The Zenda Vendetta

5

Forrester knew he had to move fast. Lucas and Andre would have seen the beam flashes, and with no reason to expect anyone except the Timekeepers, they would fire on sight. It would be embarrassing, to say the least, to be burned by his own people. He turned the Observer’s body over and quickly started searching it.

Christ, he thought, they’re sending children now. He recognized the boy. Bobby Derringer. Mensinger’s grandson. He remembered him from RCS, when he had lectured there on temporal adjustments, part of his regular duties in Plus Time. That had only been last year. What the hell was he doing on Observer duty in the field already? He recalled that the kid had an amazing mind. He must have breezed through RCS in record time. Now he was dead. When were those people going to learn that it took more than classroom instruction to prepare people for active duty in Minus Time? As he stared down at the dead boy’s face, his feelings were a volatile mixture of sorrow, anger, outrage and self-recrimination. If he had fired just one moment sooner-

His searching hands found what they were looking for. Derringer’s chronoplate remote. For a brief moment, he hesitated. The most important thing now was to safeguard the Observer’s chronoplate. He had to get to it at once, but he had no idea what would happen if he activated the remote. The remote would instantly transport him to the location of the chronoplate, but there was no way of knowing what he would be clocking into. On the other hand, if he stayed where he was, he would be in danger from his own people. He knew only too well how they would react. He had trained them himself. That decided him. He hit the button on the small remote, launching himself into a diving forward roll even as he did so.

He disappeared in midair and an instant later, completed the forward roll upon a wooden floor, coming up with his laser held ready in his hand. Before he could even realize where it was he found himself, before he could recover from the dizzying effects of the transition, his ears picked up a soft, chuffing sound and a faint mechanical whirring noise. Instinctively, he fired in the direction of the sound.

The tracking system he had incapacitated had just been zeroing in on him, reacting to his body temperature. It was a small, portable unit that had been set up on a tripod. The chuffing noise had been the sound of its twin turrets firing. In the opposite wall, at the level where his chest would have been had he clocked in standing up, two small needle darts were imbedded in the plaster. He went over to the wall and pulled one out. An M-90 Stinger. Clever. If anyone broke into the safe-house who had no business being there or if someone managed to get hold of his remote and clock in without knowing how to deactivate the tracking system, the M-90s would knock him out for a period of at least 48 hours. You can teach them to be clever, he thought, but you can’t teach them the instincts they need in order to survive. They have to pick those up themselves and no one had given Derringer that chance.

He took stock of his surroundings. It was a small room with a well-worn bare wooden floor and white plaster walls grown dingy with age and neglect. The beamed ceiling was low and there was only one tiny window that looked out on a narrow alley with nothing opposite it except the wall of the adjoining building. A ramshackle bed covered with a heavy woolen blanket stood in one corner of the room. A crude table made of old, scarred oak, heavy and blocky, was stood up against the bare wall to his right. Two wooden chairs were pushed in to the table. There was a large porcelain bathtub, a chamberpot, a sofa with faded and torn upholstery, a throw rug before the sofa, a battered reading chair and an old lamp. A wooden chest of drawers with discolored brass handles and a large traveling chest completed the furnishings. With the exception of the damaged tracking system on its tripod, there was nothing to distinguish the shabby room from any other shabby room in the low-rent district of Strelsau’s old quarter, except for the ring of border circuits on the floor where he had clocked in. The room was on the top floor of an old four-story building. The window had heavy wooden shutters and the door had a decent bolt. Forrester stood still by the door and listened for a moment, then he unbolted it and opened it a crack. He heard footsteps on the stairs close by and a moment later, two people walked past him down the hall, a man and a young woman. The man was stumbling slightly and mumbling to the woman, leaning on her heavily. She laughed in a sultry way and rubbed his crotch with her right hand. Meanwhile, her left hand reached into his pocket and removed his wallet. Derringer had done well in his selection of a safehouse. No one would notice the coming and goings here.

He closed the door and bolted it again, then turned to face the squalid little room. He spied a bottle on the floor beside the bed. It was three-quarters full, a bottle of Glenlivet unblended Scotch, very nonregulation. Damn kid, he thought, and suddenly tears came to his eyes.

