There Will Be Time

His head moved heavily up and down. “Yeah. I s’pose.”

“I sympathize with your caution, but I do wish you’d consulted me at an earlier stage of your wife’s illness.”

“Don’t I? … At first, seemed like she’d only gotten a bad cold. They’re tougher then than we are today. Infants die like flies. Parents don’t invest our kind of love in a baby, not till it’s past the first year or two. By the same token, though, if you survive babyhood the chances are you’ll throw off later sicknesses. Xenia didn’t go to bed, in spite of feeling poorly, till overnight—” He could not finish.

“Have you checked her personal future?” I asked.

The sunken eyes sought me while they fought off sleep. The exhausted voice said: “No. I’ve never dared.”

Nor will I ever know how well-founded was his fear of foreseeing when Xenia would die. Did ignorance save his freedom, or merely his illusion of freedom? I know nothing except that he stayed with me for a pair of days, dutifully resting his body and training his hands, until he could minister to his wife. In the end he said good-by, neither of us sure we would come together again; and he drove his rented car to the city airport, and caught his flight to Istanbul, and went pastward with what I had given him, and was captured by the Eyrie men.

It was likewise November in 1213. Havig had chosen that month out of 1969 because he knew it would be inclement, his enemies not likely to keep a stakeout around my cottage. Along the Golden Horn, the weather was less extreme. However, a chill had blown down from Russia, gathering rain as it crossed the Black Sea. For defense, houses had nothing better than charcoal braziers; hypocausts were too expensive for this climate and these straitened times. Xenia’s slight body shivered, day after day, until the germs awoke in her lungs.

Havig frequently moved his Istanbul lair across both miles and years. As an extra safety factor, he always kept it on the far side of the strait from his home. Thus he must take a creaky-oared ferry, and walk from the dock up streets nearly deserted. In his left hand hung the chronolog, in his right was clutched a flat case containing the life of his girl. Raindrops spattered out of a lowering grayness, but the mists were what drenched his Frankish cloak, tunic, and trousers, until they clung to his skin and the cold gnawed inward. His footfalls resounded hollow on slickened cobblestones. Gutters gurgled. Dim amidst swirling vapors, he glimpsed himself hurrying down to the waterfront, hooded against the damp, too frantic to notice himself. He would have been absent a quarter hour when he returned to Xenia. Though the time was about three o’clock in the afternoon, already darkness seeped from below.

His door was closed, the shutters were bolted, wan lamplight shone through cracks.

He knocked, expecting the current maid — Eulalia, was that her name? — to lift the latch and grumble him in. She’d be surprised to see him back this soon, but the hell with her.

Hinges creaked. Gloom gaped beyond. A man in Byzantine robe and beard occupied the doorway. The shotgun in his grasp bulked monstrous. “Do not move, Havig,” he said in English. “Do not try to escape. Remember, we hold the woman.”

Save for an ikon of the Virgin, their bedroom was decorated in gaiety. Seen by what light trickled in a glazed window, the painted flowers and beasts jeered. It was wrong that a lamb should gambol above Xenia where she lay. She was so small and thin in her nightgown. Skin, drawn tight across the frail bones, was like new-fallen snow dappled with blood. Her mouth was dry, cracked, and gummed. Only the hair, tumbling loose over her bosom, and the huge frightened eyes had luster.

The man in East Roman guise, whom Havig did not know, held his left arm in a practiced grip. Juan Mendoza had the right, and smirked each time he put backward pressure on the elbow joint. He was dressed in Western style, as was Waclaw Krasicki, who stood at the bedside.

“Where are the servants?” Havig asked mechanically.

“We shot them,” Mendoza said.

“What—”

“They didn’t recognize a gun, so that wouldn’t scare them. We couldn’t let a squawk warn you. Shut up.”

The shock of knowing they were dead, the hope that the children had been spared and that an orphanage might take them in, struck Havig dully, like a blow on flesh injected with painkiller. Xenia’s coughing tore him too much.

“Hauk,” she croaked, “no, Jon, Jon—” Her hands lifted toward him, strengthless, and his were caught immobile.

Krasicki’s broad visage had noticeably aged. Years of his lifespan must have passed, uptime, downtime, everywhen an outrage was to be engineered. He said in frigid satisfaction:

“You may be interested to know what a lot of work went on for how long, tracking you down. You’ve cost us, Havig.”

“Why … did … you bother?” the prisoner got out.

“You did not imagine we could leave you alone, did you? Not just that you killed men of ours. You’re not an ignorant lout, you’re smart and therefore dangerous. I’ve been giving this job my personal attention.”

Havig thought drearily: What an overestimate of me.

“We must know what you’ve been doing,” Krasicki continued. “Take my advice and cooperate.”

“How did you — ?”

“Plenty of detective work. We reasoned, if a Greek family was worth to you what you did, you’d keep in touch with them. You covered your trail well, I admit. But given our limited perso

She shuddered and barked, as an abandoned dog had barked while her father was slain. Blood colored the mucus she cast up.

“Christ!” Havig screamed. “Let me go! Let me treat her!”

“Who are they, Jon?” she pleaded. “What do they want? Where is your saint?”

“Besides,” Mendoza said, “Pat Moriarty was a friend of mine.” He applied renewed pressure, barely short of fracturing.

Through the ragged darknesses which pain rolled across him, Havig heard Krasicki: “If you behave, if you come along with us, not making trouble, okay, we’ll leave her in peace. I’ll even give her a shot from that kit I guess you went to fetch.”

“That … isn’t … enough … Please, please—”

“It’s as much as she’ll get. I tell you, we’ve already wasted whole man-years on your account. Don’t make us waste more, and take added risks. Look, would you rather we broke her arms?”

Havig sagged and wept.

Krasicki kept his promise, but his insertion of the needle was clumsy and Xenia shrieked. “It’s well, it’s well, my darling, everything’s well, the saints watch over you,” Havig cried from the far side of a chasm which roared. To Krasicki: “Listen, let me say good-by to her, you’ve got to, I’ll do anything you ask if you let me say good-by.”

Krasicki shrugged. “Okay, if you’re quick.”

Mendoza and the other man kept their hold on Havig while he stooped above his girl. “I love you,” he told her, not knowing if she really heard him through the fever and terror. The mummy lips that his touched were not those he remembered.

“All right,” Krasicki said, “let’s go.”

Uptime bound, Havig lost awareness of the men on either side of him. They had substance to his senses, like his own body, but only the shadow-flickers in the room were real. He saw her abandoned, reaching and crying; he saw her become still; he saw someone who must have grown worried and broken down the door step in, days later; he saw confusion, and then the chamber empty, and then strangers in it.