Conflagration (34 page)

The lid closed, and Cordelia was left in darkness. She waited for what seemed to be an eternity before she felt herself being lifted and tilted. She was bumped a couple of times, and then carried at an angle. She could only suppose that she was being moved down the
Nancy Belle
’s narrow gangplank by bribed or otherwise fixed porters or longshoremen. Cordelia closed her eyes and did her utmost to think of nothing. The day, even with its wrenching shocks and dire revelations, had been manageable, but now night had fallen, she was in Mosul occupied territory, and the future really did not bear consideration.

The
Nancy Belle
had mingled with the Mosul herring fleet without hitch or incident, and none of the fishermen seemed to question that one ship could pull far ahead of the others, and then deliberately drop back so it was in the dense middle of the fleet with boats all around it. Maybe freebooters attached themselves to the fleet on such a regular basis that no one thought anything about it. Conrad had ordered Cordelia back to the chain locker when the fishing fleet had been sighted, but he had left the hatch open so she could peer out. She had seen a procession of strangely assorted craft drift past, as though they had been assembled from all over the Mosul empire. Ugly tug-like steamships sailed alongside narrow-beamed sailing boats with curved hulls and billowing triangular sails of a kind that Jesamine had only seen in picture books of the Mediterranean. Cordelia had seen the trim, squat fishing smacks that worked out of Gloucester and Boston, and the fishing villages on Long Island Sound, and these were nothing like this mismatched Mosul flotilla. The
Nancy Belle
had sailed into Boulogne just as the sun was setting behind sinister, windowless, waterfront buildings with belching smokestacks, and before it found a berth at the far end of what Conrad had called the fish dock, it passed two hulking, rust-streaked Mosul ironclads, and a Mamaluke trireme with unhappy galley slaves silhouetted in the oar ports. The warships were ugly, in need of paint, and of a crude and makeshift design in comparison to the sleek lines of Norse naval vessels like the
Ragnar,
the
Loki,
or the
Rob Roy
. Even before they docked, Cordelia did not need to be told that she had entered the domain of Hassan IX. In addition to fish, even the harbor was permeated with the aura of misery, fear, and oppression, and the tangible presence of evil.

Confined in the stink of her box, Cordelia was carried on a fairly level course for a few minutes, but then she was jerked upward and slammed down headfirst, hard enough to make her bite back a cry. After that, though, she remained still until she heard the sound of a steam engine firing up, and the box started to sway as though she was aboard a moving vehicle. On one, very minimal level, she breathed a sigh of relief. The cargo of the
Nancy Belle
had come through the port and its authorities without being detected. Doing her best to calculate time, Cordelia figured that the vehicle, most probably a truck of some kind, traveled for maybe fifteen minutes, huffing and puffing, before it came to a stop with a hissing escape of steam. Most of the time, it was on a paved roadway, with ruts and potholes, but for maybe the last hundred or so yards, the bed of the truck bucked and bounced, as if it was negotiating a back alley. Again she waited, and then her crate was lifted roughly, and bumped and bounced into some kind of building. The final jarring thud came when she was deposited on a floor. She heard voices, and then the lid was ripped off and Cordelia found herself looking at a brassy, overweight woman, with far too much makeup and a Teuton accent, who was pointing a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun at her. “Do one thing I don’t like, sister, and I take your face off.”

RAPHAEL

“Take a seat.”

Raphael considered the plain, hard-backed wooden chair for a moment before sitting down. “This has the feeling of an interrogation.”

“I think, Major Vega, you are being a little paranoid.”

“My Prime Minister has just been assassinated. I think I have a right to be paranoid.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I’m sorry about the whole situation.”

Sir Harry Palmer, the commander of the Metropolitan Constabulary Special Branch sat across the desk from Raphael. They were somewhere in the bowels of the Great Scottland Yard, a huge, redbrick pile, the architectural product of the gothic revival, that was the headquarters of combined law enforcement for the city of London. When the plainclothes men at the crime scene had asked Raphael and the others to come with them, this is where they had come. Palmer was a tall man, probably an athlete in his youth, but now, close to retirement age, his weight was running to comfortable excess. His gray hair was neatly trimmed, his formal suit was elegant and probably expensive, and he wore thick, wire-rimmed spectacles that gave him an especially penetrating stare. “Would you care to tell me all that you remember about the attack?”