Forrester didn’t know why he was crying. He didn’t know if it was from anger or sorrow or frustration. His emotions, which he had steadfastly held in check for more years than he could count and which had been under an extremely great strain ever since he had received that letter, suddenly let go, like a cable snapping, and he lost all control of them. They came over him in waves-unutterable grief at the death he might have, should have prevented; frustration at his inability to change what he had done; fury directed at himself and at the woman he once loved. Like some manic depressive run amok, his mood shifted with lightning speed; one moment he wanted to collapse onto the bed and sob his heart out, the next he felt charged up with a trembling fury that made him want to batter down the heavy plaster walls with his bare fists. He had Drakov in his sights and he had hesitated. And Derringer had died. Even when he fired, he could not be sure if it was Drakov’s swift reaction or some unconscious impulse that had made him miss the killing shot. He seemed to remember crying out. Had he done that on purpose? In either case, the responsibility was his. He had not been able to kill his own son.

He should have told them. He should have told them at the briefing. He wanted to, but he had not been able to bring himself to do it. He had rationalized. They were the three finest soldiers under his command. They had never failed before. They would not fail now, he told himself. They will neutralize the threat, effect the adjustment, and correct the mistake I made many years ago. Why burden them with the knowledge of who it was I’m sending them to kill? But when they had left, the sour taste of guilt had filled him with immense self-loathing. He had given Drakov life. It was on him to take it away. Elaine-or Falcon-knew that, which was why she had written him that letter. She had known that he would come. It was all there, all the details, she knew it all, even more than he did. And to prove it, she had recounted the whole story for him.

It happened many years ago. The year was 1812 and the place was Russia just prior to the French invasion. He was a young man on his first mission to Minus Time, a newly indoctrinated recruit assigned to the Airborne Pathfinders, as green as a granny apple. The refs had selected that scenario for a campaign, and his unit was floater-clocked into the period for the purpose of scouting out the territory in order to facilitate the temporal conflict. They were to make maps and compile logistics reports. It was supposed to have been a routine mission.

The transition was a complete disaster. Half of his unit was lost in the dead zone coming through. Many came in too low and splattered before they could recover from the effects of the transition and activate their floater-paks. The survivors were widely scattered and, eventually, they managed to get back, but it was one hell of a mess. He came through alone.

He had never made transition before and there he was, on his first hitch, in free fall with a malfunctioning floater-pak. He came in way too low and way too fast. He barely had enough time to realize that he would splatter unless he gained some altitude in one heck of a hurry, so he kicked in his jets and that lousy, misbegotten piece of army ordnance shot him right at the ground instead of boosting him higher. It was all he could do to reduce his speed and try to alter his flightpath so that he didn’t corkscrew into the Russian countryside.

He was over a field, traveling at a high rate of speed with a floater-pak that was virtually out of control. He resigned himself to death. He saw the old wooden barn looming up before him and, helpless to alter his direction, he plowed right into it. The barn was old, abandoned. It had seen a great deal of weathering and neglect. Sections of its roof were missing. He went through an exposed latticework of beams and cross-members, managing somehow to turn as he hit so that the pak absorbed most of the impact. It was torn right off him, damaged beyond all hope of repair. He sustained several broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, a broken arm, a broken wrist, a dislocated shoulder, numerous lacerations, and a concussion. Considering the circumstances, it was a miracle he wasn’t killed.

He came to in a hayloft. He could still recall the smell. The hay was old and decomposing. It had rained recently and, with the gaping holes in the roof, much of it was wet. A young woman was kneeling over him, a beautiful young woman with green eyes and long, wavy black hair. She was using a kerchief to wipe the blood away from his face. Her hair was brushing his cheeks.

She spoke to him in Russian. He may have mumbled something back, he did not recall. She remained with him, caring for him as best she could, trying to set his bones and ease his pain. Her name was Vanna Drakova and she was a nineteen-year-old gypsy, a runaway serf. They were both very young, both lost, both scared.

It took Search amp; Retrieve a long time to sort the whole mess out. When no one came after him, he concluded that his implant must have been damaged in the crash through the barn roof. He assumed that he was stranded, marooned in the 19th century.

As the days dragged into weeks and weeks turned into months, he recovered slowly. His bones began to knit, but without proper medical attention, they did not heal properly. Thanks to the drug treatments he had received in the 27th century, he healed with astonishing rapidity, but he would be a cripple-functional, but twisted out of shape. There would be no going back or, in his case, forward to the time from which he came. In his despair, he told Vanna everything.

