The Zenda Vendetta (TimeWars 4)

He tipped the bottle back again, wishing that Derringer had brought more than just the one.

The large grandfather clock in the sitting room outside the royal bedchamber chimed twice. It was a soft sound, coming through the closed doors, one that would not have impinged upon the monarch’s sleep, but Finn heard it clearly. He seemed to hear even the slightest sound in his wing of the palace and in the streets outside. He lay on his back, chainsmoking Rudolf’s Turkish cigarettes and wondering when he would finally start feeling the effects of the previous day’s exertions.

He had been up since five o’clock in the morning, rudely awakened with a hangover to be plunged headlong into his impersonation of Rudolf Rassendyll impersonating Rudolf Elphberg. He was hustled at full gallop to the Hofban station, put aboard a t

rain and drilled mercilessly in the requirements of the part he had to play. He was displayed to all of Strelsau in a grand parade, crowned king in an opulent and lengthy ceremony, driven through the city in a coach while improvising his way through his first meeting with Flavia, toasted in a seemingly interminable banquet, hustled once again on horseback at breakneck speed from Strelsau to Zenda and back again and yet still the adrenalin rush would not subside. It felt like being in battle.

He realized that the time had to come when it would hit him all at once, fearing that it would come at the worst possible moment, knowing that when it did come, he would have no choice but to resort to that small but no less potent dose of nitro that he carried. He loathed that horrifying stuff. It made him burn like some apocalyptic roman candle. When it wore off, he had the shakes for hours. The sleep that came thereafter was always filled with hideous nightmares that left him wondering at the sanity of a mind that could manufacture such twisted, tortured visions. He blew a long stream of smoke towards the large canopy above his bed and, for lack of anything better to do on this sleepless night, ran over the events of the last few hours in his mind, trying to get some sort of handle on the role he was assigned, a role in a demented play with only the barest outline of a script.

Poor Fritz von Tarlenheim, his nerves strained to the breaking point by his long vigil, almost had a stroke when he realized that it was not the king who had returned with Colonel Sapt. Finn wondered how he would have taken it if he had known that the man whom he first took to be the king returned from Zenda, but who was actually Rudolf Rassendyll was, in fact, not Rudolf Rassendyll at all, but a soldier from the 27th century named Finn Delaney, who just happened to resemble Rudolf Rassendyll, who just happened to resemble the king. Von Tarlenheim had been badly shaken when Sapt explained to him what had occurred. Finn could only imagine the effect on him if he were to have heard the real story.

You see, Fritz, it all has to do with something called the Fate Factor, which controls the flow of time. Most people believe that time is absolute, but in point of fact, it’s not. Time is absolute only in a manner of speaking. It depends on where you are in time and what you’re doing in time at the time. It’s all a question of relativity-temporal relativity, to be exact. It’s a bit difficult to comprehend, but don’t concern yourself, old sport. The only man who ever came close to really comprehending it wound up committing suicide, so I wouldn’t work too hard at trying to understand it all if I were you. Basically, what it comes down to is that my friends and I have come here from the future in order to prevent a group of criminals from the 27th century who call themselves the Timekeepers from altering the historical sequence of events in this tiny fragment of what we refer to as Minus Time. Unfortunately, what’s making our job a bit difficult is the fact that not only are we supposed to make certain that events at this particular point in time proceed according to history when we aren’t exactly sure of the historical details, but-and this is where it gets a little sticky-these Timekeepers are apparently intent on killing us while we’re about it.

I realize it all sounds totally insane, Fritz, but the truth of the matter is that what we have here is a situation in which nothing seems to be happening the way it’s supposed to happen and no one is who or what they seem to be. I’m not really Rassendyll. There’s a woman here in Strelsau who calls herself the Countess Sophia and it appears that she’s involved with Rupert Hentzau and Black Michael, only she’s actually involved with the Timekeepers and her name is not Countess Sophia, but Sophia Falco, alias Elaine Cantrell, alias Falcon, a woman whose true identity no one seems to know. And while we know that Countess Sophia isn’t really Countess Sophia, at this point we have no way of knowing if Rupert Hentzau is really Rupert Hentzau or if Black Michael is really Black Michael. For that matter, Princess Flavia, for all I know, could be a B-girl from San Diego, Sapt could be a hired assassin from Detroit and, come to think of it, Fritz, I’m not too sure about you, either.

Finn crushed his cigarette out with a vengeance, lighting up another one immediately. Best to stop thinking that way, he told himself. That kind of paranoia will make you really crazy. He wondered where in hell Lucas and Andre were. Why hadn’t there been any contact? Not that there had been much chance for it, the way he’d been running around. His mind involuntarily returned to the image of Falcon standing on the balcony of the Grand Hotel, watching him with a mocking gaze, smiling. Had she wanted to, she could have taken him out right there and then. Rudolf the Fifth assassinated on the day of his coronation before thousands of witnesses. After that, Michael could have killed the king and there would have been a truly fine mess. So why hadn’t she done it?

