1636 The Devil's Opera (Ring of Fire) (40 page)

He always made a visit to the Women’s Dressing Room. Sometimes it was the first place he visited back stage; sometimes it was the last. Tonight it was his last stop. He flashed his light around, and walked down the way to the table of his interest, where he poked around the various jars and bottles on the table top. He couldn’t take any of them, of course, but he did lift the one bottle of scent and sniff at it. That smell—it sent fire through his head and to his groin. But he only allowed himself the one sniff.

Schardius started to turn away, but stopped as his light flicked across something lying on the floor under the table. Stooping, he picked it—or rather, them—up. He stared at them, and smiled. These—now these he could take. He sniffed of them. There was a hint of the scent, but it wasn’t strong. He dared to open the scent bottle and pour a drop on each, then he closed it and returned it to its place.

Smiling a hot smile, Schardius turned to take his new trophies to safety.

* * *

Ciclope looked up as Pietro slipped through the door and closed it behind him.

“Did you get it?”

The Italian grinned and hefted his bag, which was much larger than it had been when he left, and judging from the effort he expended to lift it, weighed more as well.

Ciclope nodded toward the last hollowed out tree limb bomb case.

“Let’s get it done, then.”

“
Si.
”

Pietro set his bag on the table and pulled out a very finely woven cloth sack. It was the work of moments to fill up the bomb casing, pick up the waiting plug, rub a piece of wax around it, and press it into the hole, sealing the gunpowder inside the case. He rubbed the wax over the face of the bomb, then pressed a mixture of dirt and sawdust into the wax, hiding the circle where the plug met the wall of the bomb case.

The little thief picked up the completed bomb and set it with the other three of its mates, all masquerading as nothing more sinister than inert lengths of wood, suitable for someone’s fireplace or furnace. He dusted his hands, and said with satisfaction, “That’s that. We’re ready to go now.”

“Good,” Ciclope said. “Sooner is better. Tomorrow? Day after?”

Pietro thought for a moment, then nodded. “
Si.
I’ve been watching the night watchman, and the early morning crew. I know the routines pretty well. Give me one more night to follow them, and we can go the next day.”

“Good,” Ciclope repeated. He pointed to where the not-so-empty sack of gunpowder sat on the table. “Why did you get so much more than we needed?”

Pietro flashed a triumphant grin. “Because I got these, too.”

He reached into his carry sack and pulled out two pistols. And such pistols! Hockenjoss & Klott revolvers, they were. Five-shot beauties, Ciclope discovered when he took one in greedy hands.

“How…” he started, turning the pistol over and over in his hands.

“You visit a gun seller’s shop, you’d be surprised if there weren’t some guns there somewhere, wouldn’t you? And I picked up bullets and these percussion cap things, too.”

Pietro lifted more treasures from the carry sack.

Ciclope settled in for a long evening playing with his new toy.

Chapter 47

“Tell me again why we’re doing this now, instead of in the middle of the night?” Ciclope muttered.

Pietro turned around in the early predawn light with an air of patience.

“Because I don’t know how long it will take these to burn through and explode, so if we want to catch people, we need to load them in the fire about now. If we did it earlier, they might go off too early, which would wreck the machine but wouldn’t hurt anyone. Now come on, and for God’s sake, be quiet!”

The thief turned away and led Ciclope in a circuitous route through the darkest shadows, until they reached their destination: a wagon that had been jacked up to sit on columns of timber and brick, with its east end almost nosing the platform the steam crane was built on. It was the largest wagon either of them had ever seen, but then, considering what it carried when it rolled, it pretty well had to be.

The wagon bed had very high sides and a wooden roof. Up-timers who had seen it frequently remarked on how it resembled an old railroad car.

At the moment, a set of wooden steps led up to the door at the end of the wagon. Pietro handed his load to Ciclope, then paused, listening. After a moment, he slunk up the steps, then opened the door and whipped inside.

There were a couple of muted thumps, then Pietro appeared in the door and beckoned to Ciclope. He rushed up the steps as quickly as he could with the cumbersome loads.

