The Empire of Time (7 page)

But when I open my eyes she’s gone, as if she too were a dream.

It happens that way sometimes. Things change, and we with them – our clothes, our memories, the things we’ve done in our lives. And we might not even know about it, only Hecht keeps track and lets us know.

It doesn’t happen often. Not the big changes. But when they do we all feel strange for a time, not quite knowing why.

When I next see Hecht, he seems different, though in what manner I’m not sure. He looks and acts the same. Only …

‘What is it, Otto?’ he asks, amused by the way I’m studying him.

‘Nothing.’

‘Good.’ He pauses, finishes something on the keyboard, then. ‘Feeling better?’

‘Yes. Much refreshed.’

‘Good. Then we’ll find you something to do.’

‘I thought …’

He looks up patiently. ‘Go on.’

‘I thought maybe I could take Ernst back. To the Haven. I realise it’s your space, but he’s going mad, being cooped up here.’

Hecht studies me coolly. ‘Cabin fever.’

‘What?’

‘It’s what they used to call it. What happened when people were cooped up together for too long. Cabin fever.’

I nod, then wait, and after a moment Hecht shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, Otto, but I can’t take that risk. We tried it once, remember?’

I look down, disappointed. Though I knew it would be his answer, I’d hoped he might perhaps relent. After all, what trouble could Ernst get up to so far back in time?

‘You want me to speak to him, Otto?’

‘No … no. I’ll go and see him now.’

Ernst is teaching when I find him, the boys hanging on to his every word as he tells them an anecdote from one of his journeys back. It’s one I know well, and I stand there listening in the shadowed doorway until he’s finished, and then – and only then – do I make my presence known.

‘It’s true,’ I say, stepping past the boys and grinning at Ernst, who is surprised to see me there. ‘I was there, and that’s exactly what happened.’

‘You blew them up?’ Tomas asks, eyes wide.

‘That’s right. They just walked right in and …
boom
! They never knew what hit them!’

The boys are delighted, but it’s not them I’ve come to see, and once Ernst has dismissed them, I sit him down. Only I can’t bring myself to tell him. He so wants to go back again.

‘Well?’ he asks. ‘What did Hecht say?’

‘I didn’t get to see him. He’s very busy right now.’

‘Busy?’

I nod. ‘He’s got a lot on his plate. Seydlitz’s project for a start.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘You’ll just have to be patient,’ I say, and hate myself for lying to him. ‘I’ll see him later. I promise. I’ll ask him then.’

Ernst looks down. ‘They’re still watching me.’

‘Watching you?’

‘Assessing me. To see if I’m stable. I look up sometimes and it’s like I can see them there, in the control room, watching me on the screen, looking for some nervous tick perhaps, or some self-betraying phrase.’

‘I guess they have to be careful.’

‘Careful, yes. But sometimes …’ He hesitates, glancing past me at the camera high up on the wall behind me. ‘Sometimes I think it’s more than that.’

Another night passes without rest, and when finally I sleep, I dream once more, awful bloody dreams where I am back there with the Knight Brothers, and of all the bad things we did in the name of Our Lady, and I wake, gilded with sweat, gasping for breath, as if I’ve been drowning in blood.

Unable to settle, I go to the sanctuary, where, before the image of Ygdrasil, the Tree of Existence, I give offerings to Urd, Goddess of Fate, Queen of Life and Death.

This is
our
religion, and in this I believe, strangely enough. Rational as I am, this fulfils some need in me. Why? Perhaps because it is the only faith that reflects both the strengths
and
weaknesses of mankind, a religion that does not ask its followers to be any better than its gods. And yet …

Yet there is still a small, argumentative part of me that
does not
believe. My ‘mathematical soul’ as I call it. And that part finds such emotional comfort little more than a superior theatre show. Yet, cold as I might appear, aloof as I am, my emotional self believes. I know the gods exist, and that when I die my soul – yes, and my bodily self – will go to Valhalla, there to feast with the gods.

I close my eyes and lower my head, saying the words of the ritual.

‘Great Mother Urd protect me and guide me. All-Father Odin, grant me the strength of will to do my duty.’ And it is true. Urd
does
protect me and watch over me. She, above all, safeguards my deeper self. She
is
my strength. If ever I lost my faith in her …

I open my eyes and look up at the World Tree, nodding to myself. The great ash is the image of our cosmos: its roots stretch back into the Past, its great trunk forms the Present, its branches unfold into the Future. So life is, and we … we are but leaves upon that Tree.

