TW04 The Zenda Vendetta NEW (16 page)

He had been born while Moscow burned. He was one month premature. His mother’s midwife was an old, drunken Cossack who looked after the wounds of the irregulars who harrassed Napoleon in his retreat, supporting in their disorganized way the attacks made upon the French by Kutusov’s army. A severe winter was setting in and no one believed that the baby would survive. He not only survived, he grew strong and never sickened, not even when grown men succumbed to the fierce cold. They were taken in by a young army officer who led the irregulars, Captain Nikolai Sorokin. It was his name that had been given to the child. With the invaders driven out, they returned with Sorokin to St. Petersburg, where Sorokin—who knew the truth about Vanna Drakova, that she was a runaway serf—invented a fictional background for her. She became the sister of an army officer who never existed, who had died in the campaign and whose last wish was that Sorokin should care for her. They married and there was hope of a good life at last, but it was not to be.

Sorokin was a leading member of the secret Northern Society, which was one of several radical groups whose goal was to bring an end to the autocracy. Drakov was thirteen when Sorokin’s hopes were dashed in the tragic Decembrist Uprising. Sorokin had escaped the slaughter in the Senate Square, only to be arrested and brought before the Tsar, who personally ordered his exile to Siberia. They followed so that Vanna could be close to him. Drakov knew that she had never loved him, at least not as Sorokin loved her, but she thought him a kind and good man and she owed him gratitude and loyalty.

They were released from that obligation by Sorokin’s death. He succumbed to influenza within the year, dying in his prison cell.

Vanna died soon afterward, murdered by a rapist, an ugly, smelly Georgian who took advantage of the fact that her only protector was a child of 15. When Drakov attempted to go to her defense, the rapist slashed him across the face with his knife, then kicked him repeatedly until he could no longer move. He left him bleeding, had his way with Vanna, and left her dead. Falcon had told him that the scar could be easily removed when she brought him to the 27th century, but he would not consent to it. The scar served as a daily reminder to him of what Moses Forrester had brought his mother to. It always kept the memory alive.

He survived being orphaned at 15. He survived Siberia to make his way with an old fur trader to the Russian settlements in Alaska, where he took up the fur trade, learning to hunt, learning to live in the wilderness. At the age of 20, he was on his own again. He still looked like a child. Many tried to take advantage of him. He learned how to protect himself. He learned to fight and he learned to kill. He already knew how to hate.

At the age of 24, he became a seaman, working on a trader’s schooner. They hunted seals in the Pribilofs with great success. By the age of 38, he had his own ship. He was known as the youngest captain in the Pribilofs, for few suspected his true age. It was something he had learned to conceal, though he could not explain why he looked so much younger than he was. Still, seamen were always superstitious and after a time, stories began to circulate about Captain Drakov, who miraculously did not seem to age. By then, he had made his fortune. The time had come to travel once again to some place where he was not known. He sold his ship the year that the Americans acquired Alaska and traveled to Boston. He was 55 years old and he looked like the son of a man that age.

He purchased a large mansion on Beacon Hill and set about making a new life for himself. He learned about investing in the stock market and within a few years, he had multiplied his fortune many times. He was thought to be some European nobleman and he soon became much sought after in Boston society.

He, the illegitimate child of a runaway serf, rubbed shoulders with the scions of the finest families on the Eastern seaboard. But notoriety led to curiosity and it wasn’t very long before people began to inquire into his affairs, into his history. It did not seem very long before it was time to move once more.

He arrived in England in his seventieth year. He had no need of looking for an occupation. He had millions. He had everything a man could want—wealth, youth (to all appearances, he was quite young), position; the scar so ignobly received was believed to have been inflicted in a duel and so added an adventurous mystique; he could easily indulge the lavish tastes he had acquired. He entertained the finest minds in all of Europe, became a patron of the arts, sought all manner of diversions. Still, no matter what he tried, he could not find a sense of self. He was a shadow with substance, a creature who could not possibly exist, yet did exist, blessed—or cursed—with eternal youth. Why did he not age? Why did he never become ill? After a time, he was not the only one who wondered about such things, as people who had known him in America arrived in London and the gossip began anew. Only this time, he decided that he would not run away. He had had enough of running from himself. Let the speculators speculate, let the gossips gossip; let the curious wonder. He no longer gave a damn.

