David Wingrove - The Empire of Time

Seydlitz nods. ‘He wouldn’t say why, but it was pretty obvious. After his victory at Saule, Mindaugas was in the ascendant, and the Knight Brothers knew it. Hochmeister Balk knew he needed to buy time. A temporary peace with the Lithuanians would give him that.’

‘So you think that’s the reason he went to Christburg? To meet with Mindaugas and arrange a peace?’

Seydlitz looks past Hecht at me. ‘I can’t be certain, but it seems likely, don’t you think? More likely than that he’d make that perilous journey just to enrol a single knight — however worthy — into the Order.’

I feel some of the tension leave me at Seydlitz’s words, and thank him inwardly for saying them. Maybe it wasn’t my fault, after all. Maybe this was — as Seydlitz and Kramer are suggesting — a well-worked Russian plan to get to Meister Balk and kill him and so destabilise the situation. Yet it is some coincidence, if so. And why not just take him, there in Marienburg? It’s unlike the Russians not to be direct.

Hecht looks to Kramer. ‘What happened next?’

Kramer looks to Seydlitz. ‘We met up. At the pre-arranged jump location. Traded information. Then decided to jump back to the Curonian encampment and follow the Russians. See where they went, what they did.’

‘You didn’t think they’d just jump home?’

The two of them look surprised at that. It’s clearly not occurred to them before now.

Hecht pursues the point. ‘You don’t think they might have waited for you? Deliberately travelled by horseback down the coast so that you’d find them and make an attempt against their lives?’

‘ Waited?’ Seydlitz looks aghast. ‘But why should they do that? They didn’t even know we were there!’

‘Didn’t they?’ Hecht pauses, then says, ‘As you might have guessed, I sent in another agent. Just to be safe. To protect you. And what he discovered was interesting.’

He turns in his seat, indicating the screen. ‘Our friend on the left there is named Kabanov, and his fellow — the largish man — is named Postovsky. They’re both new to this era, which is probably why you — and Otto, there — didn’t recognise them. That said, they’ve clearly done their homework well. Well enough to fool you, Max, and many a better agent, too. But even so, they made mistakes. Once alerted to them, our man jumped back to when they first arrived in Marienburg and kept a close eye.’

Seydlitz looks up. ‘Who was it?’

Hecht smiles. ‘Our agent? You want to know?’

Freisler , I say to myself, a moment before Hecht confirms it.

Both men look thoughtful now. Neither meets Hecht’s eyes.

‘So what did he find out?’ I ask, walking over to the table.

Hecht looks up at me. ‘I believe they knew who you were, Otto. And that we were sending other agents in.’

‘Not possible,’ I say. ‘I took such care.’

And it was true. I had spent time in Thuringia, establishing my credentials as a knight, then rode all the way to Marienburg, along with other knight-supplicants, so that when the time came they could speak for me and guarantee my authenticity. It simply wasn’t possible that they had penetrated my disguise.

‘Freisler thinks they got lucky. That one of their agents spotted you before you spotted him. If so, it would be easy to jump him out of there and replace him.’

‘And is there any evidence that they did that?’

‘Freisler thinks so. He traced them back, and discovered that there was just such a change of agent shortly after you arrived in Marienburg.’

‘And who was there before?’

‘Dankevich.’

‘ Dankevich ? Is he certain?’

Hecht nods.

‘Shit …’

There’s a moment’s silence, and then Kramer asks. ‘So are they dead?’

‘The Russians?’ Hecht smiles. ‘What do you think?’

Both men look down, deflated now, but Hecht seems unaffected.

‘It was rash, perhaps, to ambush the Russians, only you already had all the information you needed. You knew who they’d spoken to, and who the traitors were. That could be helpful in some future campaign. All in all, you did well. But for now, we do nothing.’

‘ Nothing ?’ Kramer looks horrified. But I understand. For any of our schemes to succeed we rely upon an element of surprise — we need to be able to spring the trap before they can get any of their agents into that time-line to combat us.

Hecht spells it out. ‘I’m not going to waste good resources getting drawn into a tit-for-tat over a very minor time-line. As you know, the Russians have more agents than us — a hell of a lot more — and there’s nothing they like better than to involve us in a fire-fight over nothing.’

Kramer makes to object again, but Hecht raises a hand, brooking no argument.

‘We leave it. Understand me, Hans? We let it go.’

‘Why Seydlitz?’ I ask, when he and I are alone again.

‘Because the Elders have agreed.’

‘Barbarossa?’

Hecht nods.

‘Then …’

‘Seydlitz didn’t know. Only I wanted him to get a taste of it again. It’s been a while.’

Almost three years, if I’ve heard right .

‘You think he’s ready?’

‘Don’t you?’

I nod, remembering how I felt when my first project was green-lit by the Elders. ‘What backup are you giving him?’

‘He’ll lead a team of eight.’

‘Eight!’ It’s a lot. Twice what we usually send in. But then, this is a major operation — a direct assault upon the very heartland of Russia — and if this works … ‘Am I …?’

‘No, Otto. I want you at a distance from this one.’

I don’t quite understand what he means, but I bow my head anyway, obedient to his wishes.

‘So when does he start?’

Hecht stands, then walks over to the bookshelves. He takes down a book and, turning back, hands it to me. ‘He’s begun already. I sent him in an hour back.’

‘But …’ And then I laugh. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how elastic Time is here in Four-Oh. For though Seydlitz was with us only moments before, it’s an easy matter to wait a while, send him back a few hours, then send him back again, to a thousand years in the Past.

‘The platform was busy the next few hours,’ Hecht says, by way of illumination, which explains how he knew when to be at the platform to greet Kramer and Seydlitz.

And the book?

I look to Hecht, puzzled. It’s a collection of Russian folk tales.

‘Open it. To the title page.’

I open it and stare, because there, on the title page, is a hand-written dedication, and beneath it, the same symbol the Russian wore around his neck … the lazy-eight with the facing twin arrows.

I try to make out the signature, but it’s almost unreadable. ‘Who is it?’ I ask, but Hecht only shrugs.

‘Maybe we should find out.’ And he smiles. ‘Just in case.’

That night I dream.

I am back there, in the summer of 1236. Sunlight bathes the broad, flat rock on which we rest, laying a veil of gold upon the river below us and the trees beyond. There are five of us — Johannes, Conrad, Luder, Werner and I — brothers-in-arms, waiting there in the warmth of that July afternoon for Meister Dietrich to return from leading a scouting party into the forest on the far bank.

He has been gone since early morning, looking for pagan settlements amid that wilderness of trees. It has been some time — almost a year — since we last raided them, and they have grown incautious once more. Or so the Meister claims.

Johannes is the first to suggest it. He makes a comment on the smell of young Werner, and, laughing, roughly playful, Conrad helps Johannes strip the young man and throw him from the rock, naked, into the water. He surfaces, spluttering yet laughing, taking it in the spirit in which it was meant, then turns on to his back and floats there, treading water.