The Zenda Vendetta

7

Drakov wandered alone through the dank, deserted corridors of Zenda Castle. In his right hand, he carried a small flashlight, one capable of throwing out a wide beam or of being used as a highly concentrated light source, emitting a beam of light almost as thin as that of a laser. At the moment, he had it set in the middle of its range, so that it illuminated only the corridor before him.

It was damp, it was cold, and it was quiet. The silence was broken only by the sound of his boots upon the stone and by the chittering of rats. There were thousands of them inside the castle, some approaching the size of housecats. Most swarmed in the dungeons below. From the lower floors of the abandoned main sections of the castle, their noise was like the distant sound of monstrous birds. It was a fitting atmosphere for black and brooding thoughts. As he walked, he brushed aside spider webs the size of bedsheets and crushed the bodies of long-dead insects beneath his boots. Just like Count Dracula, he thought, striding through his dark domain. Drakov, Dracula, even the names were similar. But the year was 1891 and the book would not be published for another six years yet. Perhaps Stoker was working on the manuscript somewhere in England at this very moment.

It never ceased to amaze him how he knew such things through the subknowledge of his implant programming, that a veritable library of information could be stored upon a tiny sliver in his brain, available to him with the speed of thought. Subknowledge. Knowing things he didn’t know he knew until he thought about them. That was one of the true miracles of Falcon’s 27th century. He had become a part of it, but there was no place for him there. There was really no place for him anywhere. He should never have been born.

Moses Forrester would not even have been born for hundreds of years at the time he was conceived. For years, he had not really understood how a man could father a son before his own birth. The whole thing had seemed supernatural to him, despite his mother’s attempts at explanation, and he had felt himself to be a demon issue, accursed from birth. Born of an impossible union, victim of a hate that could never be appeased. How to take revenge upon a man who had not even been born yet? How to reach across almost a thousand years to find him?

It had always been important to his mother for him to know his history, to know who and what his real father was. She had impressed upon him early on that he was different, that he was very, very special. She had been so proud, never suspecting how the story terrified him. He had always listened silently, never asking any questions, never saying anything, afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid of learning more.

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.”

“I can see that, I suppose,” said Hentzau, “but it all seems needlessly elaborate to me. My patience is wearing thin.”

“Your impatience may yet be the death of you, my love,” she said. “You must learn to wait.”

“Well, I shall wait until tonight, at least,” he said. “What about tonight?” said Michael.

He stood in the doorway, holding the door open. Falcon glanced at him sharply, wondering if he had heard. He gave no sign of it. Hentzau could not appear to care less.

“We were discussing the dinner tonight,” she said, moving toward him. She came up to him and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. “Rupert is impatient to get back to Zenda to check upon the prisoner. I told him that he should wait until tonight. I would feel better knowing he was here to guard me while you were at the dinner. They might try anything to work against you. They could try to kidnap me and use me to make you release the king.”

“But what makes you think that you will be remaining here?” said Michael.

“You’re sending me away?”

“I will do no such thing. You shall attend the dinner with me.” He glanced down at her fencing apparel. “In fact, you had best be getting yourself ready.” He frowned. “I don’t know why you bother practicing your fencing. It is one thing for a girl whose father had desired a son to play at it, but it is useless for a woman. It is unseemly.”

“She plays at it rather well,” said Hentzau, with a smirk. “You should try her, Michael.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Now run along, dear, and prepare yourself.”

“Is it wise to take her to the dinner?” Hentzau said. “I mean, it would hardly ingratiate you to Flavia. You might do well to cultivate the favor of your future queen.” His eyes mocked them both. “A man in your position may find two women burdensome.”

“Take care of your insolence, Rupert,” Michael said. “When the time comes, I shall take Flavia as is my due. As to what she thinks or doesn’t think, I could not be less concerned.”

“What about yourself, Countess?” Hentzau said, addressing her, but baiting Michael. “Have you no thoughts upon the matter?”

“Flavia can warm his throne,” she said, smiling. “I shall be the one to warm his bed.”

“You see, Rupert?” Michael said. “Sophia and I understand one another.”

Hentzau gave an insouciant chuckle. “I would caution the man who believes he understands his woman.”

Michael narrowed his eyes. “That will be enough! I shall tolerate no veiled insults to Sophia in my presence.”

“Why,” said Hentzau, innocently, “was I insulting the countess? May Heaven forbid! I meant no such thing.”

“Stop it, both of you,” she said. “Dissension in our ranks serves only Sapt and von Tarlenheim. We must be patient. Time is on our side. We can afford to wait, while each day makes the imposter’s position more precarious. They are doubtless growing desperate by now and desperate men are vulnerable men.”

“You see, Rupert, how she always thinks of my interests above all else?” said Michael.

“Our interests,” she said. “It is in all our interests for you to become king. Isn’t that right, Rupert?”

Hentzau smirked and inclined his head slightly.

Simon Hawke

The Zenda Vendetta

“I shall go get ready, then,” she said. “Rupert, thank you for indulging me. I know I could never give you a good match, but it was kind of you to humor me. It helped alleviate some of my worries.”

