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CHAPTER TEN

WHO ARE YOU?

ARGO Conference Room
Hangar Bay 287
Moscow, Russia
November 2620

Sully led Eroica and the visibly recovered Major into the ARGO’s conference room. In the center of the table were two trays, one with coffee, tea and an unidentified beverage on it: the other with a selection of various foods. At the far end of the table was an open laptop computer. Jason was just placing another tray on the table and looked up as the men entered.

“Your guests, your highness,” Sully announced.

“Thank you, Sully.”

Sully gave a slight bow. “I’ll be on the flight deck if you need me, sir.”

The Prince gave a small smile. How Sully loved to be formal at times like this. He waited until the door was closed before addressing his guests. “Can I offer you something to eat?” he said, indicating the trays. “Major? You must be starving.”

“He won’t eat a thing without a food taster,” Eroica said knowingly, pouring himself a cup of tea. “And if the coffee isn’t Nescafé, he won’t touch it even with a food taster.”

“It is, actually.” Jason flashed a smile, turning to the glowering officer. “And everything else that I recall you approved of is on that tray, Major. I did cook for you both a few times.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and then sat down in front of the laptop.

The Major eyed the coffee pot and then lifted his suspicious gaze to the Prince. He was dressed in the same elaborate royal finery he had worn when he first laid eyes on him. The officer threw a sideways glance in Eroica’s direction. “You say you’re Jason Krystovan, but you look like you raided the Earl’s wardrobe.”

“I’d say be nice, Major, but I know I’d be wasting my breath.” Jason studied the officer’s set expression. He could just see the wheels turning in his head as he analyzed every aspect of the room. “You haven’t even asked me where you are.”

“I already know where I am,” the Major replied firmly. “KGB Headquarters.”

“Ah. Well, not quite. What year is it?”

The frown on the Major’s face deepened and he wondered what game the Prince was playing. “It’s 1987. August.”

Jason shook his head. “Not anymore. This is where Lubyanka Square once stood, about…six centuries ago,” came the startling reply.

“What?” the Major and Eroica said in unison.

“You’re more than six hundred years in your future. It’s the year 2620. November. You’re in the Twenty-seventh century.”

“Impossible!” the Major gasped.

“What’s impossible? Time travel? You were in the TARDIS. You know time travel exists.” Jason sat back and looked at him. “You still don’t believe me, do you?”

“No.”

“You are a very hard man to convince, Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach,” Jason said, the German’s name rolling as impeccably off his tongue as it had the first time he had spoken it. He turned to Dorian, seeing uncertainty was now clouding his striking features. “Do you doubt who I am?”

“I didn’t.” Eroica replied hesitantly.

“But you do now?”

Eroica threw a quick sideways glance in the Major’s direction. “Iron Klaus has a lot more experience with this cloak and dagger stuff than I do.”

“Alright, fine,” Jason sighed heavily. “Take a seat, will you? We have a long afternoon ahead of us.”

“Why do you say that?” the Major asked guardedly.

“I thought you had some questions you wanted answered. I know I have several hundred myself.”

“I thought you might.”

There was an edge to the reply that caused Jason to look up again. “Major, I’m not interested in any of the secrets you may have in your head. They’re not secret anymore.” He noticed the officer searching his pockets and gave a knowing smile. “If you’re looking for your cigarettes, they were removed by the transmat.”

The Major looked up. “Transmat?”

“It’s how you got here. It identified them as being hazardous.”

Eroica groaned and put a hand to his head, sitting down at the same time. “Wonderful. Now we have to put up with paranoia and nicotine withdrawal.”

Jason gave a wry smile. He reached into his inside pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes and lighter, which he slid across the table in the astonished Major’s direction. “You’re not really supposed to smoke in here. But I’ve reset the safeties to allow it.”

The Major eyed the pack of cigarettes as if they would jump up and bite him. The lighter, however, he recognized as his own. He picked up it up and proceeded to take it apart. It was obvious he was looking for bugs and equally obvious that he did not believe a word the Alterran was saying.

Jason sighed heavily, leaning his elbow. “Major Eberbach, you are without a doubt the most suspicious man I have ever met.”

The Major met his steady gaze with an icy stare. “I’m a professional. I haven’t lived so long being gullible. You expect me to believe that I’m six hundred years in the future and that you are someone I last saw four years ago just because you tell me?”

A smile came to Jason’s face when the officer’s nicotine craving overrode some of his paranoia as he cautiously lit one of the cigarettes.

The Major was surprised when he discovered the cigarette was identical to the brand he smoked. He stored this piece of information away, as it only seemed to confirm his suspicions. He looked around the room, checking for any obvious surveillance equipment, not that he expected to actually see any. The KGB was much too clever to make things that obvious.

