Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

‘Its loss means I cannot go home.’

Draganov sighed. He relaxed against the side of the carriage. ‘What is home?’

‘A time more than one hundred years from now. As for the place, I don’t know. I have a good friend called David. It will come to pass that he will disappear. I wish to prevent that, or find out why.’

The ambulance rocked. Saskia heard a gloved palm slap its side. A shouted threat to shoot at the ambulance faded as they turned a corner. Saskia and Draganov looked at one another. There was something abstract about his expression. It lacked fear.

Saskia asked, ‘What makes the Amber Room useful as a point of extraction?’

‘Some places are like that.’

‘Let me speak plainly,’ she said, leaning forward. The ambulance rattled over cobbles and she raised her voice to ask, ‘Did Jennifer Proctor send you back in time?’

With a playful smile, he said, ‘Who?’

The frustration was a cramp in her chest. It compounded with her knowledge that the remainder of this journey, and perhaps her liberty, was dwindling.

‘How can a man from the future not know Jennifer Proctor, the inventor of time travel?’

Draganov’s smile only broadened. Something in her question had amused him, and she saw her error with such clarity that when Draganov corrected her, no surprise remained, only wonder.

‘I’ve come here across centuries, my friend, across lifetimes of change. I’m not of your future, but your past.’

Saskia gasped.

‘That is …’ but she could not finish the sentence.

‘My story is long, but there is not much time to tell it. I was born into nobility near Languedoc in the south of France on Christmas Day, 1098. My family had ties to the Cathari, a learned sect going back generations. I joined the Order of the Temple in my twenty-fourth year. In Jerusalem, something happened to me that took away my faith. Then I learned of the road through time. I took it.’ Draganov inclined his head and made a looping gesture with his palm, the parody of a courtly greeting. ‘Sir Robert of Chappes, of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, at last.’

‘You are a Templar Knight,’ said Saskia. As she spoke, she listened to the words. The statement was extraordinary. A trick on the part of Draganov? She did not think so. It suggested a justification for the risk he had taken on her behalf. It explained his fluency in Old Frankish. It would be beyond the powers of an actor to affect the irony in his tone as he introduced himself; to see the hurt underlying his confession that he claimed to be part of a myth, more a fool in motley than a knight.

‘The present tense is hardly appropriate,’ he said. There was pain in his eyes. ‘I have broken my vows too many times.’

‘Does your Order have anything to do with Meta? Is Meta a synonym for the order?’

Draganov laughed. ‘That would be preposterous. We were betrayed by a weak French king six hundred years ago. We no longer exist.’

‘It doesn’t matter if the Order exists now, does it? The important thing is that it existed at all.’

‘Good, Saskia. I was right to help you.’

‘Tell me, what is your age? How do you travel in time? What technologies are available to you?’

‘Slowly, slowly, my dear. My age is as you see it, but my family was always youthful and long-lived. I travel in the Gnostic manner: through meditation and the secret given to me in Jerusalem by a mendicant beggar. Do not ask me for the secret. I am bewitched and may not tell it. Technology? I’m just a man. I have nothing more than my physical powers, my wits and what remain of my vows before God.’

Saskia let her head drop against the folded blanket pillow. She longed to spend time with Draganov. It was not physical attraction. She yearned to speak to a man who was truly an agent in the sense beyond the limited use of the word in revolutionary circles. Draganov was of now , not then . He and she were the same. She felt, despite her rational rejection of the notion, that they alone were capable of choice in this world of clockwork, predetermined movements.

‘Why do you work for the Protection?’

‘I like to know what’s going on. As one of the okhranniki , I can do that.’

‘When we first spoke in the Caucasus, you told me my true name. How did you know these things if you lack future technology?’

Draganov looked at her sidelong. At length, he nodded.

‘Bravo. Yes, there is a device within your body that radiates this information silently. I have what I call my Good Angel, who often whispers in my ear.’ He withdrew a leather wallet from his waistcoat and showed her a black business card. Its text was white, curlicued Cyrillic: Alexei Sergeyevich Draganov, Fontanka 16 . As Saskia watched, the letters flattened to a long string. The string swung like a skipping rope for an instant before new letters knotted along its length.

Guten Abend, Frau Kommissarin .

Saskia felt unease at this. Slowly, she passed the card back.

‘It’s better that the card stay with me,’ he said. ‘That is why I didn’t speak of it.’

‘Will it do me harm?’

‘Quite possibly.’ He reached towards the tight drapes that blocked the rear window and parted them with a finger. ‘We’re almost there,’ he said. ‘At the hospital, we will part. A doctor called Leontiev has been paid. He will escort you to one of the larger St Petersburg hospitals. From there, you will be on your own. Remember my advice: don’t come back.’

‘Thank you, my friend,’ said Saskia. ‘Or do I have your Order to thank, for avowed protection of pilgrims?’

‘The Order,’ continued Draganov, ‘is no more. Is it connected to Meta? I doubt it.’

‘That is disingenuous. You must work for Meta in some capacity.’

‘Meta is not an employer, Saskia,’ said Draganov, in a warning tone. ‘Nor is it a gentleman’s club. Meta is a way of thinking.’

Saskia gave him an expectant look. She remembered the suspicions of Ego in that parallel universe. Her physical predecessor in that reality had been on a mission.

‘What is the Meta way of thinking?’

‘Simply, the belief that change is possible.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Saskia said, but her thoughts turned to that yearning for connection once more. She wanted this conversation to continue not only because Draganov had answers, but because he was special among the men of this time. All her conversations for the past three years had been with automata.

‘Tell me about a time when you wanted to change something but could not.’

‘That describes my whole life,’ she said. His request felt too vague to answer, but still her reply came, surprising her with its confessional cast. ‘There are events in year 2023 that have already taken place. They involve me as an older woman. Whatever happens between now and then, whatever tortures or pains I endure, my life must continue. I am protected by the time paradox that might result in my death.’

‘And when you tried to go home, the time band took you through realities where the time paradox did not exist.’

‘Yes,’ she said. Her mind coasted. The physical presence of Draganov, and the shaking ambulance, seemed to bleed out of her perception. ‘I felt that I could make a difference in those places.’

‘Do you think it is possible, rationally, that you could make such a difference?’

‘Some days I think so. Other days I don’t.’

‘There,’ said Draganov. He smiled and this broke whatever spell had distracted her. ‘You would not make a good associate of Meta.’

The ambulance stopped. It rocked as the driver climbed down.

‘And now,’ said Draganov, ‘we are here.’