The Empire of Time

35

I am asleep when the summons comes. Ernst’s soft suden Deutsche voice fills the room.

‘Otto! Wake up! Hecht wants you.’

I rise and dress, still half in my dream of her, the room silent about me, the single night-light on the far wall revealing the contents of my room.

I am not one to acquire much – most of what I need is in my head – but I do keep certain little luxuries, gleanings from the shelves of Time: books and tiny statues; coins and photographs and, oh, trivial things, but meaningful to me. Sometimes I think that it’s not even for the things themselves, but to try and mask the truth of how we live. Not that I was ever one for evading the truth. Outside, I know, is a vacuum, and no ordinary vacuum at that. To cross a single micron of its vast emptiness, one would need to slip sideways and back a thousand times.

But no riddles now. Hecht awaits me.

Dressed, I go to the door and punch out the code for Hecht’s apartment. Our doors are not what they seem. They do not open on to some contiguous space, rather they link to whichever portion of this Nichtraum – this ‘no-space’ – we desire to visit. None of it actually exists. Our dwellings are like soap bubbles, only folded in, like Russian dolls. And the doors transport us. At a touch of the pad we transform the topography of Four-Oh, linking rooms that were previously unlinked. At least, that’s how it seems. Just as we travel in Time, linking one unrelated spot to another, so do we travel here. And if the doors ceased to work, then we’d be trapped.

Right now, it hisses open. In front of me lies the briefest of corridors; bare and functional, designed for one purpose only: to get me across this bubble universe of ours to Hecht.

Hecht is sitting at his desk. Busy at his screen, he does not acknowledge me at first, and when he does it is with that strange half-smile of his, as if, in that single glance, he has already all he needs to know.

Hecht is the oldest of us. How old nobody knows, yet old enough to have taught three generations at least. Old enough to have seen a thousand minor changes and to have been changed a thousand times.

And yet still himself – Hecht, ‘the Pike’. His stubble-short silver hair seems to glisten in the overhead light, his grey eyes to fasten on me as he speaks.

‘Ah, Otto, we seem to have a problem.’

His voice is soft and the words seem innocuous enough, yet something in the way he says them makes me go cold. Besides, it is not his way to summon you from sleep. Rarely does such urgency move him. After all, we have all of Time and Space.

He is wearing blue today – the blue of an early winter sky. His bare arms on the desk are strong and thickly haired, his hands the hands of a blacksmith, the fingers interlaced.

‘A problem?’

He nods, and as I wait for him to spell it out, I can feel my own heartbeat, feel the pressure of its quickened pulse against my chest.

Above Hecht is the Tree. Some of its branches are clear, others faint, yet all except the central trunk seem frail – the merest threads of possibilities – as if, at the blink of an eye, they might disappear.

Hecht’s eyes never leave mine. He watches me as if to gauge something from my reaction.

‘We’ve been infiltrated.’

‘What?’

‘Seydlitz. He didn’t return. Not in person, anyway.’

I don’t follow, but he continues anyway. ‘We’ve arrested three in his direct genetic line, but that still leaves five unaccounted for. They’re out there somewhere, doing mischief.’

‘Eight?’

‘Yes. They used Seydlitz’s DNA to infiltrate our bloodlines.’

‘Ah…’

Then this is serious, for our whole security system – the very way we travel in Time – is determined by our DNA. We use its information as a code, the best there is. But now the Russians have stolen it and used it against us.

Eight of them. My mind reels. We’ve been infiltrated before, but never on this scale.

‘Why didn’t we spot this before now?’ I ask, conscious even as I say it that this is Hecht’s direct responsibility.

‘Because we weren’t looking for it,’ he answers. ‘We’d been making the assumption that if they were born here, then they would be German, right down to the smallest strands of their DNA. I mean, our women never leave Four-Oh, and the only men they sleep with are our men, so it seemed safe to assume that there wasn’t a problem. Seems we were wrong. Mind, it didn’t help that the variations in chromosome eight were extremely marginal.’

‘But these men… they’re still our agents, yes?’

‘Ours and theirs.’

‘I see. So where precisely is the danger?’

‘We don’t know.’

I consider this a moment. ‘Sleepers,’ I say, and Hecht nods. ‘So why didn’t Yastryeb activate them before now?’

‘My guess is this. That they were planning something big. Maybe something to do with the platform of Four-Oh itself. Why else would they turn our men? What other use could they have?’

‘Yes, but why not activate them? Why wait for us to discover them?’ Hecht shook his head. ‘I don’t think they did. My guess is that they thought they had more time. Time enough to put together something imaginative and bold, something that would damage us irreparably. Maybe even eradicate us.’

‘And you think they’d go along with that? I mean, the Russians may have turned them, but to make them take that next step, to harm their own. After all, they were born and bred as Germans…’

‘I know,’ Hecht says, and there is the slightest hint of dismay in his voice as he says it. He, like me, I’m sure, is surprised – shocked may be the better term – at how patient, how long-term the Russian planning has been in this regard. We’d always considered them more impulsive than that. More spur of the moment.

Only now that they had been activated, maybe we’d see Yastryeb adopt some ad-hoc scheme. Something that could shake the Tree. After all, why waste the opportunity? And maybe that is why Hecht is troubled by this. Because for once we’re not in control.

Sixteen hours, I think. It’s not a long time when you think of it, but experienced agents can cause a lot of damage in that time. The thought of that makes me ask the question I’ve been wanting to ask since I was summoned.

‘So just who are they?’

‘Of your operatives? Gruber…’

‘No.’

Hecht pushes a pair of genetic charts towards me, studies of the repeated sequences in chromosome eight which form the genetic fingerprint of a man. At first I don’t see the similarities, and then I do, and nod.

‘What did they do? Clone him?’

‘Nothing so complex. Seydlitz always liked women. All they needed was to trick him into sleeping with one of theirs.’

‘And you think that’s what they did?’

Hecht’s smile is bleak. ‘I know it for a fact. The Russians even made a file of it.’

That, too, shocks me. A file…

But I realise something else from what Hecht’s said. The ‘three’ must already have been interrogated. I sigh, wondering who they are, and if any of them are good friends. We are a small community, after all.

Before this latest war there was another war, fought – at first – with more conventional weaponry. That war – in its first, long phase – lasted all of eighty-seven years, and at its end only a handful of survivors remained – in the ‘no-space’ bunkers of Neu Berlin and Moscow, the command staffs and their families. Thirty-one families, in our case, seventy-eight in theirs. And from those narrowed bloodlines all of us now derive.

I meet Hecht’s eyes. ‘How did they get their orders?’

‘In the field. Each one of them was contacted the very first time they jumped back.’

‘But that isn’t possible. How could they know where to be or when?’

‘Krauss told them.’

I stare at him, incredulous. ‘Theodor Krauss?’

Hecht shakes his head. ‘No, thank Urd. Phillipe.’

‘Ah…’ I have a vague image of a man; tall, blond-haired and broad-shouldered. A lot like Seydlitz, now that I come to think of it.

‘And the damage?’

But Hecht only sighs, and I realise that he doesn’t know. The damage is being done right now, and he needs us to rectify it before the game is lost and the branches of the Tree blink out one by one.

Time. There is never enough time.

36

The platform is ready, its massive concave circle vibrating faintly as if alive. As I step into the room the women look up from the surrounding desks, their eyes anxious. They know that I may not return this time.

So it is sometimes. But this is much more serious than usual. I am the third operative to depart. Two more will leave after I’m gone. Yet will any of us return? Not if we’re too late. Not if we can’t undo the damage that is even now being done.

I have been busy between times. Hecht gave me Ritter’s report to read and a copy of the Russians’ file. Where he got the last, I don’t know, but they are both sobering documents. Freisler was right, after all. Seydlitz did get careless. Hecht blames himself. He thinks that the very directness of Seydlitz’s project may have alerted the Russians, but Freisler and I know otherwise.

Meanwhile Time has healed itself. History is as it was. The river flows on. All except for that huge gap in Space-Time in the middle of 1952. That is still there, for some reason, though the main current of Time appears to flow about it, like a river about a rock. And we’re not sure why. Some changes take on a permanency, others don’t. Some alter the river’s course, others merely dam it for a while.

And sometimes – and these are perhaps the worst instances – it changes and our perceptions and memories change with it, so that there seems no change at all. That is, until a traveller returns from the past and finds us so.

Those are the times I fear. To lose something – or someone – and not to know.

I have come straight here from a conference – Hecht and the five of us. He wanted to see if we could discern any pattern to events. Aside from the obvious, that is. Of the five who are out there, not a single one is in charge of a major project. They’re all cadet operatives, learning their trade in the field before taking on new projects of their own. It’s how we all start, helping others to carry out their schemes while learning all we can about those Ages in which we travel.

Beyond this, what? Gruber is patient and careful – meticulously so. Of the other four, there is the same divergence of character one might expect from any group of young men.

The eldest is twenty-eight, the youngest twenty-three. None of them has any longer than four years’ experience in the field. Anticipating things, Hecht had the genetic charts of all the dead operatives over the past four years checked out. Of those, another fifteen carried variants of Seydlitz’s distinctive genetic pattern.

Murdered, he thinks. Killed because they would not switch sides and betray the Fatherland.

But the big question is, how will the Russians use them? What scheme have they hatched to get at us through these ‘sleepers’ in our midst? Or is the damage already done?

Hecht thinks not. It is a characteristic of Time that while one can travel back a long way, one cannot travel forward a single nanosecond beyond the Now. In that sense, Time has a ceiling. It is as if we are in a lift that is moving slowly upward, but down the shaft of which we might plunge at any moment. A hole so deep one might fall for ever.

In Hecht’s opinion, the Russians’ plan will have been triggered the very moment Seydlitz went missing. Until then, they would not have risked removing the foci from their chests, for as soon as they did, those agents would vanish from our tracking screens, alerting us. But unless they remove them and substitute their own – a lengthy process that can take anywhere between twelve and sixteen hours – what possible use can they be?

No. Things are happening now – right now – but in the Past.

Our job then is to locate our missing operatives and bring them back. Or, failing that, to kill them. It isn’t a pleasant thought. I like Gruber. Yet as I stand there on the platform, waiting to jump, I find a matching coldness in myself. If he succeeds, then I die, and all my friends with me.

And if I die, who will look after Katerina?

37

The room is locked. As I look about me, I remember how things were and note that nothing seems to have been disturbed. My books lay open on the desk to the right of the bed as I left them, the old brass candlestick I bought in Konigsberg spattered with melted wax. My black leather boots rest on the floor to the left, dry mud still clinging to them, while my green velvet smoking robe hangs from the back of the tiny walnut wardrobe.

In the corner, tucked away, rests my leather travelling case, a white cloth belt acting as a strap.

It is the evening of 27 July 1759, and the sun is shining in through the leaded window of my Potsdam apartment. But what I am most aware of is the smell.

Someone has been in my room. I can smell the faint odour of their cologne, like a dark ink stain in a bowl of crystal clear water.

Smell. It always hits you powerfully when you jump back. Its richness can be overpowering at times. This time, however, the smell means something.

Gruber. Gruber has been here.

It takes a moment to assimilate. As my pulse slows and my lungs become accustomed to the richer air, so my thoughts clear.

Getting in here was no mystery. Gruber had a copy of the key. Until today there was no reason not to trust him, but now I know what he is.

There could be a bomb here somewhere, or a device to trap me.

I decide not to touch a thing – not even to look – and, turning about, I open the door and slip out, locking the door and then walking down the stairs, careful to make no sound, pausing on the turn to listen before hurrying to the door and out on to the street.

My clothes are of the Age: a long brocade jacket and a three-cornered hat, knee-length boots and britches. And, as this is Potsdam, capital of Prussia, and the style is distinctly military, so the cut and colour of my clothes is simple too: blues and greens, with a plain black hat. I blend in. And little wonder. I have spent years here in this place.

