David Wood, Steven Savile
Dead Ice
Prologue
Karl Gustavovich Fabergé did not look up from his work when, unheralded, Nikolai bustled through the door. He raised one hand, forestalling further interruption.
“Go outside, close the door, and knock.” Fabergé remained calm and kept his eyes on his work as he gave these instructions. His work required focus and attention to detail, and he could not allow the temerity of a foolish assistant to put him out of sorts.
“Master, someone is here to see you.”
Now Fabergé looked up. Nikolai’s interruption had been out of character, but for the young man to ignore his command, that was something else entirely. Furthermore, there was a tremor in Nikolai’s voice, and a breathy quality to his voice that was so unlike him.
Fabergé looked his assistant up and down. Nikolai’s skin was the color of new-fallen snow, and perspiration ran in rivulets down his cheeks. What had put him out of sorts? Fabergé made a placating gesture.
“Calm yourself and explain.”
“Master, you have a visitor. He says he has plans for an egg…”
“Plans for an egg?” Now Fabergé’s ire rose. “I have always been free to make every egg as I choose. The royal family wishes it so. Whoever this visitor is, tell him to go away. I have no time for such foolishness.”
He turned back to his work, thinking the matter at an end, but Nikolai hurried to his side and reached out a trembling hand, nearly touching Fabergé’s arm.
“Master, please. This is not a man to be turned away.” His voice had fallen to a hoarse whisper, and he kept glancing at the door, as if whoever waited outside might enter at any time.
Fabergé took three deep breaths, restoring himself to his usual calm. “Very well. Did he bring these plans with him?”
Nikolai nodded.
“Take his name and tell him to leave them with you and I will review them. If I wish to make this egg for him, I will contact him.”
“I fear that will not be possible.” The voice that came from the direction of the doorway put Fabergé in mind of a serpent, due both to its hypnotic quality and the faint hiss that underscored his last word.
The man that stepped into the room seemed impossibly tall. His lean body and long face, hair, and beard only served to exaggerate his height. His intense eyes burned into Fabergé, freezing him in place.
“Leave us,” the man said to Nikolai, who scurried out the door, giving the stranger a wide berth as they passed.
Even if there had not been two uniformed, armed men standing just outside the doorway, Fabergé would have been powerless to protest this intruder giving orders to his staff. The tall man’s aura was too strong. It was not charisma, exactly, but something like…
…witchcraft.
Perhaps the stories were true.
Fabergé tried to speak, but found his mouth dry as a desert.
“Forgive me for the intrusion. I know it is the height of discourtesy, but I fear my business cannot wait.” The man was all courtesy now, though condescension twinkled in his eyes.
Nevertheless, the ice now broken, Fabergé managed to speak.
“How may I be of service to you?”
“As your man told you, I need you to craft an egg. A special egg.” The words hung in the air as he reached inside his coat and produced a leather cylinder from which he extracted a roll of papers.”
Fabergé noted a slight tremor to the man’s hand as he passed the plans over to him. He spread the plans out on a table and looked them over. They were all wrong. A note in the margin, written in a spider hand, specified a thickness that would make the egg far too fragile. And the other details…
“I realize the design is not consistent with the other eggs which you have so expertly made, but it will serve my purpose.”
“Purpose? There is no purpose to the eggs beyond the artistic. To what use could you possibly put this?” He tapped the plans with one slender finger.
The smile spreading across the man’s face did not reach his eyes.
“One which could change the world.”
ONE
“Стой!”
The man didn’t break his stride, didn’t glance back at those chasing him, yelling at him to stop. He ran for his life. Moonlight glinted on the rain soaked street, only to be trampled and splashed by expensive Italian leather shoes designed for anything but running, and metal tipped boots that clattered and echoed between the tenements of a harsh city.
“Стой!” Louder this time. Demanding. Stop! Soon they’d shoot.
He reached a narrow redbrick alleyway, ducked into it and kept running. He knew these streets and back alleys, not well, but well enough not to be herded into a dead end. The buildings were in a state of decay far worse than a few broken streetlights suggested. The rot lay deep and pervasive, and the fetid odor of urine and rotting garbage hung in the air. Back home they’d have been condemned and torn down. Here they were home to the poor and used as a mask to hide the horrors of the regime. He had to use it to his advantage if he was going to make it to the rendezvous in time. It was vital that the information he was carrying reached the right hands. After that nothing else mattered. He would have done his job. He’d always known the risks.
He almost lost his footing as he turned left then right, ducking under a sagging washing line strung with grime stained vests and underwear that surely hadn’t been washed before being hung out. The double-back bought him a few precious seconds while he was out of sight, then he hit the open space of the unlit courtyard before a towering block of apartments. He tipped over a few trash cans, spilling garbage across the narrow path, hoping to slow the pursuit. To his left he saw a rusty wrought-iron gate that hung open on a shadowy doorway. Beyond it, barely visible, the first couple of stone steps leading up. He ran for them, climbing the stairs three and four steps at a time, then rushed along a walkway that overlooked the courtyard. He looked down. He shouldn’t have looked down. The first of the men hunting him stumbled into one of the overturned cans trying to avoid the garbage strewn across the path. His curse barely carried as far as the walkway. The tactic maybe bought him half a second.
He had to keep moving. There had to be a way out of this rat hole.
He checked the grime crusted windows as he ran past the apartments. He didn’t know exactly where he was going. A little divine intervention would be gratefully accepted. One door along here, he hoped, would get them off his trail. The first two were lit by dim lamps and the muted glow of television sets; tiny sets in tiny rooms and yet the people watching them did not know anything bigger or better. Those tiny sets were as close to luxury as they’d ever come. They had been raised good Communists, content with their lot, and did not deserve the fate he could bring to their door. Forcing his way into any one of those homes would ruin their lives. He didn’t want to do that to them.
But if he had to, he would.
At the far end of the walkway he saw what he was looking for.
Even with the bare bulb above shattered, the limited light was enough to see that the door had been forced open. Jags of splintered wood around the frame betrayed the fact the apartment had been broken into despite the fact the door had been pushed back in to place to disguise the invasion. It was one of many, he was sure. Not the best for his purpose, but the closest. It would do.
The echo of boots in the concrete stairwell meant it was now or never.
He didn’t like never.
He pushed in through the doorway ready for the inevitable fight. The shock. The screams.
Voices came thick and fast, some startled and angry others slurred and listless; mostly men, but there were a couple of women. They screamed as he knew they would. Bodies scrambled in the dim light; some in search of clothes, snatching them up from where they had been abandoned. At least one of them was reaching for more than a discarded shoe. He charged right into the middle of the chaos, his hands held up to show that he was unarmed. Not a threat. They need to understand he wasn’t a threat. He was a victim. Hopefully they weren’t good Communists. He was banking on that slim hope.