"Simon Hawke - Time Wars 04 - The Zenda Vendetta" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

eyes, to the sharp crease in his immaculate fatigues bespoke a soldier. In the Temporal Army Corps,
Forrester was the most widely respected soldier of them all.
The men and women under his command performed the most unenviable job a soldier could be
called upon to do. They were the guardians of history, assigned exclusively to deal with temporal
disruptions created by the actions of the Time Wars. Forrester was proud of his command and of the
work they did. His one great regret was that he no longer accompanied them on their hazardous missions
to Minus Time. His days in the field were now over. After a lifetime spent fighting on the battlegrounds of
history, he was now firmly stuck in time, in the 27th century, on a large military base in Southern
California. He lived in luxurious quarters located in the heights of the Temporal Army Command
Headquarters; he ate and drank nothing but the best; he had orderlies to see to his needs and he lived the
full if regimented life of an officer and a gentleman. Yet it was not enough, far from it.
He longed for the old days. During the quiet times, a great wistfulness would sometimes come upon
him. At such times, he would enter his den, light up a pipe, pour himself a glass of wine, and toast his
memories. He would gaze at the collected artifacts and books, select one item or another, run his fingers
over it, and smile as the memories flooded back to him.
Here was the pith helmet he had worn when he served under тАЬChineseтАЭ Gordon at Khartoum. Here
was the iron cross which Otto Skorzeny himself had pinned on him for saving the German commando
leaderтАЩs life during the raid to free Il Duce. Here was the cutlass he had carried when he sailed under the
freebooter, Sir Henry Morgan. And here was the most significant memento of them allтАФa lock of raven
black hair kept in a tiny enameled box.
It was the one item not prominently displayed. He kept it in the left-hand drawer of the ancient
rosewood writing table at which Lord Byron penned his poems. He never took it out. Now, for the first
time in many years, he took out the tiny box, holding it in his hand as if it were a sacred object. His eyes
softened as he thought of the woman it betokened. She was long dead, her dust stirred by the passage of
some eight hundred years. It had been one of only two times in an incredibly long life, even by the
life-extended standards of the 27th century, that he had ever been in love. Both loves had been ill-fated.
Both were part of a past he had tried hard to forget, never with complete success. Those memories were
very fresh now. Painfully so. He held the tiny box in one hand and a letter in the other. Each represented
one of those two loves. One woman was long dead; the other, whom he had thought dead, was still very
much alive. She had reached out across the centuries to unite them all and twist the knife.
He had received the letter earlier that evening, delivered by a bonded courier from New York.
However, it had been written in another city, in another country, in another time. He sat down at the
rosewood writing table, placing his elbows on it, pressing the letter in one hand and the enameled box in
the other against his temples. He sat that way for a long, long time, his eyes shut, his breathing laborious.
The past had finally caught up to him and this time, there was no escape.

1
As the train pulled out of the Dresden station in a cloud of steam and early morning mist, Rudolf
Rassendyll sat in the dining car over a light breakfast, trying to recall where he had seen the scar-faced
man before. The object of his ruminations sat several tables away from him, drinking coffee. They had
exchanged several glances and Rassendyll found the situation somewhat embarrassing. Clearly, the man
remembered him from somewhere and was awaiting some sign of recognition. With none forthcoming, he
must have thought that Rassendyll was slighting him. To stall for time while he racked his brain for some
clue as to the manтАЩs identity, Rassendyll hid behind his copy of The Strand Magazine, pretending to
read while he kept glancing furtively at the scar-faced man, hoping to jog his memory into remembering
where they had met.
He was an unusually large man with the broad shoulders of a laborer and big, muscular arms.
However, he was quite obviously not of the working class. The large ruby ring he wore on his left hand
indicated that he was a gentleman of some means, as did the diamond stickpin, the gold watch chain, and
the elegant, gold-headed ebony walking stick he carried. His suit was the height of Parisian fashion, but