But what? Was he looking to get off-planet, where we couldn’t possibly find him? Is that it?
The answer is, we simply don’t know.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Let’s go back. See what the others make of this.’
And in my mind I’m thinking that maybe they could set the Great Men on this. See what they come up with. Only why should they make more sense of this than us? For I’m beginning to think that their greatness isn’t as useful as we thought it might be. That maybe our field experience – in Time – might be worth one hell of a lot more than all their philosophy and physics. But I keep my thoughts to myself … as yet. Because maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they will come up with a solution or two. Only Time, as they say, will tell.
420
Only when we get back to Moscow Central, it’s to find that Katerina has gone, following up on something an agent brought back for her. And that fazes me temporarily, because why should she be getting things from Time?
I ask Zarah to send me in after her at once, and find myself in a place I recognise, in Belyj, a town I once visited with Katerina on my long journey overland. This is where the smithy was – where I got the ash-leaf pendant for Katerina. But I sense that this is much later than that occasion, for things feel a lot different.
It’s not a big place, but I can find no trace of Katerina, even though she jumped through only a minute before me. I go to the waterfront. There are slaves there, sleeping in the shade of one of the huts. There are also three boats moored there, their contents covered in crude tarpaulins. I’m about to climb on-board the first of them to search it, when three men emerge from one of the huts and confront me.
I can see from their attire and their weaponry that these are slavers. That wouldn’t normally bother me, only I notice that one of them has one of the ‘lazy-eight’ pendants about his neck – those worn by Kolya’s followers – and I wonder whether the man’s a time traveller.
Whether they all are.
If so, then I’d have no advantage if it comes to a fight, not without me jumping out and jumping back with help. Only I want to know where Katerina has gone – whether, maybe, they’ve taken her – and so for once I’m direct, asking them in the local Russian dialect if they know where she is.
Only these, one of them tells me, are Thuringians, and when I ask again, in their tongue, where she is, they just laugh.
‘She dead,’ one of them says, in halting English. ‘She very dead.’
Which I don’t believe. I mean, why should they kill her?
No. I think that maybe they’ve ambushed her. Taken her hostage.
I make to jump out of there and jump back in a moment earlier, when someone – a child? – calls my name.
I turn sharply, to find – to my great shock – not just one of my daughters, but two, Natalya and Anna, slouched there, chained up with the slaves, clearly slaves themselves. Appalled, I take a step toward them, putting out my hand, as if to comfort them, even as one of the men brings a rock down on my head.
And wake, my head pounding, to find that I’m lying in the bottom of a boat, heading upriver.
I try to put my right hand to my chest, only both my hands are bound to a pole which runs beneath me. In fact, I’m trussed up like a turkey. I move my head the little that I can, trying to see who else is in the boat with me, only I can’t. All I can see is the dirty sheet that’s pulled taut above me.
I can hear the sound of the oars, however; feel the movement of the boat in the water, and know that there’s someone just behind me. I can also smell tobacco, an anachronism in this age.
I lie back, relaxing, for a moment forgetting what I saw. And then it comes back to me.
I groan, in sudden agony, and as I do, a shadow falls over me, an upside-down face peering down at me. Bearded. Russian.
No, Thuringian, I remember.
‘Not dead, then?’ he says, and laughs.
I’d answer him, but my throat is too dry. The stranger speaks again, clearly amused.
‘You want to know where you are and who we are, don’t you?’
I manage something. A pained croak.
‘Where is she?’
‘Dead,’ he says. ‘We told you that. She stepped out, directly into the beam. Exactly as he said she would.’
I close my eyes, pained by it, seeing it in my mind’s eye.
Kolya, I think. It has to be. And now we both die, without any second chances.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Upriver,’ he answers me. And chuckles.
421
Two of them carry me ashore and place me in a dark, insanitary hut. Lying there, in the midst of that squalor, I wonder why no one has jumped in to check up on me, or why Zarah hasn’t simply pulled me out of there. That’d be the normal process. So maybe my focus isn’t functioning. Maybe it’s been damaged or destroyed.
A long time passes. Voices come and go outside. Flies buzz about me.
This is the lowest I have ever sunk, and for perhaps the first time ever I wonder if I’ve been defeated. Only suddenly there are shouts and gunfire and screams. As silence falls, the door creaks open and, in the moonlight, someone crosses the hut and looks down at me.
With the light behind him and his face in shadow, I can’t see who it is, but when I hear the voice, relief floods through me.
Ernst.
422
Outside, laid out like so many haunches of meat on the ground, are the strangers who kidnapped me, dead now, their lazy-eight pendants taken from them.
Ernst is quite distraught. He can’t stop apologising to me for leaving things so long and cutting it so fine, but what he tells me makes good sense.
‘Once we knew you were taken we followed closely, hoping to snare Kolya when he made his appearance. Only Kolya didn’t show, and when we overheard those three discussing whether they should wait for the man or simply cut your throat, we decided to move in fast.’
And Katerina?
Katerina, it seems, is safe. She too was part of their plan to get Kolya and was wearing protective clothing against the laser. That and the shot she took to feign death fooled them totally.