Church bells are ringing for the evening service. Even here, in free-thinking Prussia, religion is still important, and people stroll in their best attire, enjoying this most beautiful of evenings.

I see it all, but am distracted. Where is Gruber? That’s what I want to know. That’s why I hurry now, as if late for the evening service.

Gruber’s rooms are on the other side of town, near St Nikolai. He’ll not be there. He’d not be that stupid. But I have to check.

His landlady squints out at me from the darkness of her hallway, then grudgingly lets me pass. She knows me as Gruber’s friend, nor is there any reason for her to suspect otherwise, unless he’s told some tale. But it seems not. I am allowed to go up. The door is locked, but again I have the key. I hesitate. What if there’s a bomb? I fling it open, trusting to fate. Of Gruber there’s no sign, but it’s clear he was in a hurry. Clothes are strewn all over the place, and the contents of a bag have been emptied out over the floor. And there on the bed…

I walk across, then crouch, sniffing at the stain on the cover. It’s blood. Gruber’s blood, no doubt, where they cut the focus from his chest. Indeed, after a moment’s search, I find the tiny, delicate circle lying there among the debris. It looks like the very finest of filters, its ridged edge like the milling of an ancient metal coin.

They would have had to have done the crudest of operations on him – the most basic of repair jobs – but they will need to buy themselves time if they’re to replace it with their own. It takes twelve hours minimum to fix a new focus, sixteen max – it needs to grow into the nerves, to integrate with the whole of the body’s nervous system, especially the brain. Get it wrong and you might arrive at your destination missing a hand, a leg, or even your head.

I straighten up and look about me. There is a second smaller room just off to the left behind a pair of doors. I go through. Inside is a card table and four chairs. Two empty wine bottles and three glasses clutter the table. And cards. I can almost see them there, playing endless hands of cards, seeing out the night, awaiting the moment when they’d have to act. No doubt a messenger was sent, the very instant that the focus was taken from Seydlitz’s chest.

I smile and reach into my pocket, drawing out the skin-tight gloves. Pulling them on, I pick up the cards and slip them into the transparent bag.

As ever, I have come prepared. I knew I would find this, or something like this. To take Gruber they would have to have come here in person, and that meant that they would leave traces. From those traces we can put faces to them, reconstruct their appearance from their genetic code. Saliva, sweat, skin particles – anything will do. And the results are good. Ninety-eight per cent accurate, or thereabouts.

Because it will help to know who I’m looking for. Gruber they’ll hide away. But they can’t all hide. Not all of the time. And if I know what they look like it will give me an advantage. That is, if Gruber hasn’t already given them my likeness.

Gruber and his new friends will be armed, but that doesn’t worry me. If I find them I’ll give them no chance to use a weapon.

But before then I need to trip back.

38

They are waiting for me at the platform. Inge takes the samples and hurries off, and while I wait, Urte comes across and asks me how I am.

I have not seen Urte in almost a month. She’s almost half my height, but she always seems somehow bigger than her physical size. Her grey eyes smile up at me.

‘Will I see you later?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Have you forgotten?’

For a moment I wonder what she means, and then it hits me. We have an appointment for that evening. This thing with Seydlitz and Gruber had driven it from my mind.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I shall be there.’

Either that, or I’ll be dead. But I do not say that. I stand there, awkward now. And, sensing that, she smiles and nods and walks away, leaving me wondering how she manages to do that to me. After all, she is only half my age.

I walk over to where Zarah is sitting, hunched over her monitor, and ask her how things are. She looks up at me, distracted momentarily, then gestures towards the screen.

‘He’s still there. For the moment.’

She is speaking of Klaus, Klaus Heusinger. He has gone back, too, to take out Schwarz, another of the turncoats. They are out there right now, somewhere in the late twenty-fourth century, in the Time of the Mechanists. At any moment he might return. Or things might change.

In an Augenblich, I think. In the blink of an eye.

If a single one of us fails, we all fail. If a single one of them is successfully operated upon by the Russians, then we have lost, because then they can infiltrate us before we know what’s happened and can thus penetrate our defences. Right now, however, all five are suspended in their timestreams, subject to the normal flow of Time. Until the Russians can place foci in their chests they are vulnerable. And so we must hit them now. There will be no second chance.

If you’re clever, you might have spotted a paradox of sorts in there. If they could operate, then they would have done, and we would have lost already, so this wouldn’t actually be happening. Only it doesn’t quite work like that. Timestreams have this peculiar property of running twice: first time without interference, and only then, second time round, with their changed characteristics. For instance, the day before Gehlen invented his first crude time machine, no one had ever travelled back in Time. Time was pure. No one had tinkered with it. There were other dimensions and secondary universes, certainly, but there were no links between them. Only when Gehlen started things rolling – made his first trip back, eighty-five years into the Past – was the timestream sullied.

Inge returns and offers me a pair of files. ‘There are three separate DNA strands, Gruber excluded. Those are the first two. The other’s new, so it’ll take a while to process.’

I open the first of the files and study it.

His name is Nemtsov – Alexandr Davydovich Nemtsov – and the generated image shows him to be a large-built, heavily muscled man. They’ve made him thirty in the picture, but he could be anywhere between twenty and fifty. Dark eyes, dark hair and a large, long nose. Not a handsome man.

I push the picture aside and look at the report. Nemtsov has crossed our paths on two previous occasions, once in the twenty-third century, and once late in the twenty-fourth, during the last days of the Mechanist Kings. According to this he killed one of our agents, but on neither occasion did we get a good look at him, so the image could be wrong. Unlikely, but…

He’s clever, this one. Good at his job. But this seems to be the earliest he’s ventured back, and I note the fact, hoping it might help. If he’s not familiar with Frederick’s period then he might just fuck up. It’s possible.

The other one is Dankevich.

I look up at Inge and laugh. ‘You’re kidding!’

She smiles back at me. ‘No. It’s your old friend. Guess they needed someone who knows the Age.’

True. But Dankevich! I had shot the bastard twice, the second time fatally – but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t the same man. When you travel in Time, things don’t always happen sequentially. What was my past was probably his future. But at least I knew one thing: I wouldn’t die this time round, not if Dankevich was there, because if I died, then who would shoot him?

I grin then close the file. It’s time to get back. Time to find Gruber and close him down.

39

I return to Potsdam. It is still the evening of the twenty-seventh. A single hour has passed since I was last here, but the shadows are lengthening, and the streets are silent now. At the Black Eagle tavern, the innkeeper, Muller, tells me he saw Gruber earlier in the company of two men: a big, dark-haired man and a weasel of a fellow.

Dankevich.

They bought several flagons of wine, then left.

‘How long ago?’

Muller shrugs. ‘Two hours, maybe three?’

I thank him with a silver thaler, then hurry to Taysen’s stables to the west of the town. As I walk between those neat, Prussian houses, I start trying to think like them. Gruber and I were here for one reason only: to save Frederick’s life.

In seventeen days’ time, Frederick will take on the combined armies of Russia and Austria at Kunersdorf, eighty kilometres east of Berlin. It will be a fateful battle, and Frederick’s forty-eight thousand men – almost half the strength of the enemy force – will be soundly beaten. That much we cannot change. But we can keep Frederick himself alive. Two horses will be shot out from under him on the battlefield, and two musket-balls will penetrate his cloak. The second will kill him. Unless the snuff-box that it hits on the way – a flimsy silver thing, barely capable of deflecting a shot – is replaced by something sturdier.

Historically I knew I had already succeeded. Frederick had survived. But unless I actually made the swap, he would not. And then…

It was simple, really. If Frederick died, so too would Prussia, partitioned off between its three great rivals: France, Austria and Russia. Not a square mile of it would survive, and without Prussia there could be no Germany.

Because Frederick had lived, catastrophe was turned into ultimate victory, for though only eighteen thousand of Frederick’s men survived that bloody encounter, by the end of the month Old Fritz would gather together a brand-new force of thirty-three thousand men and, in an act of heroic defiance, steel himself to fight one final battle on the open field before Berlin.

He never had to, of course. His defiance proved enough. Both the Russians and the Austrians withdrew. Prussia was saved, and so, a century further on, its greatest chancellor, Bismarck, would create the German Confederation.

So history functioned. With a little help from us.

As I came into the street where Taysen’s was, I looked up past the walls of the town towards the royal palace. Sanssouci rested on the hills above the town, a marvel of rococo architecture, its elegance understated, like its owner.

He was a wonder, Old Fritz. For six years now he had taken on the rest of mainland Europe and held them off. And not merely held them off, but beaten them soundly on numerous occasions. He was an inspiration to us all. Prussia, a country of four and a half million souls, had faced a coalition whose joint population was over ninety million, and whose combined armies were at least six times the size of Prussia’s own. In the space of nine months, between November 1757 and August 1758, Frederick had crossed a thousand miles of Central Europe and defeated his three main rivals one after another – the French at Rossbach, the Austrians at Leuthen, and the Russians, finally, at Zorndorf. Each time the odds were heavily against him, and each time he emerged from the battlefield the undisputed master. To have won a single one of those battles was remarkable, but to have triumphed in all three…

There was no king to match him in all of Germany’s long history, and I had met them all. But the long struggle had cost Prussia dear. To arm and feed his armies, Frederick had bled his country white. There was barely an animal to be had in the whole of Potsdam, or so Taysen told me as we sat in his office sharing a tankard of beer.

Taysen is an old friend, but this once he says he cannot help.

‘I’ll pay well,’ I say. ‘Whatever you ask.’

He gives the faintest smile. ‘If only it were that easy, Otto. You see, I’ve sold all my horses. Yes, and for a good price. Your friend Gruber—’

‘I need a horse,’ I say. ‘If you can get me one…’

I place a heavy bag of silver thalers on the table before him.

‘Otto, I…’ He shrugs apologetically, but his eyes look longingly at the bag of silver.

‘There must be one horse left in Potsdam, surely?’

The notion gets him thinking. He reaches for his beer and downs it, then stands. ‘Wait here,’ he says. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Thus it is that, twenty minutes later, I am riding north-west towards Berlin on a horse that previously belonged to a captain in the Bayreuth Dragoons. The man, Taysen tells me, was drunk, else he’d never have contemplated the deal, but my only concern is not to be taken as a thief.

Besides, I have other things on my mind. Like where Gruber is. I go to Nauener-Tor and ask the gateman if he’s seen a party heading out on to the Berlin road – merchants, not soldiers, with pack horses, maybe – and he says yes, they passed not an hour back. Four men in a hurry. And he thought it odd, because they had three spare horses with them, and horses being at such a premium, and there being no wares on their saddles…

I thank the old man and ride on, hastening my pace as darkness falls. If I were them I’d find lodgings in Berlin – in one of the poorer quarters, maybe – and do the operation there. But they’ll know I’m after them.

Or someone like me.

40

There are a dozen inns on the road and I am forced to stop and check each one, but my instinct is that they’ve headed straight for Berlin. If I were them, I’d try to lose myself in some backstreet lodging house and do the operation there, but I know from experience that it’s a mistake to try to outguess the Russians. They rarely do the expected. The only thing I’m certain of is that Gruber cannot jump – not yet – and they won’t leave him here, so until they’re settled somewhere they’ll move fast and try to lose me.

Of course, it’s possible that they left the Berlin road and doubled back in the dark, but it’s unlikely. This is Angerdorfer country – farming villages. There’s not a major town for more than fifty miles, unless they make for Brandenburg, and why go there? Besides, Berlin is on the way to Kunersdorf, and, if my hunch is right, they’ll not waste the chance to make a double strike: at us, through Gruber, and at Frederick himself.

It’s after dawn when I reach the Schloss Bridge to the west of the medieval town. The royal residence dominates the skyline on the other bank, but it’s of no interest right now. Frederick has not been to Berlin these past six years. He’s south of here. Until three days ago he could be found on a lonely farm in Duringsvorkwerk, catching up on his correspondence, but having heard of Marshal Saltykov’s victory at Paltzig, he’ll have broken camp immediately and will be marching north, towards Frankfurt-an-der-Oder. In four days’ time he will reach Sommerfeld, and four days after that he will arrive in Frankfurt itself. It’s there I plan to meet him. But not until I’ve dealt with Gruber.

