draganov, ‘we are here.’

  As he buttoned his dress shirt, Saskia put her hand over his.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Does Meta send agents through time?’

  ‘Think of them as soldiers of a special regiment.’

  ‘Or soldiers of God like you, Sir Robert of Chappes.’

  Draganov pushed her hand away and finished buttoning his shirt.

  ‘As I discovered to my cost, my dear, God has little to do with it.’

  ‘Did God send me through those parallel universes?’

  ‘Why would He do that?’ asked Draganov, closing the doors of the medical cabinet.

  ‘I don’t know. As a lesson in hope, perhaps.’

  ‘I thought you might say, “Faith”.’ He looked down on her. His stern expression changed to one of fondness. ‘My dear, listen to me. If someone at Meta deliberately manipulated the behaviour of that time band, you should be worried.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they want to recruit you.’

  ‘They have already recruited me. One version of me, at least. The one that died in the back of a Peugeot Bébé.’

  The doors of the ambulance opened on a dark courtyard. The driver stood there. He was no more than a boy.

  In Russian, Draganov said, ‘See to it that she is taken directly to Dr Leontiev.’

  The boy nodded and clapped his mittened hands against his thighs.

  Saskia said, ‘How do I repay you?’

  Draganov grunted as he stepped from the ambulance. He scratched his red beard and gave the courtyard a searching look. Satisfied, he turned back to her.

  ‘Payment, pilgrim? You forget my vow of poverty.’

  A whistle was blown in the distance. The sound of trotting horses and clattering body armour reached the courtyard. The last that Saskia saw of Draganov was his tall form, perfectly at home in it
self, charging as though a lone vanguard, moving to intercept soldiers as they entered the hospital grounds.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Gulf of Finland: Autumn, 1908

  The last hours of the Baltic approach to St Petersburg were renowned. Many of the first class passengers gathered on the unsteady private deck to watch the Imperial City rise from the troubled sea. The morning was bright and its sky gulled. The east wind smeared spray from the wave crests but this reached neither the high deck nor the muzzled figures surrounding Saskia Brandt, who had the truest balance of all the passengers.

  The mouth of the River Neva opened and the many islands of the Gulf of Finland took shape. Over the next minutes, the vast naval fortress of Kronstadt passed to the north and the palaces of Peterhof moved by on the south. The gentlemen pointed cigars and pipes at the golden tower of the Admiralty. Appreciative noises filled the deck. Then a warm gust carried salt water into the air and Saskia turned against it.

  She overheard one of the passengers speaking Hebrew. The words had the monotone of prayer. He would be placed in a category of close inspection when they arrived at the Russian customs on Vasilyevsky Island. The slightest irregularity would ensure his entry was refused. She thought of Yusha, her once-lover in that Zurich garret.

  Pasha was somewhere on that horizon, impossibly small against the infinite line of Russia. She wondered if he had forgiven her. The boy lived, that was sure, but the i-Core lived with him, too. What had the parasite done? Saved the host for itself? Saskia did not know who, or what, would look out through his eyes. Pasha might hate her.

  Thoughts on the consequences of his resurrection had followed her since that night when she had ridden from the Great Summer Palace in the ambulance, and burdened her through months alone in Finland and Norway reading about Draganov’s arrest and his court martial, and they slowed her steps from the crowded, blaring customs room to the noisy quayside. There, no fewer than five taxi drivers competed for her fare. They wore padded blue coats despite the growing warmth. Each claimed to have met her before and rendered an excellent service. Saskia selected the largest of the bearded men. Robespierre had always claimed that the larger the beard, the better the driver. She negotiated a rate that was half of his proposal, citing his torn collar. His fellows laughed at this out-smarting, and as she waited, watching for Green coats, anxious to be gone, the driver loaded her trunk. A moment later, she was once more moving through the streets.