“Anytime, Countess,” Hentzau said.

They left him in the training room. “I have a few matters to attend to,” Michael said. “I will see you when you have dressed. I wish you to look particularly ravishing tonight, my dear.”

“Your wish is my command. Sire,” she added, significantly.

When she was alone in the bedroom, she shut the door and bolted it, then sprawled down on the bed with a bottle of whiskey. She took a long drink. It helped to wash the bad taste out of her mouth. Hentzau was a pleasant diversion as a lover, but he was growing more tiresome by the day. It was wearying to play constantly to his juvenile sensibilities, to his swaggering braggadocio, to his arrogance and conceit. He was an excellent swordsman, but he had condescended to her during their match. She had to use all her concentration to fence even more poorly. It would have been interesting to see how it would have gone had he given his all. It might have been an excellent match, indeed. She was reasonably certain that she could take him if he were in earnest. She had originally thought to use him further, but she had long since dismissed any such notion. He was too self-centered, too unpredictable, too much of a boy with a cocksure sense of his own uniqueness. If Michael had walked in on them one moment earlier, she had no doubt that Hentzau would have welcomed it as an opportunity to kill him. He simply didn’t care. He did, indeed, live only in the here and now, with no thought to any consequences.

Michael, on the other hand, was the complete opposite: a planner and a brooder, a born intriguer. However, his moodiness and his possessive attitude were stultifying. Keeping the two of them in line and away from each other was a full-time job. Fortunately, the same tactics worked well on both of them. They were men and being men, were easy to manipulate. All it took was an appeal to their hormones. It was easy, but it was both annoying and time-consuming. Now this demand that she attend the dinner at the palace as Michael’s showpiece. She grimaced as she realized the double entendre nature of the thought. Her first instinct had been to beg off. Michael might not have liked that, but she could easily have managed it. Then, it occurred to her, why not?

Why not attend the dinner? It would make Delaney squirm. There she would be, face to face with him, and he would be unable to do anything. It would serve to demoralize the bastard. Perhaps he would give himself away somehow. It was certain that they were planning to make their move soon, perhaps even tonight. Maybe something in his manner or in his face would give it all away.

To Rupert and to Michael and to Nikolai, she counseled patience, yet she herself was beginning to chafe at the bit. She was concerned about the others, Priest and Cross. She had no idea where they were or what they were doing. Surely, they would not be idle. And Moses would be with them now. That would only serve to spur them on, give them more confidence. The leader had come to join his troops in battle. She wondered what was going through his mind.

He would be thinking of his son. His son, the Timekeeper. His son, who hated him with an all-consuming passion. His son, whom he would have to kill. Would he be thinking at all of her, of how she had used Nikolai to lure him here? Would he be recalling the nights that they had spent together, both in Plus Time and in the field, of the love that they had shared, of her proposal to him?

She drank more whiskey. It had been another life. A part of her, a very essential part, had been suppressed so that she might avoid detection. During that life, she had been unaware of her true self, but afterwards she had remembered. She remembered both her real self and everything that had happened while she had been Elaine Cantrell. The whiskey always helped to dull the memories, but it could not obliterate them.

There had been a desperation in Elaine Cantrell, some sense of imminence perhaps motivated by subconscious knowledge of the hidden part of her. She had sought escape. There had been strong impulses driving her, impulses she had not understood then but knew now as programmed imperatives she had vainly attempted to resist. In order for Elaine Cantrell to be able to function in her role, it had been necessary for her to be the sort of person who would abhor what her real self did. She had found solace in the arms of Moses Forrester and for a time she believed that she might find escape as well. Escape from an imminent something that would not resolve into a clear picture. She had proposed marriage to him one night-a new life, a new beginning. They could leave the service and find stability. As civilians, they could enjoy a peaceful existence. No more uncertainty. No more traveling through time. No more pressure, no feelings of impending disaster. They could have a permanent home that would be their own. They could have children. A son, Moses. We could have a son.

He turned her down.

She offered him what other men would have accepted upon any terms and he turned her down. To add insult to injury, what she offered him he had accepted from some ignorant peasant girl. The child that Vanna Drakova had borne should have been hers. She flung the bottle away, cursing Lachman Singh. He had done his job too well. Elaine Cantrell should have been dead, but a large part of her still lived. Well, soon it would be put to rest. Relief would come at last with the death of Nikolai Drakov.

She lured Forrester here to destroy him, but not in the manner that he thought. She would not try killing him herself. She would leave that job to Nikolai. If Drakov killed his father, she would, in turn, kill him, and then the slate would be wiped clean. And if Forrester prevailed, it would be a much more exquisite revenge. She would let him live with the knowledge that he had killed his own son. Either way, he would die. The Timekeepers would also be avenged and a massive timestream split would occur. As with the ancient Japanese, who would not surrender until they had experienced firsthand the awesome power of atomic energy unleashed, so would the war machine be forced to face the final consequences of their folly. She would go down in history as the woman who had single-handedly brought the Time Wars to a halt. And this time, history would not be changed.