The Fourth Rome Read online

  “Great. I’ll be sure to tell her.”

  “Say me who else you have contacted.”

  Matsak might be planning a little coup against possible rivals, but you had to play along. None of the locals meant anything to Grainger. And he had to go with his instinct. “Viktor Etkin, of the Min—”

  “Ha! Etkin!” Now Matsak looked at Grainger pityingly and stroked his beard. “KGB. Very good. Very smart. Typical American efficiency. How do you say, spook to spook cultural exchange? The security service will take care of problems from the Foreign Ministry, at least. You will go ask your friends not to mention in their meetings that you are meeting with us as well, or else to conclude those meetings by telling other Russians you will meet only with us henceforth. I will wait here for you. I have everything I need.” He shook another cigarette from the pack although he had one lit and burning in the ashtray. “Confer with your colleagues. When you have a decision on how to proceed, we will go see the technology.”

  Quid pro quo. Lucky that Russians were hive-mind sort of folks, who expected decisions to be at least ratified by groups.

  “I’ll go talk to my people, then.” Grainger stood to go. “Should I get some roubles, for the trip?”

  “Roubles? You want roubles?” Matsak’s bearded upper lip curled. “I have thousand of millions of roubles. I need this many to pay for lunch. I have a man who follows me around with a briefcase full of roubles and stays behind to count them out to pay the luncheon bill. Sometimes it takes half an hour to count the total.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of roubles. On top was a thousand-rouble note. “Here. Take it. You can tip the chambermaids with it.”

  Grainger was embarrassed. And despite himself, he was impressed by Matsak’s candor, his wry sense of humor, and his pragmatic approach to his country’s problems. Grainger took the roubles. He dared not offend this proud man.

  “Spacebo.“ Thank you. And: “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’ll be right back with that decision.”

  He found Chun where he’d left her, bleary-eyed and drunker than he’d have liked. Etkin was holding her hand in his. Classical balalaika music was playing somewhere and a few couples were dancing slowly, hardly moving, swaying in place.

  “Chun, I need to see you alone for a minute,” Grainger said without ceremony.

  “Viktor Ivanovitch, you must excuse me,” she muttered thickly, stumbling over her gearbag as she rose.

  “Seen Roebeck?” he asked. His eyeballs felt as if they were pulsing. His mouth was dry. His arm hurt. Damned shots. He grabbed Chun’s gearbag from the floor by her chair and thrust it at her.

  “Not since you two left us,” Chun said, slinging the bag over her shoulder insouciantly.

  Grainger took her by the hand and pulled her a short distance away. “Ditch that guy. We’ve got an invitation to a closed city to see relevant technology. And my guy doesn’t want you dealing with anybody else.”

  “No Russian wants you dealing with anybody else,” Chun said, brushing black hair out of her eyes. “I’m making good progress. Tell your friend we’ll deal with whomever we choose. And as for a closed city trip—that’s fine with me. Just check with Nan. What time tomorrow?”

  “You don’t get it. Now. Bus is leaving. Be on it or stay behind. As a matter of fart, given that you’re not exactly sober, maybe you ought to stay behind and sleep it off with Son of Ivan over there.”

  “Tim, stuff it. You need me for any serious evaluation and you know it.”

  “My guy won’t take you if you’re interacting with the KGB, there.”

  “Okay, fine. Whatever Nan decides. But I think I’m onto something here.”

  Grainger was exasperated. “We brought you to evaluate critical technology, not seduction techniques of a vanished civilization. Russians like parity, remember. You’re our best technologist.”

  “You said it—vanished civilization. I didn’t. Your grasp of technology’s good enough for this closed city junket, as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, it’s up to Roebeck. Not to either of us.”

  “Great. Good. You stay right here, then, until I find her.”

  “I had no intention of going anywhere,” Chun said sweetly.

  Grainger slapped left-handed at a plastered column, hard, on his way out of the bar. His whole arm pulsed from the concussion and the injection he’d taken.

  Where the hell could Nan Roebeck be?