He became a figure of mystery and infamy. He was rich enough and he had become powerful enough to do as he pleased. He no longer cared what others thought. Doctors clamored to examine him, to conduct tests to see if they could determine the secret of his youth. He gave them all the back of his hand.

Officials who became curious about his background were quickly silenced by the expedient of bribing their superiors. He quickly learned that each man had his price, some higher than others, but none so high that he could not afford to pay and never miss the loss. Women were irresistibly drawn to him, fascinated by the virile power of a man who seemed to be forever in his prime. He entertained them all, but he had none of them. He was still a virgin, unwilling to risk bringing a child into the world, a child whose father would have been a man born of some sort of supernatural union. He had no wish to pass on the curse.

He remained chaste, until he met Sophia Falco.

She appeared one day in London, a woman of intrigue and mystery, apparently a rich countess from the Mediterranean. No one seemed to know much about her background. She was like quicksilver; elusive, charming, breathtakingly beautiful and compelling in a strange and savage way, like some predatory feline. She was full of animal grace and power. She fascinated him. They seemed to be two of a kind, each determined to live life solely on his own terms, with no thought for the opinions or concerns of others. Drakov was unable to resist her. He had never before met a woman who possessed such strength and independence, who affected him so profoundly.

All the while, she was penetrating his defenses, suspecting the truth about him, a truth not even he himself knew. She thought him to be a member of the temporal underground, a soldier who had deserted from the armies of the future. She thought she could make use of him and of his resources. When she finally learned the truth, for by then he could no longer keep it from her, she laughed. He could never forget that laugh. In it was contained a wild joy, grim realization of some grotesque joke that he was unaware of, bitterness, and even grief.

Each time he fantasized confronting Moses Forrester at last, having his father helpless before him, much as Rudolf Rassendyll had been, he always heard her laugh again. It had been a laugh that he had heard only that one time, for she laughed rarely and never quite like
that,
and each time he experienced anew the gripping fear that he had felt when he first heard it. There was an understanding in that laugh. He felt himself reflected in it, a pathetic caprice of fate, a sad and ultimately meaningless joke that served only to unite events, having no significance in and of itself.

He longed to make that fantasy reality, to confront his father, to see his face in the flesh, to hear his voice, to make him real and to demand some sort of an accounting.
Look
at me, he wanted to tell him. I exist! I think, I breathe, I feel! Did you even once consider
me
when you released your poisoned seed in a paroxysm of lust? Did you ever give any thought to what would become of the young girl who gave herself to you, to whom you whispered words of love, to whom you promised to return, all the while knowing you would leave her, never to come back? It was not enough for you to use her. It was not enough to shame her. You had to leave her with a hope that could never be fulfilled. Where were you when she gave birth to me in a ramshackle wooden cabin in the dead of Russian winter? Where were you when she was being violated? Damn you, where were you when she died?

Ultimately, at the bottom of it all, was one central question that was posed by all the other questions, a question that he knew he could never bring himself to ask directly.
Where were you when I needed
you?

“Is that, then, the final measure of a man?” he asked himself, speaking aloud to the damp walls, to the spiders, to the dust. “That his life is not complete unless he needs someone? Is
that
why she laughed, because she understood that both of us, who had lived as though we never needed anyone, really needed you?”

Falcon did not have to say it. He saw that she had once again put on the ring. Which of us has the greater need, he wondered. Which of us hates you more? It began in the ruin of a peasant’s barn and it was somehow fitting that it would now end in the ruin of some long-departed noble’s castle.

