The Ocean of Time

by David Wingrove

  Nevsky laughs, but again it’s a nervous laugh. ‘Why’s that, Kolya? You wanted them alive, I wanted them dead. So we both get what we want, no?’

  ‘But you get the silver.’

  ‘I have tribute to pay.’

  ‘Ah yes, the Horde.’ And there is such contempt in the word that I wonder just who the old man is, and what his relationship to Nevsky is. He’s certainly not intimidated by him. In fact, it’s the other way round.

  ‘Here,’ Nevsky says, and, casting the rope towards the old man, he turns his horse and moves aside, leaving us facing him.

  The old man’s eyes fall on me and smile. ‘Otto. How long I have waited for this.’

  ‘Do I know you?’

  At which the old man laughs. Laughs until the tears stream down his face. Only when he’s finished it’s like he’s drained all of the good humour from his soul, and when he looks at me again it is with pure malice in those eyes. Malice that I can’t understand or comprehend. He raises his hand and gestures for his men to bring the cart forward.

  They lead the horse on, until it’s almost level with us.

  ‘Turn it,’ he says quietly. ‘Let the bastard see.’

  As the horse turns and the litter comes into view, so I gasp in disbelief. Beside me, Katerina falls on to her knees with a little cry.

  ‘Mother of God!’

  But I at least know that this isn’t sorcery. And though I do not know this Kolya, I’m certain now of one thing: he’s a Russian agent, like the others. For the two bloodless corpses on the litter, their throats cut, their clothes crusted with blood, are mine and Katerina’s. I swallow, trying to find the words to defy the old man, to show him that I’m not afraid. Only for once I am, because I can’t see any way out of this, unless to jump. And that will leave Katerina here, in this festering, god-forsaken place, alone among enemies. And that I cannot do.

  Dead, I think. They finally got me.

  Yes, and the bastards brought me back to show me. To gloat over me. Only when I turn and look, it’s not what I expected. The only one who’s smiling is Nevsky. Rakitin, Zasyekin and the others are strangely sombre, and when I look at them, they quickly look away, as if ashamed. Only why should that be so? They’ve nailed me, after all. They don’t even have to kill me now, because they’ve killed me up the line somewhere.

  Katerina reaches out and grips my leg. I look down at her, pitying her, pitying us both. But for once I can do nothing – nothing whatsoever – about it. Even so, she pleads with me, breaking my heart anew.

  ‘Do something, Otto! For God’s sake do something!’

  ‘Katerina, I—’

  Nevsky laughs. Forgive me, but he laughs. A mocking laughter that rolls on and on.

  I want to kill him. Only it’s not rage I feel any longer. I sink to my knees and, facing Katerina, clasp her to me and lift her face so that she’s staring into my eyes.

  ‘This is it,’ I say gently. ‘Do you understand? This is the end, my love. They’ve won.’

  Yet even as she shapes her mouth to answer me, even as her eyes meet mine, their perfect darkness filled with sorrow, so I feel the world fragment about me, my self dissolve into a thousand billion particles …

  215

  Hecht stands there, arms folded, beside the platform, facing me as I shimmer into being.

  ‘We’ve got to go back there!’ I cry, stepping towards him. ‘Katerina, the woman I was with, we’ve got to save her!’

  Hecht gives the slightest shake of his head. ‘No. There’s no time for that now.’

  ‘No time?’

  Doesn’t he know? But then I realise. He doesn’t. He has no idea what significance she has to me. He thinks I’m just being cranky.

  ‘We must!’ I say, shocked that he can’t understand. ‘We have to!’

  But Hecht’s not listening.

  ‘Listen,’ he says, speaking slowly, calmly. ‘It’s all falling apart. Five of our agents are dead already. So you’ve got to go in there, Otto, and sew it back together again.’

  I stare back at him, bewildered. ‘Together? What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s Poltava,’ he says. ‘The Russians are about to lose Poltava.’