There was barely room inside for the two of them, their loads, and the body on the floor. Ciclope unslung his load with a curse, but set it and the other one down with care nonetheless. Despite Pietro’s assurance that bumping or dropping the packages would have no effect on them, Ciclope was still a bit nervous about being so cavalier with the bombs.

“Who’s that?” he asked, pointing at the body.

“Nils,” Pietro said, taking a knife from his pocket and cutting the cords that bound the bombs into two packages. “He’s a Swede, one of the boiler tenders, usually works the early morning shift by himself getting the steam up to operating temperature.”

“Dead?”

“Probably. If he’s not, he soon will be.”

“So this is the fabled steam engine,” Ciclope drawled, looking at the equipment. “Looks like a big water tank to me.”

“This is the boiler,” Pietro said, opening the door to the brick firebox beneath the metal tank. “It looks like a water tank because it is a water tank. The engine itself is in the crane housing on that deck in front of the wagon.”

“Oh.”

The heat rolled out from the open firebox. Pietro bent down and peered through the open door.

“Okay, hand them to me.”

Ciclope hefted one and passed it to Pietro, who shoved the log into the firebox with the fire iron that had been propped in the corner, then bent down some more to push it around inside the firebox. The process was repeated three more times, after which a few pieces of regular wood were added to the fire as camouflage. Pietro straightened with a smirk on his face.

“That’s that.” He closed the firebox door. “No one would think to look in there for anything. Now come on, let’s get out of here.”

Ciclope wholeheartedly agreed with that last sentiment. He was first out the door.

* * *

“Tell me again why we are here so early even the birds are still yawning?” Baldur groused, following suit with a gaping yawn of his own.

“Because,” Ulrik said around the mouth of his coffee mug, “the emperor’s latest message said he would be here just after first light. That being the case, someone should be here to meet him.”

“And that would be you?” Another prodigious yawn from the Norwegian.

“That would be us and the princess,” Ulrik said with a nod to the car. “Best foot forward, family unity, all that.”

“Umph.” Baldur was not a morning person.

“We wouldn’t want to leave Gustav alone and at the tender mercies of the politicians, now would we?” Ulrik nodded to where the Magdeburg pack stood, headed by Senator Abrabanel and Mayor Gericke.

“Umph.”

“Too much wine last night?”

“Umph.”

Ulrik smiled, but he turned away from his companion and let him suffer the morning in his own way. He looked downriver, and was rewarded with a glimpse of a river barge in the distance, just having rounded the last curve on the other side of the Navy yard. He elbowed Baldur and beckoned to the car. The rear door closest to him flew open and Kristina bounced out. Caroline followed more sedately from the other side.

“Is he here? Is Papa here?”

Kristina clutched at his hand, a sensation that Ulrik noted that he enjoyed.

“Not yet,” he said, “but soon. I think that may be his boat you see coming toward us.”

* * *

“Yuck.”

Gotthilf looked up at Byron’s mutter. His partner was drinking a cup of the stationhouse coffee, and it obviously wasn’t any better than it ever was. In fact, judging from Byron’s expression, it might be worse than usual. He shuddered at the thought.

“Grade four,” Byron announced as he set his empty mug on the tray set out for that purpose. “Definitely grade four.”

“Enlighten me,” Gotthilf said as they headed for the door.

“There’s an old joke that says that coffee comes in four grades,” Byron said. “Coffee, java, joe, and battery acid.” He held up fingers to enumerate the list as he ran down it. “That stuff,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “would eat the enamel off your teeth.”

“Ah,” Gotthilf said. “Grade four. Got it.”

“But it’s still better than my mother’s coffee.”

Gotthilf shuddered again, and changed the subject as they headed down the hall. “There was an interesting theft report from a couple of days ago.”

Byron looked at him and raised one eyebrow in a query.

“Someone stole two pistols and some caps and about five pounds of gunpowder from Farkas’ gun shop.”

“Whoa,” Byron said. “That’s scary. Make sure that gets out to all the patrolmen. We want to find those as soon as possible.”

“I’ll take care of it as soon as we get back.”

“Right,” the up-timer announced as they arrived at the bottom of the steps leading up to the station’s front door. “Parade duty.”

This time Byron shuddered.

