The dawn of the iron dra.., p.13
The Dawn of the Iron Dragon, page 13
part #2 of Saga of the Iron Dragon Series
Signal Strength: 22 dBmV/m
Carpenter’s heart quickened. That label would only appear in the case of a radio transmitter that was actively transmitting. As far as he knew, there were only four transmitters on Earth, and except for one that had gone offline in Scotland, they were all accounted for. This signal seemed to be emanating from somewhere in southern France, several hundred miles from any of the spacemen. Unless Sten had traveled nearly a thousand miles in the past three weeks, the only possible explanation was that he’d accidentally picked up a Cho-ta’an transmission.
As he watched, the signal strength reverted to zero, which only confirmed it hadn’t been a fluke. Andrea Luhman’s sensors had been calibrated to filter out background radio noise, but in the year 885 background noise was not a big problem. So he’d cranked the sensors all the way up and then used software to filter out quasars and other natural radio sources. The latest algorithm was the first version to fully make use of the new data. If the anomaly had been natural—a large thunderstorm, for example—the signal would not drop from twenty-two decibel-millivolts per meter to zero instantaneously. It would only do that if a transmission abruptly ceased—as it would when a transmitter was turned off.
He needed to wake the captain, but first he needed to make sure it wasn’t a problem with the algorithm. He minimized the display and brought up the logs of the raw sensor data. Sorting all the received radio signals made the fact undeniable: except for the anomaly, all the signals with a strength of over point five dBmV/m originated with one of the three spacemen. Someone besides them was using a radio transmitter.
But that wasn’t the most disturbing thing about the signal. If there were two groups of Cho-ta’an on Earth, it wouldn’t be surprising if they were using radios to communicate with each other. But ordinarily communication went two ways. So where was the second signal? Nothing else resembling an unknown radio transmission existed anywhere else in the data. Did they only have the one transmitter? And why was the signal so strong? It was far stronger than would be needed to communicate with someone else on Earth, even if they were just above the horizon.
Who the hell were the Cho-ta’an talking to?
Chapter Twenty-one
O’Brien did not see Helena at the school again. Part of him insisted this was for the best: Helena was a distraction, and his infatuation with her was putting their mission at risk. Another, louder, part of him told him he’d screwed up. He’d missed the forest for the trees. His own personal biases aside, Helena was by far the best candidate they’d come across. She had a quick, insightful intellect that reminded him of Reyes, but with a broader range of knowledge. Helena alone would have made O’Brien’s expedition to Constantinople worth it. But instead of pursuing her aggressively, he’d flirted like a schoolboy, and now he’d lost her. Whatever other candidates they might recruit, they were all consolation prizes now.
He could have sought Helena out at Leo’s house, of course, but Leo had put strict prohibitions on where he and Joseph were allowed in the house. Occasionally he would hear Leo arguing with her, but so far he had not seen her inside the house. Helena seemed to keep to her own quarters; whether this was prompted by the presence of Leo’s houseguests, he could not say.
Joseph, sensing O’Brien’s despondence, tried to cheer him up with some good news: he’d finally managed to set up a meeting with Dimitris Angelidis, the chief architect for the Patriarchate. Dimitris had recently completed construction of a new church in Constantinople—literally called Nea Ekklasia, or “New Church”—and was said to be dissatisfied with his circumstances. He wished to undertake a project the scope of the Hagia Sophia, but the Church wasn’t interested. Joseph had approached one of Dimitris’s assistants with his standard story about representing a consortium of aristocrats who were undertaking a large project in Frankia. As always, Joseph had insisted that the government and the Office of the Patriarch remain in the dark about the meeting.
Joseph had dropped Leo’s name to convince Dimitris to take the meeting, promising they would be able to meet at Leo’s house. As the day of the meeting approached, however, a complication arose: Dimitris had sent a messenger requesting that Joseph confirm that Helena would be present at the meeting. Joseph insisted he had not given Dimitris the impression Helena was involved in the project; he claimed not to have mentioned her at all. Further investigation on Joseph’s part revealed that Dimitris—like half the rich men in Constantinople, it turned out—had once had designs on Helena. Dimitris, who was some ten years older than Helena, had now been married for five years, but evidently his interest in Helena remained.