The gate is open and has been for an hour, and when I ask the gatekeeper, he tells me that four men entered the town at daybreak. It would appear that they have let the spare horses go, for the man makes no reference to them when I question him. I leave him with a thaler in his hand and gallop on, down the Schlossfreiheit with its tall and massive buildings, then out into the open space before the Schloss itself.

Berlin, even in this age, is large, and I barely know where to begin my search, but I’m certain they’ll head for one of the poorer, less reputable parts of town. I stop and look about me. There are stalls out already. I dismount and walk across to one that’s selling Bouletten, and purchase several of the spicy meatballs that are Berlin’s culinary specialty. I’m hungry, but that’s not the reason why I choose this particular stall. It’s well placed, on the corner of the two main thoroughfares, with a good view of the entire square. The vendor is a big man in his forties, with an untrimmed hedge of a moustache, and as I chew on one of his delicacies, I ask him if he saw four travellers pass earlier.

He’s been here since first light, hoping to catch the early trade, and he remembers the men well. He even describes the fourth of them: a tall man, quite young and yet completely bald, with the look of a priest about him. He says they went south, down the Bruderstrasse.

I thank the man with a coin, then walk my mount across the cobbled square.

I should be hurrying, only I’ve a good idea now where they’ve gone. Berlin is, and always has been, a twin city, and here, to the south of the Schloss, begins its other, smaller half. This is Colln. Where I’m walking now is the nicer, more respectable part of Colln, but to the south, where the town nestles in a curve of the River Spree, is a huddle of streets that spill out on to the river front.

Berlin is a cosmopolitan place, even in this century. You can find a colony of French Huguenots to the south-west in Martinicken, near the Kleine Tiergarten, or Bohemian Protestants in southern Friedrichstadt. There’s a Jewish quarter in Kreuzberg, and smaller gatherings of Poles and Slavs and Dutch to the east of the old town. All add to the flavour of the place, yet none of these has such an influence on Berlin’s character as its soldiers. Right now they are a hundred miles away, marching to Frederick’s order, but in peacetime up to twenty thousand might be found quartered throughout the city. It is why Berlin is a city of whores. But while the soldiers are away, the landlords must find other lodgers, the girls other sweethearts.

I stop at the north end of Fischerstrasse, looking down that long, narrow street. The facing rows of tall, four-storey houses seem to lean in towards each other, soot dark and close enough to touch, their wood-framed windows opened outwards. It’s a shabby, grimy place and its inhabitants dress to match. I have a gut instinct that they’re here, but I could be wrong. They could be anywhere. But then, why head south from the Schloss? If they were looking for a place to the east of the city, they would have carried on along the Konigstrasse, out past the town hall and the police headquarters.

Mind, they could be heading towards the Kietz…

I need to be careful now. For all I know one of them is keeping look-out, trying to spot me before I can spot them. It’s cat and mouse. And there’s the problem of where to stable my horse.

I smile, knowing suddenly what to do. If I find where they’ve stabled their horses, then I’ll find them.

It takes me half an hour, but the time’s well spent. They’re here in Colln, or not far away. Until they can operate on Gruber, they’ll need their horses, just in case they have to make a quick escape. There’s no quicker way of travelling in these times.

Having stabled my own horse, I call the ostler to me and, slipping him a few coins, tell him I’m one of Frederick’s spies, working for the Marquis D’Argens, and that I’m trailing the four who came in earlier.

Like everyone, he knows D’Argens by reputation, and the mere mention of the name is enough to persuade him to help me. He takes me over to the stall where their horses are and, as I walk about them, he tells me what he knows.

The big man, Nemtsov, appears to be their spokesman. It was he who paid the ostler, he who gave instructions concerning the horses. The other three were silent, the ‘priest’ eerily so.

‘I knew,’ he says, with a self-satisfied smirk. ‘I just knew they were up to no good.’

I notice blood on one of the saddles – Gruber’s blood, no doubt – and turn and ask the man if one of them seemed hurt.

He shrugs. ‘Maybe.’

But I know he doesn’t know, and that worries me a little, because Gruber would be hurting by now, and it would show.

I leave the stables and move swiftly down the street. They could be anywhere in the vicinity, but there are ways of narrowing down the search.

In these days before advanced communications, everyone seems interested in everyone else’s business. I walk across and, doffing my hat and bowing, greet them.

‘Ladies. I’m looking for some friends.’

There are giggles and blushes, but one of them, more forward than the others, meets my eyes, a flirting smile on her lips.

‘And what would these friends of yours be like, master?’

She’s a working girl, up early for her kind, and from her clothes I’d judge she’s far from Berlin’s finest.

‘Four men,’ I answer her. ‘A big man and a priest. A small, dapper little fellow, and one other. Young. Dark-haired.’

There’s a moment’s consultation, and then the girl puts out her hand. I smile and place a silver thaler in it – a real one, not one of Frederick’s debased ‘ephraims’.

She stares at it round-eyed, then looks back at me and grins. ‘Are you sure these friends of yours can’t wait an hour? That is, if you’ve another like this.’

But I am not tempted. I want Gruber, and I need to find him soon.

‘Another time,’ I say, and smile back at her pleasantly.

‘A shame,’ she says, ‘for you look like a fine gentleman.’

‘And no clap-ridden soldier!’ remarks one of the others, and they all begin to giggle once more.

‘Well?’ I ask. ‘Am I to know where my friends are lodged?’

In answer she smiles and turns and puts her arm out, like an actress on the stage. ‘Right here,’ she says, ‘on the third floor, above old Schmidt.’

And even as I look up at the window, I see one of them – the bald one – and know that I’ve been spotted.

The girl’s smile changes to shocked surprise as I push past her, drawing my gun. The stairs are inside, to the right of Schmidt’s stall, and as I hurry up them I can hear urgent voices coming from above.

But even as I turn on to the first-floor landing, there is a familiar hiss of air behind me and I whirl about to find Nemtsov there on the steps below. He raises his gun, but I’m much quicker than him. The beam catches him through the temple and he falls back with a cry.

I turn back in time to see the priest’s bald head duck back from the landing above. I hear the soft thud of a grenade drop on the stairs close by and, without thought, throw myself at the door to my right. It gives, and I am halfway across the room when the thing explodes.

I pick myself up and stagger to the window. The house is on fire now, the old wood burning fiercely on the landing. There’s no way out the front, so I open the shattered window and clamber out, then drop into the cluttered backyard.

I move back, looking up at the backs of the old houses. There is a rickety wooden fire escape two houses down, and if they were to get out on to the roof they could make their way across to it. Even as I watch, I hear the roof hatch crack open and see the bald one’s head appear.

I fire off two pulsed beams at him, but he scrambles behind the chimney stack, and neither hits the mark. Brick dust and scorched cement showers down. The angle’s awkward and I really need to get higher. Not only that, but I’m vulnerable where I am. A single shot could pick me off.

I run inside, making my way through a dank, dark basement room and out into the shop. Schmidt is standing there, looking up the staircase, his face distraught, wringing his hands in anguish. The whole top of the building is now on fire, and a crowd is slowly forming. A bell is clanging some way off, and as I step out on to the street again, the working girl points me out and yells. ‘That’s him!’

‘It’s okay,’ I shout back, putting my hands up defensively as the crowd looks to me. ‘They’re Russians… Russian spies!’

But it’s far from okay. I knew they’d fight me, but I didn’t expect them to risk Gruber’s life – not in so cavalier a fashion.

I move back across the street, looking up at the rooftops again, trying to get a glimpse of them, but there’s nothing. Even so, they will have to come down. The fire is already spreading to the surrounding buildings, and while the Russians can jump, Gruber can’t, and I’m pretty sure they won’t leave him to his fate. Yet even as I start forward someone grabs me and pulls me about. I find myself staring into the angry face of a soldier – a captain by his uniform.

‘Who are you?’ he demands gruffly. Behind him stands the ostler. ‘Klaus here tells me you work for D’Argens, but I’ve never seen you before. I think you’re the spy, my friend!’

I try to pull away, but his grip is firm, and I decide to plead with him.

‘You’ve got to help me. If they get away, then we’re all done for. There’s a man in there, Gruber – he’s about to betray us all!’

It’s the truth, and something of my conviction must get through, because the captain loosens his grip.

‘My name is Behr,’ I say. ‘Otto Behr, and I do work for D’Argens, only you won’t have heard of me because I’ve been away, in Silesia, trailing these Russian bastards.’

There’s a scream. I turn to see that one of the women is hit – burned by the beam of a Russian gun. There’s a sudden stench of burned flesh.

‘Get them out of here now!’ I yell at the captain, hoping he’ll respond. And he does. The tone of authority in my voice does the trick. He’s Prussian, after all. Yet even as he tries to urge the crowd to leave, two more are hit.

There’s screaming now, and panic in the crowded street. The very nature of the wounds – huge gouges of exposed and burning flesh – scares them. I use the moment’s chaos to escape and run towards the second house down and kick my way inside, gun raised, ready to brazen it out.

And stop dead, astonished.

‘Otto. It’s about time you did something useful.’

It’s Freisler. He puts a finger to his lips. There are hurried footsteps coming down the stairs. As a figure appears on the landing, Freisler raises his gun and aims, then lowers it again.

It’s an old woman, moving with the haste of someone half her age. She’s in a state of undress and not a pretty sight, but fear has clearly triumphed over vanity. She sees us and freezes, but Freisler waves her down, giving her his most reassuring smile, and she hurries away, the door slamming shut behind her, leaving Freisler and I alone in the silent house.

‘How did you know?’ I ask quietly.

‘You came back and told us,’ Freisler answers, not looking at me. ‘You had a bit of trouble. We thought we’d change that.’

‘Trouble?’

‘They shot you.’

‘Ah…’

‘But you got back.’

‘Ah…’

‘But that won’t happen this time.’

There’s a creak on the stairs. Someone is coming down, slowly, carefully, step by step. Freisler gestures to me to go across and crouch beneath the stairs. I do as he says. This is my place, my time, but I am used to taking orders, and this is not a time to argue.

I glimpse his boots first, beautifully polished leather boots. He hesitates, then leans forward very, very slowly, looking down towards where I am crouched.

And I burn him, straight through his right eye. He makes a shocked, strangled noise of surprise and tumbles over. We don’t expect to die, we time travellers, but we do. And sometimes more than once.

I wait a second or two, listening to the silence, trying to make out if Dankevich is up there too, but there’s nothing. He’s probably still on the roof, with Gruber.

I go up quickly. The ‘priest’ is lying on his back, a pool of blood beneath his head. Dead. At least, in this time-line. And maybe dead for good, unless they act to change things.

I call down quietly to Freisler and he joins me after a moment.

‘Bobrov,’ he says, looking at the man. ‘A real nasty bastard. He’s killed a good dozen of our men.’

I look at Freisler and blink. Something’s wrong, but I can’t pinpoint it. Besides, we need to deal with the others. I look to Freisler and gesture up the stairs with my Honig.

‘You first or me?’

‘Age before beauty…’

And so I let him go ahead.

There’s no sign of them on the next two floors, which leaves the very top of the house. There’s a strong smell of burning now and the street outside is full of smoke. The flames will spread to this house in a while, but for now we’re safe. Besides, we can always jump.

Freisler steps out from one of the rooms and looks to me, then glances up the stairs. ‘Something’s wrong.’

‘Wrong?’

‘They’re good, the Russians. Better than us, most times. But this… it’s not their style. You found them too easily. And two dead with two shots. You’re not usually that accurate, are you, Otto?’

It’s true. He’s right, and suddenly I know what I missed.

‘Bobrov…’ I say. ‘We’ve a file on him, right?’

‘Right.’