‘So you used me!’ I say, not knowing whether to be pleased or angry with them.
Ernst grins. ‘We knew you’d go in after her. In fact, that part of it was her suggestion.’
That stops me in my tracks. And then suddenly she’s there, holding me, kissing my face and grinning, as ever making me feel that I’m the luckiest man in Time. I’m so relieved I forget to be angry with her. But then, suddenly, I remember something else.
‘I saw them!’ I say, my face a hand’s breadth from hers. ‘Natalya and Anna! We have to go back and get them!’
Katerina is shocked. ‘They’re here?’
‘No. Back at Belyj, among the slaves.’
‘Then what are we waiting for?’
And we jump. Katerina and I. Back to Moscow Central, then to Belyj. Back to the waterfront.
Only this time we jump back to a moment just before we last jumped in, so that we see, from our hidden viewpoint, an earlier Katerina jump in, directly into the laser cross-fire.
Stunned – they think dead – she drops to the ground and is quickly dragged into a nearby hut by one of the men, the others following a moment later.
We wait, and a minute later I jump in – or an earlier me – and we watch events unfold, from the emergence of the three men from the hut, to the sudden arrival of a fourth slaver, who creeps up on me while I’m distracted.
The sight of him bringing that rock down on my head makes me wince. They, meanwhile, bind me up and carry me onto the boat.
Three of them climb on board, leaving just one of them to guard the slaves.
When the boat has gone from view, Katerina and I make our way quickly across to where the slaves are. Creeping up on him, I knock the guard unconscious, and as he falls Katerina jumps onto his back and lifts his head by the hair, meaning to slit his throat. But before she can, Nat
alya cries out to us – ‘No, Mama! Not him! He was good to us. Made sure we ate. Kept us from being beaten.’
Katerina turns, staring at them, almost not recognising the two girls, in whose eyes tears are welling. They are dishevelled and dirty and underfed, and Katerina goes to them now, holding them to her, even as I start carefully laser-cutting their shackles from them. And then they’re all free and we huddle together in a moment of purest joy and relief. My girls!
Grinning like a madman, I take two pendants from my pocket and slip them over my daughters’ necks. Only, before they jump, Natalya stops them. ‘No, Papa. We have to come back for them. For all the others. We can’t leave them here.’
I want to object, to tell her that we can’t be responsible for everyone, only a look in her eyes cuts me short.
‘Promise me, Daddy,’ she says, gripping my hands tightly. ‘Promise me you’ll return for them.’
I nod, and a smile appears on her face, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, and we jump, back to Moscow Central, and a reunion with Irina.
423
Fresh from showering, I listen as Ernst and Svetov discuss the situation at Moscow Central.
There have been fresh and much more serious troubles between the two sets of time agents. It seems that a fight over a Russian woman has ended in the death of one of the German agents, the three Russians who killed him having fled into Time.
‘We have traces on them,’ Svetov says, ‘if you want us to go in and take them captive.’
‘Let me think about it, Arkadi.’
This is a major set-back. Not only has it caused fresh tensions, but it means, in all probability that Kolya has three new recruits. Up till now we’ve tracked down most of the rebel agents, accounting for all but eleven of the rebel Russians and six of the Germans. It isn’t many, but with three more additions, that little core of resistance could prove a real thorn in our side, especially as so much manpower is being taken up searching Time for my daughters, as well as trying to track down Kolya himself.
Ernst lowers his head in that habitual way he has when he’s about to suggest something awkward, then meets my eyes.
‘You won’t like this, Otto, but I want to make a suggestion …’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, it’s just … now that three of your girls have been found – and praise be for that – we might just ease off a little and reallocate some of our manpower towards dealing with the rebels.’
‘Wind it down, you mean?’
I don’t mean to be hard on him. He’s my best friend, after all. But I’m not about to ease off, not while two of my girls are still missing.
‘No,’ I say, and before Ernst can say another word, Svetov takes his arm and pulls him over to the corner of the room.
‘You don’t have children, do you, Ernst?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Then listen to one who has. If only one of my children remained missing, as Otto’s girls are missing, then I would scour Time and Space to try and find them, using as many agents as I needed for the task. Which is to say, once we have located Martha and Zarah we’ll deal with the rebels. But until then finding the girls remains our priority. Do you understand, dear friend?’
Ernst nods, but I can see there’s still part of him that wants to contest the decision. But that’s how Ernst is. Tactical.
When Ernst is gone, I thank my Russian friend. ‘You speak as if you have experience,’ I say, and notice how a cloud crosses Svetov’s face. ‘You say you had children.’
‘I did …’
‘And?’
‘You Germans took them.’
I stare at him, stunned.
‘Oh, I’m not blaming you, Otto. That was how it was. But that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing now. To change things.’
I study the big man a moment, seeing him in a totally different light. ‘Would you like to share a beer, Arkadi?’
And he smiles. Back to the man I’ve come to know. My enemy turned friend.
‘That would be good, Otto. That would be very good indeed.’
