“Very well. Captain.” said Forrester. “What did you have in mind?”
“Safe conduct through a confluence point back to my own timeline.” Hunter said.
“If your information’s good. I think that might be arranged,” said Forrester. But not until your information has been thoroughly checked out.”
“That’s fair.” said Hunter. “But I want one other thing.”
Forrester raised his eyebrows. “You’re already asking quite a lot. Captain.”
“I want in on the mission,” Hunter said.
“What?” said Steiger. “You’re out of your mind!”
“Back off, Steiger.” Hunter said. ‘I helped save your bacon in 20th-century New York, remember? You owe me, Nikolai Drakov poses a threat to both our timelines. Besides, this has nothing to do with the hostilities between us. This is strictly personal. I’ve got unfinished business with that man. And I’ve already established connections in that temporal scenario. I could make things easier for you. Without me. you’d be going in cold.” He turned back to Forrester. “What’s it going to be. sir’?”
They all looked at Forrester expectantly.
The old man thought about it only for a moment. “All right. Captain.” he said. “I’ll take a chance on you. You’ve got a deal.”
2
The last time he had been to Boston was in 1867. but that time would not arrive for about another hundred years Nikolai Drakov had known nothing about time travel then, only that his father, whom he hated, had come from the far future. Moses Forrester had met his mother, loved her, and then returned to the future once again, leaving her to give birth to their child alone as Moscow burned during Napoleon’s retreat.
The infant Nikolai had survived the savage Russian winter while grown men around him died. His poverty-stricken mother married a kindly Russian army officer who took them in, but the man was a Decembrist and Nikolai was just thirteen when they were exiled to Siberia. He survived Siberia as well, only his family did not His adoptive father had died of influenza in his prison cell and his mother had been murdered by a rapist. Nikolai had been too young to save her, although he had tried. He still bore the mark the murderer had left him with, a knife scar running from beneath his left eye to just above the corner of his mouth. In years to come, it would be taken for a dueling scar and thought quite dashing. In still later years to come, cosmetic surgery could easily have removed it. but Drakov chose to let it stay., He wanted to remember.
An old trapper took him in anti Drakov learned to hunt and live off the frozen wilderness. Eventually, he made his way to the Russian settlements in Alaska. At the age of twenty, he was once more on his own and he took up the fur trade, He still looked very young. He could not have known back then that due to the advances of the future, he had inherited from his father an immunity to all known diseases and an extended lifespan that would be measured in centuries, not decades. He knew only that he had survived conditions that had killed ordinary men and he hardly seemed to age. He looked so young that many people tried to take advantage of him. He learned how to fight and how to kill. He had long ago learned how to hate.
He became a seaman and hunted seals in the Pribilofs. Before long, he had his own ship and the hardened sailors soon learned to respect their tough “young” captain. At thirty-eight, he still looked like a teenager. although his rough life had given him a powerful physique. After a while his constant youthfulness started to cause comment and people became too curious about him. It was time for him to move on. He sold his ship and arrived in Boston a very wealthy man. He purchased a handsome mansion on Beacon Hill and invested in the stock market. Within a few years. he had multiplied his fortune many times. He was thought to be some European nobleman and he became much sought after in society. But notoriety soon led to curiosity and as the years passed. people again began to wonder why he never seemed to age. It was time to move on once again.
He was seventy years old when he arrived in London, though he did not look a day over twenty-five. He had no need of looking for an occupation. He had millions. He had everything a man could want. Everything but answers. And he found the answers when he found Sophia Falco, alias the Falcon. one of the leaders of the Timekeepers, a terrorist organization from the 27th century. When they found out whose son he was, they eagerly accepted him into their ranks. The irony of Moses Forrester’s son becoming a member of the Timekeepers was too delicious to pass up and from that moment on, Drakov’s life had taken on a whole new meaning.
He had joined the Timekeepers and traveled to the future, where a biochip had been obtained for him and he was educated via cerebral implant programming. With the native intelligence he already possessed, after the programming, he emerged a genius. He finally understood who and what he was and he was able to comprehend the convoluted principles of temporal physics. And he had made up his mind that he would devote the remainder of his life to destroying Moses Forrester and the perverse world that he came from.
Now he was the last one left. Sophia. Benedetto. Taylor. Singh. Tremain… all of them were dead. The Timekeepers were no more. But Drakov wasn’t finished yet. With all time at his beck and call, he had infinite resources. He would stop the Future, even if he had to destroy the world to do it.