‘But the fourth man, the other Russian, he wasn’t on our files. Inge couldn’t give me a likeness.’

Freisler stares at me. ‘So?’

‘So there are more than three of them here. And those spare horses…’ I bang my hand against my forehead. ‘Damn! They’ve switched him! They’ve bloody well switched him!’

But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we get out of there at once.

‘Jump!’ I yell. ‘Just jump!’

And even as I say it, there is a distinct click and the air begins to glow.

But I’m gone, even as the centre of Berlin erupts.

41

Hecht is waiting for us at the platform. I jump through first, Freisler a moment later. His hair is singed, his clothes steaming, but he’s alive.

‘Shit!’ he says angrily. ‘Think quicker in future!’

‘What happened?’ Hecht asks.

I glance at Freisler, then answer him. ‘It was a trap. I followed them to Berlin, but they must have made the switch on the way. They’ve a team there. Six men at the very least.’

Hecht looks down. We both know we can’t afford to match the Russians man for man.

‘You and Freisler go,’ he says. ‘I’ll see who else I can rustle up. If any of the others return early, I’ll send them through. Where will you be?’

‘Potsdam,’ I say without hesitation. ‘This time I want to be there when the messenger arrives.’

42

But it’s not as simple as that. Every jump necessitates a careful calculation. Even when we seem at our most cavalier and jump to safety, there’s always a pre-planned destination – a bolt-hole, if you like. That’s how it works, and the women at the tracking screens make sure it does. They keep an eye on us. They know just where and when we are for every second of our time back there in the Past. And when we need, as now, to go to such a place and such a time, it is they who work out how to do it. With a little help from the machines.

There are a lot of factors involved, and in the early days it was very hit and miss. Agents were sent back into the sides of mountains, into mid-air, even into lakes. We lost a lot that way. But as the years have passed they have got very good at what they do.

It’s not just a case of calculating how far back and to what point on the earth’s surface we need to jump, there’s also the fact that the planet is revolving not only about its axis, but about the sun, which is itself slowly drifting out from the centre of a slowly revolving galaxy. Everything is in constant motion, which is why our calculations have to be updated nanosecond by nanosecond to keep the Time-grid accurate. That grid registers the position of the jump platform in absolute terms. Wherever we are right now is forever zero, zero, zero, zero. Hence Four-Oh. And from Four-Oh every point in Time and Space has its own four-dimensional grid reference. Those references change moment by moment yet the machines keep track. If I need to go back to a certain place, they can get me there in the blink of an eye – they’re that fast.

And if that seems complex enough, there’s a second factor to be taken into account. Nothing inorganic can make a jump. Only living matter can be transported back and forth through time. Which means that if I don’t want to find myself back there, buck naked with only my dick in my hand, I have to take back artefacts that are made of living tissue.

Again, it’s no real problem. We’ve had centuries of doing this. The clothes I wear back there, the money I spend, even the gun I carry, are made of my own DNA – marvellous fakes that our experts spend much time and care producing from moulds they make back in the Past. What’s more, the use of it makes it easier to screen who jumps back to the platform. Any Russian landing there would find himself fried in an instant.

Or so it was, until yesterday.

I go to the workshops to see Hans Luwer. He is alone in his workshop for once, none of his other selves about. Hans is our artefacts expert and has a bag of goodies waiting for me: guns and knives and bombs. And two other special items I requested. One is an ornately jewelled snuff-box, specially strengthened, the other is a copy of Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque, in the 1699 original edition – Frederick’s favourite book. Both are gifts for Old Fritz, and like all else they’re made of my DNA, but you wouldn’t know that, not unless you owned an electron-microscope. They look and feel quite real.

I thank him and turn to go, but he calls me back.

‘Otto, would you do something for me?’

I can see this is awkward for him, and I’m not sure why.

‘Of course. What is it?’

‘Just a note. To a woman I met. I— the address is on it.’

I take the sealed envelope from him and slip it into my pocket. Hans has been back with me a number of times, to do his own research into coinage, clothes and the like, but this is the first I’ve heard of the woman.

‘I thought she deserved some kind of explanation,’ he says, not meeting my eyes.

I smile sadly. ‘Not the truth, I hope.’

He looks up. ‘Oh, no! No, I… Shit, Otto, why is it so difficult sometimes?’

I reach across and hold his arm a moment and he nods, thanking me for my understanding. Then I turn and leave, wondering how many more of us have these little secrets.

43

I am outside, further down the street, concealed in a shadowed doorway, when Dankevich emerges from the house. He looks up and down the road, then gestures for Gruber to come. I see my erstwhile friend, hunched, clearly in pain, step out, Nemtsov at his back, holding his shoulders, keeping him upright.

I could take the three of them out right now, but I want to know what else is going on. This is my patch, my little segment of history, and I don’t like the fact that the Russians are here in force. If I can kill all six of them I will.

That is, if there are not yet more of them.

The fourth of them – a short, neat man with jet black hair – is the last to emerge. He looks right across at me, but I know that I’m too well hidden. Unless, of course, he’s got night lenses in. It’s a possibility, but then why would he not react on seeing me?

Unless that too is part of the game.

You see, nothing is ever straightforward in Time. If we both did the same old things, time and again, it would soon become predictable. And though the aim is to win – to eradicate the enemy – there is also a feeling, and I know I’m not alone in this, that the game is of itself a satisfaction, and a deep one at that.

I like to outguess them, to prove myself not only quicker and tougher, but also smarter than they are. They outnumber us three to one and they are good – Yastryeb has trained them well – but we’re better. We have to be simply to survive.

I let them get some way ahead, then follow, keeping to the shadows. They are going to Taysen’s, of course, to buy up the last of his horses, and I could have waited there for them, but I want to be there when they link up with the others – to see exactly what’s going on.

Freisler is waiting at the Nauener-Tor, just outside the north wall of the town, among the trees. He has the horse I purchased from the captain of dragoons. If the Russians double back, he’ll see that and pursue them, otherwise I’ll catch up with him on the Berlin road.

Their business with Taysen takes but a moment. Nemtsov goes in alone and emerges with a big grin on his face and seven lead reins in his big right hand. Dankevich and the other go across to help him with the horses, but Gruber holds back.

I get a glimpse of his face in the light and see the pain there. But whether it’s a physical thing or something deeper, some malaise of the soul, it’s hard to tell, and I wonder just what made him switch. Is the blood tie really that strong? Or did they work on him with drugs and propagandist talk until he buckled to their will? If so, I didn’t notice any change in him. Yet change there must have been.

Nemtsov helps Gruber into the saddle, then mounts his own horse. In a moment they are gone. I hurry after, trying not to look suspicious. But the big garrison town is quiet now and I reach the gate without incident.

Freisler is waiting for me among the trees outside the town wall, and I climb up into the saddle behind him. He tells me that the Russians have gone straight on, and so we follow at a canter, but we have barely gone two miles when Freisler slows and, half turning to me, puts a finger to his lips.

He’s right. There are voices in the darkness up ahead. We jump down and, tying the horse to a tree, walk quietly, silently, towards them.

The road climbs, then dips towards a village. As we stop on the ridge, we can see, not two hundred metres away, a group of men standing in the centre of the muddy track. Two of them carry lanterns, and by their light I can make out six figures. Bobrov is one of them, and there beside him is Dankevich. The two who are holding the lanterns look vaguely familiar, but it’s too distant, the light too patchy, for me to make them out properly, but that’s not what worries me.

Freisler says it for me. ‘Where’s Gruber?’ he whispers.

‘He’s there somewhere,’ I say quietly, only half convinced. ‘He must be there.’

But I can’t see him. There are raised voices now – a disagreement. They’re different from us in that way, too, these Russians: we know what we have to do and get on with it, but the Russians… the Russians love to argue. As Hecht says, they’ve a dozen generals for every foot soldier.

Nemtsov, particularly, seems very heated. He makes an angry movement of his head, then leans in and pokes one of the newcomers in the chest. There’s a moment’s stunned silence and then the other draws his gun. Nemtsov laughs and turns away, as if it’s of no consequence, but when he turns back there is a gun in his hand too and he fires it point blank. The Russian drops like a sack.

‘What the…?’

Freisler, for once, seems shocked, but my own thoughts are going in another direction. The Russians like to set traps. The bomb in Berlin was one, so why should this not be another, a fall-back, just in case the first one failed? Only what are we meant to believe, and how might it work to their benefit?

There are shouts, threats, another shot. Another Russian falls.

Games within games. But what if it’s true? What if Nemtsov has just shot two of his own men? What’s going on here?

I think back to the first time I pursued them down the road. There was no sign then of a scuffle. No bodies by the roadside. But then, I was a good hour or two behind them, and they would surely hide their dead among the trees.

And how does this help them in the least? If the four go to Berlin, who’s Gruber with? Not with the dead men, that’s for sure.

‘Look!’ Freisler hisses.

It’s Gruber, staggering across, pleading for them to settle things. One hand clutches his chest, and even as we watch he falls to his knees and keels over.

It has its effect. The Russians stop arguing at once. Nemtsov looks about him, then gestures to the two dead men. He says something I can’t catch and there are nods all round. Then, with a strange unanimity of purpose, they disappear, one after another, vanishing like soap bubbles into the air, the two corpses following a moment after.

There’s a moment’s strangeness. Vision swims. The air itself shimmers. And then it’s gone.

Silence. The call of an owl. Freisler touches my arm. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s take Gruber now.’

But he has barely uttered the words, when we glimpse lights among the trees up ahead and hear their laughter, coming down the road ahead of us.

A game. It’s all a bloody game to them.

44

They split up outside Berlin, in Spandau, two of them heading south with Gruber, the others travelling on, to Colln and Fischerstrasse.

Freisler leaves me there and goes to report back, while I trail the southbound party. They’re heading across country now and I have to stay closer than I like simply to keep in touch, but after a while they change direction,. Heading east towards Furstenwalde and Frankfurt.

Their actions surprise me. Gruber is clearly in a bad way and, unless they can operate on him soon, he’s liable to die. When I catch a glimpse of him, it’s like looking at a ghost, he’s so pale. And his eyes…

I can’t get over how he looks. Not like a zealot at all, but like a condemned man, haunted by his betrayal. And that altercation earlier – what was that about? Was Nemtsov merely making a point, knowing that all he had to do was jump back and change events? If so, it was not how we Germans would behave.

And what were they arguing about? Whatever it was, it’s settled, and Gruber – looking half-dead himself – now rides with two men I saw shot dead before my eyes not six hours past. Then again, I shot Nemtsov myself, only an hour before that.

These dead who can’t stay dead, they worry me.

It’s midday when they finally stop. We are still in dense woodland. I dismount and tie my horse to a tree, then go to investigate.

The two Russians – the ones Nemtsov shot – are very much alike. One is the man I first glimpsed coming out of Gruber’s apartment, the other could be his twin, but for the duelling scar on his left cheek. They talk quietly, ignoring Gruber.

As for Gruber, he seems in a kind of trance. They have given him a plate of food – meat, bread and cheese – but it rests beside him on the ground, untouched. I could shoot him right now, but I hesitate. There’s something in his face. And besides, I want to know what the Russians are planning. So long as they’re not operating on him, I can afford to wait.

For a while I listen to them, picking up the odd word, the odd phrase. It all seems harmless enough. Chit-chat mainly. I speak Russian fluently – like a native – but theirs is heavily accented, and it gives me a clue as to where they’re from. There’s Mechanist jargon thrown in here and there – odd words that jar – and that’s where Nemtsov was operating. So maybe these two are Nemtsov’s men, and maybe he was making a point as to who was boss.

Maybe…

I jump, then jump straight back. A moment later, Freisler appears beside me, homing in on my grid-reference.

He nods towards the Russians and mouths a word.

Now?

I shake my head and he puts away the gun. We could take them. It would be fairly easy, in fact, only I know what would happen. Kill them and the place would be swarming with Russians.

