Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(90)
Jean-Yves shook his head. “Not even if I thought you stood a chance of understanding it. Which I don’t.”
Rudi sighed and looked at his phone, thumbed up a text, read it, swiped it away.
“We went to the house by the sea in January 1939,” said Jean-Yves. “We stayed there for three years, as far as I could judge. When we came back to Europe it was April 1979.”
Rudi stared.
“It was a bit of a shock,” Jean-Yves added.
“I can imagine.”
“Can you?”
Rudi thought about it. “No,” he said finally. “No, I can’t. Sorry.”
“Most of us wanted to go straight back to the house,” Jean-Yves said.
Time passes more slowly in the Community. But not that slowly. Rudi tried to think.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Our lives had ceased to be normal when we went to the house by the sea. We knew we were investigating something... extraordinary, but until we came back we didn’t realise just how extraordinary it was. We were men out of time. Our patrons had placed fake obituaries in the papers. We were dead. Some of the group wanted to try to find their families; they went away and I never saw them again. I don’t know what happened to them.
“One night Roland gathered the rest of us together and told us he believed our patrons would have us killed as soon as they realised that our work was complete. He’d kept the truth from them for some time, but he said they were close to understanding that they didn’t need us any more. So he had done a bad thing. At some point, he had come into contact with quite a large amount of our patrons’ money, and he had... sequestered it somewhere. He said he’d been in contact with the Community and that they were prepared to grant us asylum. They’d sent him the coordinates of a border crossing in Estonia and were waiting to welcome us with open arms.”
Rudi’s shoulders sagged. He dropped the phone into his lap and sat back. “And that’s when you met my father.”
“Your father and another man. They’d been sent to guide us across the border. I didn’t find out until later that Roland had also engaged him to take care of the money, and by that time it was too late to do anything about it.”
Rudi closed his eyes and swore under his breath. With an effort, he said, “What happened next?”
“Roland was very clever in his negotiations with the Community. He hadn’t told them everything we knew, everything we had done. They believed we were mathematicians who had stumbled independently across topologies which would allow us to open their borders from the European side. The world had just passed through two terrible wars; they were terrified that Europe would find a way to invade. It would have been just as easy to have us killed, but instead they put us to work making their borders secure.”
Rudi thought about it. Apart from a very brief period in the late nineteenth century, the Presiding Authority had been staunchly isolationist for its entire history, aware of but entirely uninterested in Europe. Only a select few had been allowed to cross the border, in either direction. It would have suited them to seal the place off entirely, but they had already begun to meddle quietly in European affairs and either they had too much time and effort invested in it, or were simply enjoying themselves too much, to stop.
He said, “What went wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Jean-Yves. “Nothing earth-shattering, anyway. We were prisoners, that’s all. Safe and content, but prisoners again nonetheless. Our social contacts were strictly limited and policed, the Community was stultifyingly dull. And the food was terrible. We just decided to leave, so one day we opened the border in W?adys?aw and crossed into Prague. Roland had already contacted your father – I don’t know how – and he was waiting for us. And we went to ground. Until today.”
“We’re here,” Forsyth said.
THE COBBLER LOOKED about fourteen years old, a cocky, runty youth in a leather jacket and cowboy boots who carried his gear in an antique calfskin rucksack. From the window of the safe flat, Rudi could see the verdigrised rooftops of Jasna Góra, the monastery which housed the Czarna Madonna, a venerated icon ascribed with protecting Jasna Góra from the Swedish invasion in 1655. He didn’t like the view. Cz?estochowa, its bustling streets, its crowds of pilgrims coming to visit the monastery, suddenly seemed dangerous. The whole world suddenly seemed dangerous, far beyond his ability to cope with it.
“The photo you sent me was shit,” the cobbler said, handing over the fake passport. “But that’s good. Border guards get suspicious if your photo’s too good.”
It occurred to Rudi that he had had just about enough of cobbler wisdom, which all seemed to boil down to you don’t want to look like your passport photo. He paid the cobbler and they went back down to the car.
“Where now?” asked Forsyth as they stepped out into the courtyard behind the building, and Rudi felt strong hands grip his arms from behind. At his side, Forsyth and the Frenchman seemed to be struggling with invisible assailants. Rudi didn’t struggle. Forsyth was shouting, but no one came to investigate the disturbance. Several patches of air in front of them seemed to boil, and four figures wearing stealth suits appeared. They were all holding automatic rifles.
An SUV with smoked windows drove into the courtyard and pulled up behind the armed men. Three men got out. Two of them were security-guard types in good suits. The third was shorter, slender. He had long auburn hair and he was wearing chinos and a blazer over a dark blue shirt. All of a sudden, Forsyth stopped struggling.