  He checked everywhere: the lobby, the beautiful main dining room where the harpist had played, even—against all protocols of the era—the ladies’ toilet.

  She wasn’t anywhere.

  Don’t leave the hotel without us for any reason, Roebeck had decreed during the planning session.

  Only then did he think to call her room.

  He hoped to hell she wasn’t up in her room with Orlov, beating Chun to the punch. Then he hoped she didn’t answer the house phone.

  But she did.

  “What the hell are you doing up there?” he nearly snarled at her when she said hello.

  “What the hell do you mean, talking to me like that, mister? I’m having a meeting.”

  “With your shoes on, I hope.”

  “Excuse me? I’ll forget I heard that. What’s the problem, Tim?”

  “Permission to leave the hotel requested on a priority basis.” He didn’t feel well. Roebeck was really angry at him now. He couldn’t cope with Chun and Roebeck and the Russians as well. He didn’t want to take either woman along. They’d second-guess him all night long and blow his rapport with his target. “By myself if possible. With you if necessary. Not with Chun.”

  “Why? And it better be a damned good reason. Nothing justifies your behavior tonight, mister!”

  “I need to talk to you, now. In person. Not on any phone. And I don’t want to come to your room if you’ve got company. This can’t wait.”

  “Where’s Chun? We’re just getting started here.”

  “She’s pretty far along with lover boy in the bar and doesn’t intend to take direction from me. I have a proposition from my guy for you. And I need clear direction about who does what in the next few hours.”

  “I’ll be right down.” Roebeck slammed the phone down.

  Grainger waited by the elevators. When she came out, he grabbed her by the strap on her gearbag and pushed her back against the wall.

  Leaning over her, one hand on the wall beside her head, he made as if to nuzzle her neck. “We’ve got an offer to go technology shopping in a closed city tonight—now. Chun doesn’t want to go. The offer’s contingent upon our choice of two options. Option one is breaking off other meetings with alternate technology channels and saying we’re using my guy exclusively—then everybody who’s up to it goes to the closed city tonight. Option two is you both keep meeting with your guys, don’t mention anything about my guy, and only I go to the closed city tonight. What’s your pleasure, boss?”

  “What’s Chun want to do?”

  “Chun’s falling in love. She wants to sleep with the poster boy. Or she’s too drunk to know what she wants. She says I don’t need her to look at this primitive tech base, but she’ll do what you say. So she’s not blind drunk. Just drunker than I like.”

  Roebeck dosed her eyes and blew out a deep breath. Then she opened them and looked at him analytically. “How come all these demands?”

  “Maybe I’ve got the right tiger by the tail. He got people out of bed. I listened while he kicked ass. I didn’t get all the words but I got enough. He says he’s the only channel to what we want. He says mixing other channels will just make it harder—maybe impossible—to cut a deal. They’ll start fighting among themselves. He says you especially don’t want to be involved with the Foreign Ministry—the Yeltsin government hates them and distrusts them. The distrust extends to anybody dealing with them. They’re all Gorbachev holdovers, hard-liners, due for early retirement. I think he doesn’t need to lie to me. I think I want to go with him. You’re the boss, but I’m asking that you at
least protect my association with him and let me go. If you want everybody to go, that’s fine, too—under his rules. But I don’t want to fuck with this guy. It’s his ball, his court. If we play his game, we’ve got to play it his way.” Stripping proper names from targets was second nature to them both at a time like this.

  “I don’t know, Tun. My guy talks a good game, too.”

  “Did he offer to show you anything tonight? Mine did. And I’m worried that Chun’s professor already knows just exactly what we’re looking for—maybe who we are and why we’re looking for it. You heard that toast. If he knows, he’s got to be involved with the revisionists.”

  “That’s your assessment?”

  “You bet.”

  “And Chun wants to stay with him?”

  “Seems like.”

  “Then let her stay with him. It’ll raise the ante if we pull her out. If he’s what you think, we can’t tell him who else we’re working with, so option one is out. Option two may fly, but I’d like to go with you. Can’t I meet with your guy again and see if we can reach a compromise?”