“Fair enough. The last thing I would do is call Iron Klaus unprofessional,” Jason said when the officer looked at him again. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “Why don’t you believe me?”

The Major took the compliment with no more than a flicker of his eyelids. He drew himself to his full height and began laying out his misgivings. If he was to believe what Jason was telling him, then he and Eroica were thrown into the device in the Lubyanka in 1987 and had somehow been retrieved more than six hundred years later. Unharmed.

“I never said you were unharmed when you arrived,” Jason injected knowingly. “You weren’t in the infirmary simply for observation. Anyway, go on.”

The Major gave him a sideways look, taking a drag on his cigarette as he continued to get his thoughts in order. He remembered nothing until waking in the infirmary. “How am I to be certain that the memories of these events are true?”

“Major, what are you saying?” Eroica asked nervously. He was getting more and more unsettled by the minute. Why did the Major always have to turn everything on its head?

“I think he’s saying that what you remember is a false memory that was somehow implanted by the KGB,” Jason replied succinctly. “And that I’m not really who I say I am, but someone you were told to believe I was.” He paused and scowled. “Wow. That didn’t make sense even to me.” He looked over at the Major who was silently watching his every move. He’s trying to read my body language. Good Luck, Major. I’m not even remotely human. “Is that what you think, Major? You’re seeing me, Jason Krystovan, as a result of post-hypnotic suggestion?”

The Major did not reply, but Eroica did. “Is that what this is?” he gasped, getting to his feet. He moved away from the table, positioning himself slightly behind the Major. “We’ve been brainwashed?”

“How else would anyone know who we are six hundred years in the future?” the Major replied logically.

“Actually, I’m the only one who knew who you both were,” Jason informed. “And even if I wasn’t, it was easy enough to identify you, Major.” He opened a box that was beside the laptop and slid it down the table. “Among other things, you were carrying your NATO ID and a very impressive document from Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the General Secretary of—”

“I know who the bloody bastard is,” the Major snapped impatiently. He looked in the box, quickly retrieving his property. He made particular note of the fact that his gun and shoulder holster were conspicuous by their absence. He pocketed the documents and looked up. “But not the Earl. I happen to know Lord Gloria never carries any identification. His subordinates take care of all that.”

“Why, Major, I didn’t know you cared,” Eroica said sweetly.

“Not now, Dorian,” Jason reproved sharply, receiving a startled look in reply. Again, his tone only seemed to reinforce that he was the same man Dorian had first met seven years earlier.

The Prince tossed another paper on the table. “You’re correct, as always, Major. But he was carrying his calling card.”

The Major looked at the card upon which was written, From Eroica with love. He turned to glare at the thief. “You idiot!”

Jason ignored this outburst. “I would like to point out that I haven’t made a single threat to harm either of you. In fact, if you’ll recall, I’m the one who rescued you.”

The officer turned back to face him. “A very convenient rescue.”

“Meaning what? It was a set up by the KGB?”

“Yes.”

Jason sat back in his chair. “Why would the KGB choose an obscure person such as myself as a dupe?”

The Major met the Alterran’s challenging gaze steadily. “Who better than a person we would trust.”

Jason’s eyebrows went up. “Trust? Major, I’m touched. From you, that’s high praise.”

“It wasn’t meant as such.”

“For what it’s worth, Jason, I believe you,” Eroica said mildly.

“You would believe anything, you stupid limey,” the Major snapped.

The Alterran Prince jumped to his feet and banged a fist on the table, causing the unprepared officer to jump. “God dammit, Klaus, that’s enough!” he thundered in flawless German. He met the Major’s angry glare with the same cold look he had used on the Captain in the mind probe room and Eroica was startled to see Iron Klaus actually flinch. “I do not have time for your petty bigotry and intolerance,” he went on in the Major’s native tongue. “Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. There is a rogue temporal corridor operating out there, and somehow you two got caught up in it. And, unfortunately, you’re also the only ones who can help me figure out who activated it and why!”

Jason dropped back into his seat, switching back to English as he said, “Now, can we get on with this without any further petty squabbling?” He did not wait for a reply, turning his attention to the computer before him.

Eroica was thunderstruck by this enraged outburst. Again, he found himself questioning himself. This was not the mild mannered Jason Krystovan he had once known. He shifted his position to see what the Alterran was doing. To his amazement, a wealth of information was scrolling across the screen. “What is that?” he asked finally.

Jason looked back at him. “What? This?” He nodded at the laptop, receiving a nod in reply. “It’s a computer. I’m pulling up all the information on you both and your arrival.”