“Why have we been separated?”

“You mean Majors Weaver, Jesamine, and yourself?”

“Jesamine is distraught. Argo and I should be with her.”

“She has Commander Tennyson and a nurse with her.”

Raphael looked around the room. Its only function had to be that of questioning suspects. It was bare except for a couple of posters on the walls, exhorting citizens to report crime, and a large mirror, bolted in place, that Raphael suspected might be two-way.

“That still doesn’t explain why we’ve been split up.”

“A terrible crime, with obvious international ramifications, has been committed in our city. We can’t afford to leave any stone unturned, and I felt it was probably advisable to talk to each of you individually before you unconsciously formed some kind of mutual memory.”

The desk between the two of them was empty apart from a short stack of orange-colored manila folders, and a very expensive fountain pen that Palmer had obviously brought in with him. Raphael was becoming increasingly angry and unhappy at the treatment he was receiving. “You mean before we could get together and fabricate a story?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No?”

“You can’t deny that when the four of you get together, you have some kind of collective consciousness. That’s hardly a secret any longer.” Sir Harry Palmer had a strange manner of speaking. His words came out in groups of three and four, with pauses in between that paid little or no account to the conventions of punctuation.

Raphael shook his head. “That’s not quite how it works.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You will admit though, that the disappearance of Lady Blakeney does present something of a problem in present circumstances. Prime Minister Kennedy is shot, and simultaneously, one of your people goes missing.”

“She’s been missing all day. It would be a problem under any circumstances.”

“I understand Lady Blakeney is especially vulnerable to what we might call the … ah … occult techniques … of Her Grand Eminence Jeakqual-Ahrach.” Sir Harry used the words “occult techniques” with a clear distaste.

Raphael’s face was set. “I wouldn’t call Cordelia exactly vulnerable. Jeakqual-Ahrach seems to have a special grudge against her, but Cordelia gives as good as she gets.”

“So you don’t think she could be turned?”

“Turned?”

“She has vanished.”

“I think we would have felt something if Jeakqual-Ahrach had taken over her mind.”

“So there is some kind of thought transference?”

Again Raphael shook his head. “It really isn’t like that.”

Palmer changed direction. “You were all close to Prime Minister Kennedy?”

“I wasn’t, and neither was Argo.”

“But the women were?”

“We all knew Jesamine had started sleeping with Kennedy on the
Ragnar
.”

“And Lady Blakeney?”

“She wasn’t sleeping with him, but he was a friend of her mother’s, by all accounts.”

Palmer permitted himself a narrow smile. “He seems to have been a friend to many of the ladies.”

Raphael regarded Palmer with bleak distaste. “I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t raised in Albany, I just came there to fight. All I know is that the man’s dead, and should perhaps be given a break from cheap innuendo.”

Sir Harry Palmer looked mildly contrite, but then shuffled the folders on the desk and opened the one he was seeking. He read for a moment and then stared at Raphael from behind the cold lenses of his spectacles. “You really haven’t been in Albany very long, have you?”

“Less than a year.”

“And before that you were part of the armed forces of the Mosul Empire.”

“I was drafted into the Provincial Levies. I’m from occupied Hispania, and didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

“And you deserted right before the Battle of the Potomac?”

“I prefer the word defected. I escaped across the river and immediately saw action in the service of Albany. I think my loyalties are proven.”

“And Major Weaver. He defected from occupied Virginia.”

Raphael met Palmer’s cold eyes. “So?”

“And Major Jesamine, she was the concubine of a Teuton colonel and she also defected?”

“To be exact, I helped Cordelia and Jesamine break out from a Zhaithan torture chamber where they had been confined by Jeakqual-Ahrach herself.”

“So really, of the four of you, the only one native to Albany, and with no Mosul connections, is Lady Blakeney?”

Raphael looked long and hard at Sir Harry Palmer, and then leaned back in his chair. “Am I under arrest?”

Palmer shook his head. “No.”

Raphael’s lip curled and he rose to his feet. “Then fuck you, Sir Harry, I don’t like your attitude and I’m out of here. Either get me a cab or the Albany ambassador.”

As he stood looking down at the head of the Special Branch, Raphael felt a strange sensation, as though some faint, previously undetectable presence had slipped out of his mind. Previously he had been angry, but now he was furious. “Psychics?” He gestured to the mirror on the wall. “Are they on the other side of that thing trying to read me?”

