The Fourth Rome Page 6

  “What’s this?” the gray man demanded. He spoke German but his accent must have been almost unintelligible to the others. The Russians had prepared themselves as carefully as possible in their time, but they wouldn’t have been able to study the actual dialects in use on this horizon.

  “They knifed Hilderic, Master Hannes,” said the same thug who’d spoken before. “We was just—”

  “Wha happen?” Hilderic demanded muzzily, supporting himself on a doorpost. His head must be solid bone. A point-blank microwave pulse could easily be fatal.

  “Get your trash out of here, Hannes,” the innkeeper said in a low growl. His hairy left hand massaged the muscles of his right shoulder. His loaded fist twitched sideways. “Get them out or you’ll go with them!”

  “Tomorrow we will go, brother,” the slight Russian said. “When the army leaves.”

  “You know we need bodyguards and handlers for the slaves we will buy,” the older man added. He threw back the right flap of an embroidered cloak. “Come, Lothar, how much to settle this?”

  “What the hell happened?” Hilderic repeated, still hugging the door frame. “Osric, have I been drinking?”

  “I said I didn’t want you!” Lothar said. “Get your trash out or get out with them!”

  “And if we don’t choose to do that?” the younger Russian asked coolly. Both his hands were under his cloak, and Rebecca didn’t figure they were on his purse. She moved to the side so that she wouldn’t be hit by bullets aimed at the innkeeper.

  Lothar looked around the big room and smiled with real humor. “So,” he said, “there’s twice as many of you as there is us, Istvan? That’s what you’re counting on? Sure, you all can stay. Until my daughter—that’s her at the window—”

  Rebecca glanced toward the street. Sure enough, a moonfaced girl whose braids were woven on top of her head watched the events from the street.

  “—tells the soldiers it’s free ale for the whole company whose men bring me all your heads. I don’t even think they’ll wait till dark to finish the business, Istvan.”

  Hannes turned to the bodyguards. “Go on, then,” he snarled. “You act like pigs, you can sleep like pigs in the street tonight. Go on!”

  “Hey, that’s not right,” said the thug who’d been sure Hilderic was stabbed. He looked in puzzlement from his employer to Hilderic standing in the doorway. “We got a right to a roof. What if it rains?”

  “Find a roof, then!” Hannes said. He shook three gold coins from his purse and tossed them at the man. “Go on, get out!”

  The guards moved toward the door with a good deal of mumbling and groping for the coins—enough to pay the wages of all of them for a week. Rebecca suspected they’d wind up sleeping in the street anyway after getting pig drunk on the unexpected windfall.

  “Master Istvan,” she said to the blond Russian in Latin. “Our master Gaius Clovis sent us to see what stock you had on hand. He’ll be returning to Rome in a few weeks and thought he’d take some slaves back with him if the price was right.”

  “What?” said Istvan. His Latin was slightly better than his German, but the revisionists’ accents probably had the locals wondering if they came from Hyperborea. “We don’t have any slaves. We won’t have slaves till the governor puts down the barbarians who are causing trouble.”

  Hannes turned his attention to the discussion also, but he didn’t seem unduly concerned. Both Russians had taken their hands away from the weapons that were apparently hung from their belts.

  “Well, till later, then,” Rebecca said. “You’ll accompany Varus tomorrow, then?”

  “Yes,” Hannes said curtly. “Come, Istvan, our goods are in the loft.”

  “Have a drink with us, masters?” Rebecca offered. Gerd was manipulating the sensor concealed in his left palm. It was her job to give the analyst time to gather as much information as possible. “Wine, perhaps?”

  The Russians ignored her. Istvan preceded his companion up the ladder.

  Lothar and his wife looked at Rebecca without warmth. The innkeeper didn’t know exactly what had happened, but it was clear Rebecca was somehow involved in it. Now that the adrenaline rush had worn off, the strain Lothar had put on age-stiffened muscles was probably making itself felt.

  “Rebecca,” Gerd said in Latin, “our master won’t be back from dinner with the governor for many hours yet. I’m glad we’ll have the opportunity to eat and drink here in this inn.”