He had come to a large central chamber, feeling the hazy disorientation of one who is caught in the delicate awareness of that moment between wakefulness and dreaming. He stood in the arched entry way to a cavernous room, a hall cloaked in dust and darkness. He widened the beam of his flashlight.

The ceiling was high over his head and vaulted. The stone sconces for the torches that had not blazed in years were carved into the shapes of gargoyles. A wide stone stairway curved gently to an upper floor and spiders made lace curtains between the columns that supported it.

Once ornate tapestries hung upon these walls. Once long oaken tables stood here, groaning beneath the weight of medieval feasts. Once wolfhounds sprawled beneath those tables, catching morsels thrown to them by raucous celebrants. Once logs piled high inside the spacious fireplace burned brightly, making dancing shadows on the walls. Now the place was permeated with an aura of decay. The hearth had long been cold; the floor was veined with cracks and the current celebrants were spiders, rats, and lizards, creatures that regarded his intrusion with indifference. They seemed to accept his presence as if he belonged here, a lifeform that remained long after others had departed, a shade of some bygone age, a dream with substance, indeed, one of the un-dead, like the vampire count who lived only to hunger ceaselessly and never have his appetite appeased.

Drakov leaned back against the wall and slowly slid down to a sitting position on the floor. He had lived in squalid huts, in cramped cabins aboard ship, in staterooms, in well-appointed homes, in luxurious mansions, yet never had he felt more in his place than he had come to feel inside this mausoleum of a castle. He had started off hating it, but it had grown upon him. It felt like home now.

He switched off the flashlight and sat there in the darkness, feeling the weight of time upon him. It was almost like being asleep, only he did not have to close his eyes.

And he did not have to dream.

Rupert Hentzau’s face shone with an expression of pure joy behind his fencing mask as he lunged at his opponent. His lunge was neatly parried, followed by a lightning beat and riposte, then a disengage.

Both backed off, then sprang forward once again, their sabres clanged against each other four times quickly, then another disengage. Again, steel on steel singing, three staccato notes followed by a grinding as each attempted to bear the other’s sabre down, then a quick scraping of blade against blade, three more strikes, cut, parry, riposte and Rupert scored a touch, whipping off his mask with a triumphant cry.

His opponent’s mask also came off, revealing a cascade of long ash blond hair.

“Hah!” cried Rupert, his light blue eyes glittering with excitement. His black hair was tousled, hanging down over his boyish face. White, even, perfect teeth flashed in a wide grin. “By Heaven, you fence well!

Would that I could cross swords with your father. He must have been the very devil of a swordsman. He taught you well, Sophia.”

Falcon smiled. Her father had been a small, studious man, slight of frame and weak of wrist. He would not have known a sabre from a foil. His field had been genetic engineering. Her fencing instructor had been a woman, a weapons training specialist in the Temporal Army Corps. What would Hentzau have made of that, she wondered.

He stood there, breathing heavily after their long exertions, staring at her with undisguised lust. Then he flung his sabre away from him and took her in a strong embrace, crushing his lips to hers. She raked her fingers through his hair, returning the kiss and grinding her body up against his; then she pulled away.

“Not now, Rupert,” she said huskily. “Michael could walk in at any moment.”

“Hang Michael!” He sought to kiss her again, but she put her hands upon his chest and pushed him away firmly. “Control yourself,” she said.

He scowled petulantly. “I’ve been doing little else. I don’t see why we waste time. All we have is here and now.”

“There is somewhat more to life than here and now,” said Falcon, glancing at him archly. “Perhaps one of these days, you will realize that.” The arch look became coy. “Maybe when you’re older.”

“Older! Like Michael, you mean?”

“Michael is not so very much older than you are. He is, however, more mature in some respects.”

“The devil with Michael! I don’t see what we need him for, I don’t see why we dawdle. We should finish the whole thing and have done with it!”

“How many times must I explain it to you?” she said, wearily. “We need Michael to fall back upon if our plan fails. The man Rassendyll has nerve and we need Michael to play against him.”