‘We’ll have a dozen of our best sharpshooters in position. That’s separate from the team we’re sending in.’
It makes sense. Even if we’re over-reacting, the fact that Kolya had men in there should make us extra careful. Because from what we’re learning of him, Kolya is never predictable.
I allow fifteen minutes, then go to the platform, where Katerina and the girls meet me. Our men are already in position, the team ready to go through, and I lead the way, jumping through onto the waterfront, expecting …?
Expecting it all to be gone, frankly. Because that’s Kolya’s way. He’s a regular vanishing act. Only it’s exactly as it was, and, having dealt with the solitary remaining guard (gently, because Natalya insisted) I free the five remaining slaves and, once they’ve all got time pendants about their necks, jump back.
The slaves are all Danes, two young boys aged eleven and thirteen, a young woman of twenty and two men in their mid-twenties. None of them are related, though the woman and one of the men hail from the same village. They’re clearly bemused by what has happened and consider me a great sorcerer. They kneel before me, bowing their heads almost to the ground, but I tell them, haltingly, in their own tongue, that they are free now and that rooms and clothes and food will be provided.
Meeting them, seeing their all-too-human reactions, I am moved, more than I care to admit. Freeing them makes me feel that I have done something good, something positive in the world.
Sitting Natalya down, I ask her about her experiences, and learn that she and Anna were captive for two whole months. The simple thought of it appals me and makes me want to change it, only Natalya won’t let me.
‘It’s part of me now,’ she says. ‘It made me grow up, Papa. Don’t change it. What good is experience if you can change it at will? I want to remember how it felt. No, more than that … I need to remember.’
I am awed by her words. It makes me challenge everything I have ever done in my life.
What good is experience if you can change it at will?
It’s a big question for someone like me who can. Aside from which, I am used to solving problems with a gun. So this …
This is a revelation to me. An epiphany. An opening of eyes.
425
But there is still Kolya to contend with, and, just as we think we might have lost him for ever, one of our agents comes back, dishevelled and breathless, to report that he has seen Kolya, or, if not, one of his ancestors who looks very much like Kolya. Only Katerina and I would know for sure. Katerina is keen to pursue him, but I am not so sure. I don’t intend to dash in madly after my adversary. Not this once. No. I am convinced that this is a trap. And besides, I have another plan.
I am going to send in Schikaneder.
We bring the exiled agent back from his bolt-hole in nineteenth-century Prague, to Moscow Central. Schikaneder is shocked that peace has been made between Germany and Russia. Shocked yet delighted, because this is what he’s wanted all along.
Alone with him in Yastreyeb’s old rooms, I offer him a ‘deal’. Either he goes in and reports back or he’ll be incarcerated permanently.
Schikaneder really doesn’t want to go. He trembles at the thought of encountering Kolya again. But he has no option. For once I am intractable. If he ever wants to see his cosy rooms in Prague again, then he has to help us.
He begs and pleads, but finally he agrees. Only what he doesn’t know is that I am giving him just two days to find Kolya and confirm it’s him. After two days we’ll pull him out of there, whatever happens.
426
While Schikaneder is inside, I decide to jump back and visit Albrecht Hecht in the Haven. With a little time on my side, I have decided to see whether there are any records of Kolya’s activities in Time.
Only it’s a very sombre Albrecht that greets me on the mountain slope, and it is very quickly obvious to me that, now that his brother is dead and the Neanderthal community dispersed, he is finding his solitary life in the deep past very hard to take. Duty alone is keeping him here.
‘You shouldn’t have let them come here,’ he says, as he taps in the password and stands back.
He means the Great Men, their ‘manus’, but I tell him that had nothing to do with me.
‘But you’re the Meister, Otto. One word from you …’
‘It’s not like that,’ I interrupt, ‘it’s all veche and committees and … the days of the Meister deciding everything have gone. They died with your brother’s death, and Yastryeb’s.’
‘I see.’
We go inside, into that massive storeroom of alternatives.
‘So what do you want, Otto?’
‘I want to find Kolya,’ I say. ‘He must be somewhere here. He can’t have erased all traces of himself from everywhere. It isn’t possible.’
‘Maybe not,’ Albrecht answers. But he has a thoughtful look about him, as if there might be a way.
For the next ten hours we pursue the man, starting with what we know and making guesses as to where he might have gone. Only it’s heavy-going and even after a full day’s work, we’ve made no progress whatsoever.
I want to bring in help, but Albrecht is against that. He’s almost paranoid about keeping the Haven’s secrets – especially its location – to as few people as possible. He doesn’t like the idea of its existence becoming common knowledge, and, after a heated discussion, I agree that I will return alone, then jump back to Moscow Central.
427
In the brief time that I’ve been gone – in what’s less than half an hour subjective – a great deal has happened.
Poor Schikaneder has been ‘returned’ to the platform, dead, stripped naked, his body bearing identical scars to those inflicted on the young Teuton knight, Brother Werner, his corpse laid out like a star, his fingers and his feet cut off, his chest opened up with an axe. His eyes have been gouged out and his ears cut off, his tongue cut from his mouth. Finally, they have carved the sign of the cross into his crudely shaven skull.