  Part Eight

  A Stitch in Time

  ‘Studying history, my friend, is no joke and no irresponsible game. To study history one must know in advance that one is attempting something fundamentally impossible, yet necessary and highly important. To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.’

  – Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

  216

  IT’S HARD TO feel enthusiastic when you know you’re dead.

  Even so, I recognise the significance. Poltava. It’s one of those historical cusps. A pressure point, if you like. And even if the word means nothing to you – in which case, you cannot possibly be a Russian – that significance can still be quickly grasped.

  Poltava is the first great battle that the Russian empire wins. The grand turning of the tide. It is when the whipping boy becomes the master.

  But let me take a moment to explain, if only to give this context.

  Long before Hitler, long even before Napoleon, another European ruler tried to conquer Russia, to march an army across the steppes and seize Moscow. That ruler, Charles XII of Sweden – twenty-seven at the time of which we speak, that is, the summer of 1709 – was just as much a megalomaniac as his two successors. A child king and most definitely a warrior, he attempted the impossible, and failed. But not by much.

  At least, that’s the regular history. But things have changed. Suddenly, it seems, he’s about to win, and we need to find out why.

  Russia in the eighteenth century was a backward place of bearded men in long, thick furs; an insular and isolated place, as strange in its ways as Far Cathay, and, to the Western view, every bit as barbarous. The young tsar, Peter the First, changed that. He dragged his country, kicking and screaming, into the modern world, attempting to make a proper European power of it, much as Stalin, years later, tried to transform his basically agrarian state into a centre of industry.

  Russia, before Peter, was landlocked. Or almost so. For six months of the year there was Archangel in the Arctic Circle. Otherwise …

  Peter changed that. He built a fleet from scratch, and fought for footholds on both the Baltic in the north and the Black Sea to the south. And between times he modernised the Russian army, which had always – always – been a joke.

  Oh, and he built a city, in the mouth of an icy river, in marshland, in a place so hostile that its builders often froze to death as they worked.

  This is a story, then, of two compulsive young men, given by Fate to their respective countries. Implacable enemies, whose ‘Great Northern War’ dragged on for seventeen long years. But Poltava … why Poltava?

  Because that is where Charles’s ambitions died. That is where Peter – who had avoided open battle for two whole years – finally turned and faced his foe, and crushed him. Sent him scuttling into Turkey with a bare six hundred men – all that remained of the seventy thousand who had marched from Saxony twenty-three months earlier.

  Hecht wants me to go in at once, but Freisler, who’s been brought into the discussion, argues against that. He thinks I should undergo a refresher course. Maybe he’s right. Only this once I don’t actually care. What does it matter whether Peter loses the battle if Katerina is dead? What do I care if Russia is cut to pieces by its enemies and shared out like a giant cake?

  Because if I don’t start caring then I won’t get back to save her.

  If I can, that is. If this dreadful gut feeling I have is false.

  And so, with Hecht’s concurrence, I find myself in the immersion laboratory, data flooding into every pore. Or so it seems. And maybe that’s good for me, because for a while the sheer intensity of it makes me forget.

  Only the moment I stop remembering, I think
of her again.

  Hecht is waiting for me when I come out of there.

  ‘Are you ready, Otto?’

  I hesitate, because for once I’m not sure. In fact, I’m not certain I’m ready for anything any more, only I don’t say that. I just nod and let him lead me to the platform.

  And so I go back. To Poltava. And to the Swedish camp, on the evening of 26 June 1709.

  217

  I know something’s wrong the moment I step into the tent. Charles, for a start, is standing there, his back to me, looking down at the map spread out across the table. Gathered also about the table are others I recognise – Count Adam Lewenhaupt, Field Marshal Rehnskjold, the two Poles, Stanislaus and Krassow, the old Cossack ‘Hetman’ Konstantin Gordeenko, Mazeppa, his friend from the Zaporozhsky Cossacks and – most surprising of all – Khan Devlet Giray, the Sultan’s man.

  Their presence says it all. Someone has been tinkering with history big time. Making not one but four, maybe five decisive changes.