At first, she did not believe him. Eventually, however, he was able to convince her and more was the pity. He should have kept his mouth shut, but he believed that he would never get back to his own time, much less have his deformity corrected. It seemed important to him that she should know the truth, because by then she was pregnant with their child.

It never should have happened. Strict precautions were observed to prevent just such an occurrence, but Forrester did not react well to the pills they issued in those days. Rather than take the trouble of getting a temporary sterilization, he simply hadn’t bothered taking them. It would have taken a mere couple of days of medical leave, but it would have caused him to miss out on his first mission, and he had been too eager to go out to wait until the next one. He had not counted on being intimate with anyone in Minus Time. The possibility had simply not occurred to him. He had not counted on being separated, thinking he was stranded, or falling in love. When S amp; R finally tracked him down, he didn’t tell them that Vanna was pregnant. They would have aborted the fetus. It would have been the best thing all around, but he could not bring himself to go along with it. Leaving her would be hard enough.

He tried to explain things to her before they took him back. They were kind enough to give him the time. It was the hardest thing he ever had to do. He could not take her with him and he had no idea what would become of her and of their child. But there was nothing to be done. There were a lot of tears, both hers and his. She gave him a lock of her hair in remembrance and like a fool, he told her that he would come back for her. He never saw her again.

As if what he had done had not been bad enough, there was yet a further complication, something that never even occurred to him at the time. His family had not been well off and it was always taken for granted that he would go into the service. As a result, they had spared themselves the expense of procuring antiaging treatments for him. As an inducement for recruiting, the Temporal Corps provided antiagathic drug treatments for those unable to afford them during indoctrination processing. The drugs were very volatile. It took a long time for them to stabilize. When Vanna became pregnant, they were still active in his system and were passed on to her in his sperm.

Forrester tipped the unauthorized bottle of Glenlivet back and took a long pull from it. He had a son. Falcon took great pleasure in telling him about him in her letter. His name was Nikolai Drakov and, by now, he’d be 79 years old. She wrote that he appeared to be in his late twenties. She ran into him in London, purely by accident-he thought of Delaney and his fated coincidences. He had made a good life for himself. He was a very rich man, a playboy with a well-known reputation, especially for his astonishingly youthful appearance. She even joked about it. In the circles that he moved in, she wrote, he probably knew Oscar Wilde, which raised the intriguing possibility that he might have been the model for Dorian Grey. The fact that he looked so young had suggested another possibility to her. She thought at first that he was a member of the underground, a deserter from the Temporal Corps. In order to find out the truth, she had seduced him and found out a great deal more than she had bargained for.

He never knew his father, but he knew that his father’s name was Moses Forrester and he knew who and what Moses Forrester was. His mother had told him all about his father before she died. She had been raped and killed when Nikolai was just 15. Falcon took him to Plus Time with her. She obtained an implant for him, educated him up to the standards of the 27th century, and indoctrinated him into the Timekeepers. Now things had come full circle.

He was back in his own time again, with her. It was he who had murdered Rudolf Rassendyll, causing the disruption. Drakov was motivated by a hatred which Falcon had fed-a hatred for his father. Forrester could hardly blame him.

Time had bent back in upon itself like some sort of double helix. Coincidence piled on coincidence piled on coincidence, with the Fate Factor tying the whole thing together. Forrester was sure that Finn Delaney would appreciate this little problem in zen physics. He imagined that Finn would be just thrilled to find out who got him into all of this, as would Andre and Lucas be. What could he tell them, that he was sorry?

Nikolai shouldn’t be alive, he thought. He’s a paradox. At the time he was conceived, I wouldn’t have been born for another six hundred years. He should not exist, but he does. And I have to kill him. Or maybe he’ll kill me. One way or another, it all ends here.

He tipped the bottle back again, wishing that Derringer had brought more than just the one.

The large grandfather clock in the sitting room outside the royal bedchamber chimed twice. It was a soft sound, coming through the closed doors, one that would not have impinged upon the monarch’s sleep, but Finn heard it clearly. He seemed to hear even the slightest sound in his wing of the palace and in the streets outside. He lay on his back, chainsmoking Rudolf’s Turkish cigarettes and wondering when he would finally start feeling the effects of the previous day’s exertions.