  Rebecca looked at him. The analyst was dead serious. He really was happy for the chance to eat on the economy in this horizon. It was an experience he never would have had if the operation had been a quick in and out by transport capsule as the team had intended.

  “Sure, Gerd,” she said, looking at the cauldron that was probably pork being boiled flavorless. God only knew what the beer would taste like. Still, they needed to eat somewhere and close to the revisionists might be a good choice. Their immune-system boosters were going to get a workout. “We sure are fortunate.”

  “A meal for each of us and a mug of your house ale,” the analyst said to Lothar, beaming.

  Rebecca sighed. If you told Gerd you had to amputate his leg without anesthetic, he’d probably look forward to that experience, too…

  “You’ll have to wait here,” the majordomo said to Pauli Weigand in the dark reception room. “Someone will come to collect you, I’m sure.”

  It said something about Varus’ attitudes that he’d changed the orientation of the governor’s residence from an outward-facing villa to a town house with blank outer walls. The fort’s residents were disciplined soldiers, not a city rabble. Varus simply didn’t want to have to look at the men he commanded.

  The reception room was intended to be lighted through the front colonnade, so oil lamps were the only illumination when Varus boarded up the windows. The open skylight of a Mediterranean-style atrium wasn’t possible because there were rooms on the floor above. German winters would have made that a bad plan anyway, though Pauli couldn’t be sure Varus, fresh from a profitable governorship in Syria, quite appreciated the differences in climate. A Roman aristocrat didn’t trouble himself with details of geography.

  The majordomo was having his nails buffed by a young boy. Three ushers lounged in the reception room, all of them pointedly avoiding looking at Pauli; a fourth usher had been sent off at his arrival.

  The ten-man military guard outside the building had let Pauli through without delay. They didn’t see their job as requiring status games.

  Pauli wasn’t bored: he was listening to Beckie and Gerd through the bone-conduction output of his headband. It worried him that the other two were operating without him, though time contraints and common sense required it. He worried more that they’d only located half the revisionists Central briefed them to expect. He worried that he was going to make a blunder at dinner and compromise the mission.

  Oh, no, he wasn’t bored. But still…

  He smiled at the majordomo. “Do you visit Rome often?” Pauli asked in a tone of mild interest.

  The plump servant flicked his eyes sideways, caught Pauli’s smile, and jerked his hands away from the manicurist. If this barbarian did chance to have the emperor’s ear …

  “Stupid donkey!” he shouted and slapped at the startled boy. “Rufio!” he ordered an usher. “Take the gentleman’s cloak. Blaesus, conduct Master Clovis to the garden.”

  To Pauli the majordomo added, “I don’t know what’s become of the boy who was supposed to fetch you. It’s so difficult to buy good help these days.”

  “I can imagine,” Pauli said mildly as he unfastened the ornate gold pin that closed his knee-length military cloak. He handed the garment to Rufio. Underneath he wore a dining cape of cerise linen, tied at the throat with ribbons. Most of the team’s baggage consisted of Pauli’s garments and equipment. His slaves could wear the same tunics and cloaks throughout the operation without arousing curiosity.

  Blaesus, a sad-looking man of Egyptian or Levantine origin,
guided Pauli through the building. Varus had brought a huge household; there were a number of slaves in every room.

  The furnishings were sparse by the standards of later days, but the bronze work, statuary, and ceramics on display were obviously expensive. Slaves were packing many of the items into traveling chests. Pauli almost walked into a wall as he realized Varus intended to take the goods along to decorate the new camp to be built on the lower Weser.

  Dinner was laid in the garden at the back of the building. Three benches were set against a round serving table; the fourth side was open to permit servants to change the dishes. Diners reclined on their left elbows in eight of the nine places; the lowest in status, the end place on the right arm of the U, waited for Pauli.

  A quick glance convinced Pauli that the garden was converted from a section of the stables that were part of the building’s original design. Trees stood in pots and roses had made a start on the trellis. Suncatchers of colored glass wobbled on threads from the branches.