“Is he even interested in the project?” O’Brien asked. “Or is he just using this as a way to meet Helena?” He and Joseph were eating lunch at one of the thermopolia near Leo’s school. These small eateries—the name literally meant “a place where something hot is sold” were essentially the Greek equivalent of fast food restaurant. They liked to eat here rather than walking back to Leo’s for lunch, partly because it gave them a chance to talk without risk of being overheard. Leo spoke little Frankish, but he had half a dozen servants who hailed from all over Europe.
“My impression was that he was genuinely interested,” Joseph said. “He’s had nothing interesting to work on since Nea Ekklesia, and he’s bored. You know these artistic types.”
O’Brien did know the type—which was the reason for his worry. “How much did you tell him?”
“The standard story. We need a chief architect to build a vault for a large-scale, unspecified project. And his personal foibles aside, he’s the man for the job. He’s brilliant.”
“Leo will never go along with it. I think he’s angry that we even talked to Helena. Things are strained between them.”
“But he’s said nothing to you?”
“No, but you know Leo.”
Joseph nodded. Leo avoided talking about personal matters if at all possible. So foreign were the workings of human relationships and society to Leo that he still had not asked O’Brien for any elaboration about where he was from or the war his people were fighting. To Leo, it was all details. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Helena; he just didn’t understand how all these different people in his life fit together. In general, he preferred that they didn’t. Complex relationships outside of his control made him uncomfortable. He wanted to be able to see the machinery work.
“What if I can get Helena to agree?” Joseph asked.
O’Brien sighed. It would be a huge coup if they could get the architect of the Nea Ekklesia on board. The church was not as grand as the Hagia Sophia, but was an architectural marvel in its own right. “We won’t be able to meet at Leo’s,” he said.
“I’ll find a neutral place,” Joseph said. “Leave it to me.”
O’Brien agreed to let him try. Dimitris hadn’t wanted to meet at his home—ostensibly because he didn’t want church officials or other busybodies finding out, but O’Brien assumed Dimitris was at least as keen on keeping the meeting secret from his wife. For O’Brien’s part, he would be happy to have a chance to see Helena once more, even if it was only to satisfy the lecherous interests of a preening architect. In any case, he couldn’t imagine Helena going along with it, even if Joseph could locate her.
He should not have doubted Joseph’s diplomatic skills nor his tenacity. Joseph reported back the next day, having approached Helena at the market. She had reluctantly agreed to be present at the meeting as long as she was not committed to anything else. Joseph was evasive when O’Brien asked him how he’d gotten her to agree; he hoped he hadn’t promised her anything they couldn’t deliver.
Joseph set up the meeting for noon on the last day of September. The four of them would meet in the upstairs room of a tavern in Galata, the ghetto across the Golden Horn where the Jews and Muslims lived. It was a rough area, but they would be unlikely to run into any high-ranking representatives of either the Church or the government.
In the meantime, O’Brien, Leo and Joseph finalized their choices for recruits from the school. They ended up selecting six boys, ranging from twelve to sixteen in age. Three were Greeks, two were Latin, and one was Frankish. Eckart, the boy who’d copied Dorian’s work, barely made the cut—mostly on the basis of his knowledge of Frankish. Dorian was one of the three Greeks selected. A few of these boys, including Dorian, had accepted prior offers of employment, but Leo was able to find suitable replacements for them. The others had no attachments to speak of; the three Greeks were orphans whose schooling had been paid for by a wealthy patrician. O’Brien’s plan was to leave for Iceland two days after the meeting with Dimitris. That wouldn’t give Dimitris much time to make arrangements, but he doubted they’d be able to recruit the architect in any case. Birgir had released four of the oarsmen with a small severance to make room for the passengers; these men would have to eventually find work in Constantinople or make it back to Scandinavia on their own. Birgir promised the remaining men would be ready to depart on the second of September.
