She heard distant motor traffic and the tap-tap of a pistol. Overhead, an aeroplane droned, engines ill.
As Saskia stepped into the room proper, she looked back through the enfilade. There was no sign of the original Amber Room, only an empty doorway whose door had long become firewood and through which the wrecked enfilade continued. She crouched in the snow-rubble and looked, from under her purple hat, at the German soldier who tended a stove in the centre of the floor. He wore white trousers over his jackboots, a dirty, pale jacket that wrapped him like a tunic, and a peaked cap. His shoulder boards indicated that he was a sergeant. He held a white mitten in his mouth while his hand moved a ladle in the watery broth. His stirring motion continued as Saskia crouched.
In German, she asked, ‘Can you hear me?’
The soldier moved his ladle a quarter turn. Only then did he look at her. His brown eyes were dark and his cheeks recessed and mottled. His stubble had not yet spread from his upper lip and chin to the rest of his jaw. On the basis of this, Saskia put his age at twenty years.
‘I remember you,’ he whispered. His voice sounded as though he had been crying. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t? Have you forgotten me? Your Michael?’
‘I’m far from home, Michael. I need your help.’
His eyes stayed towards the soup. ‘Do you want some?’
‘No. That’s for you.’
‘It’s stone soup,’ he whispered, and that was enough for Saskia to feel all his pains, the waste of him, the unstructured and unstoried deaths of his friends, and the cold. The snow fell onto the lid that half-covered the soup. ‘Do you know the story?’
‘Of stone soup? No, tell me.’
‘I can’t. The boys will think I’m mad. Ssss. Quiet.’
‘Who am I, Michael?’
‘You are my Katrin from home.’
‘Home in?’
‘Schliersee.’
Saskia smiled. ‘Yesterday, I walked on the banks of the lake with our friends.’
Michael’s jaw shifted to the right. His moustache shook. When the tears gathered in the edges of his eyes, they did not fall. Saskia reached towards him—wincing at the pain in her shoulder—and thumbed them away.
‘Is this the Great Summer Palace?’
‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘It’s the Catherine Palace.’
‘What happened here, Michael?’
‘We finished stripping the amber,’ he said. His eyes were unfocused. ‘Today, it’ll go home.’
‘No, not the amber. What happened to the palace?’
Michael looked at her, as though into bright light. ‘I’m not mad. You’re not Katrin.’
‘No,’ she said, smiling.
‘You need to leave before the boys come.’ Michael nodded towards the door that led to the Apartments of the Empress Maria Fyodorovna. ‘They haven’t seen a woman like you for months.’
‘I will.’
He nodded, then said, ‘What happened to your face? Did someone hit you? Was it one of us?’
Saskia touched her cheek. It was swollen.
‘No, Michael,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t.’
He breathed deeply and looked at his stone soup.
‘Don’t cry, Michael.’
He sniffed. ‘Then what?’
Saskia rose. Her blackcurrant skirt drew in. She took careful steps towards the open throat of the enfilade and stepped into the doorframe. Beyond it was a third Amber Room. As she passed, there was no sensation of travel through time. Only the physicality of her environment changed. From cold to warmth; steady to unsteady; quietude to noise. Her heel wobbled on a loose board as she
tipped into herself, a young woman in the back seat of a police car. It was night. Her seatbelt cut into her hip as the car undertook a queue of stationary traffic, groaned across the rumble strip, and continued along the hard shoulder. The car slowed. Its siren muted, but the blue lights flashed over the parked cars, flashed across their curious passengers. Next to her, a tall, fifty-something man wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Sweat collected against his collar.
Where am I? Saskia thought. She recognised the man next to her as a British police officer called Jago. She had last seen him at Heathrow Airport in the year 2023, where they had chased a criminal called David Proctor. Jago had collapsed at the terminal while Saskia boarded Proctor’s aeroplane to Las Vegas, to a US government programme called Project Déjà Vu, and backwards in time to the year 2003.
‘Jago?’
The man turned to her. ‘It’s Jago now, is it?’
I call him Scotty. Something about Enterprise. A joke.
‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘I’m fine. But there’s an accident up ahead.’
The car tipped forward as the driver braked to avoid the edge of a wide vehicle. Saskia took Scotty’s hand. He smiled.
‘You’re not still worried about the driving?’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m worried about
(Whether we’ll reach Proctor in time)
you.’
Scotty smiled. The expression seemed unsuited to his face. ‘Why do I always get the daft ones?’
‘Sorry.’
Now he’ll say the pain is indigestion due to the sausages he ate on the way from Edinburgh.
‘You know what it is. It’s those—’
‘Scotty?’
He sighed. ‘Yes, pet?’
‘You’re a good man.’
As he turned towards her, his seatbelt creaked. He squeezed her hand once. ‘And you’re soft as shite.’
A new light flashed on the dark, glittering dashboard. The co-driver reached over and touched the light. She turned and
(A woman. Her name is Teri.)
said to Scotty, ‘Sorry, Guv. A lorry has shed its load. We’re the closest unit and we’ll need to secure the scene.’
Saskia was overwhelmed by a sense of desperation. It was difficult to rationalise the feeling. Wasn’t this a dream? Wasn’t she an observer? Nevertheless, she gripped the co-driver by her upper arm and shouted, ‘I don’t care
(They’re dead anyway; they’ve always been dead.)
about lorries and their loads. We need to get to Proctor. Do you understand? It has to take priority. Otherwise, otherwise …’
Her voice weakened, then cut out. The anxiety faded. Saskia looked at the puzzled face of the co-driver. The driver, too, was looking at her in the rear-view mirror.
Saskia whispered, ‘Scotty, have you ever had one of those dreams when you’re back in school and there’s an exam—’
‘Shush, pet. All the bloody time. What you looking at, Teri? Tell control to send us another unit.’
‘It’s not the same,’ said Saskia, half to herself. Her worry grew again. This was not a dream. Neither had she dreamed of the German soldier in the palace. He, perhaps, had dreamed of her. Here, in the car, the blue light flashed over the queuing motorists. She felt the vibration of the chassis. Scotty smelled of cigarettes and sweat.
‘We won’t make it, then,’ he said.
This was not a dream. This was a repeat of a moment in her life. Something in the band, whose technology was decades ahead of 2023, and unknown to her, had snapped. It had bounced her into memories.
No. This is different.
Scotty and I got to Proctor in time.
She could see a slice of dashboard between the seats. It might have been a cityscape at night. A view from a pitched, plunging aeroplane.
Like—
(Yes)
Like DFU323.
This is
‘DFU323 to anybody. I am a qualified pilot who has taken control of this aeroplane following an emergency. We are experiencing altitude control problems and I request clear airspace while I investigate the extent of our manual control.’