My lady …
Dead, I think, as the platform shimmers into being all about me. She is dead.
And my heart feels heavy like a stone, and when Hecht asks me what it is, I turn from him and walk away, unable, for once, to trust myself to speak. Wanting only to find some dark and lonely spot and grieve. For that’s what’s needed now.
151
‘Otto?’
I roll over on to my back and look up. Ernst is sitting there, in my chair, across the room from where I lie. ‘What time is it?’
‘It’s now.’ And he laughs at the old joke. For it’s always ‘now’ in Four-Oh.
He hesitates, then asks. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Me? Yes, I’m fine. You?’
‘It’s just that …’
‘Go on.’
‘Just that you seemed hurt.’
I give the faintest nod, then sit up, knuckling my eyes and yawning. ‘How long did I sleep?’
‘Two days.’
‘Two …?’ I laugh. ‘Urd help us, was I that tired?’
‘It would seem so.’
Ernst stands. ‘Hecht wants to see us.’
‘Us?’
‘Yes, us. And he wants to see us now.’
152
For once, Hecht comes to the point slowly. ‘It was Ernst’s idea … a good one as it happens.’
I glance at Ernst, who’s sitting cross-legged beside me, then look back at Hecht.
‘Go on …’
‘It’s a sector you both know. Somewhere familiar …’
‘1239,’ Ernst says.
I try not to look surprised. ‘1239?’
Hecht nods. ‘Novgorod. You both know it well, so there shouldn’t be any problems. The idea is to ease Ernst back into things.’
‘Right. And the pretext?’
‘To meet Nevsky,’ Ernst answers. ‘And to get in tight with him.’
‘But Nevsky is in Moscow all that winter.’
‘That’s right,’ Hecht says. ‘So you go to him. You and Ernst. It’ll allow you to acclimatise. To get to learn a bit more about conditions there.’
‘But …’
I stop. I don’t know why I’m objecting. It’s what I want, after all. To go back there and see her. But I’m concerned for Ernst. Worried that this might be too soon, that such a trip might prove too demanding for him.
‘When would we go?’
Hecht shrugs. ‘When everything’s prepared. Ernst will brief you. He’s come up with a neat little scheme. And besides …’ He meets my eyes. ‘… it’ll be good for you both to take things easy. These have been difficult times.’
That’s true, but when I get Ernst alone again, I ask him exactly what he’s got planned.
‘It’s a thank you,’ he says.
‘A what?’
‘For doing what you did. For freeing me. You put yourself in grave danger …’
‘Of course I did. You’d have done the same.’
‘I know, but—’
And he begins to spell it out, until finally I stare at him and laugh, surprised by just how devious he can be. Devious … and yet as honest as they come. I reach and embrace him, holding him to me tightly.
‘You’re a good friend, Ernst. The very best of friends.’
‘And you, Otto, are quite mad.’
I move a little away from him. ‘Mad?’
‘Yes, and me too … for pandering to you.’
I grin. ‘So just when did you come up with this little scheme?’
‘Oh, I had time,’ he says, and his eyes take on the slightest sadness as he says it. ‘Or do you forget? Six months lying on my back. That’s a long time. Time enough to come up with a dozen such schemes.’
I look at him thoughtfully. In the last few days he seems to have changed a lot. And all for the better. So just maybe …
‘Ernst?’
‘Yes, Otto?’
‘You mustn’t hide anything from me, understand? You must tell me if it ever gets too much.’
‘Of course,’ he says, and reaches out to clasp my hand again. ‘Of course.’
153
One dream, one final dream, before I let them ‘purge’ me of the memory.
It is of her, of course. Not Katerina, but Gudrun.
In the dream we are on the battlements again, at Orhdruf, standing side by side as the dawn breaks. Turning to me, she lifts me up on to her massive shoulders, my legs wrapped tight about her thick, exquisitely pale neck. And there I nestle, her long golden tresses like a blanket beneath me, the perfumed scent of her in my nostrils, as I look past her at the beauty of the surrounding countryside.
Slowly she turns, and as she turns, so she lifts, light as a feather, from the flagstones, and drifts out, as the birds freeze in the air and Time stands still.
Her head turns, until she’s looking up at me, her beautiful blue eyes smiling back; and then she speaks, her voice slow and deep, like the tape’s been slowed.
‘You see, Otto? You see?’
And I wake, cold and shivering and alone, and call out. And Urte comes and lies with me, holding me until the morning, until they can locate the memory and remove it.
Because sometimes it hurts to dream. Sometimes you can see too much.
Acknowledgements
I’ll keep it simple. Thanks this time must go to my agent Diana Tyler, for finding the very best of homes for this, and to my dear friends, Mike Cobley, Andy Muir, Ritchie Smith, Rob Carter, Brian Griffin and Brian Aldiss, for their intelligent and immensely helpful readings of the manuscript in progress. Thanks also must go to my editorial team at Ebury – Michael Rowley and Emily Yau – who gave the work its fine tune and asked all the right questions. May we make many more books together!
As ever, thanks must go out to my darling wife and life companion, Susan Oudot (long may she write for Coronation Street!) and to my four beautiful daughters (now grown), Jessica, Amy, Georgia and Francesca. Any resemblance to Otto and his five daughters is purely coincidental.
And, finally, huge thanks must go to Al Stewart, whose marvellous song, ‘Roads To Moscow’ set me off on this journey through Space and Time.
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