No – tell it right. The place would be swarming with Russians right now, merely because we intended to kill them. We would never stand a chance. They would hit us before we even knew they were there. But as it is…

I gesture towards my left and begin to make my way back, making no sound, knowing that Freisler is behind me. Back at the horse, I unfasten the saddle-pack, take a couple of packs of food and hand one to Freisler.

‘Any news?’ I ask.

‘They’ve got Locke.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It’s a start.’

Then there are still four loose, Gruber included.

I meet Freisler’s eyes. ‘Did you see Gruber?’

Freisler nods. ‘He doesn’t look a willing man.’

That’s true, but I hadn’t thought of it that way. Putting my food aside, I tell Freisler to stay where he is, then go back.

Gruber is exactly where I left him, only he’s looking down now, staring at his feet. There’s misery in his face. Not anger or a desire for vengeance, just misery. I see, and know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he is being coerced.

I go back, keeping my thoughts to myself. If I say what I’m thinking, then Freisler will want to discuss it. He always does. He’s like Hecht in that; he thinks you can pick at a problem. But I trust to my back-brain. I like to let a problem stew inside my head until an answer comes.

The Russians move off after a while, and we follow, keeping some way behind them, listening to their voices drift back to us through the trees. And all the while I’m thinking about Gruber. If this isn’t voluntary on his part, then precisely why is he doing it? What possible hold could they have over him? Like all our agents, Gruber’s single, and as far as I know there’s no one in this age. But then, that’s precisely what I thought about Hans Luwer.

In fact, I’m so immersed in my thoughts that when Freisler pulls up the horse and turns to me, I’m at a loss as to why.

‘What?’

And then I hear it. Silence. Not a whisper of a voice. The ancient wood seems to sleep around us.’

We jump down, and while Freisler ties up the horse, I draw my gun and crouch, searching the surrounding woodland with my eyes. It’s possible they’ve doubled back; that they’re watching us even now. The hairs on the back of my neck stiffen as I peer out into that maze of branch and leaf, craning to see some shape, some sudden movement among the trees. For a moment the sense of threat is overpowering, yet as the seconds pass and Freisler joins me, I start to think.

What would you do, Otto? How would you handle the situation?

Whatever they plan to do with Gruber, they need to make him theirs – to put their focus in his chest. To do that they need time, true – and that’s what we’ve been obsessed with so far – but what else do they need?

Simple. A place to do it in, and the right equipment.

All along I’ve been assuming that they’d take shortcuts; that they’d get him to some hideaway in one of the towns and do the operation there. But why? They have had years to prepare for this.

No wonder they’re playing with us. No wonder they’re so relaxed about it all.

‘Come on,’ I say to Freisler and stand. ‘It’s here somewhere.’

He stares at me. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t you understand? They’re not going to a town. They’re going to do it here.’

‘But this is a forest!’

True. And what better place to hide something away? Even so, we search for the best part of an hour before we find it.

‘Urd protect us!’ Freisler murmurs as I come and stand beside him, looking across the clearing at it.

The place is well camouflaged. Were you not looking for it, you might take it for a rocky outcrop. Young trees have sprouted all about it, disguising its shape, but there’s no doubting what it is. A bunker. The Russians have built themselves a bunker here – and for a single purpose.

‘They’re in there.’

Freisler looks to me and nods. ‘You want to fight them?’

I smile, then shake my head, for once admiring Freisler’s no-nonsense spirit, but he’s not thinking straight. If I were them, I’d make sure the place was well defended, particularly when they needed it most – that is, while they were operating on Gruber. We haven’t seen any yet, but I’m pretty certain there will be cameras and guns, computer-operated and primed to shoot at whatever came close. Yes, and I’d mine the surrounding area, just for good measure. Because while I was operating on Gruber, I’d not want to have one eye trained on intruders. It’s a complex job, and they’ll not want to botch it.

There’s no point in trying to get in there. The place will be defended like a fortress. But that doesn’t matter. I already know what to do.

‘Come,’ I say to Freisler. ‘Let’s get back.’

45

As Klaus and Gunner operate the digger, I set the charge and check the timer. We’ve come back thirty years, to May 1729 and, as I thought, there’s no sign yet of the bunker. If I were them, I’d not want to leave it there too long, either, lest someone stumble on it accidentally.

It won’t take long to make the bore-hole. The earth here is soft and at this time of year it yields easily to the excavator. We go down forty feet, just to make sure, then plant the charge and seal the hole. When the Russians come they’ll not suspect a thing. They’ll build their foundations directly over it.

Finished, we jump back to Four-Oh. Then, alone, I jump back to the clearing, this time to July 1750.

It’s there, just as I guessed it’d be from the age of the young trees I’d seen growing on its slopes. Those trees are mere saplings now, dotting the bare earth that covers the bunker. I move cautiously, yet I know I won’t be seen. Why? Because if I was then I’d not be able to do this at all. If they’d seen, they’d know, and they’d come looking for me. And so, unwatched, I make my way inside and see what they’ve prepared for Gruber.

Inside, there’s a simple lab facility with an operating theatre and living quarters for six agents. To set this up, they’d have had to bring things through bit by bit over a number of years, and it’s clear they’re far from finished. There are no defences yet and the cupboards in the operating theatre are bare. But someone has been staying here. There’s food in the cold-store and a change of clothes in one of the drawers.

Satisfied, I jump out of there and then instantly jump back, to two fifteen on the afternoon of 28 July 1759.

The clearing is exactly the same as I remember it. It is barely ten minutes since Freisler and I jumped out of here, though in subjective terms I have been gone the best part of four hours. I count to ten and Freisler appears beside me, shimmering out of the air like a ghost.

There’s a rustling in the branches to our left and I turn abruptly, tugging my gun from my pocket, but it’s a deer, a young buck. He stands there, staring across at Freisler and I from twenty paces away, his head held proudly upright, his antlers displayed. In that instant I meet his dark amber eyes and smile, even as the whole of the clearing in front of us begins to lift into the air with a tremendous roar, as if some sleeping giant has woken in the earth.

The startled deer turns and bounds away, even as the sky begins to rain earth and splintered wood. And as it does, so Freisler and I jump back.

46

Back at Four-Oh, the celebrations have begun in earnest. Finding that first bunker was the breakthrough. After that it was just a question of finding the others, then going back and blowing each of them.

Hecht is delighted with me. It was such a simple, elegant solution, and the best part of it is that the Russians probably don’t know just how we hit them. What’s more, they never will, for immediately it was done, we sent back agents to make small changes to each of the five time-lines, well back from the period we were dealing with.

I know what you’re thinking. What difference does that make? Only that, by making those small yet subtle changes, each of the time-lines containing one of the bunkers was shunted off into an alternate branch of history. Side-lined, if you like. And now, if the Russians go back, they can’t access those histories, not without discovering how we made those changes and when. And if they can’t access them, they can’t get at their agents, and their agents will remain dead, along with the traitors.

History is like that. Beside the great trunk of the Tree of Time lie countless other ghostly branches – the remnants of endless experiments to change and shape it. Sometimes one of those experiments works, and the ghost becomes reality – a switch is made. The sap flows elsewhere. But that doesn’t happen often. You can even travel to those other worlds and see the effects of your what-ifs, but you need to be careful always to come back to the point at which you entered that otherness. Step even a foot to the side and you can be lost.

For ever.

While I’m celebrating, Urte comes up to me and, gently stroking the back of my hand, asks me if I’ve remembered our appointment. Although it was only this morning, her time, for me it’s been a long time since I spoke to her – almost three days subjective – and I’m tired. Even so, I know my duty.

‘Half an hour,’ I say, and she slips away, grinning, as if I’d promised her the world. But now my mood is darker, and I wonder just how much use to her I’ll be.

I stay another fifteen minutes, then get a detoxifier from Zarah. She asks me what I’m doing later, and I tell her I’ve an appointment with Urte, and she nods, as if it’s okay, but I know Zarah is sweet on me, and I’m sad I can’t reciprocate. Oh, I’ll sleep with her when it’s my turn to see her, but for her that’s not the same, and I think I understand just what she’s feeling.

Urte is waiting for me in her room. As the door hisses open and I step through, I see that she’s made a real effort for tonight. There are sweet-scented candles and, in the far corner of the long, shadowy room, she’s filled a bath.

I smile at her, though I feel little like smiling. Though it’s my duty, I don’t have to be unpleasant to her. It’s just that I can’t do this like I used to. It used to be… what? Recreation, I guess you’d call it, and I used to enjoy the physical side of it, but now – since I’ve known Katerina – I find it very hard. Each time is a betrayal.

Urte is naked. She has a nice body, and as the door hisses shut, she slips from her bed and comes across to me, taking both my hands in hers.

‘I’m glad you came,’ she says, looking up into my face, and I find myself at once feeling guilty. Guilty because she clearly wants me and, try as I might, I know I don’t want her. I just can’t give her back all the love she seems to want to give me.

Not that this is about love. This is duty. How we maintain our bloodstock.

Urte is one of the most intelligent of our women, She’s our astrophysics specialist, though what she doesn’t know of higher maths and electrical engineering isn’t worth knowing. In any other time or place she would be considered a Meister. A mere Frau she is not. But like all of us she has no choice in this. We serve the Volk.

She leads me across and, as I undress, she sings softly to herself, watching me all the while. Naked, I wait for her next move and, as I thought, she takes my hands again and climbs into the bath. We sit there, facing each other.

‘You’re a real hero, Otto. You know that?’

‘Yes?’

But I don’t feel like it. I feel like a man who has just killed an old friend.

She leans closer and plants a soft kiss on my chest, just beneath the hollow of my neck, then places her hands gently on my shoulders. It’s pleasant, yet I have to fight the urge to pull away; to climb from the bath and run from there.

I close my eyes. ‘I’m glad it’s over.’

‘Mmm…’ And her lips move down, her tongue now playing at my nipples. Yet if she senses my reluctance, she doesn’t show it. Or maybe she thinks she can simply win me over. I am a man, after all. And in a sense she’s right. I’ve never failed yet. I’ve done my duty by the Volk. Once a week since my eighteenth birthday I’ve done this, each week with a different woman. It’s how, in this small community of ours, we attempt to diversify the gene pool. Just how many children I have from this is hard to tell. Hecht knows, I’m sure, but we are not allowed to. All of the children are our children; all of the women our women.

I try to think that way right now, but it’s hard to. I liked Gruber, and the thought of him having died in that explosion haunts me. I keep seeing the misery in his face, and I’m conscious that I don’t know why – that I didn’t even attempt to find out why.

Even so, my cock grows stiff, my body responds to her gentle ministrations.

It’s late when I wake, and for a time I wonder where I am. I roll over and find that Urte’s next to me, her eyes closed, her tiny, compact body on its back, her small breasts barely prominent. For a moment I am somewhere else, and the sense of loss makes me almost want to cry, only what’s the point? It’s no use trying to change things.

‘Otto?’

Her eyes are open now. She studies me a while, unconcerned that I do not answer her.

‘Otto… why can’t we women go back in Time?’

I laugh. ‘You want to, then?’

She nods, her eyes never leaving mine, and I realise that this matters to her.

‘Because it’s dangerous.’

‘The Russians send their women back.’

‘The Russians are barbarians.’

She’s silent a while, then. ‘You know, sometimes I feel… degraded.’

‘What?’

‘This!’ She laughs at the reaction in my face. ‘Oh, I like you well enough, Otto, and in other circumstances…’ A shivering sigh passes through her. ‘It’s just so unfair, being a brood-cow.’

‘But…’

Only I don’t know why she’s raised this right now. It’s how it is. How it’s always been with us. The men go out and back, the women stay at home. That’s the German way of things. As for the Russians… well, the Russians are barbarians. They kill each other for fun, then resurrect themselves.

I make to say something, but she interrupts. ‘You want to fuck me again, Otto? You know, I’d rather like a child of yours.’