He had been up since five o’clock in the morning, rudely awakened with a hangover to be plunged headlong into his impersonation of Rudolf Rassendyll impersonating Rudolf Elphberg. He was hustled at full gallop to the Hofban station, put aboard a train and drilled mercilessly in the requirements of the part he had to play. He was displayed to all of Strelsau in a grand parade, crowned king in an opulent and lengthy ceremony, driven through the city in a coach while improvising his way through his first meeting with Flavia, toasted in a seemingly interminable banquet, hustled once again on horseback at breakneck speed from Strelsau to Zenda and back again and yet still the adrenalin rush would not subside. It felt like being in battle.

He realized that the time had to come when it would hit him all at once, fearing that it would come at the worst possible moment, knowing that when it did come, he would have no choice but to resort to that small but no less potent dose of nitro that he carried. He loathed that horrifying stuff. It made him burn like some apocalyptic roman candle. When it wore off, he had the shakes for hours. The sleep that came thereafter was always filled with hideous nightmares that left him wondering at the sanity of a mind that could manufacture such twisted, tortured visions. He blew a long stream of smoke towards the large canopy above his bed and, for lack of anything better to do on this sleepless night, ran over the events of the last few hours in his mind, trying to get some sort of handle on the role he was assigned, a role in a demented play with only the barest outline of a script.

Poor Fritz von Tarlenheim, his nerves strained to the breaking point by his long vigil, almost had a stroke when he realized that it was not the king who had returned with Colonel Sapt. Finn wondered how he would have taken it if he had known that the man whom he first took to be the king returned from Zenda, but who was actually Rudolf Rassendyll was, in fact, not Rudolf Rassendyll at all, but a soldier from the 27th century named Finn Delaney, who just happened to resemble Rudolf Rassendyll, who just happened to resemble the king. Von Tarlenheim had been badly shaken when Sapt explained to him what had occurred. Finn could only imagine the effect on him if he were to have heard the real story.

You see, Fritz, it all has to do with something called the Fate Factor, which controls the flow of time. Most people believe that time is absolute, but in point of fact, it’s not. Time is absolute only in a manner of speaking. It depends on where you are in time and what you’re doing in time at the time. It’s all a question of relativity-temporal relativity, to be exact. It’s a bit difficult to comprehend, but don’t concern yourself, old sport. The only man who ever came close to really comprehending it wound up committing suicide, so I wouldn’t work too hard at trying to understand it all if I were you. Basically, what it comes down to is that my friends and I have come here from the future in order to prevent a group of criminals from the 27th century who call themselves the Timekeepers from altering the historical sequence of events in this tiny fragment of what we refer to as Minus Time. Unfortunately, what’s making our job a bit difficult is the fact that not only are we supposed to make certain that events at this particular point in time proceed according to history when we aren’t exactly sure of the historical details, but-and this is where it gets a little sticky-these Timekeepers are apparently intent on killing us while we’re about it.

I realize it all sounds totally insane, Fritz, but the truth of the matter is that what we have here is a situation in which nothing seems to be happening the way it’s supposed to happen and no one is who or what they seem to be. I’m not really Rassendyll. There’s a woman here in Strelsau who calls herself the Countess Sophia and it appears that she’s involved with Rupert Hentzau and Black Michael, only she’s actually involved with the Timekeepers and her name is not Countess Sophia, but Sophia Falco, alias Elaine Cantrell, alias Falcon, a woman whose true identity no one seems to know. And while we know that Countess Sophia isn’t really Countess Sophia, at this point we have no way of knowing if Rupert Hentzau is really Rupert Hentzau or if Black Michael is really Black Michael. For that matter, Princess Flavia, for all I know, could be a B-girl from San Diego, Sapt could be a hired assassin from Detroit and, come to think of it, Fritz, I’m not too sure about you, either.

Finn crushed his cigarette out with a vengeance, lighting up another one immediately. Best to stop thinking that way, he told himself. That kind of paranoia will make you really crazy. He wondered where in hell Lucas and Andre were. Why hadn’t there been any contact? Not that there had been much chance for it, the way he’d been running around. His mind involuntarily returned to the image of Falcon standing on the balcony of the Grand Hotel, watching him with a mocking gaze, smiling. Had she wanted to, she could have taken him out right there and then. Rudolf the Fifth assassinated on the day of his coronation before thousands of witnesses. After that, Michael could have killed the king and there would have been a truly fine mess. So why hadn’t she done it?

