Fabergé didn’t just make jewelled Easter eggs for the imperial family, but given that the potential provenance of Charlie’s egg came from Dimitri Guskov, the Russian soldier guarding the royal family in 1918, Julius decided to focus on the imperial eggs first.
Fifty were made, although a further two were under commission when the family were assassinated. Julius was intrigued by these two, but decided that even if they did exist, Fabergé wouldn’t have been able to get them to the family. So, back to fifty. The whereabouts of six eggs were currently unknown. However, the more he drilled down, the more he was able to narrow his search. The location of two of them had been recorded during the mid-twentieth century. If the idea was that Charlie’s egg had been hiding in a doll all these years, then it needed to have been missing almost from the beginning.
Only four fit this description, having been last itemised in 1922 at the Kremlin. Could the record have been falsified? Could one have been stolen after the inventory had been taken?
Can you steal something that was already stolen? When the imperial family had been assassinated, they had been told they were being moved to a safe location. Apparently, the Tsarina and her five daughters lined their clothing with jewels and money. It took over ten minutes to kill them. Shots fired wildly as bullets ricocheted off all the diamonds and hidden treasures. No doubt as their bodies were taken to the carts, soldiers plundered the skirts and jackets, looting the precious gems. Had a little egg been hiding in a pocket?
Julius thought it very likely that treasure had been looted, but then how would you explain those four eggs turning up four years later on an inventory? Unless... Was it possible? Was there an unknown imperial egg? And if so, all bets were off as to its actual value.
#9 Neith – Alpha Earth
‘Case FE 988776 is now active. Quantum Curators Sala, Masoud, Gamal and Flint, stay behind, the rest of you get to work.’
Well, that was music to my ears. I loved live events. You were far less restricted by time paradoxes or end of world scenarios. Time paradoxes were a huge problem. On one occasion a team screwed up so badly during a visit to England in 1647, that the quantum stepper wouldn't work for a year. By the time we stepped back, their timeline had twisted and they’d had a whole thirty years where the English had actually had a civil war, assassinated their King— THEIR KING — and banned Christmas carols. Happily, the British are pretty resilient when it comes to their timeline, and it didn’t take too long before they re-installed another King and tried to pretend that it had all been a bit of an embarrassing interlude. That said, it was not one of our finer moments. Every cadet has to recite liturgical plain song for an hour if they fail their Cause and Effect module. They don't get to fail it twice.
Sam started to take us through the case. The Q Field was giving hot lead locations for London, Cambridge and Poland.
We all groaned. Those northern countries were horrible in winter. Poland was likely to be covered in snow, London was going to be wet, and Cambridge was just going to be freezing, with that cold wind blowing off the fens. Fingers crossed it ended up in Britain: much less chance of snow.
‘What details do we have for the extraction event?’
‘Right,’ said Sam. ‘It’s a Fabergé egg, but not one we recognise. This makes it all the more important. Currently, we have it rolling out of someone's hand in Cambridge. As it hits the pavement it cracks and then rolls onto the road, where a passing bus runs over it.’ We all winced.
‘As it's live, I don't need to remind you that if you find the egg earlier, you can extract it immediately. This one has a quantum probability of zero percent that it will survive.’
Basically, no matter what we do to try to fix the timeline, this egg was toast. This was typical of the rare and valuable stuff. Their own allure was often the cause of their inevitable downfall.
Even though we were all in a state of readiness, we needed to wait until a morning slot on the stepper. Now that we had the finer details, I sent everyone home to brush up on all the relevant information, as well as pack accordingly. We were going to set up base in London and move if need be. As northern cities go, I don't hate London, and it does have some lovely museums. It’s just that the Thames always makes me feel sad; a river should have crocodiles.
As we headed out, I shouted a final warning not to drink. Drinking after a step was dumb. Who needed a quantum hangover with bizarre side effects? Drinking before one was dangerous.
I played with the idea of going off to Paul’s. Whilst we were on a mission we would be strictly colleagues only. In the end though I decided against it. I wanted to be on top form for tomorrow, and that meant a good night’s sleep. And don’t assume the obvious. We would just as often spend the whole night chatting. A few months ago, we sailed a felucca down the Nile for a few hundred miles. It was a pretty special time, and I began to see a whole new side to him. There’s a book by Jane Austen, a Beta classic that we adore, with a character called Mr Darcy. He has a little sister that he utterly dotes on. Well, that was how Paul was about his sister. She is the
