Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) (43 page)

There was a single chair sitting before a small pedestal crowned
by a Plexiglas dome over the red phone. It had a keypad for code entry and
Elena quickly used it to re-enable her phone. MacRae set the box heavily down
on the pedestal desk, waiting while Elena seat herself on the chair.

“Well,” she said, “protocol has it that I should report any red
mission irregularity at once. I never thought I would find myself sitting here
in front of this damn phone again. This is all quite unexpected.”

“What was the failure?” MacRae folded his arms.

“You saw yourself. The key would not operate, and there was no
other passage or door.”

“But there was that box,” he pointed.

“Yes, and now I’ve got to report that and see if I can find out
why my key won’t open it.”

“Try it again,” MacRae suggested. “No sense making your call
unless you’re sure it won’t work.”

That sounded reasonable, and so she nodded, drawing out the key
again on its chain and slowly inserting it into the hole. It turned! There was
an audible click and a quiet tone from some mechanism inside the box, and now
the front side tilted open, revealing a small drawer that held a rolled scroll.
She glanced at MacRae, perplexed, and then slowly reached for the scroll to open
it.

There was a brief message, addressed to her, and she read it
aloud. “Should you read this your mission will have concluded as planned. Keep
this device within a secure room aboard
Argos Fire
at all times and it
will serve to hold you in a safe nexus. As of this moment, you are now
Watchstander G1. Godspeed.”

“Watchstander G1?” MacRae did not understand.

“There were nine of us left,” said Elena. “It seems I’ve been
promoted.”

“What does it mean, Mum?” said Morgan. “A safe nexus?”

She turned, looking at him with a new light in her eyes, and then
smiled. “It means I know why you can’t raise anything on the radio now, Mack.
It’s begun. It’s happening right now, and we’re right in the eye of the
maelstrom…”

Epilogue 2

It
had taken some time to debark at the port of Ostend, as it was
quite busy that morning. Sir Roger had his footman Thomas retrieve their
luggage while he thanked the Captain of the
Anne
roundly for taking his
small party on a minute’s notice The Captain was all to gracious and willing to
do more. The glitter of the diamond the Duke had left in his palm was more than
ample inducement.

“May I look for your ship in these waters again, sir?” Ames had
inquired as he made ready to leave the ship.

“Most certainly, Mister Ames. I make this run from Edinburgh to
Ostend once every fortnight, and then sail on to London before returning north
again.”

“That will work out well, Captain, as I shall have business in
London soon,” said Ames.

“Excellent. Well I do hope the French don’t complicate matters for
you. I would advise you to stay well away from the border.”

“I take that as good advice, Captain Cameron. Very good, sir.
Farewell.”

The Duke quickly found a pawn shop and brokerage near the wharf
that agreed to buy a few of his diamonds for a considerable sum in coinage,
which he thought would make for much easier commerce in the days ahead. He soon
had a nice leather pouch full of pounds, shillings, and pence, though the old
240 pence pound was still being used, with a pound equal to twenty shillings,
and a shilling equal to twelve pence at the time.

The first order of business was then to secure a good coach for
the journey to Brussels, some 80 miles inland which was accomplished in an
hour’s time. Thomas and the coachman loaded the luggage on a sturdy
post-chaise, a common four wheeled carriage of the day, and the two men climbed
aboard. Sir Roger leaned out to speak with the coachman, intent on giving him
firm direction.

“Now then,” he said. “We will not be going to the principle
residence of the Duke of Richmond on the Rue des Cendres. There is a coach
house back of the property with an address on Rue de la Blanchisserie. Make for
that location, my good man, and an extra shilling if you get us there before
sunset.” The exact location of the ball being given by the Duchess of Richmond
was in some doubt for many years, but the Duke had discovered it was held in
that very coach house, and not the main residence. He recalled attending mock
events of the famous ball, the last given on the 200th anniversary of the
battle in 2015. Yet none will be so grand as the original, he thought with some
satisfaction.

He eased back in his seat now, exhaling and pleased that they were
finally on their way, though the Duke’s companion and would be footman sat in
sullen silence. Ames regarded him sympathetically, knowing the shock of his
present circumstances must be very hard to take, even in the comfort of the
plush riding coach. He reached up, sliding the window shut to make certain the
driver would hear nothing, then regarded his hired hand Thomas with a steady
gaze as he fished in his pocket for a pipe.

“I managed to get my hands on a bit of Bull Durham tobacco while
we were at the wharf. I don’t suppose you’d care for a smoke?”

Thomas shook his head, saying nothing.

“Well,” said the Duke, “I don’t partake often, but I rather feel
like getting into the swing of things here. You know the saying…When in Rome,
do as the Romans do. My meerschaum pipe is an old favorite.” He held up an
ornately carved pipe in a pale cream meerschaum, a Black Sea mineral that was
perfect for the application and used for pipemaking since the early 1700s.
“Much better than a clay pipe,” said Ames. “The stone is soft and porous, and
it cools the smoke wonderfully. I’d favor a pipe like this over briar wood any
day. Manzanita is another fine wood for a pipe, but meerschaum stone is top
drawer.”

He could see that his attempt at simple civil conversation was
having little effect on Thomas, so he inclined his head and got round to the
trouble at the bottom of his footman’s depressed mood. “Well, Mister Thomas. I
suppose you think you have been hoodwinked here, eh?”

“Sir?”

“Come now, I can read that glum expression. Yes, I know this has
all been quite a shock, and perhaps more than you bargained for when I first
proposed this journey.”