  The orange tree certainly wasn’t going to survive its first German winter. On the other hand, its owner wasn’t going to survive the remainder of this month …

  “There you are, Clovis,” Varus said. “We’d wondered what happened to you.”

  He took in Pauli’s dining cape and added approvingly, “Ah, yes. Very urbane. Well, there’s a few of us in this benighted bogland who try to keep up civilized standards.”

  Pauli eased himself onto the pillowed couch. Five of the governor’s guests were civilian friends, including the lawyers from the afternoon’s trial. Arminius reclined in the place of honor beside the host, next to another German. Based on the background briefing he must be Sigimer, another leader of the conspiracy. Sigimer was a little younger than Arminius; the Latin in which he demanded wine from a servant was much less fluent than his fellow’s.

  The other diners probably lived in the governor’s residence as Varus’ special friends. They had no need to twiddle their thumbs at the entrance, waiting for servants to pass them through.

  “Tell me, Arminius,” one of the lawyers said as he swallowed a sausage ball from the platter in the middle of the three benches, “do you think these Chauci rebels are going to fight? I’d like to have some stories to carry back to Rome.”

  “You’ll carry back stories anyway, Gallus,” another lawyer gibed. “The truth would just get in your way.”

  “Yes, I am your lesser in that fashion, Lentulus,” Gallus agreed urbanely. “You’ve never let truth delay you in the slightest.”

  “Bah, the Chauci won’t fight,” Sigimer said in his heavy accent. “Anyway, it’s just the Squirrel Clan if they did. Nothing to worry about.”

  He slurped down his wine and belched. He was drinking it unmixed and from the slurring of his voice this wasn’t his first cup. The beer Sigimer had been brought up on wouldn’t have anything like the wine’s alcohol content.

  “Some of the boys got drunk and killed a few traders, Gallus,” Arminius said. He lifted a sausage ball between thumb and middle finger, aping the refined technique of the Romans around him. “You know how it is. When they sobered up in the morning it was too late. They decided they’d rather be rebels than be crucified alone.”

  “There’s no profit in crucifixion,” Varus said through a mouthful of honeyed sparrow.

  “Oh, but you’ve got to crucify some of them, Publius,” protested the lawyer beside Sigimer. “And after all, there’s not a lot of profit to be made from bog-trotting Germans even when they’re alive. Scarcely what milady’s looking for in the way of a house slave, are they?”

  “Depends on the lady, Cisius,” the man on the far end said. “How do you suppose your wife’s keeping warm while you’re away?”

  Cisius shuddered. “The same way she keeps warm when I’m in Rome, I trust,” he said. “What a thought. But she brought three adjoining farms as a dowry.”

  “There’ll be plenty of wealth!” Arminius said. “Sigimer and I will bring our folk to drive all the cattle out of the woods where they’ll be hidden. Oh,*yes, we’ll have a fine time chasing animals in the woods!”

  “Gentlemen, cups all round!” Varus ordered. He raised his own, a fine piece of silver. “To Arminius and Sigimer, and to the success of their enterprise!”

  I’ll drink to that, Pauli thought as he took a filled cup from a servant. I came back twenty-five hundred years to make sure the Germans succeed.

  But for all that, thought of what success meant soured the Gallic wine in his mouth.

  Moscow, Russia

  March 9, 1992

  Grainger hated enclosed spaces. They made his skin crawl. Usually he was happy to leave the confines of the temporal capsule for the wide-open spaces of any temporal horizon you could name. But not this time.

  Inside the Kremlin’s high brick walls were churches as well as government offices. Under one of them, the chapel of Ivan the Terrible, were catacombs, all but forgotten, long unused. Deep in those catacombs, the ARC Riders left TC 779. Grainger hated being underground more than anything but being sheathed in his ARC Rider’s hard armor.

  The temporal capsule’s chameleon skin mimicked the rough-cut stone walls perfectly before TC 779 phased out of the continuum. Then the team was alone, committed—at least for nine minutes until the capsule phased back into reality. Looking at the empty space where the temporal capsule had been, Tim Grainger felt as if he’d lost his best friend.

