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Uniformed, Krasicki sat in a room as neat and functional as a cell. “Be seated,” he ordered. The chair was hard, and squeaked.
“Do you judge yourself ready for your work?” he asked.
A thrill went through Havig. His pulses hammered. “Y-yes. Anxious to start. I—” He straightened. “Yes.”
Krasicki shuffled some papers on his desk. “I have been watching your progress,” he said, “and considering how we might best employ you. That includes minimum risk to yourself. You have had a good deal of extratemporal experience on your own, I know, which makes you already valuable. But you’ve not hitherto been on a mission for us.” He offered a stiff little smile. “The idea which came to me springs from your special background.”
Havig somehow maintained a cool exterior.
“We must expand our capabilities, particularly recruiting,” Krasicki said. “Well, you’ve declared yourself reasonably fluent in the Greek koine. You’ve described a visit you made to Byzantine Constantinople. That seems like a strategic place from which to begin a systematic search through the medieval period.”
“Brilliant!” Havig cried, suddenly happy and excited. It rushed from him: “Center of civilization, everything flowed through the Golden Horn, and, and what we could do as traders—”
Krasicki lifted a palm. “Hold. Perhaps later, when we have more manpower, a wider network, perhaps then that will be worthwhile. But at present we’re too sharply limited in the man-years available to us. We ca
“What — ?”
“Given a large hoard of coin and treasure, we can finance ourselves in an era when this is currency. But you know yourself how cumbersome is the transportation of goods through time. Therefore we must acquire our capital on the … on the spot? … yes, on the spot. And, as I said, quickly.”
Havig’s suspicions exploded in dismay. “You can’t mean by robbery!”
“No, no, no.” Krasicki shook his head. “Think. Listen. A raid on a peaceful city, massive enough to reap a useful harvest, that would be dangerously conspicuous. Could get into the history books, and that could wreck our cover. Besides, it would be dangerous in itself, too. Our men would have small numbers, not overly well supplied with firearms. They would not have powered vehicles. The Byzantine army and police were usually large and well-disciplined. No, I don’t propose madness.”
“What, then?”
“Taking advantage of chaos, in order to remove what would otherwise be stolen by merciless invaders for no good purpose.”
Havig stared.
“In 1204,” his superior went on, “Constantinople was captured by the armies of the Fourth Crusade. They plundered it from end to end; what remained was a broken shell.” He waved an arm. “Why should we not take a share? It’s lost to the owners anyway.” He peered at the other’s face before adding:
“And, to be sure, we arrange compensation, give them protection from slaughter and rapine, help them rebuild their lives.”
“Judas priest!” Havig choked. “A hijacking!”
Having briefed himself in the Eyrie’s large microtape library, having had a costume made and similar details taken care of, he embarked.
An aircraft deposited him near the twenty-first-century ruins of Istanbul and took off again into the air as quickly as he into the past. A lot of radioactivity lingered in these ashes. He hadn’t yet revealed the fact of his chronolog and must find his target by the tedious process of counting sun-traverses, adding an estimate of days missed, making an initial emergence, and zeroing in by trial and error.
Leonce had been furious at being left behind. But she lacked the knowledge to be useful here, except as companion and consoler. Indeed, she would have been a liability, her extreme foreig
He didn’t start in the year of the conquest. That would be too turbulent, and every outsider too suspect, for the detailed study he must make. The Crusaders actually entered Constantinople in 1203, after a naval siege, to install a puppet on its throne. They hung around to collect their pay before proceeding to the Holy Land. The puppet found his coffers empty, and temporized. Friction between East Romans and “Franks” swelled to terrifying proportions. In January 1204, Alexius, son-in-law of the deposed Emperor, got together sufficient force to seize palace and crown. For three months he and his people strove to drive the Crusaders off. Their hope that God would somehow come to their aid collapsed when Alexius, less gallant than they, despaired and fled. The Crusaders marched back through opened portals. They had worked themselves into homicidal self-righteousness about “Greek perfidy,” and the horror began almost at once.
Havig chose spring, because it was a beautiful season, in 1195, because that was amply far downtime, for his basic job of survey. He carried well-forged documents which got him past the city guards, and gold pieces to exchange for nomismae. Alter finding a room in a good i
His prior visit had been to halcyon 1050. The magnificence he now encountered, the liveliness and cosmopolitan colorfulness, were no less. However raddled her dominion, New Rome remained the queen of Europe.
Havig saw her under the shadow.
The house and shop of Doukas Manasses, goldsmith, stood on a hill near the middle of the city. Square-built neighbors elbowed it, all turning blind faces onto the steep, wide, well-paved and well-swept street. But from its flat roof you had a superb view, from end to end of the vast, towered walls which enclosed the city, and further: across a maze of thoroughfares, a countlessness of dweffings and soaring church domes; along the grand avenue called the Mesé to flowering countryside past the Gate of Charisius, on inward by columns which upbore statuary from the noblest days of Hellas, monasteries and museums and libraries which preserved works by men like Aeschylus and women like Sappho that later centuries would never read, through broad forums pulsing with life, to the Hippodrome and that sprawling splendid complex which was the Imperial Palace. On a transverse axis, vision reached from glittering blue across the Sea of Marmora to a mast-crowded Golden Horn and the rich suburbs and smaragdine heights beyond.
Traffic rivered. The noise of wheels, hoofs, feet, talk, song, laughter, sobbing, cursing, praying blended together into one ceaseless heartbeat. A breeze carried a richness of odors, sea, woodsmoke, food, animals, humanity. Havig breathed deep.
“Thank you, Kyrios Hauk,” Doukas Manasses said. “You are most courteous to praise this sight.” His ma
“Less courteous than you, Kyrios Manasses, to show me it,” Havig replied.
They exchanged bows. The Byzantines were not basically a strict folk-besides their passionate religion and passionate sense for beauty, they had as much bustling get-up-and-go, as much inborn gusto, as Levantines in any era-but their upper classes set store by ceremonious politeness.
“You expressed interest,” Doukas said. He was a gray-bearded man with handsome features and nearsighted eyes. His slight frame seemed lost in the usual dalmatic robe.