The Amber Rooms

Chapter Thirty-Two

Saskia knew she was in the Amber Room—her room, on the night of 23rd May, 1908—before even she felt the absence of her left hand, or the scent of room perfume and gun smoke, or the approaching crackle of fireworks. She did not wake slowly. Her consciousness returned in full bloom and she snapped upright, gorging on her surroundings in a sweep that rekindled the sense of despair and failure she had felt only heartbeats ago in a parallel Geneva, in the flames of a burning house. She understood, without knowing why, that her return here was final. If the malfunctioning time band had caused a crack in reality—wide as a doorway in an enfilade—that crack had been sealed. But the meaning of those other Amber Rooms was inscrutable. Had another person, perhaps a time traveller, deliberately interfered with the band to trigger a malfunction? If so, Saskia could not think why her transmigration might advantage that third party. Her struggle with this produced another question: Had this person been working against her, or for her? To answer that, she needed to know what the outcome of the transmigration had been. The outcome remained elusive. Perhaps it was better to think of her journey as a meaningless trip little different from being swept down a street by a flash flood. She might feel lucky that there was solid ground beneath her once again.

The room was lit by its chandeliers once more. The air remained dry, but the floor was wet with dew. There were piles of broken glass beneath the dark rectangles where the mirrors had been. The band, which Saskia remembered being in the centre of the room, was gone. Only a scorch mark remained. Soso and Kamo had gone, too. The door behind them, which led deeper into the enfilade, was open. Masked guests were standing there. Where mouths were exposed, they were agape. The doors to the balcony opened and guests entered. They began to talk in a mixture of English and French. Behind her, Saskia could hear a furious thumping on the door that led away from the enfilade. Men were shouting.

Pasha lay with his head against the base of the statue. He might have been the younger, sickly brother of the Pasha who had been cradling Saskia’s dead head, rather than his twin. This Pasha had his doublet torn open. The wound to his abdomen was worse than Saskia remembered. Blood had soaked his trousers and much of the floor beneath him. Saskia knew he was dead, but she put her hand to his cheek and looked for something in his half-open eyes.

There had been a moment when she had died, too. Not in that parallel Geneva, but in this reality, in a hut somewhere in the Bavarian National Forest. Her saviour had been a transfusion of i-Core. She considered giving Pasha such a transfusion. There was a risk that the i-Core would destroy his identity and rebuild it in a form closer to itself and further from Pasha. What would it do to him? Her thoughts stopped on the unsettling experience of becoming the dog that had killed one of her attackers the night she left the Count’s villa in Zurich. She had smelled using its nose; tasted the blood with its tongue. She feared the dehumanising force of the i-Core. Could she make that choice for Pasha? Would he prefer to be dead? His orthodox faith might be troubled.

The door behind her gave way with a loud crack. She had time to hear the stamp of booted footfalls before she was lifted bodily by tall men, each holding an upper arm. They were Hussars of the Imperial Guard. Like the doors to the Amber Room, their dolman jackets were white but ribbed with gold. Sable fur hung across their shoulders. They wore flat-top bearskin hats that seemed to connect with their waxed moustaches and curled side-whiskers.

Another four hurried into the room and took station at the door to the Picture Hall, the door to the Apartments, and each of the balcony doors. The two at the balcony lifted their rifles and tracked through the crowd in the square. Saskia watched them with some anxiety, as did many of the guests. The Fourth Squadron of the Hussars of the Guard, based in the Tsar’s Village, had mutinied the previous summer, not long before the heist in Tiflis. The rebellion had been a reaction to the strict discipline imposed on them since the military reorganisations.

Alexei Sergeyevich Draganov stepped into the room and turned to Saskia. Even taller than the Hussars, he was conspicuous in the long, scarlet cherkesska coat and white beshmet vest worn by the Imperial Convoy. Draganov nodded to the Hussars, and they ushered the remaining guests from the room and closed the doors, until only Draganov, the Hussars, Saskia and Pasha, remained. The air in the room seemed to thicken. The smell of perfume and polish grew stronger and the chandeliers flared with an electrical spike.

It would not do to show any recognition of Draganov. Saskia could not know whether his Hussars understood the complexities of this situation. With that came the wry thought that Saskia might not have fully grasped those complexities either. Draganov’s expression was a study in ambiguity.

‘He tried to stop them,’ said Saskia. Tears ran down her cheeks. ‘My beloved, there, against the statue. Why don’t you chase after the murderers!’

She felt the grip of the Hussars lessen. That was good.

‘Unless they can become the night itself, the two won’t reach the end of the square,’ said Draganov. ‘Well?’ he called to the two Hussars at the balcony doors. ‘Do you see anything?’

‘No, sir,’ replied both men.

‘Keep looking,’ said Draganov.

‘Let me go to my betrothed,’ Saskia said. She wriggled weakly at the men holding her. ‘For what he has done, he is a hero of the Empire now.’

Draganov gave the body of Pasha a look of disgust.