47

Back in my own room I try to sleep, but it’s no good, there’s all eternity to sleep. So I go to Zarah and she gives me something to keep me awake for a couple of days, and then I visit Hecht. And so it is that, two hours after leaving Urte’s bed, I am standing on the platform once again, a knapsack on my shoulder, waiting to jump.

I am going to see Frederick, to give him the snuff-box. I have to, otherwise none of it means a thing. Frederick dying would mean a big change, a major re-routing of the Tree, and I can’t allow that.

As I step into his tent, Frederick looks up from his map table and smiles at me.

‘Ah, Otto, where have you been?’ Frederick has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. They dominate his lined and careworn face and are – so I’ve come to learn – the absolute barometer of his mood. He is forty-seven years old, yet he looks a good ten to fifteen years older, an impression that his unkempt uniform does much to enhance. Yellow snuff stains cover his unwashed indigo blue coat – what, in his youth, he called his ‘Sterbekittel’, his ‘shroud’. Nowadays he never changes from it. Even at court he wears this patched and shabby uniform. Only on his mother’s birthday does he take it off and wear ‘mufti’.

Still smiling, he beckons me across, then stabs a finger at the hand-drawn map.

‘Saltykov’s in Frankfurt, and Daun is marching north to meet him. I mean to cut them, Otto, and bring each one to battle separately.’

Frederick is much smaller than me – five two to my six foot – yet he dominates the space surrounding him. Like Urte, I think, and wonder briefly what she’d make of this, for Frederick is our hero. As much as Frederick Barbarossa, he is Germany, though if you were to say that to him he would laugh, and curse the Saxons for pigs and dogs, and tell you what a barbarous language it was. No, Frederick speaks only French, as now.

And so I answer him. ‘You think they will attempt to link their forces, then?’

His eyes seek mine. ‘Assuredly. Saltykov is still licking his wounds from last year’s battle at Zorndorf. If what my spies say is true, the Empress Elizabeth would prefer him not to sustain a second bloody nose.’

I nod, but we both know that it is only half the story, and that Frederick’s words, as ever, contain an element of bravado. Zorndorf was a terrible confrontation – as fierce as any in this bloodthirsty century – and both the Russians and the Prussians came away from it with a new respect for the ferocity of their opponents. Neither side, I know, wish to repeat the experience. Yet Frederick seems determined to force the issue.

His flute stands in one corner, propped up against a music stand. Nearby is a small shelf of books: Tacitus, Horace, Sallust and Cornelius Nepos in French translations, Rousseau, Racine, Corneille, Crebillon and Voltaire in the original. Nothing German.

This is a complex man, an icon of the Enlightenment, and a friend of that impish monkey Voltaire; a man whose private art collection includes works by Rubens and Watteau, Titian, Corregio and van Dyke. Yet he is also a king steeped in the blood of his own people, a man who has lost one hundred and twenty generals in battle, and who has been in the thick of ten of the most terrible battles of the century.

An honourable and untrustworthy man, full of contradictions.

‘So how have you been?’ he asks, turning from the map.

‘Not too well,’ I say, sticking to the tale I have invented for myself here in this time and place. ‘My chest…’

He nods sympathetically, for if Frederick understands one thing it is physical suffering. He is troubled by his teeth and has gout in both his feet. Moreover, the cold, damp weather bothers him and causes him arthritic pain in his hands and knees.

‘We are plagued, you and I, Otto.’

‘So we are. But there are spiritual compensations.’

I remove the knapsack from my shoulder and open it up, then hand Frederick the first of my two gifts.

He studies the leather-bound volume a moment, squinting at the binding, and then his eyes open wide with delight.

‘Fénelon! His Telemaque! My God, Otto, where did you get hold of this? When my father destroyed my library…’ He stops, lost for words, then reaches out and holds my arm affectionately. ‘Thank you, dear friend. This is indeed a valued gift.’

‘And this…’ I say, and hand him the tiny gold snuff-box.

Frederick laughs. For that moment his smile and his eyes are as clear as a summer sky. ‘You know me too well, old friend. Why, this is beautiful. Is it Dutch?’

‘Russian,’ I say, and he laughs with delight.

‘Russian, eh? Then they can do more than just drink and fuck and fight?’

‘Oh, sometimes…’

And we both roar with laughter and he claps his right arm about my shoulders, even as two uniformed men step through the flap into the tent. Frederick turns to them, still grinning.

‘Friedrich… Hans… come in…this is my old friend, Otto. Otto Behr.’

Friedrich and Hans… I almost want to laugh, for these are none other than Seydlitz and Zieten who, since the deaths of Keith and Winterfeldt, have become Frederick’s chief advisors.

Seydlitz, yes, but not that Seydlitz. This is his historical predecessor, the man who, almost single-handedly, won the day at Rossbach and was subsequently promoted to the highest rank by Frederick for his valour. Seydlitz is an elegant, attractive man. Zieten, by comparison, is an amiable thug, a man who would fight you for a wager, or even for the sheer hell of it. Both stare at me now, suspicion in their eyes. They have heard of me, for sure, but this is the first time we have met.

‘Is there news?’ Frederick asks, releasing me, a sudden sobriety changing his whole face, giving it that cynical, trouble-plagued expression that was so often noted by observers.

And so they talk, discussing the latest news. Most of it is rumour and hearsay, dangerously inaccurate. Many of Frederick’s spies, I know for a fact, are double-agents, paid by the Austrians to provide him with false information. And as they lean over the map, I realise I could surprise all three by telling them exactly where Daun and his Austrians are right now, and what instructions he carries from his Empress. But that might lead them to think me a spy, and so I hold my tongue, knowing that this part of it is unimportant in the greater scheme.

You might think me cold. By not saying what I know, Frederick will lose Kunersdorf and thousands of men will die who might otherwise have lived. Indeed, Kunersdorf would not happen at all – Frederick would intercept Saltykov’s Russians at Gorlitz, to the north and, despite the odds, beat him. But he would die there, taken by a party of Cossacks, who would cut his throat and strip him naked before leaving him on the battlefield.

I know because I have seen it. I have stood on that terrible battlefield, the screams and shouts echoing in my ears, and watched as fate snatched away all hope, even in the hour of victory. We have tried to make that change, and each and every time it ends the same: the Prussians win, but Frederick dies. Each death the kind of death we can’t undo. Only by losing at Kunersdorf, by suffering the very extreme of adversity, can Frederick, and thus Prussia, survive.

History is like that, sometimes. Things seem fated. There appears to be but a single path. Which is why the snuff-box that now rests in Frederick’s pocket is so important. Yet if it is fated, then you might ask why I go to such lengths to get it to him. If History wants it so, then surely History will provide.

Not so. This is what we call the ‘fallacy of inaction theory’. I know that Frederick will live, that the musket-ball will strike the strengthened snuff-box. That is what happened, after all. But I also know that it happened only because I interceded, and I know that because our experts analysed the snuff-box and saw what it was made of.

DNA. My DNA.

Circles, I know, but one I must complete. Inaction is not an option.

I am about to leave, to make my excuses and go, when Frederick turns and looks to me.

‘Otto, you know the Russians. What do you think is in Saltykov’s mind? Do you think he’ll try and march on Berlin?’

This is awkward, for I know precisely what is on Saltykov’s mind. Not only that, but I have seen with my own eyes his mistress Elizabeth’s detailed instructions to him. She doesn’t trust the Austrians – not completely – and is worried in case Daun decides not to link up with her army, but stay where he is in Gorlitz, near the Elbe. Their alliance is one of mutual suspicion, and only a joint hatred of Prussia holds it together. What’s more, she is afraid – and rightly so – of extending her supply lines further than she has to. Last year’s retreat from Zorndorf proved more costly than the battle, and she is loathe to repeat the experience, hence Saltykov has been warned to be cautious.

‘He might,’ I say. Then, pushing him – for I know I must – I add, ‘Unless you prevent him.’

Frederick beams, his blue eyes shining at me. ‘Exactly! And now that Finck is here, we should move at once. Word is that Loudon has crossed the Oder and joined Saltykov in Frankfurt. They have a combined force of seventy thousand to our fifty, but we’ll do what we did last time – ferry our troops across the Oder north of them and establish a bridgehead. From there we can outflank them…’

Frederick stops, looking past me, even as the sound of the commotion reaches my ears. There are raised voices, threats and curses, and then a young captain – barely twenty if he’s a day – bursts into the tent and, sweeping off his hat, bows before Frederick.

Frederick strides across, his face deeply lined with concern. ‘What is it, man?’

The captain glances at me, then answers. ‘We have captured an intruder, your majesty. A friend of Herr Behr.’

Frederick looks to me, but I am too shocked to respond. Hecht said nothing about sending anyone else in after me.

‘Otto?’

I shrug. ‘I’m sorry, I—’ And then I gasp, as Gruber steps into the tent, his arms held securely by two soldiers.

‘Otto,’ he says, his eyes pleading with me. ‘Otto, you have to help me.’

48

I have them tie him to a pole, then have them leave me.

Frederick was curious, naturally, but he has known me long enough to trust me, and so did not insist on being here for the interrogation. I have explained only that Gruber was captured and, so I thought, killed. But I say no more than that. How could I? After all, it was I who killed him. Or so I thought.

I look at him now and sigh deeply. ‘Hans… what in Urd’s name happened?’

He tries to look away, but his head is tightly bound and he can’t turn it. There is shame in his eyes. Understandably so, for I was his friend, his brother, and he betrayed me.

‘They’re after me,’ he says, his voice quiet against the noises from the camp outside. ‘They took him, and now they’re going to kill me.’

‘Took who?’

‘Adel.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I have a son, Otto. A little boy. Six he is. Just like me. He—’

‘And they took him, right? The Russians?’

Gruber nods.

So that was it. I can see it all at a glance. It’s like Hecht said. The Russians take blood hostages. Nothing else could have turned him.

‘Who was the mother?’

‘A Russian.’

‘You knew she was, when you slept with her?’

‘No. No, I… I fell in love, Otto. She—’

But he doesn’t have to say. I know. I know all too well how it is.

‘So tell me. How did you get out? We blew that place sky-high.’ Gruber almost smiles. ‘So I saw. And it saved my life. I ran, you see. Tried to get away. And they came after me. They cornered me and were about to shoot me, and then the bunker blew. I knew it was you, Otto. You always were the smart one.’

But I don’t want his compliments. I want to know what the Russians are up to. I’m about to ask another question when Gruber speaks again.

‘I knew they’d failed. Knew it as soon as I saw you following us.’

‘You saw?’

He shrugs. ‘I thought I glimpsed you once. Through the trees.’

‘And the others, the two Russians, they didn’t know?’

‘Those two!’ Gruber almost spits his contempt out. ‘They were brothers. Alexi and Mikhail Kondrashov. Nemtsov hated them. They were the weak links, or so he claimed. Corrupt, lazy, and they drank. More than was good for them. Nemtsov wanted them dead, but Yastryeb overruled him.’

‘The argument – when Nemtsov killed them.’

Gruber’s eyes meet mine for the first time, surprised. ‘You saw that?’ He looks away again. ‘Yes, well… it seems Nemtsov was right. If they’d not fucked up you’d have never known.’

That’s true. If they’d been more alert they’d have known we were trailing them, and then, perhaps, we’d never have found the bunker, and they’d have won. And I’m surprised for once, because I thought Yastryeb was better than that.

‘So what now?’ Gruber asks, glancing at me, trying to gauge my mood.

Again I sigh. This is hard. Much harder than the first time.

‘I can’t let you live, Hans. Hecht wouldn’t let me. You’d always be suspect. There’d always be the chance that you were still a “sleeper”, playing the long game. You talk of Yastryeb. Well, I don’t believe he’d make such an elementary mistake. He’s not such a fool.’

‘Then what?’

‘I don’t know. This has a… diversionary feel. I think Yastryeb is playing a deeper game.’

Gruber is watching me. His blue eyes plead with me. ‘We were friends, Otto. You could let me go. No one would know.’

I could. Only then the Russians might capture him again and we’d be back to square one.