The recruits still knew virtually nothing about the project. They only knew that they were going to be working on something very secret and very important, and that they would have employment for life. Only one boy—a curly-headed Greek lad named Nestor, thought to ask whether he might one day be able to leave the project to do something else. O’Brien assured him that once he started working on the project, he’d never want to leave. He suspected this was true, but of course he hadn’t actually answered the question. The truth was that Iron Dragon was too sensitive to allow word of it to spread throughout Europe. That meant that they were going to have to strictly control travel outside the Höfn base. Some in the inner circle would have to travel in order to recruit and to secure resources and forestall political troubles, but most of the engineers, craftsmen and laborers would never be allowed to leave.
Reyes had assured him this wouldn’t be a problem: after all, where would they go? If one of the engineers got fed up with the project, it wasn’t like he could send his resume to another spaceship-building program. The idea of using knowledge of twenty-third century technology and historical events to exploit the resources of medieval Europe sounded good on paper, but as the spacemen had found, foreknowledge did little good when you needed all your wits and energy just to survive. Most of the skills learned on the Iron Dragon project would be useless anywhere else in Europe, which was largely still a very primitive, agrarian society. Who would voluntarily leave what would essentially be a cushy office job to go live in crushing poverty, as most of Europe did at this point in history? Once the project got going in a few years, they hoped to have the best living conditions available anywhere in the ninth century. That wasn’t saying a whole lot, of course, but at the very least they would have comfortable living quarters, a steady supply of nutritious food, and basic medical facilities staffed by people who understood the principle of infectious diseases. Anyone who left Höfn would be at much greater risk of dying from starvation, cholera, gangrene and a hundred other dangers.
None of this changed the fact that once recruited, the workers would be captives. They would be comfortable, well-fed captives, and Reyes didn’t intend to force anyone to work against their will, but they would still be captives. For the sake of the project and the future of the human race, they simply could not be allowed to leave. But such conflicts were still some way in the future, and O’Brien decided twelve-year-old Nestor didn’t need to know about all of that right now. So he changed the subject.
O’Brien, Joseph and Helena took a ferry across the Golden Horn from Prosphorion Harbor to Galata. It was evident to O’Brien before they’d even reached the dock that this was a much less desirable area of the city. The stench of garbage and the odor of tanneries and butcher shops wafted over the boat, and he did his best not to retch. No wonder the government forced the less desirable citizens to live here.
Reading his thoughts, Joseph said, “It’s bad along the water. There are nicer neighborhoods farther in.”
“I should hope so,” O’Brien said. Behind a ramshackle fence were rows of tiny mud-brick houses. Larger buildings, including what appeared to be a mosque, loomed in the distance.
The boat had reached the dock. They got out and Joseph paid the ferryman. “This way,” he said, leading them up the dock to a gate. The attendant, apparently determining that they were not a threat, swung the gate open and they entered Galata. They followed a brick path that sloped steeply upward past the houses clustered around the docks, eventually reaching a wider city street. This area looked less desperate than the environs of the docks, but was still a far cry from the well-heeled districts of Constantinople where they’d spent most of the past two weeks.
Joseph led them down the street to a tavern and they went inside. The place appeared to be empty except for a short, fat man who stood wiping down the bar. He exchanged greetings with Joseph in what O’Brien took to be Aramaic. They followed Joseph upstairs to a small room with pillows on the floor. Joseph and Helena sat, while O’Brien remained standing, nervously facing the door. Something about holding a secret meeting in a room above a Jewish tavern had him on edge.
“Relax, O’Brien,” Joseph said. “Ezra is a friend. We are safe here.”
O’Brien nodded, but he was starting to regret agreeing to this meeting. He didn’t like using Helena as bait, and he still had doubts regarding Dimitris’s motivations. He’d agreed to the meeting because he thought Reyes would have wanted him to, and because he honestly hadn’t believed Helena would show up. But here she was, looking almost as nervous as he felt. She had barely spoken a word on the trip over. He wanted to say something to her, to reassure her, but he had no idea what to say. Hopefully Dimitris wouldn’t show, and they could all go back to Leo’s.