“It’s just too much to believe, sir. I can’t imagine how any of
this could be happening!”

“Of course not. You have taken it all bravely, my man. I suppose
you thought it was all sport and theater to tickle my fancy at first, though I
tried to put you off that mindset several times.”

“Well who could believe it, sir? Who could believe
this
without seeing it all first hand?” He gestured to the world outside, passing
the windows of the coach as it started off down a narrow road.

“Indeed. Seeing is believing, however, and we have only just
begun. You will see a good deal more before we’re through here.”

“How, Sir Roger? How did we get here?”

I’m afraid that is a very long tale, my man. But I do suppose I
owe you a bit more of an explanation. That business at Lindisfarne was no mere
sightseeing tour. The place has a long history, and hides more secrets that
many know. You have just seen one of them—that passage at the back of the
closet on the upper bedroom. It was that stairway, and the tunnel after it,
that led us here. We walked only that very short distance, but traversed long
years with every step we took.”

“What…through
time
, sir? How is that possible?”

The Duke regarded him with narrowed eyes, considering. “I suppose
you have both feet in it now, Thomas, and you did not know the full measure of
what I was asking of you when you signed on to this little adventure. I tried
to convey the indefinite duration of the assignment, and its potential hazards.
Yet I apologize for not revealing everything. If I had told you this beforehand
you would simply not believe it. There was no other way. Sometimes you cannot
go by rope or ladder when you come to a precipice in life, my man. You must
simply throw yourself over. Very well then, in all fairness I will be candid
with you now. Few men or women will know what I will now tell you. To put it
simply, the world we have just come from is in real jeopardy, not just with
that war brewing up like a storm on our near horizon, but because it seems time
itself has simply run itself down there. Things are starting to come apart and
it’s about to get very strange, which is why it was necessary that we go
somewhere else.”

“I don’t understand, sir. How could we move in time?”

“Of course you don’t. Let me see if I can explain it. You are
given to thinking of time as something you always have, and always spend, like
these shillings in my leather pouch here.” He cupped the pouch under his
waistcoat and went on. “You think of your life as beginning at birth, when you
are handed a nice big bag of coinage in time and you spend two pence a day
until you run out. You move through time every day. Yes? But you always move in
the same direction, forward. The thought that you might ever take a step back,
to unsay an ill made remark, or correct some other misjudgment often crosses
every man’s mind, but it’s not something he can ever do—or so he believes.
You’ve heard the poetry by Omar Khayyam: The moving finger writes; and, having
writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a
line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. So it has seemed to be true for
most of our lives. Yet I have found it to be in error, Mister Thomas. Other men
have too—though they are very few in number.”

“Others have done this—they have traveled back here?”

“Not here. This is my keyhold, and I paid handsomely for it,
believe me. But there are other places like Lindisfarne in the world, and they
open hidden doors like the one you and I just went through. I only know of a
very few, but they are there.”

“You’re telling me these doorways and passages exist elsewhere?”

“They do. There’s one in the Great Pyramid, and others in Greece
and China. There may be more that I do not know of, and each one leads to a
different place—or rather I should say, a different
time
. This one led
us here to the eve of a great moment in history, and it was much coveted. I had
to pay a great deal for the key, and there it is.” He touched the chain that
held the key where it hung about his neck.

“But… how? Who built these passages?”

“The short answer is that we do not really know. There is no doubt
that the portals exist, though they are really more like fissures in time. The
one we traversed was discovered in the early 19th century when the restoration
of the castle was underway. How they managed to determine its unique nature
remains a mystery. There were signs that they tried to open the doors, without
success. Those works were beyond the means of anyone in the 19th century. They
could not be breached by force. The doorways were six inches of
tungsten-carbide steel and titanium alloy! That is technology we may master in
2021, but not in the 1900s.”

“Then they were built in our day?”

“I could find no evidence of that, which means that they were
built in the past.”

“But how could they achieve that? You just said the technology was
beyond them.”

“So one would think. Well, we don’t know who built them, do we?
They may have been built in the past, but that does not mean they were built by
anyone native to the time of their construction. I could undertake a project
here, for example, using knowledge and methods known only in our time.”

“You are suggesting they were built by…by someone from a
future
time?”

“Very good, Mister Thomas. I knew you would come round to it one
way or another. It’s really just a process of elimination, isn’t it? If past
generations could not master the technology required to build those doors, and
they were definitely not built in any of the modern history we know, then they
had to be built by men who
could
complete the project, and also built
before
they were discovered by architect Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1902. In fact. He may
have been privy to their existence.”

“How would that be possible?”

“Easy enough, Thomas. He may have been from the future! I’ve given
all this a good deal of thought, you see. Suppose Lutyens deliberately
engineered his restoration to deftly conceal those doors, stairs and passages?
He would have to have rather specific knowledge of the subterranean layout and
all.”

“Did he have that key, sir? The one you used to open those doors?”

“Perhaps he did. Perhaps he was a warden of sorts—a gatekeeper. In
any case, those who did know of the passage kept it under their hats and quite
secret.”

“Then how did you come by the key, sir?”

The Duke folded his arms, considering. “I’m afraid that would be a
very long story, Mister Thomas. Let me put it to you this way. Men of
privilege, wealth, and power have a handle on things that go on in this world
that few would realize or ever know about. This is a perfect example. Suffice
it to say that I had the means and the will to find out about this passage, and
to obtain the key.”