The only possible answer was that it would not have gone according to her plan, whatever her plan was. She obviously felt that she was in control, so much so that she hadn’t even bothered to disguise her presence. She even went so far as to assume an alias as obvious as Countess Sophia. Her arrogance both astonished and unnerved him. The Timekeepers had proved themselves to be formidable adversaries in the past. Falcon was not only a Timekeeper, she was a Timekeeper who had been trained by the TIA. She had killed Mongoose, who had been the TIA’s best agent.

He thought of Derringer’s safehouse. Derringer had told them where it was, in the old quarter of the city, on a tiny back street. He had explained about the security system and told them how to deactivate it, stressing that if anything went wrong, they were to meet there. However, Finn had no indication that anything had gone wrong. So far. Besides, he would be far more vulnerable on the streets of Strelsau than inside the palace. His orders were to play the part of Rudolf Rassendyll and the last thing Rassendyll would do under the circumstances would be to roam the streets of Strelsau in the middle of the night. He would be alone in this charade, forced to depend upon Sapt and von Tarlenheim for guidance, but ultimately, all alone. Much as Finn wanted to do something, at the moment there seemed to be nothing he could do.

In exasperation, he threw the covers off the bed, got up, belted the king’s robe around himself and went over to the windows to unlatch them and let in some air. He pulled the large double windows open and took a deep breath of the cool night air, then jumped about a foot when Lucas said, “Good, I’m glad you’re still awake.”

He was pressed against the outside wall, supported by a nysteel rappelling line. He was dressed all in black. He had blackened his face as well. Using his legs to push away from the side of the building, Lucas swung out from the wall and in through the open windows, the nysteel line unwinding from the grip handle with a soft, whizzing sound. Once inside, Lucas turned around to face the open window, pressed a small button on the grip, gave the line a couple of sharp jerks. It retracted quickly, whistling back into the handle.

“Where in hell have you been?” Finn said angrily, despite his enormous relief at seeing him.

“Take it easy, Your Majesty,” said Lucas, reaching out and taking the cigarette out of Finn’s mouth. He took a deep drag off it and sat down on the bed, wearily. He exhaled the smoke in a heavy sigh. “Derringer is dead.”

“Oh, hell,” Finn said, softly.

“I don’t think he even knew what hit him,” Lucas said. He held up a hand. “Give me a minute, okay? I haven’t slept in 48 hours and I’m exhausted.” He rubbed his eyes. Finn gave him another cigarette. Lucas lit it off the butt of the one he had taken from Finn.

“Take your time,” said Finn. “You look all done in.”

Lucas sighed heavily. “I’ll bear up. If I could just catch a couple of hours’ sleep, I’d be okay.” He inhaled deeply on the cigarette, then lay back on the bed. Finn sat down beside him.

“It happened at around oh-three-thirty last night,” said Lucas. “I had taken up a post at the southwest corner of the lodge, where I had a good view of the west side and the rear. Andre was at the northeast corner, where she could see the east side and the front. Derringer took up position a bit farther to the northwest, where he could see part of the front of the lodge and all of the road leading up to it. At about oh-three-thirty, Andre spotted laser flashes. Two quick beams, coming from Derringer’s direction, one firing and one returning fire. We couldn’t raise Derringer. I had Andre stay put, covering the lodge from her side in case it was some sort of diversion, then I circled round wide to check on Derringer. I found him dead with his neck broken. No signs of a struggle.”

“His neck broken?” Finn said.

Lucas nodded. “His laser had not been fired.”

“So who-”

“I have no idea. I didn’t see a thing. Oh, one other thing. His chronoplate remote was gone.”

Finn swore. “We’re screwed. By now they will have hit the safehouse and taken the plate. I hope you like the neighborhood. Looks like we might be staying for a while.”

“Maybe not,” said Lucas. “Derringer did have security setup. Maybe we’ll get lucky. If not, we go on with the mission. S amp; R will come looking for us eventually.”

“Yeah, in a few months, maybe, if they’re on the ball. Where’s Andre?”

“I sent her to check the safehouse. I’ll be heading out there as soon as I leave here.”

“Take it back from last night,” Finn said. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “We expected them to hit us, but they never did. It was pretty nerve-wracking. With only two of us left to cover the lodge, we didn’t want to risk trying to get to you and leaving ourselves open. We held tight, expecting them to make their move, thinking maybe they were watching from somewhere and waiting for us to expose ourselves, but it must have been a hit-and-run. When you left in the morning with Sapt and von Tarlenheim, Andre took one of the other horses and trailed you. She was supposed to stick with you until you looked reasonably safe, then head right for the safehouse.”