  Charles turns and, seeing me, smiles. ‘Otto! Where in God’s sweet name did you come from?’

  And he comes across and embraces me.

  I look down, taking in the fact that his left foot is unharmed, his riding boot unviolated, then look back into his face.

  ‘Otto?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘Only there were rumours …’

  ‘Rumours?’

  ‘That you were hurt.’

  He laughs, his heavily pocked face unsmiling. ‘Haven’t you heard, Otto? God looks after me. I am his favourite. He blesses me, and not merely with the strength of will and body to carry out his purpose, but with good friends and allies to help me in that task.’

  I look past him at the others. ‘So I see.’

  At least five of them should not be here in Poltava at all: the two Poles, Mazeppa, Gordeenko, and Devlet Giray. In our timeline, all five disappointed Charles, depriving him of some 36,000 troops. As for Lewenhaupt, he was never consulted, never given his battle orders by his rival, Rehnskjold, and to see him there at the map table is as much a shock as anything.

  ‘The supplies?’ I ask.

  ‘Are safe,’ Charles says.

  And that too is different. So different that that fact alone should swing the battle in Charles’s favour, let alone the rest.

  Peter doesn’t stand a chance. The Russians, well, they might as well cut their own throats as try to contain the Swedes with such advantages as they now possess.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Charles asks, drawing me across to the map table and finding room for us between the hunched Mazeppa and his marshall, Rehnskjold.

  ‘Kiev,’ I say, and he turns to look at me questioningly.

  ‘Kiev?’ The others are watching now too. ‘And what were you doing there, my old friend?’

  I hesitate, and in the sudden silence, old Mazeppa speaks. ‘Maybe he has a woman there.’

  Charles stares at me, his steel-blue eyes intense, then shakes his head. ‘Not Otto. He is like me. A warrior. Chaste. God’s servant. The pleasures of the flesh hold no interest for him, isn’t that so, Otto?’

  ‘It is,’ I say with conviction, and realise just what a liar I have been in my past dealings with this man. But it has been necessary, for Charles is an intolerant and unforgiving man who has chosen a hard existence. For him women are a distraction, sent by Satan himself as a test. In this, as in much else, Charles is not like other men.

  ‘Then what was it?’ Devlet Giray asks, his German – which is spoken in deference to Charles, who will speak little else – softened almost to the point of incoherence.

  ‘Sorry?’ I say, as if I haven’t understood.

  ‘If not a woman, then what?’ the Turkish Khan asks, his dark, almond eyes watching me strangely.

  ‘For information,’ I say, the German word – ‘Auskunfte’ – pronounced with a hardness that makes Charles’s eyes come up and study my face again.

  ‘Information?’ he says softly. ‘What kind of information?’

  ‘About Peter.’

  He waits, and, after a moment’s hesitation, I go on. ‘He’s dying.’

  Charles’s face is hard. ‘He’ll die tomorrow anyway. That is, if he dares face me and doesn’t run away again.’

  There’s laughter at that, but Charles himself remains grim. He continues to study me.

  ‘Is that all?’ he asks finally.

  I shake my head, then, quietly: ‘He means to assassinate you.’

  ‘He tried. Nine days back. At a little place called Nizhny Mliny, north of here on the Vorskla. We caught the fellow. Racked him. Heated him up in places.’

  Again there’s laughter; but this time it’s a cruel laughter. Mazeppa finds it particularly amusing.

  ‘I think they’ll try again. I was told—’

  ‘Told by whom?’

  I look about me, then look to Charles again, my eyes pleading for secrecy. But he ignores me. He wants to know.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By Patkul.’

  There is a collective intake of breath. But Charles just stares at me, then shakes his head.

  ‘Patkul’s dead. Two years back and more. We broke him with a sledgehammer. Cut him apart and hung him on a wheel. I had his head set on a post beside the highway for his treachery.’

  ‘Johann Patkul, yes. But he had a brother.’

  Charles has a doubting expression in his eyes. He doesn’t know whether to believe me or not. But I’ve never lied to him before. Not in any way he could have discovered, that is.