424
I wake with a start, from a dream I do not want to remember. The room is dark, and as I lie there, letting my pulse cease racing, I hear it.
Katerina is to my right in the darkness, a warm presence there beside me, the sound of her breathing soft yet strong, and, just beyond her, softer still, I can hear the breathing of my daughters.
I lie there a while, my eyes closed, listening to the gentle symphony of their intermingled breaths, the sound of them, alive and safe, there in the dark, close by, then let out a long sigh, as the topic of my talk with Svetov last night comes back to me.
Finding Katerina and the first three of my girls has been all too easy. And it’s not just me who thinks that. Svetov thinks it too. And others. Like me, they think that Kolya would not have discarded such valuable ‘cards’, such precious hostages, unless he had some greater, nastier scheme.
Svetov thinks that the very manner in which Kolya has distributed them, as prisoners and slaves, suggests that he wants to play on my imagination and, perhaps, draw me further in – into a trap of some kind. But that’s mere hypothesis. Who knows what’s in Kolya’s twisted mind?
Quietly, careful not to wake them, I get up and slip from the room, pausing briefly, allowing myself to glimpse them, their sleeping forms framed in the narrow rectangle of light from the corridor, before going to join the others for breakfast.
Ernst is there already, seated at the breakfast table, which comfortably holds ten, along with Zarah and Saratov. There’s no sign of Svetov, but that’s unsurprising. My guess is that he’s sleeping it off. And no surprise there, for he must have drunk three times what I consumed last night.
‘How’s your head?’ Zarah asks, a faint, understanding smile on her lips.
‘Fine,’ I say, reaching for the coffee jug.
‘I would have joined you,’ Ernst says, looking at me from over his steaming cup, ‘only something came up. I thought I should deal with it.’
I wait, expecting more, but Ernst, it seems, is done. Nor does Zarah – who, as platform controller, must know what it was – take the matter up.
I let it pass. ‘Have you thought any more about our friends? The think tank, I mean … Is that producing anything worthwhile? And, more to the point, is it causing any damage back there in the past?’
Zarah looks to Ernst, as if something’s already been said between them on this matter, then shrugs.
‘It’s hard to say. Some of the things they’ve come up with are pure genius. But there do seem to be side effects.’
‘Yes?’
Ernst sets his cup down. ‘We’ve only just started investigating the matter, but … it does look like there’s some kind of universal balancing act going on. Being here, in the future, has undeniably resulted in some real scientific breakthroughs, but probably not as many – or as great – as we hoped for. At the same time, there’s no doubting that the fact that their absence from the past – in their specific places in Time – has slowed down scientific and social progress. Almost to a halt in some of the worlds we’ve studied.’
‘But that’s reversible, yes?’
Zarah answers me. ‘It is. Providing that we slip them back into the timestream at precisely the point where we took them from. Which we can, in the blink of an eye.’
Yes, I think. And they’ll not recall a moment of their little adventure.
Ernst looks to me. ‘Are you beginning to question what we did, then, Otto?’
‘It’s been playing on my mind, yes. Just that the idea for this was wholly Gehlen’s. That he was the one who set the rules and chose who was to be taken from the timestream. And then, what with what he did next … trying to suffocate us all …’
‘D’you think Reichenau was behind it, Otto?’
‘It’s possible, don’t you think? Or even Kolya …’
I’m about to say why I think that’s possible, when Saratov
comes into the room, holding young Natalya by the hand. Seeing me, she runs across and hugs me, spilling my coffee.
‘She was wandering the corridors,’ Saratov explains, ‘looking for you.’
‘Well, now she’s found me,’ I say, and, grinning from ear to ear, I pull her up onto my lap.
She’s clean now and wearing fresh clothes, and for a moment she presses in against me as if she’ll never ever let go again. But then she looks at me.
‘I wanted to remind you, Dada.’
‘Remind me?’
‘Of your promise. You said you’d free them.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’ I look to Zarah. ‘I promised her …’
‘I know,’ Zarah says, getting to her feet, even as one of the kitchen staff comes over to wipe the spillage. ‘It’s all organised. As soon as you’re ready you can go in.’
‘And Katerina and the girls? Can they witness this?’
‘They’d best wait here, by the platform, where we can protect them. Just that bringing five bodies through might prove problematic, what with Kolya’s possible intervention.’
‘You think that’s likely?’
‘They were wearing lazy-eight pendants, remember? As to whether that makes them Reichenau’s men, or Kolya’s, we don’t rightly know, only that it’s possibly the latter, and we need to make sure it’s not a trap of some kind or that they don’t penetrate our defences.’
I give a little bow to her, impressed as ever by her preparedness, then look to my daughter. ‘Natalya. Go fetch Mummy and the girls. Uncle Saratov will take you there, and then we’ll bring your friends back here.’
She kisses me. A big wet sloppy kiss, then jumps off my lap, going to Saratov and taking his hand. He nods to me and smiles, and then they’ve gone.
I turn back to Zarah.
‘What precautions are you taking at the platform?’
The Master of Time: Roads to Moscow: Book Three Page 25