I have travelled the length and breadth of Time, and I have seen more than mortal man ought, yet only here do I find myself truly at peace, body and soul at one. Here, yes, and in one other place.

But I shall speak of that another time.

I stand, and as I do, I realise that Hecht is there, just behind me, his back to the door.

‘Forgive me, Otto. I didn’t mean to intrude.’

‘It’s okay. I was just—’

Hecht smiles. ‘I know. I come here every day.’

I nod, understanding the feelings that we share about this place. Even so, I feel embarrassed, as if I have been caught doing something illicit, something very …
personal
. Sensing this, Hecht steps back a little.

‘If you’d rather I came back …’

‘No … come and worship with me.’

And, turning back, I kneel once more, bowing my head before the holy ash, even as Hecht kneels beside me and, bowing his head, takes up the litany.

“One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil”

– Friedrich Nietzsche,
Ecce Homo
(1888)

‘Otto … we need to talk.’

Freisler stands before me, blocking my way. If I asked him to move, he would; he’s not an impolite man, but there’s something about his manner that gives me pause for thought.

‘Sure.’

‘Not here,’ he says, and places his hand on my upper arm. I look at it pointedly, and he removes it without comment. He knows I don’t really like him – that I
instinctively
don’t like him – but it doesn’t seem to worry him. Nothing does.

He turns and, tapping in the code, makes the door open on to his rooms. As it hisses apart, he looks round at me and gestures for me to enter.

I step inside. Books line the walls. In one corner is a chair. Otherwise there’s nothing. No bed, no table, and no sign in the room I glimpse through the archway that he has any of these things. It makes me wonder where he sleeps, or even
if
he sleeps. Fanciful, I know, but Freisler attracts speculation like that.

‘Well?’ I ask. ‘What did you want to say?’

Freisler is a strange fish. He’s a good twenty years older than me, and people say he was Hecht’s favourite, once upon a time. Until I came along. Not that he’s ever made any comment on it – not in my earshot, anyway – only I guess it might irk him, that he might see me somehow as his usurper.

He looks at me now with that cold, supercilious stare of his, eyes half-closed under those heavy lids, his long face almost nodding. They call him Hecht’s
Jagdhund
– his ‘bloodhound’ – and there is a certain dog-like quality to him, only he’s far too intelligent to deserve that sobriquet. Freisler is very much his own man, however loyal he is to Hecht.

‘I thought you should know what happened back there,’ he says, his voice clipped, businesslike.

‘I thought I did. Someone spotted me as I went in. They changed agents and—’

I stop, because Freisler is shaking his head. ‘I meant what
really
happened.’

‘Go on.’

‘It wasn’t you.’

‘No?’

‘No, it was those two …
idiotisch
.’

I blink, shocked. It’s not like Freisler to offer any form of criticism. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Hecht’s played it down. He had to.
Barbarossa
had been green-lit. Any criticism of Seydlitz …’

Would have meant the cancellation of his project
…

I nod my understanding. ‘So?’

‘So it endangers us all. That level of incompetence, I mean. It undermines what we’ve been doing.’

‘But surely …?’

‘When they killed those Russians, they tripped all kind of alarm wires. The Russians sent in quite a few of their agents to have a really close look to see what was going on. It got quite hairy back there for a time. And you know what they were looking at?’

‘What?’

‘Seydlitz. They paid him a lot of attention. You know how they do. One of their men will be sitting at a nearby table in a bar, listening in, while another one will be standing outside in the street as he comes out. It’s how they work. They get to know our men really well.’ Freisler smiles; a cold, wintry smile. ‘Luckily we have me. And the Russians don’t have a clue who I am.’

But
you
know who
they
are
…

‘So why are you telling me? Why not Hecht?’

‘Hecht’s busy. Very busy. Besides, I wanted to alert you.’

‘Alert me?’

‘About Seydlitz. I’ve an instinct for these things.’

It’s almost ironic. ‘You think him unsound?’