  “You can meet with anybody you want. You’re the team leader. It’s your mission. But you and my guy didn’t exactly get off to a flying start. He’ll take you anyway. He just doesn’t want a KGB escort. And neither do I, frankly. You’d have to ditch your guy, fast.”

  “I can’t—it would look funny. Okay. I’ll tell Chun not to mention anything about your channel. I haven’t mentioned your guy, but I think I already told Chun’s guy about mine.”

  “You think?” If Nan had done that, there was no use in referring to Etkin as “Chun’s guy” and Orlov as hers.

  “It’s been a long night.”

  “With all due respect,” Grainger said, “if that’s so, then you might as well take Orlov down and introduce him to Etkin. Give Orlov a chance to defend himself. My guy says they’ll cancel each other out. Could be. Who knows how it really works here, this far through the looking glass? And please, please give Chun some amended marching orders. She wasn’t taking any advice from me, that’s for sure. She’ll put my initiative at risk without meaning to.”

  “I’ve decided. You go downrange. Go on. Get out of here. I’ll stay in the hotel until I hear from you tonight. Ask me how I’m feeling if you’re in trouble and need help. Then maybe Etkin will come in handy. Otherwise, ask me how Chun’s doing. No matter what happens, be back here by nineteen hundred hours tomorrow for Etkin’s dinner party.”

  “I will. You have my word on it.”

  “Just where is it you’re going?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. I’ll call. Got my gear with me. Don’t worry.” Grainger was so relieved he was nearly babbling. “I sure hope you’ll trim Chun’s jets. I don’t know why we brought her if we can’t use her for this excursion…”

  “Let me worry about Chun.” Roebeck slid out from under his aching left arm. “Get out of here. Go play in your sandbox. We’ll say you were called away to the Embassy. Don’t trip us up.”

  “I won’t.” He turned and started down the hall.

  “Tim,” Roebeck called after him. “Good luck.”

  “I don’t need luck,” he said over his shoulder. “I just need time.”

  But it wasn’t true on this occasion, and he knew it. He was already straining the Bell curve of probability. Tim Grainger, ARC Rider, had gotten too lucky, too fast. Now all he could do was let himself be swept along and hope his luck would last.

  Three Kilometers East of the Ems River, Free Germany

  August 25, 9 AD

  A bat fluttered about Pauli Weigand’s head, then twisted into the evening sky. The little animal’s movements were quick and the track of its flight as complex as that of a lace-maker’s needle. A number of them were out, drawn to the insects put up by the feet of thousands of men and animals. Pickings must usually be slim for bats this deep in the forest.

  “Pauli, Hannes and the other six bodyguards are leaving the camp also and proceeding up the old road,” Gerd’s voice cheeped from Pauli’s headband. “They’re on foot. I’m following them.”

  From where he sat on horseback near Varus and the German chiefs, Pauli could see Hannes and half the thugs continuing up the overgrown track. They vanished into the brush and shadows, ignored in the milling chaos of tent-raising, cookfires, and attempts to corral the baggage animals and cattle driven as meat on the hoof.

  The troops had laid out a camp, but the march had gone too long into the afternoon for them to raise a proper palisade. The first day had been through open country, but today the army was in forest that had virtually reclaimed the roadway Tiberius cut on his expedition five years before.

  The need to bridge gullies and pave the low spots with logs had slowed the column as a whole, but the troops in the lead still moved faster than the mass of wagons and litters that followed over the crude surface. If this were a real military expedition, the minimal baggage would be carried on pack mules. Half the personnel in this column were noncombatants, and at least a third of the latter were women.

  “My governor,” said Arminius. He leaned from the Roman-style saddle of his horse to speak to Varus who’d gotten out of a litter carried by eight slaves. “Sigimer and I will return in one day or two after we’ve gathered our people. The Chauci rebels won’t be able to hide from us, any more than they can stand against you.”

  “Pauli, Istvan and his gang have moved off the road to hide in the brush two hundred meters from the camp,” Beckie’s voice said. She was following the blond revisionist who’d gone on ahead with six bodyguards when the army halted to encamp. “I’ve stopped ten meters from them.”