‘You see, I thought maybe I could go back. Save the boy.’

‘The boy’s already dead.’

I watch him deflate and wish I’d not had to say that. But it’s probably true. The Russians don’t tolerate indiscipline, after all, and they don’t make idle threats.

I swallow, my throat suddenly dry, then draw my gun. ‘I’m sorry, Hans.’

But he hasn’t finished.

‘I know about your woman, Otto. The one in Novgorod. Does Hecht know?’

Hecht doesn’t know. At least, I don’t think he does. Then again, it isn’t Hecht’s business. Not really.

‘It’s one thing taking lovers, Hans, another to betray your blood.’

‘I didn’t want to, Otto. Urd knows I love you all. But the boy…’

And now his voice breaks and tears begin to flow. I’m moved, but I still have to kill him. It’s my duty.

Yet even as I raise my gun, a cry of surprise comes from outside the tent. I turn, then hurry out, just in time to see something small and fleshy vanish from the air.

Locators! Shit!

The two guards are standing there, their rifles out before them, as if under attack, but there’s an unnatural fear in their eyes. And little wonder.

I whirl about, just as another two – no three! – materialise in the air, in a circle, not a metre away from me. Each is a tiny gobbet of flesh, rounded and opaque, like a gouged eye. For a full twenty seconds they hover there, rotating slowly, giving off a hissing, crackling noise, like meat on a spit, and then, with the tiniest pop, they disappear.

Beside me the two guards moan and cross themselves, their eyes almost bulging out of their heads with fright. But those were no works of witchcraft, those were locators: the means the Russians use to test out a location before sending in a man. Those tiny, ugly gobbets of flesh are expendable. They measure air pressure, temperature, oxygen content. And if they jump into something solid, that’s measured too. Send a man in without first using them, and the likelihood is that he’ll die.

‘Shit!’

I turn and run inside. Taking the knife from my belt, I slice through Gruber’s ropes, then hand him the knife.

He stares at me as if I’ve gone mad.

‘The Russians, Hans. The fucking Russians are coming!’

It shocks him into action. ‘Here?’

‘Yes, they’ve sent locators.’

‘Shit!’

Yes, deep shit. And I know who they’re after. Not me, and certainly not Gruber. They’re after Frederick.

I hold Gruber’s upper arms a second and look into his eyes. ‘Help me, Hans. Help me save him and I’ll try my damnedest to help you get the boy back.’

‘But you said—’

‘I know what I said. But I don’t know for sure. And you don’t know. And there might be a way. Shit, we’ll find a way…’

And Gruber nods, and gives me the faintest smile, then turns, even as the first of the bastards comes in through the flap.

49

Frederick gets up slowly from beside the second corpse and turns to me.

‘Who were they?’

‘Russians,’ I say. ‘The ones who took Gruber.’

Frederick nods, then looks to his Flugeladjutant, von Gotz, who is standing just behind me. ‘I don’t understand. How did they get through? Did the guards see nothing?’

‘They’re very good,’ I say quickly. ‘Three of Bestuzhev’s best.’

‘Bestuzhev-Riumin? He’s in charge of security now for the Russians?’

‘No, but there’s a special corps…’

Frederick stares at me a moment, then lets out a sighing breath. ‘Otto, what’s happening? What aren’t you telling me?’

I hesitate, then decide to tell the truth – or half of it, at least. ‘They were assassins. They meant to kill you.’

He gives the briefest nod, as if he already knew, then gestures to von Gotz to take the bodies away.

We were lucky. If I hadn’t stepped outside when I did, they’d have nailed us. As it is, Gruber is hurt, his left arm badly burned.

But Frederick isn’t finished. ‘This other matter, the manifestation. You saw it, Otto?’

I shake my head, denying it. ‘I saw nothing. Nothing at all. I can only think—’

Frederick frowns. ‘What?’

I laugh, as if embarrassed. ‘That they were enchanted somehow.’

I almost said mesmerised, but Mesmer is yet to be born and hypnotism is way in the future.

‘Enchanted?’ Frederick laughs, amused by the idea. He is a rational man, after all. ‘No matter – but I will find out who’s responsible for letting the bastards through!’

‘One thing,’ I say, as two guards enter the tent to take away the first of the bodies. ‘You should burn them.’

Frederick stares at me, surprised. ‘Burn them?’

‘You didn’t see what they did. In one village…’ And I shudder and look away.

Frederick nods, as if he understands, then looks to von Gotz again. ‘Do as he says, Carl. Burn them.’

50

You might ask why. After all, they’re dead. They’re dead and they’re still here. Normally the Russians take their bodies back. So why not this time? My guess is that they planned to wait a while, then call them back and send in live agents in their place. But not if there are no bodies. Not if their foci are destroyed in the flames.

No. These dead were going to stay dead. Dead for eternity.

Alone again, I laugh with relief. But it was close, and, if I know Yastryeb, he hasn’t finished with us yet. No. These were only his opening gambits. It is beginning to feel like he’s sounding us out, testing us, looking for our weaknesses, because he knows, just as I do, that Frederick is the key. Not Hitler, nor Peter, nor even Nevsky, but Frederick.

I walk across and stop, looking down at the dark patch of blood on the sandy ground. Something is nagging at me. Something about the whole situation.

What was Yastryeb up to? What did he want? When he went to sleep at night, what did he dream?

In essence, the scheme he had concocted was a simple one. He’d had five chances – five separate possibilities – of getting one of the ‘turned’ agents back on to the platform. Once there he could have had them jump back… to Moscow Central. And then he’d know precisely where we were in Time and Space. Four-Oh would become a number – a grid reference on the Russian map, and once there…

I laughed, astonished. So that was how…

If you live with a problem day after day, year after year, eventually you stop looking for an explanation. It’s how things are, and you get on with life. But for years now we have been suffering a prolonged sub-space bombardment, wondering how they knew where we were, when all the time…

They’ve already done it! They’ve already sent an agent back to the platform. Only…

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to work through the logic of it. Only why aren’t we all dead?

And I laugh once more, amused by the paradox inherent in the answer.

Because I thought of it just then.

I jump back and summon Hecht. He comes to the platform and I tell him what I’ve been thinking, and he nods and turns to Zarah.

And he organises it there and then and sends someone back to when the bombardments first began, along with the blueprints for our defence system. And so we survive.

Put it down, once more, to the fallacy of inaction theory.

If I’d not thought of it and told Hecht, then it would never have happened. But I had to, and it did, and here we are.

I jump back, arriving only seconds after I’d left. Only Gruber is there now, inside the tent, his left arm bandaged, in a sling. He smiles then draws a gun from his waistband.

51

‘Was it true, about the boy?’

Gruber nods. ‘I’ve a dozen of the little bastards. These Russian women…’ He laughs unhealthily. ‘But you know that, don’t you, Otto? They’re like animals in bed.’

I know nothing of the kind – only that I made a mistake. I should have killed him when I could. Oh, I could jump right now, but I need to stay and find out what’s going on. If I jump, what then? Gruber stays here, armed and within striking distance of Frederick. And so I stay, to keep an eye on him.

It is the ninth of August and Kunersdorf is three days off. I can’t keep awake that long, not even on what Zarah gave me, but that doesn’t matter. If something doesn’t happen soon, I’ll have to jump back and get some help. That is, if we’re not stretched too thin already.

Which sets me wondering. Is that Yastryeb’s plan? To keep us busy and stretch us thin, almost to breaking point, while somewhere else, on some other part of the board, he makes the move he’s been thinking of all along?

It would explain these endless subterfuges, these time-consuming distractions he has thus far thrown into our path. But one thing doesn’t make sense. Why, when he sent that first ‘turned’ agent back to the platform, did he not also send a bomb? It wasn’t difficult to do, and he could have destroyed the platform in an instant.

Yes, but we would have rebuilt it.

Maybe. But it would have bought him time. Time in which to make a dozen different moves. A dozen deadly changes to reality.

I look at Gruber thoughtfully. ‘Was it you, Hans?’

‘Me?’

‘Who went back. To the platform.’

He laughs. ‘Urd, no. That was Krauss. He’s worked for them for years. His father…’

But I know the story. Krauss’s ‘father’ – that is, the agent Krauss believed to be his father – was abandoned in an alternate time-line. He might have been saved, only, well, it might have cost us three, maybe four agents to get him out, and there was no guarantee we could.

How simple it is, after all. But no one would have guessed. Not for a moment.

‘He killed himself, you know.’

‘Did he?’ But Gruber seems unconcerned.

And it strikes me that he’s waiting for someone. He has been told exactly what to do, and this is part of it. I look into the barrel of his gun and shake my head.

‘Put it down, Hans.’

‘What?’

‘The gun. Put it down. You know you won’t use it.’

‘Won’t I?’

‘No. Because you’d have done it by now. Who’s coming, Hans? Who wants to see me?’

The surprise in his eyes is almost comical, but I know I’ve guessed right.

‘Nemtsov,’ he says. ‘He said to keep you here.’

‘I see.’ But the truth is, I don’t. I was expecting Yastryeb himself. Perhaps to gloat and tell me it was all over. But no. It was only Nemtsov. Only the messenger boy.

‘What have they promised you, Hans? What was your price?’

That riles him, but he’s trained well enough not to let it show in his voice.

‘I get to live.’

‘You’re that confident, then?’

Gruber laughs, but there’s a hardness in his face now. ‘You’re doomed, Otto. There’s just so many more of them than you, and that’ll count in the end. Because they’re every bit as good as you. And Yastryeb, well, Yastryeb will crush you, you’ll see.’

‘And that’s it, is it?’

Gruber nods, and I laugh and really anger him.

‘You’re a fucking fool, Otto. A bloody idealist. Can’t you see we can’t win?’

‘We? I thought you were them.’

The gun trembles, then he lowers it. And as he does, so Nemtsov shivers into being beside him.

‘Herr Berr… I’ve heard so much about you.’

I smile. ‘I’ve killed you, you arsehole. In Berlin.’

‘You think you did.’

And that might be true. After all, there’s no mention in history of a nuclear explosion taking out the centre of eighteenth-century Berlin.

Nemtsov is a bear of a man, complete with a bushy black beard that seems to sprout from the base of his neck. I imagine, naked, you would not see an inch of flesh on him, only a lush dark growth of hair, like the primeval Russian forest.

‘So what do you want?’

He grins and takes a letter from his pocket. It’s sealed with red wax, like some ancient document. A nice touch, I think, and take it from him.

‘For me?’

‘No. For Hecht. It’s from Yastryeb.’

‘And you want me to give it to him, right?’

Nemtsov nods.

I turn the letter, then lift it to my nose and sniff. It smells old and musty, as if it’s been kept in a box for a century or more.

‘How can I trust you, comrade? This could be a weapon.’

‘It could. But it isn’t.’

‘So you say.’

‘Then test it. I’m sure you have ways.’

He knows we have, and he knows that I’ll deliver it. But I want something more from this exchange.

‘What’s he like, your master?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Just that I’m told he has a weakness for young girls.’

Nemtsov’s eyes widen and his nostrils flare. It’s true what they say about these Russians. They are more passionate than us. But that passion can be a weakness. It can get in the way of clear thought.

‘Go fuck yourself, Herr Behr!’ And there’s a kind of mocking, childish sound to the way he pronounces the last two words. But sticks and stones…

I slip the letter into my pocket, then smile at the two men facing me. ‘So? Is there anything else I should know before I go back? Any other little messages you’d like me to carry with me?’

‘Just this,’ Nemtsov says, and glances at Gruber, a sudden gleeful look in his eyes. ‘We’ll see you in three days…’ And with that, both he and Gruber disappear.

I stare at the blank space in front of me, shocked. Gruber… has gone.

‘Oh shit!’

And I jump, not knowing what I’ll find.

52

The place is silent. Eerily so. There’s no sign of damage, but then, there doesn’t have to be. The mere fact that there’s no one there makes me think the worst, because there’s always someone there, day and night, every day of the year.

