TW04 The Zenda Vendetta NEW (6 page)

“You may find it distracting,” he said, “but I find it necessary to move about. The chill and dampness of this place is making my bones ache. While you’ve been out there socializing as the Countess Sophia, I’ve been cooped up here for days with nothing but rats and silverfish for company. I don’t know how people ever managed to live in such places.”

“It may be uncomfortable, but it’s an ideal base of operations,” she said, still intent upon the screen of the small computer she held in her right hand. “No one’s set foot in this part of the castle for years and even if the adjustment team suspected that we were holed up in here, they’d have a hell of a time trying to get at us.”

“Unless they decided to try clocking in here,” said Drakov.

“The risk factor would be far too great,” she said. “They would never attempt it without transition coordinates. They could wind up inside a wall that’s eight feet thick. However, it’s possible that they could try an assault with floater-paks, which is why I’ve moved us up here to this turret. It might be colder and windier up here, but we can see out over the entire castle. Once I’ve got the tracking system set up in those embrasures, there’s no way they’ll be able to drop in here without setting off a laser.”

“What is to prevent them from obtaining their coordinates the same way we did?” Drakov said.

Falcon raised her eyebrows. “By seducing Rupert Hentzau in the dungeon?”

“Don’t be crude,” said Drakov. “You know very well what I mean. One of them might arrange a visit with Black Michael and ask to see the castle. You might have done the same when you attended the ball in his chateau, only you chose to appeal to Hentzau’s prurient sensibilities, instead.” Falcon smiled slyly. “That’s true, but I’d never done it on a rack before. There are all sorts of interesting devices down there. You should go down with me and take a look. You never know, it might help take the chill out of your bones.”

“Thank you, but no,” said Drakov.

“You know, you really are a very pretty boy, Nikolai, but you’ve got the mind of a neanderthal.

That’s the trouble with implant programming. It can teach you things, but it can’t make you unlearn a lifetime of social conditioning. Perhaps I should have had you totally reeducated, but I liked your personality the way it was when I first found you. It has its own charm and appeal, despite your Victorian attitudes. But for God’s sake, you’ve lived in the 27th century! Haven’t you learned anything?”

“I have learned a great deal,” Drakov said. “I have learned that your ‘modern era’ is degenerate and decadent, and not in ways that pertain just to sexual morality. You have replaced quality with quantity, substance with artifice and principles with expediency. Forgive me, but I find little in your time to admire except your technological achievements, and even those you use irresponsibly.”

“You’re a fine one to take such a lofty moral tone,” she said. “When I found you, you were a jaded playboy who could buy everything except the things you really wanted. Your money couldn’t buy you peace and it couldn’t buy you a sense of purpose. I gave you both.”

“I will admit that for a brief time, I found a sense of peace with you,” said Drakov, “but that was nothing more than self-delusion. You used me, but I’m not complaining. We used each other and we continue to do so, like a pair of parasites. And where has it brought us? Here we are, the last remaining members of the Timekeepers’ vaunted inner circle, sitting in a cold, gray room like a pair of deluded anarchists, plotting our revenge.”

“It’s what you wanted, Nikolai.”

“What I wanted? No, it isn’t what I wanted. If I could have had what I wanted, mine would have been a different life entirely. It is, however regrettably, what I need. When this is over, if things should go our way, I can think of nothing that would please me more than to part from you and never see you or your 27th century again.”

“Poor Nicky,” she said. “What would you rather do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I do know that I can never go back to being what I was. Making war on war has changed me. Whether for the better or for the worse, I cannot tell. I do know that it is a thing that needs doing.”

“I see,” she said. “You just don’t want to continue doing it with me, is that it?”

“If I remained with you, I would become like you,” said Drakov, “and that is what I do not want. The end result of fanaticism such as yours is that everything becomes subordinated to the cause. After a time, you perpetuate the cause for its own sake, not for the sake of whatever it was you started out to achieve.

Look at what’s happened to us. Taylor killed in 17th-century Paris, Singh captured to die a suicide, Tremain trapped forever in the dead zone when he tried to follow us, Benedetto escaped to God knows where in abject panic, and all of those who were arrested, all of those who died trying to escape, yet you feel nothing, do you? To you, it’s merely a setback.”