  Chun had found a hoary escape route leading from a priest-hole in the chapel through the catacombs to the riverbank. She was outdoing herself on this mission. Grainger was certain she’d chosen the underground hiding place for the TC just to torture him.

  Theoretically, the ARC Riders could access TC 779 anytime of day or night in an emergency, whether or not they could get into the chapel from above ground. The escape route was so ancient that there was a distinct possibility no Soviets were aware of it. It dated from Ivan the Terrible’s time and hadn’t been rediscovered until the 22nd century.

  Of course Chun convinced Team Leader Roebeck that they’d better walk the course. Thanks, Chun. They traced the length of their underground escape route, going all the way to the river and back to where they’d started. Never could be too sure that Central hadn’t missed something. A critical passage could have been blocked by natural or human caprice. Officially forgotten tunnels might have become some Russian splinter group’s secret headquarters.

  The ARC Riders remained silent as they wandered the catacombs, using Chun’s handheld positioner to test Central’s mapping, communicating only by hand sign until Roebeck was satisfied that plan and reality were compatible. That was good, because if Chun said one gloating thing about how Grainger was handling this spelunking, he was going to shoot her there and then. Claim an accidental discharge of his weapon. But she didn’t. So he focused on keeping his multifunction command and control membrane’s physio monitor from betraying any sign of his physical distress. You can control claustrophobia. You just have to concentrate.

  Finding the priesthole exactly where Central said it would be, Roebeck gave them a thumbs-up. Through Grainger’s multifunction control membrane, pulled down over his face, everything in the catacombs was as bright as day. The membrane filtered out the dust of centuries. Perhaps they could have chanced verbal communication via their membranes’ communications link, but Roebeck was being careful. Grainger always respected careful.

  Like wraiths, they stole into the chapel’s known extent. Here, where they might encounter a custodian or a guard, they could no longer rely on their command and control membranes. Grainger and the two women rolled the C and C devices down around their necks, where the membranes looked enough like scarves to pass muster. Then the ARC Riders climbed single file up crumbling stairs. Their first priority was orientation—a walkabout. It seemed safe, even prudent.

  But nothing on a new horizon is ever safe. And prudence would have meant leaving Chun behind with the craft, as far as Grainger was concerned. He’d argued. Ro
ebeck had overruled him. She’d held firm, even knowing that anybody other than a white person was worth a second look in Moscow in ’92. Twentieth-century Moscow had a vast reserve of white people in case the rest of the world ever ran out. In Grainger’s timeline, that hadn’t happened. In the timeline that the Russian revisionists were trying to institute, it might happen. Chun’s presence set them apart. Their Oriental teammate marked them as touring foreigners or part of some official visiting delegation.

  So be it. Grainger knew he could get himself out of whatever he got into. He’d memorized the bolt-hole routes and alternate access points around Moscow that could get him back to the catacombs. So he could get back to TC 779 whatever happened. From several places in town. With the women in tow, or alone if it came to it.

  Each ARC Rider had a separate go-to-shit plan in addition to their joint plan. Their separate plans might be the only viable alternatives if one or more ARC Riders were caught and interrogated by any of a number of Russian security services. The Soviets were unparalleled interrogators. A change in government didn’t mean that the apparatchiki—the functionaries—had lost their memories. Or their abilities. So you wanted to be redundantly prepared to ensure your own security. It was that kind of mission.

  If it all went to shit, Tim Grainger would do whatever it took to survive. He was armed and more dangerous than anybody on this horizon had ever dreamed a single person could be. He’d made every contingency preparation personally. He’d brought along every weapon he could think of, wrapping them in the mission-correct clothing provided by Central. His 20th-century weaponry was heavy in the black ballistic nylon gearbag on his shoulder.

  Less than half an hour into the recon, he was sure he was going to need every weapon he had.

  They’d planned to use the state-run guided tours of the Kremlin’s historical monuments as a cover, posing as tourists to get out the Kremlin gates unchallenged with their black nylon gearbags. They found a tour group examining the jasper floors, the Botticelli oil lamps, and the priceless icons encrusted with precious stones. They tagged along.