There is no mistaking Kolya’s message. He means to wipe out Moscow Central, the same way he destroyed the Teuton Knights’ fort.
Or so I believe. Only how will Kolya manage that?
Moscow Central can ‘filter’ anything coming through to the platform – preventing bombs and other, similar threats – and, if our calculations are correct, we outnumber Kolya and his brothers by a factor of eight to one. Even if Kolya has ‘access’ to the platform, which isn’t a certainty, he can only jump a few men through at a time.
I’m taking this very seriously. Responding to his threat, I summon Zarah and have her bring all of our agents home to Moscow Central. Then, while some of them guard the platform – here and in the recent past – I address the rest, outlining my fears.
Only Svetov isn’t convinced, and when our agents have been sent back, he takes me aside.
‘I think you’re wrong, Otto. I think you might be showing Kolya far too much respect. If he is spread thin, then what better than to use our fear against us. He is a master of misinformation, after all, and it would suit his purpose, surely, to make us think he knows more than he does or is more capable than he actually is? He’s only a single man, after all.’
I tell him that might be so; that I might, indeed, be attributing too much to the man, only in my own mind I’m fairly certain As much as I loathe the bastard, he deserves respect. In my estimation, Kolya, much more than me, is the true Master of Time.
428
Leaving Svetov in charge, and with strict instructions to maintain only a defensive strategy, I jump back to the Haven.
Albrecht greets me, in a much better mood than last time, announcing that he’s found something.
Though I’ve been gone, subjectively, only an hour, two weeks have passed here in the Haven and Albrecht has barely slept in his quest to unearth some small clue to Kolya’s history.
He takes me inside and shows me what he’s found – several entries in the history of a close-matched alternativ
e world. The very same world, it turns out, that I was trapped inside. The world where Phil Dick became president. Either that or a world very much like it.
I read the entries, then nod to myself.
Of course …
And, thanking Albrecht, I jump … back to Moscow Central.
Back there, nothing’s happened, and the very fact that nothing’s happened is fraying our agents’ nerves. Those guarding the platform are getting jumpy, and many of them are deeply unhappy with my passive stance. They want to get out there in Time and do what they’re good at – locating Kolya. Only I know that we’d never find him.
Yes, and I also know that Kolya will have to come to us – eventually. He won’t be able not to.
Only what finally comes back is quite horrifying. I’m there when it happens, the platform shimmering briefly as something arrives.
It’s a child’s hand, severed at the wrist and clutching a handwritten note. As before, I send an agent back at once to the time-coordinates from which it came, but we find nothing. Drawn on the note is a map and four words, in Kolya’s handwriting.
‘Come and get me.’
We quickly run DNA tests on the hand and, to our horror, find it belongs to baby Zarah.
Katerina, deeply anxious, wants to go in at once and find her, only I know this will be a trap, and for once everyone agrees. If Katerina and I go in, we’ll die.
I begin to say this to Svetov, only as I do so I stop dead, realising what I’ve said, knowing that I must have died – that it’s all part of the greater loop we’re in.
‘This is it!’ I say. ‘This is where we do it, Katerina and I!’
Svetov doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but I turn to Katerina and, taking her hands, ask her the most difficult question I’ve ever had to ask.
‘Are you ready to die, my love? To die so we might live?’
429
And so, four hours later, we are back at the platform, preparing to go in, the platform crowded with well-wishers, everyone conscious of the huge significance of this moment.
Kolya’s hand-drawn map has been analysed and, together with an analysis of the coordinates from which it came, we now know when and where we are jumping to – to the winter of 1239 and to a small village just to the north-west of Moscow called Himki, eleven miles from …
… Krasnogorsk.
I know this and am nervous and afraid. What lies ahead is like every last bad dream you could possibly have had. If we fail then we really will be dead, for Katerina and I have both seen this. Leaving strict instructions, we jump in six hours earlier than the moment that the note was sent through, and, taking up a hidden position, we settle in and wait.
Sure enough, six hours later, a figure appears briefly in the clearing, holding something. There’s a distortion of light surrounding the stranger’s hand, as if all of the photons are being sucked into a tiny black hole, and then the figure vanishes. A moment later our agent jumps through, looks about him, then jumps out again.
A full two minutes pass, and then Katerina and I jump into the clearing and move across to crouch beneath the trees, looking back and waiting.
Thirty seconds later another Otto and Katerina jump in and, joining the others, turn away, following the path beneath the trees.
We wait, watching our counterparts move out of sight, then jump out of there, back to Moscow Central. The team there – Svetov and Ernst, Master Schnorr, Zarah, Urte and Saratov – look concerned, but I am grinning.
‘It worked! It must have! Otherwise how did the second couple get there?’
But none of the others share my confidence.
‘We can still withdraw,’ Master Schnorr says. ‘Pull them out and abandon this.’
But I’m determined. ‘No,’ I say. ‘You can’t. Not until we’ve gone in there, twice.’
And, looking to Katerina, taking her hands, we jump back in, becoming the first pair that we saw jumping through earlier.
