The Empire of Time (17 page)

I pick myself up and stagger to the window. The house is on fire now, the old wood burning fiercely on the landing. There’s no way out the front, so I open the shattered window and clamber out, then drop into the cluttered backyard.

I move back, looking up at the backs of the old houses. There is a rickety wooden fire escape two houses down, and if they were to get out on to the roof they could make their way across to it. Even as I watch, I hear the roof hatch crack open and see the bald one’s head appear.

I fire off two pulsed beams at him, but he scrambles behind the chimney stack, and neither hits the mark. Brick dust and scorched cement showers down. The angle’s awkward and I really need to get higher. Not only that, but I’m vulnerable where I am. A single shot could pick me off.

I run inside, making my way through a dank, dark basement room and out into the shop. Schmidt is standing there, looking up the staircase, his face distraught, wringing his hands in anguish. The whole top of the building is now on fire, and a crowd is slowly forming. A bell is clanging some way off, and as I step out on to the street again, the working girl points me out and yells. ‘That’s him!’

‘It’s okay,’ I shout back, putting my hands up defensively as the crowd looks to me. ‘They’re Russians … Russian spies!’

But it’s far from okay. I knew they’d fight me, but I didn’t expect them to risk Gruber’s life – not in so cavalier a fashion.

I move back across the street, looking up at the rooftops again, trying to get a glimpse of them, but there’s nothing. Even so, they will have to come down. The fire is already spreading to the surrounding buildings, and while the Russians can jump, Gruber can’t, and I’m pretty sure they won’t leave him to his fate. Yet even as I start forward someone grabs me and pulls me about. I find myself staring into the angry face of a soldier – a captain by his uniform.

‘Who are you?’ he demands gruffly. Behind him stands the ostler. ‘Klaus here tells me you work for D’Argens, but I’ve never seen you before. I think
you’re
the spy, my friend!’

I try to pull away, but his grip is firm, and I decide to plead with him.

‘You’ve got to help me. If they get away, then we’re all done for. There’s a man in there, Gruber – he’s about to betray us all!’

It’s the truth, and something of my conviction must get through, because the captain loosens his grip.

‘My name is Behr,’ I say. ‘Otto Behr, and I
do
work for D’Argens, only you won’t have heard of me because I’ve been away, in Silesia, trailing these Russian bastards.’

There’s a scream. I turn to see that one of the women is hit – burned by the beam of a Russian gun. There’s a sudden stench of burned flesh.

‘Get them out of here now!’ I yell at the captain, hoping he’ll respond. And he does. The tone of authority in my voice does the trick. He’s Prussian, after all. Yet even as he tries to urge the crowd to leave, two more are hit.

There’s screaming now, and panic in the crowded street. The very nature of the wounds – huge gouges of exposed and burning flesh – scares them. I use the moment’s chaos to escape and run towards the second house down and kick my way inside, gun raised, ready to brazen it out.

And stop dead, astonished.

‘Otto. It’s about time you did something useful.’

It’s Freisler. He puts a finger to his lips. There are hurried footsteps coming down the stairs. As a figure appears on the landing, Freisler raises his gun and aims, then lowers it again.

It’s an old woman, moving with the haste of someone half her age. She’s in a state of undress and not a pretty sight, but fear has clearly triumphed over vanity. She sees us and freezes, but Freisler waves her down, giving her his most reassuring smile, and she hurries away, the door slamming shut behind her, leaving Freisler and I alone in the silent house.

‘How did you know?’ I ask quietly.

‘You came back and told us,’ Freisler answers, not looking at me. ‘You had a bit of trouble. We thought we’d change that.’

‘Trouble?’

‘They shot you.’

‘Ah …’

‘But you got back.’

‘Ah …’

‘But that won’t happen this time.’

There’s a creak on the stairs. Someone is coming down, slowly, carefully, step by step. Freisler gestures to me to go across and crouch beneath the stairs. I do as he says. This is my place, my time, but I am used to taking orders, and this is not a time to argue.

I glimpse his boots first, beautifully polished leather boots. He hesitates, then leans forward very, very slowly, looking down towards where I am crouched.

