Mark Strang is asked to travel far back in time to the period of Caesar and the great Roman Triumvirate, in order to investigate the disappearance of a fellow time agent. What he discovers is that Caesar has been subverted by a Closer representative and that the Triumvirate has been undermined with civil war, mutual destruction, and the rewriting of history looming in the near future.
Caesar's Bicycle (1997) 295 pages by John Barnes
This is the third book in the Timeline Wars series. This books starts several years and missions after #2, and starts off with assassination attempts against Mark & Chrysamen and many other CruxOps. After ATN calls a meeting and informs them of goings on, they are returned to Mark's home timeline, and more adventures begin. Some seeming third party, not ATN, steps in to help Mark out of a jam.
Mark, Chrys, Porter and Paula end up in a Roman era timeline with Caesar and Pompey. They are looking for a lost field agent, and end up with Julius Caesar. The rest of the story follows their adventures in that time period. Again long descriptions of battles, inventions that might seem out of context, and conversations with historical figures. There is lots of mention of bicycles, but no mention of paved roads, at one point he mentions rutted roads.
Despite the stretching of our suspension of disbelief Barnes has come up with three pretty good novels, that were entertaining, fast paced, had characters that were more than stereotypes and I liked all three.
This novel pretty much ended with the Caesar adventure coming to an end, but didn't go back and say why the timelines were closing, etc. I think they could have touched on that, or on the third party once that was over. Maybe there was going to be a fourth book that never made it.