“Please sit down, Major.”

“Fuck it. I’m not one of yours. Get the Albany ambassador, or I’m starting an international incident.”

Palmer remained icy calm. “I just want to know what you saw during the parade.”

Raphael was heading for the door, half hoping that Palmer would stop him. Nothing would have pleased Raphael more than to break the suave English bastard’s glasses. “I’ve already told you, I saw nothing. That’s the problem. The carriage we were in was too far back. We heard the shots, and started running, but, by the time we got to the front of the parade it was all over. Jack Kennedy and Dawson were dead, and your man Branson was bleeding and in shock. I’d like someone to tell
me
what the fuck happened.”

Palmer took Raphael total by surprise. “We can do better than that, Major Vega. We can show you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We have the moving pictures. We confiscated all the celluloid shot by
Biograph News,
and we’re just waiting for it to be developed and dried.”

CORDELIA

Cordelia looked up at the barrel of the shotgun. She had come too far to be rendered hysterical by a fat, painted, Teuton-looking blonde in cheap, out-of-date, prostitute lingerie even if she did have a gun to her head, was calling her sister, and threatening to take her face off.

“I’m telling you. Do one single thing I don’t like, and you’re meat.”

Cordelia regarded the whore coldly, aware that she, too, was in her underwear. “Believe me, my aim right now is to keep everyone just as calm and comfortable as they can be.”

“Stand up.”

Cordelia did her superior best to sound obliging but logical. “That’s the one thing I can’t do.”

“Damn the Goddess, I told you to stand up.”

“I can’t stand up because my damned feet are shackled.”

A second painted face came into Cordelia’s field of vision. “The bitch is right, Hilde. How the fuck do you think she’s going to stand up while she’s all chained like a Mamaluke good time?”

The new arrival was a dark girl, as scantily dressed as the first, who might have looked a lot like Jesamine, had Jesamine put on weight, lost an eye, and acquired what looked like a knife scar on her left cheek. The blonde, who was seemingly called Hilde, backed off a half step, but still had the shotgun leveled. “I never did like this deal. We shoulda stuck to the booze and the pills.”

“Someone needs either to unlock me, or at least help me stand.”

The dark girl with the eyepatch glanced round. “Hey, Rotk, you got the keys to these things?”

Someone made wait-a-minute noises, and then Rotk was peering into the crate. Cordelia would have bet money that Rotk was a refugee from the Mosul infantry, who had either deserted, or wormed his way out of the ranks by some quasi-legal means, and taken to the life of a low-level pimp and black marketeer like a duck to water. Rotk had a pencil moustache and greased-back hair. He was dressed in an old-fashioned European suit; pinstriped and with broad shoulders. His nose was broken and half his teeth were missing, but Cordelia was pleased to see that he was holding a ring of assorted keys. He stooped down and examined the shackles on Cordelia’s ankles, selected a key, and unlocked first one and then the other. He removed the chains and stood up. “Okay, girl. On your feet and don’t try nothing funny.”

Cordelia gingerly stood up, with her hands still cuffed in front of her, and took her first real look at the location to which she had been brought. Her crate had been dumped in what appeared to be a windowless room—part office, part store room—a place of sepia shadows and peeling wallpaper, lit by a pair of wheezing gas jets. Cordelia didn’t have to be told that it was the back room of what could only be one of the cheapest knocking shops in the lands of Hassan IX. Jangling Mosul dance music, drunken conversation, and forced girlish laughter could be clearly heard from beyond a firmly closed door, and the air was an unattractive cocktail of cheap perfume, cheaper tobacco, alcohol, military boots, mildew, and the ever-present reek of fish. If the implausible turned out to be true, and she really had been lifted to serve as a white slave in this wretched hole, she would be running the place in two weeks, but she continued to doubt that this was the case, because, although she was definitely in the back room of a whorehouse, it plainly doubled as a distribution point for cross-Channel smuggling, and the local black market. Crates of scotch and aquavit were stacked up against one wall, and a table was loaded down with boxes of cigars and jars of pills and other medicines. Cordelia realized that, in the luxury-deprived Mosul Empire, this place was a veritable Ubu’s Cave, too costly for Rotk to own in his own right, and a clear indication that, wherever she was, it was a cell or branch office of the mysterious Il Syndicato, and Rotk was the caretaker.