‘That is as maybe. But we are here on the matter of a gross insult to the Treasury, and there will be no delay in justice.’

Even as he spoke, Saskia winced at the jingoistic tone. She wondered whether the Hussars knew, or cared, about the act he was putting on. But his order was obeyed. Saskia was released by the two Hussars. She fell to one knee and crawled to Pasha. His face was cyanotic and no air moved through his lips.

Saskia pulled away her silver mask and dropped it by his body. Then put her hand around the nape of his neck and lifted his head. His eyes opened like a doll. Before she kissed him, Saskia bit away a wedge of flesh from the inside of her cheek. The pain was lesser than she expected but the volume of blood greater. She had to swallow a mouthful before she could put her lips onto his. When she did, his skin was cold and dry. Gently, so as not to break the seal, she angled her head and took a small bite from his lower lip.

She knew that the i-Core communicated with her using a base form of language comprising metaphor alone. She did not know if the channel worked both ways, but she invested every effort in imagining a scene.

It is the fifth season, those few days between autumn and winter, and the Russian evening wanes. A widow stands above an open grave. It contains a simple coffin whose plaque is dull and unreadable in the darkness. The clouds gather to form rain, but sparrows, not water, pour from the sky, swirling towards the grave as though it were the base of a dark tornado. As the grave brims over, their wings buzz like black flames. The birds thrash against each other, crunch, fall, until they breach the coffin and gather beneath its body. Slowly, the body lifts. Though the sparrows have cast a gloom over everything, the widow sees two flashes of whiteness as the eyes of the corpse open.

Saskia fell away from the body and sobbed hard. She held her hand against her cheek. Blood flowed from the wound. She did not know whether she had passed enough into Pasha. Neither did she know how the i-Core would be able to infuse his tissues, particularly his brain, without vascular action in his body.

‘That’s enough,’ said Draganov. ‘You are the only witness to the crime, and you will now come with us.’

Saskia allowed herself to be brought upright. The Hussars were gentler this time. She kept her mouth shut and her tearful eyes open. Draganov did not give her a secret look, or anything of the kind. He regarded her with the same disgust he had shown Pasha’s body. He sneered, and was about to give an order to the Hussars when the door to the Portrait Hall was shouldered open by a gendarme. A second gendarme entered. He was followed by a young clerk in a brown suit.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ shouted the clerk.

‘I have taken control of the situation,’ said Draganov. ‘Calm yourself.’

‘You have done no such thing.’ The clerk looked with dejection around the damaged room. From the corner of her eye, Saskia saw a small, but clear change in the body language of the Hussar near the door to the Apartments. He had turned to look at the two Hussars on the balcony. It took little effort to imagine that they had become uneasy and were communicating this to one another with a glance.

‘I wish to know the situation,’ said the clerk. He looked from Draganov to the gendarmes as he said this. ‘Identify yourself, Colonel. Why are you and your soldiers here?’

The gendarme raised his pistol and pointed it at Draganov.

‘Yes, something strange is happening here,’ continued the clerk, as though confirming his intuition. ‘I suggest that we wait for more officers of the Fourth Squadron who can verify your position.’

Draganov folded his arms and approached the clerk. There was a considerable difference in their height. The clerk was still looking up in anger when Draganov headbutted him. The small man crumpled. Draganov turned towards the shocked gendarme and struck him with a haymaker punch to the side of his head. Saskia guessed that he was unconscious before he spilled across the floor. Draganov had not finished. Still turning, he kicked out at the open door to the Portrait Hall, closing it on the masked faces of the guests who had gathered there. He wedged a chair beneath its handles.

The Hussar near the door to the Apartments aimed his rifle at Draganov and said, ‘That’s enough, sir. I, too, would like to know your role here. You are not with the Imperial Convoy.’

‘Listen to me,’ Draganov replied, reaching inside his jacket. ‘I am an officer of the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order, Special Section.’

The reply of the Hussar was interrupted by a movement from the middle of the room: Pasha’s foot kicked. At the same time, Saskia almost collapsed with dizziness. Her breath shuddered and there was a sharp pain behind her left eye. She looked hard at Pasha and noticed black dots on his face and chest. His chest expanded, held, then shrank as an inhuman, sibilant breath escaped his mouth. The breath was white.

‘Mother of God,’ said one of the Hussars holding her. His grip weakened and he fell forward, unconscious. The second Hussar fell a moment later.

Saskia nodded. Her message to the i-Core had been received. The last words of Pavel Eduardovitch in the parallel Geneva had been: O Lord, revive me, for Your name’s sake. For Your righteousness, deliver my soul from danger.

She fought to remain upright. She swayed as she looked around the room. All the Hussars had collapsed, though the Hussar near the door to the Apartments was kneeling and still held his weapon. His eyes were narrow but not closed. Only Saskia and Draganov could stand. She staggered towards him.

‘What happened to my men?’ he asked.

‘Oxygen, heat, everything, is being pulled into Pasha so that he may live. We’re being spared the worst effects.’