“Sacrifices must be made, Nikolai,” said Falcon, putting the computer down and looking at him thoughtfully. “I thought you understood that.”

“Oh, I understand,” he said. “What troubles me is that I’m beginning to accept it so easily. I said much the same thing to Rassendyll when I killed him. I sat there, trying to explain things to him like a fool, watching his uncomprehending eyes staring at me as he slipped away, and I felt no remorse. None whatsoever.”

“What do you want, Nikolai, to cry over everyone who has to die so that the Time Wars can be stopped?”

“Someone should, don’t you think?”

“Well, you go ahead and grieve for all the poor souls who fall by wayside,” she said, flatly. “I’ve got more important things to do. You want to go your own way when this is over, fine with me. I don’t need you. But meanwhile, there’s work to be done. Just in case the adjustment team manages to get someone inside here, I’ve prepared some surprises for them. If staying inside this castle hasn’t turned you into an impotent Prince Hamlet, you can help me set them up. Otherwise, you can stay here and muse on the pathos of it all.” She got up from the cot. “Priest, Cross, and Delaney are undoubtedly here by now and things will start to happen very soon.”

“How can you be so certain that they’re the ones Forrester will send?” said Drakov.

“Because those three are the First Division’s best,” she said. “And because Moses Forrester will realize that he has no choice but to send them, just as he will have no choice but to come to us when we’re ready for him. Then you can have your own personal revenge. After that, I really don’t care what you do.”

Drakov glanced out of the small embrasure in the turret. “Have you ever cared for anything or anyone at all?” he said.

She was silent for a moment. “Yes, once.”

“Only once?”

“There was a very special man once. It was another life, but I remember it quite vividly.” She smiled.

“Ironically, it was the same man you want to kill.”

Drakov looked at her with surprise. “
Moses Forrester?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” she said. She held up her hand. “I still wear his ring. Here,” she said, pulling it off and tossing it to him, “maybe you should have it. After all, it was your father’s.” From where they stood, the three commandos had a spectacular view of the Duke of Strelsau’s residence. They had clocked in at a point several miles away from the village of Zenda. The province was mostly heavily forested hill country, wild and teeming with game. The village was tiny and bucolic, made up of small, picturesque cottages, an inn, a blacksmith shop, a church and several farms that dotted the hillsides around it. The flavor of the place was decidedly medieval, but the duke’s estate was a palatial mixture of the old and new.

They had been met at their transition point by Captain Robert Derringer, the Observer assigned to their mission. He seemed very young for an Observer, despite the fact that the antiaging drugs made appearances deceptive. Derringer didn’t look much older than a recruit fresh out of boot camp. He was dressed in period, in a lightweight dark brown jacket, riding britches, high brown boots, and a blue silk shirt. He was sharp-featured with large brown eyes and a thick, unruly mop of dark brown hair. There was a coltish look about him, an energetic restlessness in his speech and demeanor. He had led them a short distance to the top of the hill, from where they were able to take their first look at Michael Elphberg’s home.

The long, wide, tree-lined avenue that ran straight for a distance of about two miles to “Black Michael’s” chateau was immaculately maintained. It led up to a large courtyard in front of the chateau, then curled around the east side of the estate, making a wide loop around Zenda Castle, following the moat which was as wide as a medium-sized river. Having rounded half the castle, the road then ran south, away from the estate and into the forest, through a small pass and to the village of Zenda. The avenue that led to the chateau’s front entrance ran in the opposite direction to the road that led from Zenda to the capital city of Strelsau.

Though it was dwarfed by the castle situated directly behind it, the chateau was nevertheless quite large. Built in the French style, it was five stories high with an elaborate, columned portico and a steeply gabled roof. Its gleaming whiteness was a stark contrast to the murky gray stone of the castle that loomed over it.