I step down off the platform and look about me. Expecting what? A tiny pile of ash here, another there? But there’s no sign of a struggle, no evidence that anyone’s been here, except…

That’s it. The absolute silence. The lack of even the slightest tremor. The bombardment has stopped. That constant sub-level trembling has stopped. Gone is that faint pressure in the ears, the ever-present smell of oil and burned plastics, so subtle that it can only really be detected now, in its absence. The desks glow softly, the screens alive and tracking still. I walk across and look at one.

‘Otto…’

My name, uttered in that silence, is enough to make me jump and turn. It’s Hecht. He stands there by the portal, facing me, one hand extended.

‘You have a message, I believe.’

I should know by now not to be surprised by anything Hecht does, but this surprises me. How could he possibly know?

‘It stopped,’ he says. ‘Shortly after we acted. Yastryeb must have grown tired of the charade.’

I stare at him, wondering if that’s really how he views it. After all, if a single one of those nano-worms had penetrated our shields, we’d all be dead.

I hand him the letter. He unseals it and unfolds it, then gives a brief laugh. ‘The bastard wants us to surrender. He says we’re finished.’

‘Then why not finish us?’

‘Precisely.’ And Hecht makes a ball of the ancient paper and lets it drop. I ache to read it, to see exactly what Yastryeb has said, even to glimpse his handwriting, but I show no sign.

‘Where is everyone?’

‘Having a rest. It’s about time, wouldn’t you say?’

‘But… who’s tracking our agents?’

‘No one. They’re back here.’

‘All of them?’

Hecht nods, then gestures for me to follow. We go through, into his room. I sit across from him, cross-legged.

He’s silent for a moment, contemplating something, and then he looks at me and gives that faint, enigmatic smile of his.

‘You want to know what’s going on, don’t you?’

‘It might help.’

‘It might. Then again…’ He hesitates, then sits forward slightly. ‘As I see it, we’re at something of a stalemate. Anything we do, they undo, and anything they do, we undo. It’s cat and mouse out there, but who’s the cat and who the mouse? Or, to put it another way, Otto, we’re too well matched. This thing could go on for ever.’

There’s something about the way he says this that makes me curious. ‘What’s happened?’ I ask. ‘I mean, to you.’

Hecht looks at me admiringly. ‘Very perceptive of you, Otto. I wondered if you’d notice.’

‘Well?’

He folds his hands, then sits back again, closing his eyes. ‘I met myself today. My future self.’

‘Ah…’

‘Yes, ah…’

‘And what did you say to yourself?’

Hecht’s eyes flick open. ‘Which self would that be, Otto?’

‘Your future self. What did he tell you, other than that Yastryeb was full of shit?’

Hecht laughs. ‘You want to know?’

‘Yes.’

You see, it isn’t often that we visit our own selves. It’s not encouraged. Our future selves know too much – who died and when, and who did what – and it’s not always best to know that kind of thing. It’s hard enough living with the rest of it, the changes and the dead who aren’t dead. So future-Hecht must have had a damn good reason to visit himself. One hell of a good reason.

Hecht is smiling that smile again, which makes you think he’s mocking you, but instead of telling me, he shakes his head.

‘No, Otto. This once I’ll keep it to myself, if it’s all the same to you.’

I sigh. Maybe it’s best that I don’t know what’s going to happen. Then again, if Hecht is alive up the line, then things are probably all right.

‘I’m tired,’ I say.

‘Then get some sleep. Or go visit Zarah. I’m sure she’d like to see you.’ And he smiles, as if he knows something that I don’t.

But I don’t want to see Zarah, however much she wants to see me. I want…

To sleep. It hits me now. The drug is wearing off, much sooner than I thought it would. Maybe it’s the stress – that business with the Russians – but suddenly I am dead on my feet. I stand and nod to Hecht, then turn and make my way across. But no sooner am I in my room, than I am gone, lost to the void, an atom, endlessly circling.

Endlessly, endlessly circling.

53

And wake, on my feet, a battle waging all about me, the blue coats of the Prussian grenadiers packed densely to either side, their bayonets fixed.

A sword swings wildly past my right shoulder, a flash of silver in the acrid, smoke-filled air, and I step back smartly, half-crouching, knowing that I’m in real and mortal danger.

This happens. I do have blackouts. But rarely like this.

There’s no time for that, however. I have two options: to jump straight out of there or to fight.

I choose to fight.

It’s scorchingly hot and the air is filled with the shouts and screams of men, the thunder of cannon fire and the whistle of musket-balls. But where we are, on the Muhl-Berge, the battle rages fiercest, cold steel deciding the issue. It is early afternoon, and the battle is barely an hour old. I know this because of where we are, among the Russian trenches, where four battalions of Frederick’s finest men – his grenadiers – are causing havoc, slaughtering the demoralised Russians to a man.

I draw my sword and parry a low thrust from one of the few Russians who has the stomach for the fight. Many are just letting themselves be bayoneted. It is sheer carnage where we are, but I know that this phase of things won’t last much longer. Even as we cut our way across the great hump of the Muhl-Berg, Saltykov is redeploying his men in a new line of defence just beyond the sandy little valley called the Kuh-Grunde. From there the combined Russian and Austrian batteries will take their toll of our forces, turning potential victory into bloody defeat.

But that’s to come.

The Russian falls, shot from close range by one of my fellows, and I am conscious suddenly that I am in full Prussian uniform, the rough cloth unfamiliar, but I recognise it at once as that of the thirteenth infantry regiment. I look about me and see, far to my left, his sword drawn, encouraging his troops, Major-General August Friedrich von Itzenplitz. He will die today, but right now he grins like a demon, sharing his soldier’s bloodlust.

I know precisely where I am. I have walked this battlefield a dozen times or more, and even stood on the escarpment beside Frederick, watching as the battle unfolded. But this is different. Never, in all my years, have I been in the thick of the conflict.

I am dressed as a captain, and I wonder how and why. There’s a gun tucked into my belt, too, a replica, made to look like a pistol from this age. And slowly, piece by piece, it comes back to me. This is Hecht’s plan, not mine.

As the action begins to die down and the platoons reform, I make my way across to Itzenplitz and, saluting him, request permission to seek out Frederick and give him the news of our success. He smiles and bids me go, then calls me back to thank me for serving alongside his men. And I realise there and then that I must have volunteered for this only last night – and as I leave, making my way through the ranks, the soldiers cheer me and slap my back, like I’m a hero.

I find Frederick up on the Kleiner-Spitzberg, to the east of Kunersdorf village. Already he has made several major mistakes. His men are exhausted after their long overnight march, and the terrain is not to his advantage – there are long ponds stretching all the way along between our forces and the Russians, and now Frederick has marched his men another six miles simply to attack his enemies on their best fortified flank. Things are going badly wrong. The cavalry are arriving in dribs and drabs and the Kuh-Grunde is about to become a massive killing ground. But when I report to him, he seems elated by his early successes and keen to press his ‘advantage’.

It is not my role to talk him out of it, but for once I’m tempted. I have been down there, among the dead and dying. I’ve seen the suffering first-hand. Many are dying of the heat and thirst, their wounds untended, their loved ones far away, unaware of their fate. And there’s more to come. A whole afternoon of suffering.

Ten thousand men will die today, while another thirty thousand will carry the scars of this battle for the rest of their lives. And for what?

For a gamble. Which is all this is, after all. One mad cast of the dice against the odds. For even Frederick can see what is happening. Only he doesn’t want to. He thinks sheer will and Prussian grit and luck will win the day. But he forgets Zorndorf. His enemy did not run that day and they will not run on this. Four hours from now it will be his troops, shocked and bloodied, who will be staggering from the field of battle, a defenceless mob, mortally afraid of being captured and transported to Siberia.

But I keep my mind to the task. It is Frederick who matters now, wrong as he is, evil as this day’s work of his will prove, for without him we do not exist.

I stand close to him, watching as he gives his orders. Finck is to attack with his eight battalions from the north, struggling across the swampy ground to be slaughtered, while the Hauss battalion under von Kleist, a cultured man of letters, will be cut to ribbons by the Russian batteries, Kleist himself mortally wounded.

It is a butcher’s shop, and even from this height we can hear the screams of the dying and the wounded. But worse – far worse – is to come. Frederick has yet to commit his main army. Only then will the battle turn. Only then will the true horror of things be revealed.

I stay with him as things develop, witness to his moods. Elation and despair, anger and brute frustration war in his face. News comes of Seydlitz’s failure to penetrate the Russian defences, and of the bullet wound to his hand. Then, as the afternoon wears on, we learn that Major-General Puttkammer, a favourite of Frederick’s, is dead, shot in the chest. All is gloom.

Late afternoon sees us up on the Muhl-Berge, Frederick encouraging his army on. But they are fleeing now, their discipline finally broken, and though Frederick attempts to make a stand with six hundred men of the Lestwitz regiment, the battle is already lost and he knows it. It’s here and at this time that Frederick is in danger. One horse has already been shot out from under him, and now a second receives a musket-ball in its chest.

This is the moment. This is the reason I am here. To watch over him at this cusp in men’s affairs. To ensure that he survives these coming minutes.

As the horse collapses, von Gotz rushes across to help the King from his saddle. There is no let up in the battle. The air is filled with deadly metal. Shaken, Frederick looks to me, smiling weakly, as if to reassure me, then turns, taking the reins of von Gotz’s horse. He allows his Flugeladjutant to help him up into the saddle, then lifts his head and looks about him.

The grey horse turns, lifting its head proudly, as if it knows it now carries a king, yet even as it does, so Frederick slumps, then slides to his right, tumbling from his mount. There’s a cry of despair and a dozen men come running to help. They huddle around the fallen figure of the king, and as I look down past von Gotz’s shoulders at Frederick, I see with horror that there’s blood on his coat.

‘Mein Gott!’

I turn and look and there, not ten paces from me, dressed in the plain blue coats and orange waistcoats of the Diericke Fusiliers, are Nemtsov, Dankevich and Bobrov, and, just behind them, Gruber. They grin as they raise their guns once more.

And this time I jump and jump back moments earlier, Ernst at my side, Klaus over to my right, Freisler just behind the Russians.

Two hours have passed subjectively – perhaps the longest two hours of my life – spent closeted with Hecht, arguing about just how and why and when we’d deal with this, for there’s every chance this is a trap – a way of sucking in our forces in one final, make-or-break confrontation. After all, the Russians know that we have to respond – that we can’t let Frederick die. But anything we can do, they can do.

It’s a gamble, but what else can we do?

He gives me Ernst because – well – because I plead with him to let me have Ernst there at that moment. Because I trust no one half as much as I trust Ernst.

And so we step from the air, four against four – even odds for once – and open fire with our replicas. No mussel-loaders these, but modern high-tech lasers, made to resemble their ancient counterparts.

Nemtsov falls, dead again, and Bobrov staggers, blinded, then topples in a heap. I glance across and see that Klaus is down, and as I look back, so Dankevich aims his weapon at me.

I watch him die, not by my hand but – with savage irony – by an ancient musket-ball which strikes him square in the temple and carries away the top half of his skull.

Breathless, I turn full circle, waiting for others to appear, but that’s it – no one else is coming to this fray. Ernst is okay, and Freisler. And there, not twenty yards away, is Frederick, mounting von Gotz’s pale grey horse. Safe now.

I turn back, looking for Gruber. At first I don’t see him, but then I do. He’s also down, lying there on his back, groaning.

I walk across to him.

Gruber stares up at me, blood and spittle on his lips. The wound to his chest is a bad one. He’s been burned deeply and he’s ebbing fast, but as he sees me he smiles, as if he’s won.

‘Here,’ he mouths, and I kneel, leaning close to make out what he’s saying.

‘Your Katerina…’ he says, then coughs. ‘And Cherdiechnost… The Russians know…’

And so he dies. But I feel a fist of ice about my heart. They know? Urd protect me, let it not be true!