‘Come,’ he said, putting an arm around her shoulders and leading her towards the central door, ‘we’ll get out through the Maria Fyodorovna Apartments.’

He opened the door onto a sumptuous room. Saskia was glad to find it empty. The next breath she took was like the first after breaking the surface of Baikal those years ago; her mind resumed its edge, and her back straightened. She allowed Draganov to steer her towards a second door, which was simple by the standards of the Summer Palace. It opened onto a light-green room richly ornamented with wooden wainscot. In the corner was the metal staircase. As they hurried down, the shouts of alarms, bootfalls and whistles grew louder. No doubt the soldiers of the many barracks in the Tsar’s Village were being mobilised, not to mention the police—both secret and ordinary.

The stairs ended in a storage room. Draganov pointed to a brass bucket near the door. Saskia looked inside and saw the neatly folded uniform of a cleaning maid: a navy-blue dress and white pinafore. She wasted no time. She pulled away the telephone wires from her costume, slipped the dress from her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor. Draganov, meanwhile, removed his scarlet coat and took a second uniform jacket from beneath a dust sheet.

‘You are my patient. Understood?’

Saskia nodded. She fastened the dress and pulled the pinafore over her head. Draganov buttoned the back. When she reached for the left sleeve of her dress to tie it up, he said, ‘No, leave that.’ He took a jar from a shelf, unscrewed the top, and smeared its contents on her stump. ‘Food colouring.’

Saskia looked at him as he worked.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Thank me when you’ve left Russia for the last time. Understand? Stop for no one once we’re underway. Leave Russia somehow and don’t come back.’

He put the jar back on the shelf.

‘Who are you, Draganov?’

The man smiled, as though the answer was a private joke. He reached for the doors to the garden and opened them. On the gravel path was an ambulance. Its horse shuffled at the noise of their approach. A boy in a travelling cloak pinched out his cigarette, tucked it behind his ear, and climbed to the driver’s seat. Draganov and Saskia climbed into the back as the ambulance pulled away.

‘Answer my questions,’ said Saskia. She laid herself on a canvas stretcher while Draganov opened a compartment at the head of the carriage.

He replied using a language that Saskia had never heard before. She felt a part of her mind seize its sounds, mark the phonemes among its phonetics, compute a likely morpheme or two, and place it in a multi-dimensional constellation of all languages. Then the meaning was hers.

Draganov had said, ‘If I speak this way, do you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘Old Frankish, though we always called it Lingua Franca.’ Draganov smiled as he took Saskia’s wrist and dressed a wound that was years old, and long healed. ‘First, you want to know about the countdown. It is an automatic behaviour that the band is designed to exhibit. There are specific, known points of escape. The Amber Room is one of them.’

Saskia frowned. It disturbed her to think of a network of exits connecting this time to the future, and perhaps the past.

‘Under what circumstances would the band enter such a mode?’

Draganov shrugged. He tied a reef knot over her wound. For good measure, he took the jar of food colouring from his jacket pocket and smeared redness over the bandage and her forearm.

‘Loss or capture,’ he said. ‘A sense that the wearer is in danger, perhaps.’

‘But the band works on its own. I’ve seen it used in that way. If its senses danger, why not make my …’ She trailed off, not finding a word in Old Frankish for “evacuation”. ‘Why not take me home directly?’

‘My dear,’ said Draganov, patiently, ‘the band was damaged. Some of its functions still worked. Some did not. I would not mourn its loss if I were you.’

‘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.’

As he buttoned his dress shirt, Saskia put her hand over his.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Does Meta send agents through time?’

‘Think of them as soldiers of a special regiment.’

‘Or soldiers of God like you, Sir Robert of Chappes.’

Draganov pushed her hand away and finished buttoning his shirt.

‘As I discovered to my cost, my dear, God has little to do with it.’

‘Did God send me through those parallel universes?’

‘Why would He do that?’ asked Draganov, closing the doors of the medical cabinet.

‘I don’t know. As a lesson in hope, perhaps.’

‘I thought you might say, “Faith”.’ He looked down on her. His stern expression changed to one of fondness. ‘My dear, listen to me. If someone at Meta deliberately manipulated the behaviour of that time band, you should be worried.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they want to recruit you.’

‘They have already recruited me. One version of me, at least. The one that died in the back of a Peugeot Bébé.’

The doors of the ambulance opened on a dark courtyard. The driver stood there. He was no more than a boy.

In Russian, Draganov said, ‘See to it that she is taken directly to Dr Leontiev.’

The boy nodded and clapped his mittened hands against his thighs.

Saskia said, ‘How do I repay you?’

Draganov grunted as he stepped from the ambulance. He scratched his red beard and gave the courtyard a searching look. Satisfied, he turned back to her.

‘Payment, pilgrim? You forget my vow of poverty.’

A whistle was blown in the distance. The sound of trotting horses and clattering body armour reached the courtyard. The last that Saskia saw of Draganov was his tall form, perfectly at home in itself, charging as though a lone vanguard, moving to intercept soldiers as they entered the hospital grounds.