The only possible answer was that it would not have gone according to her plan, whatever her plan was. She obviously felt that she was in control, so much so that she hadn’t even bothered to disguise her presence. She even went so far as to assume an alias as obvious as Countess Sophia. Her arrogance both astonished and unnerved him. The Timekeepers had proved themselves to be formidable adversaries in the past. Falcon was not only a Timekeeper, she was a Timekeeper who had been trained by the TIA. She had killed Mongoose, who had been the TIA’s best agent.

He thought of Derringer’s safehouse. Derringer had told them where it was, in the old quarter of the city, on a tiny back street. He had explained about the security system and told them how to deactivate it, stressing that if anything went wrong, they were to meet there. However, Finn had no indication that anything had gone wrong. So far. Besides, he would be far more vulnerable on the streets of Strelsau than inside the palace. His orders were to play the part of Rudolf Rassendyll and the last thing Rassendyll would do under the circumstances would be to roam the streets of Strelsau in the middle of the night. He would be alone in this charade, forced to depend upon Sapt and von Tarlenheim for guidance, but ultimately, all alone. Much as Finn wanted to do something, at the moment there seemed to be nothing he could do.

In exasperation, he threw the covers off the bed, got up, belted the king’s robe around himself and went over to the windows to unlatch them and let in some air. He pulled the large double windows open and took a deep breath of the cool night air, then jumped about a foot when Lucas said, “Good, I’m glad you’re still awake.”

He was pressed against the outside wall, supported by a nysteel rappelling line. He was dressed all in black. He had blackened his face as well. Using his legs to push away from the side of the building, Lucas swung out from the wall and in through the open windows, the nysteel line unwinding from the grip handle with a soft, whizzing sound. Once inside, Lucas turned around to face the open window, pressed a small button on the grip, gave the line a couple of sharp jerks. It retracted quickly, whistling back into the handle.

“Where in hell have you been?” Finn said angrily, despite his enormous relief at seeing him.

“Take it easy, Your Majesty,” said Lucas, reaching out and taking the cigarette out of Finn’s mouth. He took a deep drag off it and sat down on the bed, wearily. He exhaled the smoke in a heavy sigh. “Derringer is dead.”

“Oh, hell,” Finn said, softly.

“I don’t think he even knew what hit him,” Lucas said. He held up a hand. “Give me a minute, okay? I haven’t slept in 48 hours and I’m exhausted.” He rubbed his eyes. Finn gave him another cigarette. Lucas lit it off the butt of the one he had taken from Finn.

“Take your time,” said Finn. “You look all done in.”

Lucas sighed heavily. “I’ll bear up. If I could just catch a couple of hours’ sleep, I’d be okay.” He inhaled deeply on the cigarette, then lay back on the bed. Finn sat down beside him.

“It happened at around oh-three-thirty last night,” said Lucas. “I had taken up a post at the southwest corner of the lodge, where I had a good view of the west side and the rear. Andre was at the northeast corner, where she could see the east side and the front. Derringer took up position a bit farther to the northwest, where he could see part of the front of the lodge and all of the road leading up to it. At about oh-three-thirty, Andre spotted laser flashes. Two quick beams, coming from Derringer’s direction, one firing and one returning fire. We couldn’t raise Derringer. I had Andre stay put, covering the lodge from her side in case it was some sort of diversion, then I circled round wide to check on Derringer. I found him dead with his neck broken. No signs of a struggle.”

“His neck broken?” Finn said.

Lucas nodded. “His laser had not been fired.”

“So who-”

“I have no idea. I didn’t see a thing. Oh, one other thing. His chronoplate remote was gone.”

Finn swore. “We’re screwed. By now they will have hit the safehouse and taken the plate. I hope you like the neighborhood. Looks like we might be staying for a while.”

“Maybe not,” said Lucas. “Derringer did have security setup. Maybe we’ll get lucky. If not, we go on with the mission. S amp; R will come looking for us eventually.”

“Yeah, in a few months, maybe, if they’re on the ball. Where’s Andre?”

“I sent her to check the safehouse. I’ll be heading out there as soon as I leave here.”