  ‘A brother …’ He shrugs. ‘And what does this brother want?’

  ‘To kill you. He was hoping I would help him find a way.’

  ‘And in exchange?’

  ‘Auskunfte.’

  Charles smiles for the first time, then slowly reaches out and lays his right hand on my left shoulder. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I left him back in Kiev. But he was planning to come south. To seek you out.’

  ‘And what name is he travelling under?’

  I shrug. ‘He wouldn’t say. Kindler, possibly. Certainly not his own.’

  ‘And how did you encounter him?’

  I have rehearsed all this with Freisler, practised it a dozen times and more, just in case Charles should ask.

  ‘A mutual friend. A Pole, working for Menshikov. One of his agents.’

  Charles nods. He doesn’t like it, but he understands the world in which I supposedly function. ‘And what is he like, this brother?’

  ‘Medium height and build. Dark …’

  I deliberately keep it vague, for the truth is Patkul has no brother. Never had, and never will have, his mother having died giving birth to her only son.

  Charles looks away thoughtfully. His hatred of the Livonian noble Patkul is quite legendary. He blames him – rightly – for starting the Great Northern War, and when the chance came to grab him, he did. In fact, he went as far as writing in a separate clause – Clause 11 in the treaty he imposed upon the Saxons and Poles, the Treaty of Altranstadt – insisting that peace was conditional on them handing over Patkul.

  To find he has a brother is thus something of a shock, even if he only half believes it.

  You might ask why I am doing this, but it’s very simple. Five of our agents are dead. Dead at the hands of Russian agents, we must assume. So, if I can snare just one of those agents by this means – by accusing him of being Patkul’s brother – then perhaps I can flush him out. Make him jump. And once we have one of them, we can quickly trace the rest, jumping back through time to trace them.

  So this is important. This is the first step.

  The conversation turns and, just as soon as seems natural, I bow to Charles and take my leave. Yet even as I turn away he reaches out and holds my arm, then tells me quietly to come to him later in his tent. After nightfall. I nod, then hurry from there, making my way through the tent city towards the town of Poltava itself, nestling to the south and west of the encampment.

&
nbsp; Where the ground rises slightly, I turn and look back and have it confirmed for me. There are a host of Turkish troops here, and Cossacks, and – in a separate camp to the east – a contingency of Poles.

  Outside the city’s hastily thrown-up earthworks, guards challenge me, then, noting the decorations on my uniform, let me pass.

  The town, besieged these past few weeks, is in a state of hasty preparation for tomorrow’s battle. I find a quartermaster and attempt to commandeer a room, but it’s a good hour or more before he finds me one. It’s a poky little room on the upper floor of an inn, and I’m sharing with a cavalry captain, but the man is out, patrolling the Russian lines, finding out what Menshikov is up to.

  I could save him the bother, only that’s not my purpose here. Besides, I need to be alone so I can jump, because what I’ve seen needs to be explained. We need to send agents in to find out just what changes have been made and where.

  Closing the door, I haul the bed across, blocking the entrance, then shrug the pack off my back and drop it on to the bed. Lifting my hand to my chest, I’m about to jump, when I realise something.

  I don’t need to go back. Not straight away. If I jump an hour from now it’s all the same. And the thing is, I’ve had no time to myself – not a single minute – since I was brought back from Krasnogorsk.

  So make some time, Otto. Now. Before you get sucked back into things.

  I sit, my back to the door, my pack beside me. From the window across from me come the sounds of frantic activity outside in the muddy streets of the town: shouted orders and running, booted feet; the neighing of horses and the trundle of wagons. I look up, listening for a moment, then close my eyes and squeeze my hands tight into fists.

  I can see her, lying there on the cart, her beautiful dark eyes staring sightlessly at the sky, her skin so pale it looks like ice has formed beneath the surface. And I beside her. The two of us utterly detached, so far from each other that the small distance between our hands might be a thousand billion miles for all it mattered.