It’s from that new position that we now witness the second couple of Katerina and I jump in, not ten metres from where we stand. And as they do, so I feel my stomach tighten. Because they are the ones who will live. That’s right. We are the ones who will die, this ‘version’ of ourselves. We are the ones who we have already seen, our naked corpses lain on their backs on that monster’s cart, and as we make our silent way along the path that leads to Himki, I can’t help but feel afraid, both for me and for my darling Katerina. For it has begun. From this moment on, Fate has us in its vice-like grip. Here, on the path to Krasnogorsk.
Like a madman with a razor in his hand …
Make no mistake. Both she and I are terrified. For even if we survive this duplication in Time, we will still have died, will still have suffered the pain and awful finality of death. Yes, and it’s the not knowing how or in what circumstances that really frightens me. It’s the fact that he – Kolya – is in control here, and not me.
Walking along beside myself I feel a prisoner in my own body. I am, quite literally, beside myself; a puppet in the hands of a puppet master.
The village is close by now. Stopping, we turn to face each other, embracing one last time, then watch as our other selves hasten away, to secrete themselves and see what happens next.
Through my eyes but not through my eyes.
And so, alone and unarmed, we walk into the centre of Himki.
It’s a small, shabby town, and as we enter the central square, a wasteland of dust and animal droppings, so people come out to stare, their expressions sullen, mocking, as if they know what is about to happen here.
I grip Katerina’s hand tightly, talking to her quietly all the while, reassuring her, only she seems less afraid than me. As we stop, so she turns and looks to me, her beautiful dark eyes smiling at me one last time, and I feel both blessed and cursed.
‘If I must die to win them back, then so be it. But he will never have them.’
It is a brave utterance. But how true it is, I fear to discover.
Across from us is an old, Orthodox church, a big wooden building with a rudimentary cupola, the blue paint flaking from the tiles. The big double doors are closed, yet, as we stand before it, the old bell begins to sound and people gather, as if for an execution.
As yet there is no sign of Kolya or his helpers, nor of the cart. For a time we wait, then I push the doors wide open and step inside. I look around in the intense gloom, then focus on what lies there beneath the altar …
And cry out, my heart torn from me, for there is my darling Zarah, as pale as death, spread out in that familiar star shape before the cold stone altarpiece, a bloodied axe beside her.
Until that moment I had been content to die, simply to fulfil the circumstances of the loop, but now I want revenge. To tear Kolya limb from limb.
Katerina, coming alongside, sees it too and falls to her knees.
‘Oh, dear God …’
The bell still rings. With a start I realise that if it’s ringing, then someone must be sounding it.
I run across and am almost halfway up the stairs when the church doors are pushed open wider. Two seconds pass, three … and then a figure steps out into the light, and even in silhouette, I know who it is.
Kolya!
With a bellow of rage, I hurl myself down the stairs, jumping them three at a time, snarling, desperate to get to him, yet even as I’m jumping through the air, my hands grasping for him, he shimmers and is gone.
430
I reappear, sprawled on my face at Moscow Central, Katerina on her knees beside me, gasping.
Scrambling up, I look about me for answers. It’s Svetov who provides them.
‘We had to pull you out.’
Remembering the sight of baby Zarah, lying there dead beneath the altar, I groan.
‘Why?’
‘Because you were wrong. We had Moseley and his team look at it and they all agreed. Your second selves could survive, yes, but only at the price of staying in the loop. They’d be trapped there, bec
ause as soon as they came out, they’d have to go straight back in, simply to be there – to be alive at all.’
‘But now?’
‘Two of you are still in there. They’ll jump out and jump back in, and this time they will die.’
‘But surely they have to survive so that they can jump back in again and be there in the first place?’
Moseley, who’s there in the crowd, answers me.
‘That’s true, and after a while the physics of it break down. The timeline stretches to its limit and ends and – bang! – it’s erased, to the point where they jump in in the first place and act merely as observers.’
‘But how can that be?’
‘Because of the nature of the universe. Because both states exist alongside one another – them dying and them jumping in – the two states perpetually alternating, one after another for eternity.’
‘But we see ourselves, dead on the cart.’
‘That’s right. You do. Just before that timeline ends. Before it’s erased. Remember what happened? You were pulled out of there, remember?’
‘And Katerina? The Katerina I left there, at Krasnogorsk?’
‘She must have vanished, along with the rest of it.’
‘And us?’ Katerina asks. ‘Us now, I mean.’
‘You two are safe now. Outside the loop. Alive. But we almost had the wrong two killed, Otto. We almost messed up!’
431
Alone, I brood on what has happened. I feel numb, devastated by Zarah’s fate. Her death has shocked me profoundly. Katerina, unable to cope, has taken to her bed, leaving me to tell the other girls – if I can. Only I don’t think I can.
I ought to feel rage, only I don’t. It’s as if all of my anger has been replaced by a sense of utter futility. I can’t even cry, I feel so numb. Only suddenly I realise something. If I’m out of the loop, then I can go back in. Not to save myself, but maybe to save my baby daughter.
To change things.
The Master of Time: Roads to Moscow: Book Three Page 26