“Take it back from last night,” Finn said. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “We expected them to hit us, but they never did. It was pretty nerve-wracking. With only two of us left to cover the lodge, we didn’t want to risk trying to get to you and leaving ourselves open. We held tight, expecting them to make their move, thinking maybe they were watching from somewhere and waiting for us to expose ourselves, but it must have been a hit-and-run. When you left in the morning with Sapt and von Tarlenheim, Andre took one of the other horses and trailed you. She was supposed to stick with you until you looked reasonably safe, then head right for the safehouse.”

Lucas paused, taking a deep breath. “I had to stay behind and bury Derringer. I picked a spot S amp; R should be able to find without too much trouble. But that was later. First I watched the guard arrive. Three men went inside the lodge. Detchard was one, I heard his name mentioned. I’m assuming that the other two were also part of Michael’s Six. They sent the guard on ahead while they remained behind. Shortly after that, they brought out the king, draped him over one of the horses, and rode off in the direction of the castle. Let me tell you, it was tempting as hell to burn those bastards on the spot. After they left, the old woman came out, carrying a carpet bag, and set off down the road to the village on foot. I waited some more, then went in to check the lodge. I found the king’s servant in the cellar with his throat cut. I left him there and went to bury Derringer. I searched the woods in the vicinity, but I didn’t find anything. Not that I expected to, but you never know. By that time, it was well after noon. There wasn’t anything more I could accomplish there, so I went to Zenda Castle and set up watch on that spot where we were before. I saw one horseman leave, riding hard down the road to Strelsau, then they raised the drawbridge. I didn’t think I’d have a chance to contact you before dark, so I stayed put. Just as I was about to leave, two riders came galloping up to the chateau from the direction of Strelsau. One of them was Black Michael, the other one was Hentzau, I think. They lowered the drawbridge, the two riders went in-they rode their horses right through the chateau, which must be a little hard on the housekeeping staff-then the drawbridge went back up again. I figure they’re holding the king in that new addition. It was the only part of the castle where lights were burning. It didn’t look as if they’d be coming out again, so I headed straight here. It took me a while to time the rounds made by the palace guard, but getting in here wasn’t very difficult. So that brings you up to date. I wish I could have brought you some good news.”

“Damn,” said Finn. They sat in silence for a moment. “He was just a kid.”

“Maybe I could have done something to prevent it,” Lucas said, his voice strained. “I keep thinking that it was my responsibility.”

“As an Observer, he wasn’t under your command,” said Finn. “It could have been Andre or it could have been you. Blaming yourself isn’t going to help. Things are tense enough as they are. They’re playing games with us. Falcon had a chance at me during the procession, but she passed on it. It would have been easy. She had me dead to rights.”

“You saw her?”

“Plain as day and bold as brass.”

“You’re sure it was her?”

“It was Falcon, all right. No question. She was on the balcony of the Grand Hotel as we rode by. You should have seen her, standing there and grinning at me. She made my stomach do somersaults. She’s established an identity here as a visiting aristocrat of some sort. The Countess Sophia, if you please.”

“Not very subtle, is she?” Lucas said.

“No, just one look at her would tell you that. That hologram didn’t do her justice. She’s one of those people who can knock the wind right out of you with just a look. She really puts it out there. Feral.”

“Sounds like she impressed you.”

“Oh, she did that, all right,” said Finn. “That was the whole point. She’s really something. Charisma with a capital ‘N’, for Nasty. Sapt tells me that the lovely Countess Sophia has managed to acquire quite a notorious reputation in the short time that she’s been here. If he only knew. He suspects her of being involved in the plot because she’s been keeping very close company with Black Michael and Rupert Hentzau. I got a look at Hentzau, but it didn’t tell me very much. He seems very young and quite fit, dark and good-looking in a go-to-hell way. According to Sapt, he’s the worst of the lot. The other five, Detchard, Bersonin, De Gautet, Lauengram and Krafstein, are all reasonably young, apparently efficient, and generally standoffish. They’re not well thought of in court circles. Michael’s tarnished his prestige a bit by hiring a bunch of cutthroats. So far, it all fits the scenario, but it’s occurred to me that it wouldn’t have been very difficult for the Timekeepers to dispose of the real Six and take their places. Anyone could be a ringer in this Chinese fire drill. They’ve got the mobility and we’re the sitting ducks, or at least I am. It makes me feel wonderfully secure. Much as I hate to say it, I think our best bet would be for you and Andre to leave me alone to take my chances and concentrate on taking out the Timekeepers. They must have a base of operations around here somewhere.”