It had been a long. unpleasant voyage across the North Atlantic. The bunks were damp. the bread was weevil-ridden. and the beef was tainted. The merchant ships of this day were like crude, ungainly barges compared to the sleek schooner he had sailed in the Pribilof’s and there were far easier ways to make the passage. He could have simply used his warp disc to clock to 18th-century America. but that would not have fit in with his plans. It had first been necessary to establish an identity for himself in London. set up finances, and make the right connections with influential men such as John Wilkes. Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord William Howe, and Benjamin Franklin. one of the colonial agents in London. If anyone in New England was to inquire into his affairs, he wanted to make certain that he could easily account for how he had arrived in Boston. so the long sea voyage had been necessary
The Boston of the 18th century looked very different from the Boston he had known. He stood on deck when the ship passed Castle Island. where Castle William stood. the British garrison in Massachusetts Bay. The Union Jack flew high over the fort. Sea gulls rode the wind currents over the ship, hoping for some scraps of garbage to be thrown overboard. The city of Boston was almost an island, attached to the mainland by a narrow, mile-long neck of land. T
he docks were crowded with a mass of piers and wharves and shipyards. stages for drying fish, distilleries and warehouses. All manner of sailing vessels crowded the harbor. There were merchant ships and schooners. sloops. whalers, ferries, fishing ketches and ship’s lighters, and even a British man o’ war, the Romney. with its seventy-four guns. They had passed her on the starboard side and just beyond her. Drakov had seen another British naval vessel, the schooner Lawrence. He smiled as he saw the Royal Navy ships. He bad timed his arrival perfectly. Boston seemed a lovely, graceful. tranquil city as they sailed into the harbor, but it was a hotbed of rebellion, a powder keg just waiting for someone to ignite the fuse.
“Americans are the sons. not the bastards of England!” The words were William Pitt’s, spoken in the House of Commons, and widely quoted three thousand miles away in Boston. Readers of the Boston Gazette hung anxiously on every word spoken in Parliament by men like William Pitt and Col. Isaac Barre, who had fought gallantly in the French and Indian War and was a good friend to the colonists. Drakov had seen Col. Barre take the floor in Parliament and reply to Charles Townshend in the debate over Lord Grenville’s Stamp Act.
“Will these Americans,” Townshend had said indignantly. “children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy burdens which we lie under?”
To which Col. Butt had replied, “They planted by your care? No, your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships of which human nature is liable, and among others, to the cruelty of a savage foe, and yet actuated by the principles of true English liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure. compared with those they suffered in their own country from the hands of those who should have been their friends! They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them! As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them in one department and another, men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them!”
Sons of Liberty! It had a ring to it. A small group of patriots in Boston known as the Loyal Nine had read that speech in the Gazette and from that moment on. they became the Sons of Liberty, an organization that would grow with each new outrage visited upon the thirteen colonies.
A large percentage of the colonists were still loyal to the Crown. but more and more were having second thoughts. They recalled the words of William Pitt. who had said in Parliament, “When trade is at stake, you must defend it or perish!” Nor was Pitt the only one in England sympathetic to the colonists. King George. however, was determined to be firm. If America successfully asserted its right to reject British taxation, might Ireland not be next? But as stubborn as King George was, the Sons of Liberty were equally determined.
At the urging of the Boston patriots, the Stamp Act Congress had been convened in New York City. It was the first real united assembly of the colonies. The representatives met to discuss a course of action and there was much talk about the Virginia Resolves, authored in the House of Burgesses by the brilliant young lawyer, Patrick Henry. The Resolves asserted that Americans had the same rights as Englishmen to be taxed only by their representatives. But Henry went still further, maintaining that only a colony’s legislature, and not Parliament, could tax its citizens.
The next few years would mark an important turning point in history. The people of the thirteen colonies were not yet ready to accept the idea of independence, but the actions of Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty would soon provoke a series of events that would work to change their minds. Only what would happen. Drakov thought, if someone were to stop them?
He stepped off the ship onto Boston’s Long Wharf, which jutted out two thousand feet into the harbor, so that even the largest vessels could come in to its south side at low tide On the north side of Long Wharf stood warehouses, shops. and counting houses. It was a small spit of the city running out into the bay. Drakov found a dock porter to see to the unloading of his trunks, then hired a carter to deliver them to the home of Jared Moffat on Newbury Street. No sooner had the caner loaded up and started off than the dock began to clear. A moment later. Drakov saw the reason why. A longboat with armed sailors from the Romney was pulling in. The word was quickly passed among the workers on the dock.
“ Press gang! Press gang!”