Julius nodded appreciatively as Rebecca launched into a tale of high skulduggery in the Jonas Dept Display Team. Rebecca was a display designer for the department store, displaying goods to their most enticing best and guaranteeing sales. Apparently, Nikki had positioned one of the mannequins in the window so that it appeared to be pinching another mannequin’s bottom. Julius duly laughed, and then apologised as Rebecca explained to him that it wasn't actually funny.
‘It's like she doesn't take her job seriously. We have standards, you know.’
At this Julius could sympathise. He knew Rebecca worked hard and was proud of all she had achieved. Her thematic windows often made the local papers, and she had made the new season window reveals into something of an event. Last Christmas the police had to temporarily close the street as the crowd was so large. Julius knew she was looking for a promotion. She deserved it, but her company were quite traditional. They wouldn't create a new position for her, so she was likely going to have to move. Julius knew she had London firmly in her sights.
‘That reminds me. I was talking to Charlie today.’
Rebecca stared at him blankly. She had been discussing the new layout of the perfume floor and what Gino had said to her about customer targeting. Had Julius been listening to a word she said?
Returning to his college office after lunch, he tried to concentrate on his paper on the Myth and Migration Patterns of the Early Hallstatt Cultures, but he couldn’t focus. No matter how much he tried to settle down, his mind drifted to his earlier conversation. Charlie had asked if he wanted to accompany him to visit Zofia’s elusive brother-in-law. Julius knew this was a big deal. If Charlie was on the path of a Fabergé, then it showed great faith and trust that he had invited him along. He had almost said yes, it was that tempting. Then he thought about all the effort involved and decided he preferred his treasure hunts in the old library stacks and the pages of the web. All within reach of a decent cup of coffee or a warming glass of single malt. What was the appeal of getting cold and wet, running down leads in the rain, hanging around in strange places and wandering when you'd be back in your own bed? Both his best friend and his girlfriend were outward going sorts. Maybe he should try a little harder. He knew Charlie understood him. Maybe if Julius tried a bit harder with Rebecca she’d understand him as well.
#7 Neith – Alpha Earth
Live events were treasured. You could play fast and loose with the timeline as there was less to screw up. They were also high risk, with greater chance of failure or death, and a greater chance of glory. No wonder we were all leaning forward in our seats. The Q Field was capable of letting us through to any place on Beta Earth in any time zone, but sometimes it lined up with Beta Earth at the same time we were currently at, hence a live event.
‘It looks like a Fabergé egg is about to resurface.’ Clio nudged me, and the flush of adrenaline through my system swept away the hangover. Just like that, the polar bear disappeared and all I had was a slight muzziness. The joy of quantum hangovers. I pushed my sunglasses up onto my head to get a better view of the large screen behind Captain Nymens.
According to record, Carl Fabergé made only fifty eggs for the royal imperial family of Russia. The location of forty-four were known to Beta Earth. We knew of a further two that were in undeclared private collections, and another two were in our own vaults. That left a further two whose locations were truly unknown. It would be our job to watch the path of its discovery. We would monitor it right until the moment it went public or was melted down.
Believe me, that nearly happened once.
We had been getting ready to grab the egg. Someone had bought it at a flea market and didn’t realise what it was. Idiot. Anyway, he could see it was made of gold and jewels and thought he would melt it down and sell it for scrap. However, the surprise that this egg contained was a watch, and the bloke thought he might be able to flog it. He did a quick internet search for the watch, and mentioned the egg as well, and suddenly he was receiving lots of search results about missing Fabergé eggs. Needless to say, he didn’t melt the egg down after that.
If it hadn’t been saved though, we would have stepped in. At the moment that the item is destroyed, we are then able to enact the live protocol. The Q Field confirming the item has left the Beta timeline permanently then opens a window for us to step through. We head back a few days or weeks beforehand and prepare to extract it at the moment of destruction.
‘Any questions?’
There was a sea of hands. This was going to be a hotly contested consignment.
‘Which egg is it? Have we got any intel yet?’
‘No, nothing yet.’
‘Do we know which continent it's on?’
‘All the intel suggests Europe at the moment. Or Asia,’
There were lots of groans. Researching two continents was twice the workload. At least it was a Fabergé. That meant only a hundred years of research.
‘Any sense of timescale?’
‘Not yet. The quantum alert has only thrown this up as a possibility at this moment. As we get closer to the event, we'll get more details. And no, we don't have any names yet either.’
Which meant loads of tedious fact finding about stuff that we will ultimately need to ditch. Step forward, Clio. I was okay at research and loved tracking down active clues, but Clio was a beast at it. It was a