“I think I’ve already found it,” Lucas said.

Finn glanced at him sharply. “What do you mean, you think?”

“Call it an educated guess. A good hunch.”

“I’ve learned to respect your hunches.”

“It hit me this morning, when I was crouching in the bushes and watching them take the king away,” said Lucas. “Put yourself in their position. You’ve had some time to set this up. You’ve considered all your options very carefully. If you wanted to play it safe, if you wanted to have an easily defensable position and still be right on top of things, where would you hole up?”

“Hell,” said Finn. “Zenda Castle?”

“Where else?” said Lucas. “It would be perfect. Michael’s got enough to do with keeping up the chateau. It must be costing him a fortune. Why would he waste time and money refurbishing a ruined castle when he doesn’t need the room, especially since he has hopes of moving into the palace soon?”

“Derringer told us he’d only seen lights burning in the new addition,” Finn said. “The rest of the place has probably been abandoned for years.”

“And you’ve established that Falcon is in close contact with Michael and Rupert Hentzau,” Lucas said. “It all fits. She’s had the opportunity to visit the chateau. She could have asked to see the castle, dropped a remote in there somewhere when no one was looking, homed in on it later, and clocked right in. There would have been more than enough time to explore the place, program transition coordinates, and establish a practically impregnable base of operations.”

“Nice,” said Finn. “Now all we have to do is find a way to get into the castle, rescue the king, and flush out the Timekeepers. What could be simpler? Searching that old ruin shouldn’t take more than a day or two.”

“That’s why Falcon didn’t kill you before,” said Lucas. “Why take unnecessary risks when they can make us come to them? She wants to be certain to get all of us. Their first move was to deprive us of our temporal mobility. Now all they have to do is wait.”

“Sure,” said Finn, grimly. “The minute we set foot inside Zenda Castle, we’ll be on their home ground. Got any ideas?”

Lucas shook his head. “No. Do you?”

“Yeah,” said Finn, morosely. “Why don’t we just shoot each other and deprive them of their satisfaction?”

“You lied to me,” said Drakov.

Falcon did not reply. The moment she clocked in, she began to strip off her elegant gown, shucking her identity as the Countess Sophia as though it were wholly inappropriate for such a dismal setting as the castle turret. Drakov watched her with scorn as she removed every last item of her clothing, laying everything out very carefully upon a clean blanket spread out on the cold stone floor. She was incredibly beautiful, yet she was completely unself-conscious of her nakedness. Aside from the goose pimples that rose upon her flesh, the cold did not seem to bother her. It would be a long time before the warmth of the early morning sun penetrated into the keep, and its light served to give only a little illumination. Falcon strode barefoot across the floor and began to dress in the black fatigues that she had left folded on her cot. She used no wasted motions. Everything about her was methodical, thought Drakov, even the way she made love, though the method there was far more subtle, far more complex, and far more incomprehensible than any that he had encountered in almost 80 years of life. In three months, he would be 79 years old. He looked 30 and, till now, he had felt it. Falcon had aged him, emotionally if not physically, but then she would probably have that same effect on any man, born of a natural union or not.

“What are you complaining about now?” she said.

“Trust,” he said. “Or rather the lack of it. You will, perhaps, excuse me if I chafe under my new status as your supernumerary. It is not a role I am accustomed to.”

“What in hell are you talking about?” She pulled on the black trousers and sat down on the cot to put on her boots.

“It was never your intention for this to be our secret base of operations,” he said. “You mean to lure them here.”

“So?” she said, putting on her shirt. “That bothers you?”

“Not by itself,” he said. “I can even see a certain logic to it. What bothers me is that I finally see my role in all of this defined. I am to be used as bait and nothing more.”

She looked up at him, meeting his gaze, saying nothing.

“In a way,” said Drakov, “I am astonished that it took me so long to see it. Yet, in another way, I am surprised that I have even seen it at all. It means, I think, that I am finally beginning to understand you and I find that quite disturbing.”