“That’s a computer?”

“Yes. A bit smaller than the ones you’re used to seeing, I’ll bet. Considerably faster and with several hundred times more storage capacity.” With a grin, Jason added, “It’s wireless, too.”

“He’s already trying to decide how to steal it,” the Major observed blandly. To his surprise, Jason did not snap back at him. Instead, he nodded in agreement.

“I wouldn’t advise it. It’s equipped with a tracking chip. I can find it anywhere.” Jason looked up, meeting Eroica’s fascinated gaze. “And I mean anywhere.

Eroica did not reply, being too enthralled by the compact device. The implications of the technology were staggering.

Jason glanced at the screen and then looked over at the glower Major. “I do have one question you can answer for me, Major,” he said mildly.

Klaus gave him a suspicious look. “What makes you think I’m gonna answer any of your questions?”

Jason flashed an amused smile. “This won’t breach NATO security. It has to do with your surname.”

The Major’s eyes narrowed, the interrogation in the mind probe room returning to mind. “I thought you already knew that.”

“Let me put it this way, what is the proper way of addressing you?” Jason nodded to the computer screen. “The reports have you as Major Eberbach and Major von dem Eberbach. Which is correct?”

“The latter is correct, not that that will make a difference,” Klaus replied, blowing smoke into the air. “Just call me Major.”

“Nobody gets it right outside of Germany,” Eroica said knowingly.

Jason nodded. “Then I apologize for having gotten it wrong before,” he said mildly.

“Are you trying to soften me up?” the Major asked coolly.

“Perish the thought. How does one soften up iron?”

“With heat,” Eroica replied playfully, fluttering his eyelashes at the officer.

“Dorian, please, not now,” Jason moaned impatiently.

Eroica flinched when the Alterran turned a disapproving look in his direction. His bright blue eyes caught the light from the computer screen in such a way that they actually glowed. Once again, the Earl found himself thinking that perhaps the Major’s current misgivings might not have been so misplaced after all.

“What’s wrong?” Jason asked suddenly.

Eroica threw the Major a quick sideways glance, seeing him studying the Prince closely. Did you see it, too? What do you know, Major? He turned back to see the striking blue eyes still staring at him with an incredible intensity that was completely unnerving. “Nothing.”

“Don’t kid a kidder. Something’s—” Jason broke off and put a hand to his head as he realized that Dorian was still having misgivings about who he was. “Look. I’m Jason Nigel Peregrine Alexander Krystovan. I’m an Alterran Healer, a surgeon. We met in 1980—I think—when I was still traveling with the Doctor.* I pulled a bullet out of the Major’s chest that should’ve killed him. And you, Dorian, were a jigsaw puzzle that I put back together leaving that flawless skin of yours still flawless.” He paused, wondering how his next piece of information would be received. “By 1987, that would be seven years ago for you. But for me, it’s been about a hundred and fifty.”
* My story – Do UNIT & NATO Spell Disaster?

“A hundred and fifty years?” Eroica gasped, returning to his seat at the same time.

“Give or take a decade or two, yes.”

“Why aren’t you with the Doctor now?” the Major asked pointedly.

“Long story.” Jason looked off into the distance, recalling the day he had parted company with the Doctor. “Very…very long story,” he said wistfully.

Eroica exchanged a mystified look with the Major, who shrugged and drew another drag from his cigarette.

Jason seemed to return to reality with a jolt and gave the still skeptical pair a searching look. “Am I ever going to convince you that I’m telling the truth?”

“You’ve convinced me,” Eroica replied.

“No, I haven’t.”

The thief frowned. “What makes you say that?”

Jason leaned on his elbow and gave him an innocent look. “Because you haven’t hit on me once since you woke up in the infirmary.”

The Major gave a derisive snort. “You should be grateful.”

“Actually, I’m shocked.”

“I thought you weren’t flattered,” Eroica injected.

“I lied.”

Eroica slapped a hand on the table. “I knew it!”

Jason’s face brightened and a smile started to blossom. “Still think I’m someone else?” he asked challengingly.

A long silence followed. Klaus stood smoking his cigarette, thoughtfully appraising the situation. He went over all the information he had gathered and analyzed it, comparing what he recalled of the Jason Krystovan he had encountered only twice with the man sitting before him.

“Perhaps there is a way you can prove what you claim,” he said suddenly.

Jason’s eyebrows went up. “Really? What could I possibly do that would convince Iron Klaus?”

Klaus stubbed out his cigarette before meeting the Alterran’s inquiring gaze. “Revert to your true self.”

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