And I burn him, straight through his right eye. He makes a shocked, strangled noise of surprise and tumbles over. We don’t expect to die, we time travellers, but we do. And sometimes more than once.

I wait a second or two, listening to the silence, trying to make out if Dankevich is up there too, but there’s nothing. He’s probably still on the roof, with Gruber.

I go up quickly. The ‘priest’ is lying on his back, a pool of blood beneath his head. Dead. At least, in this time-line. And maybe dead for good, unless they act to change things.

I call down quietly to Freisler and he joins me after a moment.

‘Bobrov,’ he says, looking at the man. ‘A real nasty bastard. He’s killed a good dozen of our men.’

I look at Freisler and blink. Something’s wrong, but I can’t pinpoint it. Besides, we need to deal with the others. I look to Freisler and gesture up the stairs with my Honig.

‘You first or me?’

‘Age before beauty …’

And so I let him go ahead.

There’s no sign of them on the next two floors, which leaves the very top of the house. There’s a strong smell of burning now and the street outside is full of smoke. The flames will spread to this house in a while, but for now we’re safe. Besides, we can always jump.

Freisler steps out from one of the rooms and looks to me, then glances up the stairs. ‘Something’s wrong.’

‘Wrong?’

‘They’re good, the Russians. Better than us, most times. But this … it’s not their style. You found them too easily. And two dead with two shots. You’re not usually that accurate, are you, Otto?’

It’s true. He’s right, and suddenly I know what I missed.

‘Bobrov …’ I say. ‘We’ve a file on him, right?’

‘Right.’

‘But the fourth man, the other Russian, he wasn’t on our files. Inge couldn’t give me a likeness.’

Freisler stares at me. ‘So?’

‘So there are more than three of them here. And those spare horses …’ I bang my hand against my forehead. ‘Damn! They’ve switched him! They’ve bloody well switched him!’

But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we get out of there at once.

‘Jump!’ I yell. ‘Just jump!’

And even as I say it, there is a distinct click and the air begins to glow.

But I’m gone, even as the centre of Berlin erupts.

Hecht is waiting for us at the platform. I jump through first, Freisler a moment later. His hair is singed, his clothes steaming, but he’s alive.

‘Shit!’ he says angrily. ‘Think quicker in future!’

‘What happened?’ Hecht asks.

I glance at Freisler, then answer him. ‘It was a trap. I followed them to Berlin, but they must have made the switch on the way. They’ve a team there. Six men at the very least.’

Hecht looks down. We both know we can’t afford to match the Russians man for man.

‘You and Freisler go,’ he says. ‘I’ll see who else I can rustle up. If any of the others return early, I’ll send them through. Where will you be?’

‘Potsdam,’ I say without hesitation. ‘This time I want to be there when the messenger arrives.’

But it’s not as simple as that. Every jump necessitates a careful calculation. Even when we seem at our most cavalier and jump to safety, there’s always a pre-planned destination – a bolt-hole, if you like. That’s how it works, and the women at the tracking screens make sure it does. They keep an eye on us. They know just where and when we are for every second of our time back there in the Past. And when we need, as now, to go to such a place and such a time, it is they who work out how to do it. With a little help from the machines.

There are a lot of factors involved, and in the early days it was very hit and miss. Agents were sent back into the sides of mountains, into mid-air, even into lakes. We lost a lot that way. But as the years have passed they have got very good at what they do.

It’s not just a case of calculating how far back and to what point on the earth’s surface we need to jump, there’s also the fact that the planet is revolving not only about its axis, but about the sun, which is itself slowly drifting out from the centre of a slowly revolving galaxy. Everything is in constant motion, which is why our calculations have to be updated nanosecond by nanosecond to keep the Time-grid accurate. That grid registers the position of the jump platform in absolute terms. Wherever we are right now is forever zero, zero, zero, zero. Hence
Four-Oh
. And from Four-Oh every point in Time and Space has its own four-dimensional grid reference. Those references change moment by moment yet the machines keep track. If I need to go back to a certain place, they can get me there in the blink of an eye – they’re that fast.

And if that seems complex enough, there’s a second factor to be taken into account. Nothing inorganic can make a jump. Only living matter can be transported back and forth through time. Which means that if I don’t want to find myself back there, buck naked with only my dick in my hand, I have to take back artefacts that are made of living tissue.