  She paused, then added, “Pauli, I can see them on infrared from here, but I won’t have a shot unless they come out of the bushes.”

  The microwave pistols had no effect on the other side of a solid object, no matter how flimsy a barrier it was. The weapons formed a difference tone at the intersection of two beams focused precisely by a laser rangefinder. Anything that reflected modulated light would take the full force of the pulse. Unlike a bullet, the pulse couldn’t penetrate a screen of leaves to stun the man behind.

  “Well, be sure you hurry back, Arminius,” the governor said, resting on his left hand on the couch. It had a lacquered roof and side curtains. “Otherwise your people won’t get their share of loot.”

  “Oh, there’ll be plenty of loot for all!” Sigimer boomed. Laughter fluffed his blond mustache.

  Sigimer rode with only a saddle blanket, as did most of the score of retainers attending the two princes. The Germans all carried long swords, though a number of them had lances also. They wore metal helmets and slung round shields on their backs. Without saddles they couldn’t hang the weight directly on their mounts. Medals dangled across the chest of Arminius and several others, but none of the Germans wore body armor.

  “Till I see you again,” Varus said. “And I hope we’ll be out of this damned wilderness by then.”

  “Oh, you’ll forget the trees soon enough,” Arminius said. He straightened; his legs tensed to prod his horse forward with his heels.

  “I’ll ride with you for a little way, Prince,” Pauli said. “I want to take a look at the road farther on.”

  “What?” said Sigimer. He glared at Pauli. Arminius kept his composure better, but there was no warmth in his expression. He muttered a warning to his retainers. Several of them reached reflexively for their swords, but a sharper order stopped them.

  Pauli rode alongside the chief. “I won’t go far. Just enough to eye the route.”

  “There’s nothing to be seen different from what’s around us now,” Arminius said. “But come along, my Ubian friend. The emperor’s man is welcome to ride with us as far as my homestead if he wishes.”

  Yes, but returning might not prove so easy, Pauli thought as he prodded his mount into motion with the Germans. The road was dangerous at anything faster than a walk. Logs laid in a corduroy by Tiberius’ engineers were a bump
y surface when new. Five years on the damp ground left some of them so rotten that they disintegrated underfoot. The horses stumbled frequently, making even experienced riders jerk and curse.

  One way or the other, he wouldn’t be going far. The revisionists were about to make their play and Pauli Weigand had to be close by. Beckie and Gerd could slip through the undergrowth covered by their dull capes, but a big imperial bodyguard in armor wasn’t going to sneak along unnoticed by those he followed.

  It was already too dark under the trees to see colors. The conspirators must expect to pick up a familiar trail nearby if they were going to ride any distance tonight. The military road didn’t appear to have been used since Tiberius returned to the Rhine along it.

  The troop of mounted men rode past Hannes. The revisionist’s guards pressed to the side of the track to keep out of the nobles’ way. The man Gerd had stunned in Aliso the previous day, Hilderic, hadn’t gotten far enough clear. A rider kicked at him. The thug cowered back, but he glared at the horsemen beneath the shelter of his raised arms.

  “Who’s that lot?” Sigimer growled.

  “He claimed he’s a slave dealer,” Pauli said. He spoke in German to warn all the retainers, not just those who’d learned Latin. “He has a partner who left the camp this way earlier. Could they be enemies planning to ambush you, Prince Hermann?”

  “I don’t have any quarrels with worms, Ubian,” Arminius said.

  “Hannes is putting on a set of night-vision goggles,” Gerd’s voice warned.

  “I think Istvan is doing the same,” Becky said. “I’m going to move closer.”

  Pauli felt his guts tighten. His teammates were using the faceshields to enhance their vision. Thermal viewing let Beckie see forms but not details through the screen of leaves. Pauli didn’t think she could safely close in on the revisionist, but he couldn’t order her to keep clear because Arminius was right beside him.

  “Hannes has radioed his partner that you’re approaching,” Gerd said. “I—oh!”