“It’s a rather curious architectural mixture,” said Derringer. “The chateau was built by the last king as a country residence, because he evidently liked the castle a great deal but felt it too uncomfortable to live in. Only that one small drawbridge you see connects the castle to the chateau. It spans the moat about twenty feet above it and it’s wide enough for three or four men to cross it abreast. It won’t accommodate a carriage. With the construction of the chateau, the only way to get into the castle now is to go through the chateau. The back door is flush with the wall and it opens directly out onto the drawbridge or the moat if the drawbridge has been raised. The castle itself seems to have been constructed in stages. The oldest part is the central portion. You’ll notice that there are no baillies. Apparently, there were at one time, but at some point, perhaps during the construction of the chateau, the outer walls were torn down and the moat was widened.”

“It does look larger than any I’ve ever seen before,” said Andre.

“That’s right,” said Derringer, with a grin. “You’re our resident knight errant, aren’t you?”

“I’ve seen many castles in my day,” she said. “This one appears to be old, but quite impregnable. I can see where the weak point in the fortifications was reinforced by building that embrasured keep on the southwest corner, but I am puzzled by that addition with the two small towers there, jutting out over the moat. It seems to serve no useful defensive purpose.”

“I think I can explain that,” Derringer said. “That was done most recently. I haven’t been inside, but judging by appearances, I’d guess that much of the old castle is in a state of disrepair. The squared-off section sticking out into the moat was probably added as a sort of guesthouse, so that people can move back and forth between the castle and the chateau. It’s the only part of the castle where I’ve seen lights burning.”

“That would explain it, then,” she said. “It’s a strange arrangement, but an effective one. Though the placement of the cheateau directly in front of the castle limits visibility somewhat, it also renders a frontal attack in force almost impossible. The chateau might be taken without much difficulty, but then there would only be the one narrow access point to the portcullis to be defended.”

“How would you take it if you had to?” said Derringer.

Andre shrugged. “I would lay seige.”

Finn grimaced sourly. “That would be a bit hard to do with just four people,” he said. “Especially since we can’t use much in the way of modern ordnance. We’re supposed to believe that a pampered Englishman like Rassendyll managed to break in there and get the king out?”

“Perhaps he wasn’t all that pampered,” Derringer said. “Supposedly, he had been a military officer.”

“Just the same,” said Finn, “I’m not anxious to try rescuing anyone from that place.”

“Maybe our best bet would be to prevent the duke from kidnapping the king in the first place,” said Andre.

Derringer smiled. “You’re assuming that you can. I’m afraid that option isn’t open to you. You’re in the curious position of having to effect an adjustment in which there’s such a strong manifestation of the Fate Factor in evidence that it makes me wonder at the possibility for any independent action on your part. Any deviation from the original scenario beyond what has already happened is simply unthinkable.

You can’t adjust a disruption with another disruption, Corporal Cross. Unfortunately, your options are limited, whereas the Timekeepers are free to attempt whatever they please. I don’t envy you your task in preserving the original scenario.”

“There’s just one little problem,” Lucas said. “If we don’t know for sure what the original scenario was, how can we help but deviate from it?”

Derringer shrugged. “You can’t, I’m afraid. The best you can do is to follow the original scenario as closely as you can within the limits of what we know about it and hope like hell that temporal inertia compensates. Sergeant Delaney’s going to have to take his lead from Colonel Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim. I’ll admit that it would be very tempting to foil Michael Elphberg’s plot before it ever gets off the ground, but although that might restore the status quo in the long run, it would still alter the original sequence of events as we know them. I could almost guarantee you that you wouldn’t get away with it.

Apparently, the Fate Factor is attempting to compensate for something that happened back in the 17th century or maybe earlier. None of us knows what that is, but it makes no difference. With all of these coincidences cropping up like temporal ‘tilt’ signals in some sort of cosmic pinball game, do you really want to take the chance that two wrongs will make a right? From a purely academic standpoint, I must admit to a certain morbid fascination. I’d be curious to see what would happen if you failed. Do we get a massive timestream split that branches off into all sorts of alternate timelines or does time bend back in upon itself and start going round in ever decreasing circles ‘til it stops? I’ve always been fascinated by zen physics, but I never thought I’d actually be confronting it in a field exer—sorry, a mission, it makes me feel as though the Sword of Damocles were hanging over all our heads, suspended by a spider web.”