a sheepskin vest to his army-surplus clothing.
“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