* * *

As it turned out, the barge that Ulrik had seen was only the first of three, and it did not contain Emperor Gustav. What it did contain was a large contingent of his bodyguards, and they debarked first. They were Scots for the most part, and looked the type: hard-eyed, hard-bitten, no-nonsense men, each carrying an SRG rifle and with a short sword and at least one pistol hanging from a belt.

When the first one appeared on the gangplank from the deck of the boat, the Marines present got tense and fingered their own weapons. Captain Beaton moved to the front of the guards and stood with his hands behind his back. At least some of the bodyguards must have known him, as they stopped short of the Marines and waited.

Gustav appeared after the second boat docked. He wasn’t the first man on that gangplank, either. That was another bodyguard.

Baldur grunted.

“What?” Ulrik said.

“That’s got to be Ljungberg.”

That was a reference to Erling Ljungberg, Gustav’s new chief bodyguard, a man neither of them had met yet.

“How can you tell?”

“First man I’ve seen I’m not sure I could beat.”

Ljungberg was a very large man, and even from a distance appeared as hard as seasoned oak. Ulrik didn’t even want to contemplate a physical contest with the man.

The emperor finally appeared, striding across the gangplank in something approaching his normal manner. That was slightly belied by the fact that he was closely followed by Dr. James Nichols, and because Ljungberg waited at the end of the gangplank, one hand on his pistol and one not exactly outstretched, but definitely poised to make a grab.

The only concession that Gustav seemed to be making to his recent infirmities was that he moved with a bit of care on the flexing gangplank. But he stood tall and straight, and once off the wood moved in something like his normal manner. Not that he had much chance to walk around.

“Papa!”

Unable to restrain herself, Kristina burst from Caroline’s grasp and hurled herself toward her father. Gustav’s face sprouted a grin, and he opened his arms wide. She cannoned into him, wrapping her arms around his waist—or at least, around as much of it as she could reach. The emperor had lost some of his weight during his recent indisposition; but not much. His problem hadn’t stopped him from eating, so he was still a very large man, and Kristina was still only nine.

He folded his arms around his daughter, and looked down into her upturned face. They stood thus for a long moment, drinking each other in. The silence was broken by Kristina.

“You look tired, Papa.”

Gustav laughed. “I am, I’m afraid. But I’ll get better now that I’m here in Magdeburg with you.”

“You’d better,” Kristina said with a determined jerk of her head.

Gustav laughed again, and released her from his hold. She in turn released him, but reached up and took his hand. Ignoring the other notables for the moment, he crossed to where Caroline and Ulrik stood.

The imperial hand was first offered to Caroline. “Thank you,” was all Gustav said.

Then he turned to Ulrik and offered the same hand to him. Ulrik took advantage of the moment of the handclasp to study Gustav’s face. There were lines there that he didn’t remember from the last time they had met. And his eyes…they were different, somehow…not pain-filled, exactly, but they definitely showed that the emperor had not had an easy time of it.

Ulrik realized that neither of them had said anything; that Gustav had been studying him just as much as he had been studying the emperor. Now Gustav gave a firm nod, and clapped him on the shoulder. “We have much to talk about, I think, you and I.”

“I agree,” Ulrik replied, sticking his hand behind his back and wiggling the fingers where Gustav’s grip had almost crushed them.

“At the palace, then,” Gustav clapped him on the shoulder again, then turned toward Senator Abrabanel, Mayor Gericke, and those who waited with them.

There were two small hiccups before they could get the procession to the palace under way. The first was a matter of protocol—of sorts. The third barge had landed the remainder of the emperor’s bodyguard company, so they now outnumbered the Marines that were present. Seriously outnumbered.

Despite that, on one side Captain Beaton was arguing quite forcefully that since they were in Magdeburg, it was his Marines’ responsibility to guard the person of the emperor. On the other side Major Graham and Captains Stewart and Gordon of the bodyguard company were not having any such thing. And since they were all Scots, the language had moved from reasoned to impassioned in very short order; had sailed past vulgar a few moments later; and was now approaching a state of sulfurousness. Ulrik stepped closer to Kristina, aware that Baldur was now at his left and Caroline at his right.