His hopes were dashed. There was a knock at the door, and Ezra opened it. With him was a tall, lean, handsome man with narrow eyes and a long, aquiline nose. He wore an undoubtedly very expensive outfit of green and yellow silk. The man’s eyes lit up as he saw Helena. Helena greeted him with a faint smile and a nod of her head. Ezra closed the door and the four sat.
The meeting went about as O’Brien expected: he described the Iron Dragon project in vague terms while doing his best to make it sound like a huge, challenging, and important endeavor. Joseph translated. Dimitris nodded politely while staring at Helena. After five minutes of this, O’Brien was tempted to stand up and declare the meeting over. They weren’t going to be able to recruit Dimitris, and O’Brien wasn’t sure he even wanted him.
O’Brien was in the middle of trying to describe the vault Dimitris would be building—without actually explaining that it would be inside a cave—when the door to the room opened. Ezra stood in the hall, a nervous look on his face. Next to him was a large woman wearing a long, flowing emerald dress and copious amounts of gold jewelry.
“Nerissa!” Dimitris cried as he got to his feet.
Nerissa greeted Dimitris coldly. Ezra mumbled an apology.
“We need to get out of here,” Joseph said, getting to his feet.
“Why, what’s…?” O’Brien started, as he stood up. Heavy boots were coming up the stairs. Nerissa strode into the room, and Ezra followed.
Dimitris said something to Nerissa in a pleading tone. Nerissa smiled and spoke curtly to him. Dimitris spoke again, shaking his head violently. A man wearing the uniform of the city watch appeared in the doorway. He entered the room, and O’Brien saw at least three more men behind him. They wore short swords at their sides.
Nerissa pointed to Joseph and then to O’Brien and spoke a brief sentence to the watchman.
“We’ve been sold out,” Joseph said weakly. “She’s telling them we’re spies for the Slavs.” He turned to the watchman, saying something in Greek. The watchman shrugged. Ezra continued to mumble apologetically. Dimitris approached Nerissa and quietly pleaded with her, but she pretended not to hear, continuing to smile her haughty smile. The watchman moved aside and barked an order. Two more men entered the room and moved toward Joseph and O’Brien.
“We’re being arrested,” Joseph said. “Don’t resist.”
O’Brien nodded weakly, a sick feeling growing in his gut. He knew this meeting was a bad idea.
Chapter Twenty-two
“Hrólfr seems to have accepted your engineer, then?” Reyes said in Gabe’s ear. He was standing at the summit of a hill near the Norsemen’s fort. The altitude wasn’t really necessary to confer with Reyes; they were too far apart for direct contact, so they were using Andrea Luhman as a relay, using the channel they’d agreed upon for ground-to-ground communications. Of course, there was no way to keep Mallick or anyone else aboard Andrea Luhman from listening in if they wanted to. Generally that wasn’t a problem, but there were elements of this operation that Reyes had wanted to keep the captain in the dark about. Hence her cryptic question.
“Yes,” Gabe replied. “We’re on our way to being back in Hrólfr’s good graces. We’ll need his help going forward, as we’re going to need a lot of resources from Frankia, and pretty soon he’s going to control all of Normandy.” This was all true, but it had little to do with their real reason for offering Ibrahim ibn Muhammed to Hrólfr.
“So this Ibrahim guy, he’s the real deal?”
“Look like it. He’s already completely reorganized the teams of workmen Hrólfr had in place. Much better division of labor. Hrólfr’s guys were tripping all over each other. It’s going to be slow going for a few weeks, as he’s having them tear apart everything they’ve built over the past six months, but I can see what he’s doing, and it makes sense. The new mangonels will require half as many men to operate and the ballistae will fire much more accurately. Rouen won’t stand a chance.”