Again, it’s no real problem. We’ve had centuries of doing this. The clothes I wear back there, the money I spend, even the gun I carry, are made of my own DNA – marvellous fakes that our experts spend much time and care producing from moulds they make back in the Past. What’s more, the use of it makes it easier to screen who jumps back to the platform. Any Russian landing there would find himself fried in an instant.

Or so it was, until yesterday.

I go to the workshops to see Hans Luwer. He is alone in his workshop for once, none of his other selves about. Hans is our artefacts expert and has a bag of goodies waiting for me: guns and knives and bombs. And two other special items I requested. One is an ornately jewelled snuff-box, specially strengthened, the other is a copy of Fénelon’s
Les Aventures de Télémaque
, in the 1699 original edition – Frederick’s favourite book. Both are gifts for Old Fritz, and like all else they’re made of my DNA, but you wouldn’t know that, not unless you owned an electron-microscope. They look and feel quite real.

I thank him and turn to go, but he calls me back.

‘Otto, would you do something for me?’

I can see this is awkward for him, and I’m not sure why.

‘Of course. What is it?’

‘Just a note. To a woman I met. I— the address is on it.’

I take the sealed envelope from him and slip it into my pocket. Hans has been back with me a number of times, to do his own research into coinage, clothes and the like, but this is the first I’ve heard of the woman.

‘I thought she deserved some kind of explanation,’ he says, not meeting my eyes.

I smile sadly. ‘Not the truth, I hope.’

He looks up. ‘Oh, no! No, I … Shit, Otto, why is it so difficult sometimes?’

I reach across and hold his arm a moment and he nods, thanking me for my understanding. Then I turn and leave, wondering how many more of us have these little secrets.

I am outside, further down the street, concealed in a shadowed doorway, when Dankevich emerges from the house. He looks up and down the road, then gestures for Gruber to come. I see my erstwhile friend, hunched, clearly in pain, step out, Nemtsov at his back, holding his shoulders, keeping him upright.

I could take the three of them out right now, but I want to know what else is going on. This is my patch, my little segment of history, and I don’t like the fact that the Russians are here in force. If I can kill all six of them I will.

That is, if there are not yet more of them.

The fourth of them – a short, neat man with jet black hair – is the last to emerge. He looks right across at me, but I know that I’m too well hidden. Unless, of course, he’s got night lenses in. It’s a possibility, but then why would he not react on seeing me?

Unless that too is part of the game.

You see, nothing is ever straightforward in Time. If we both did the same old things, time and again, it would soon become predictable. And though the aim is to win – to eradicate the enemy – there is also a feeling, and I know I’m not alone in this, that the game is of itself a satisfaction, and a deep one at that.

I like to outguess them, to prove myself not only quicker and tougher, but also smarter than they are. They outnumber us three to one and they are good – Yastryeb has trained them well – but we’re better. We have to be simply to survive.

I let them get some way ahead, then follow, keeping to the shadows. They are going to Taysen’s, of course, to buy up the last of his horses, and I could have waited there for them, but I want to be there when they link up with the others – to see exactly what’s going on.

Freisler is waiting at the Nauener-Tor, just outside the north wall of the town, among the trees. He has the horse I purchased from the captain of dragoons. If the Russians double back, he’ll see that and pursue them, otherwise I’ll catch up with him on the Berlin road.

Their business with Taysen takes but a moment. Nemtsov goes in alone and emerges with a big grin on his face and seven lead reins in his big right hand. Dankevich and the other go across to help him with the horses, but Gruber holds back.

I get a glimpse of his face in the light and see the pain there. But whether it’s a physical thing or something deeper, some malaise of the soul, it’s hard to tell, and I wonder just what made him switch. Is the blood tie really that strong? Or did they work on him with drugs and propagandist talk until he buckled to their will? If so, I didn’t notice any change in him. Yet change there must have been.

Nemtsov helps Gruber into the saddle, then mounts his own horse. In a moment they are gone. I hurry after, trying not to look suspicious. But the big garrison town is quiet now and I reach the gate without incident.