Falcon picked up a pack of cigarettes, took one out, rubbed it against the side of the pack to ignite it, then leaned back against the wall, one leg drawn up underneath her, the other bent at the knee to provide a prop for her right arm. She inhaled a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it through her nostrils. She didn’t speak, but her look prompted him to continue.

“He’s here,” said Drakov. “Or did you already know?”

“I knew,” she said. “You saw him?”

“He nearly killed me.”

“Only nearly? Then he must be slipping.”

“At first, I told myself that you must have arranged it somehow, but I don’t see how you could have. Besides, if he had killed me, it would have spoiled your plans. For both of us.”

“That’s true,” she said. “What happened?”

“He came up on me as I took the Observer. Even as I struck, I knew he was behind me. I don’t know how I knew. I simply knew. He fired as I turned and I felt the beam graze me.” He lifted his shirt to show her the burn on his left side, just beneath the large latissimus dorsi muscle. “I activated the remote with one hand and fired with the other. I had no chance to aim. I had one very brief glimpse of him, no more than a dark shape. I never saw his face. In the same instant that I felt the pain of my wound, I was back here again. But it was he. I know it.”

“Are you sorry that you missed him?” she said.

Drakov was silent for a moment. “No,” he said, finally. “I want to see his face. I want him to see my face when he dies. And I want him to know the reason for it.”

“He knows,” said Falcon. “It’s the only thing that would have brought him here.”

“You would have liked it otherwise,” said Drakov. “You would rather that you were the reason.”

She did not reply. She sat there, smoking, watching him without expression. Nothing in her face gave any indication of what she was really thinking, but then, nothing ever did.

“What is your real name?” said Drakov.

She did not answer.

“Did Forrester know?”

Again, no reply.

“Did anyone? Ever? Or did you just spring full blown, as if from the head of Zeus, with walls and moats and drawbridges, a veritable fortress of isolation and self-containment?”

“Is there a point to any of this?” she said. “Because, if not, I would like to get some sleep. I’ve had a very long night.”

“With Rupert Hentzau.”

“Don’t tell me that you’re jealous. For you, that would be the height of hypocrisy.”

“Hypocrisy?” said Drakov, with a slight smile. “That you, of all people, should accuse me of hypocrisy. I called you a fanatic, but I was wrong. Or rather, I was correct in calling you a fanatic, but incorrect in pinpointing your fanaticism. I have no doubt that at one time, your involvement with the Timekeepers was sincere. Insofar as you are capable of sincerity. You were a passionless woman in search of something to be passionate about, but when you found it, not in the struggle to bring the Time Wars to a halt, but in the arms of the man who is my father, it proved to be too much for you. You could not cross your moat and raise your drawbridge and hide behind your walls. You met a man whom you could not control. Worse yet, with whom you could not control yourself. He made you love him and for that, you cannot forgive him.”

“You’re becoming a real bore, Nicky.”

“My apologies. It was my impression that you had grown bored with me a long time ago. But you never tired of Moses Forrester, did you?” He reached into his pocket and took out the ring that she had given him. He tossed it to her. It landed on her lap. “Perhaps you should take this back,” he said. “It means much more to you than it does to me.”

She made no move to take the ring.

“Does this mean that I cannot count on you?” she said.

“You may count on me,” said Drakov. “I will see this thing through to the end with you, come what may. Tell me what it is that you expect of me and I shall do it. But I find it somewhat ironic that the Timekeepers have been reduced to one man whose cause is revenge for the wrong done to his mother and one woman whose cause is revenge for the wrong that she perceives was done to her. Somewhere along the line, the original objective of the great cause became obfuscated. Perhaps it happened with the two of us. However, I am beginning to suspect it happened with the death of Albrecht Men-singer. There is an old proverb that says when one considers embarking upon a course of revenge, one should first build two coffins. I have been giving some thought to designing mine. I’ll leave you to make your own plans.”

“Where are you going?” she said.

“For a walk through cold, dark corridors. It seems, somehow, the appropriate thing to do.”

After he had gone, Falcon glanced down at the ring that he had thrown to her. She crushed out the cigarette, picked up the ring, stood up and walked over to one of the embrasures. She closed her fist around the ring and drew it back, to throw. For a moment, she simply stood there with her arm cocked, then she lowered it. She opened her fist and glanced down at the ring once more. Then she put it back upon her finger.