‘No. Seydlitz is immensely sound. He would do anything for the
Volk
. He’s clever and resourceful and his project – Barbarossa – is a good one. It had a good chance of succeeding. Only the Russians know now who he is, and he can be headstrong. The killings … I can’t help thinking that we’ll pay for them.
How
, I don’t know, only—’

‘Did they bring them back?’

‘The two that were killed? Of course they did. They may have three times as many agents out there, but they don’t waste men for nothing. Besides, it was easy for them. Just a minor change in Time. Why, that very evening I was drinking with them like they were old friends.’

I stare at Freisler a moment, trying to understand him; wondering if I’ve got him wrong. Then, with a small dismissive shrug, he goes over and takes a book down from the shelf. As he turns back, he glances at me. ‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘All I’ve got to say.’

‘Ah. Only I thought …’

But it doesn’t matter what I was thinking. Freisler has said his piece and – in a manner reminiscent of Hecht – he has dismissed me. But maybe that too is part of his game: to remind me that he’s closer to the centre of things than I am, however it might seem.

‘Oh,’ he says, as if he’s suddenly remembered. ‘Your friend Ernst was asking after you. Wanted to know if you had an answer.’

Do I imagine the cold smile that flickers across his lips, or is he really such a bastard as to know already and enjoy making a taunt of it?

‘
Thanks
,’ I say, emphasising the word. ‘And thanks for the warning. I’ll sleep on it.’

Ernst is in my room when I get back, but one glance at me tells him more than he wants to know.

‘Hecht said no, didn’t he?’

‘Yes. He feels you aren’t ready yet.’

Ernst slumps down into the chair. ‘Shit!’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know. Only it’s so unfair.’

I don’t want to argue, so I change the subject. ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve just been speaking to.’

‘Who?’

‘Freisler.’

‘
Freisler?
That bastard!’

‘Oh come. He’s not the friendliest of men, but—’

‘But what? Those eyes of his, the heavy lids, it’s like he’s shielding his soul. Preventing you from looking in and seeing what a vacuous bastard he truly is. They say he does all of Hecht’s dirty work.’

‘Someone has to.’

‘Sure. But he doesn’t have to like it so much, and it doesn’t mean
I
have to like
him
.’ Ernst stands, agitated now. ‘So what did the
Jagdhund
say?’

I smile at my old friend’s relentlessness. ‘He says he has a feeling – an
instinct
– about Seydlitz. He thinks we should watch him carefully. Oh, and he thinks that maybe the Russians have singled him out. They were very interested, it seems.’

Ernst nods thoughtfully. He knows what it’s like to have the Russians single you out.

‘You should keep an eye.’

‘I shall.’

‘But right now …’ Ernst grins. ‘Right now I could do with a drink.’

Ernst stares at me, his eyes gleaming. ‘So … when will the first report come back?’

‘Within the hour. That is, if Hecht isn’t studying it right now.’

‘Ah.’ Ernst looks thoughtful. He strokes his close-shaven chin, then shakes his dark unruly mop of hair. I know him so well that I can tell there’s something he wants to say – something he maybe wants to ask – but he doesn’t quite know how.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing, it’s … nothing.’

‘No?’ But I leave it. Ernst is like that. He takes his time coming to the point. There’s nothing rash about him, nothing ill-considered.

We’re in the North Bar. Not that it’s north. Direction is arbitrary here in the
Nichtraum
. Yet we need a sense of it, and so where we sit, on a balcony overlooking the pool, is deemed the polar north.

‘I hear Klaus is back,’ I say, filling the sudden silence. ‘How’s he getting on? And how’s our old friend Nevsky?’

Klaus Kubhart is Ernst’s replacement back in thirteenth-century Russia, his
protégé
. Ernst trained him up, taught him everything he knew about the era, then sent him back.

‘Klaus is fine,’ Ernst answers, wiping froth from his upper lip. ‘He’s doing well. As for Nevsky … he’s just as foul-mouthed and gargantuanly conceited as when you last met him.’

I take a long sip of my beer. So it is with heroes. Theirs and ours. Some are genuine, others painted so to suit the purposes of history. But Nevsky is one of the worst I’ve come across. To the Russians he’s a demi-god, the saviour of their nation from the Swedes and the Teuton Knights, but then they’ve never met the man in person, were never forced to spend an evening in his odious company.