Conflagration (35 page)

Deciding that, if she tried hard enough, she might bend the situation to her will, she held up her manacled hands. “Are these coming off, too?”

Rotk shook his head. “Not possible, dearie. I’d be taking too much of a chance.”

“What can I do, handcuffed or not?”

The one-eyed girl, who Cordelia would later learn was called Zaza, surprised Cordelia by again intervening on her behalf. “Use what brains you have, Rotk. We gotta get some clothes on her real fast. If some drunken Zhaithan comes wandering in here, he’s going to know there’s something wrong here and start asking questions that can’t be bought off with a bottle of scotch.”

“She looks alright to me.”

“And that only shows how fucking ignorant you are. Those knickers are straight out of London, we can’t get nothing like that here.”

“A Zhaithan wouldn’t know that.”

“You want to take a chance on that?”

“Who’s the man here?”

Hilde sniffed. “Sometimes I wonder.”

But Rotk had actually given in. He once more pulled out his keys and uncuffed Cordelia. “So get some fucking clothes on her, and look sharp about it.” He covered his loss of face by picking up the crate that Cordelia had just vacated, and carrying it towards the door. “I’m going to dump this thing. Have her looking like all the rest of you by the time I get back.”

As he lifted the crate, Rotk’s suit-coat fell open, revealing a single shot pistol stuffed in his belt, an ancient flintlock, no less. The damned loser had one shot and that was that. On the other hand, he also sported a belt of four short throwing knives with which, Cordelia suspected, he might be quite skilled. The door closed behind him, and Hilde looked at Cordelia. “You going to behave yourself?”

“With drunken Zhaithan just a wall away? I’d be a fool if I didn’t, now wouldn’t I?” As if to remind her of their proximity, a roar of drunken singing came from elsewhere in the building.

We marched ’em

We marched ’em

We marched ’em

To the end of the road

And at the end of the road stood Death

And we marched ’em

To the end of the road.

Zaza was already rummaging through a trunk. “I don’t have anything too fancy to give you. The best you can say about this stuff is that it’s clean. You better hang on to your fancy skivvies, and put this over them.” She held up a short lace slip that might have once been alluring but was now little more than a rag. Cordelia slipped it over her head and pulled it down. It was too large, but it hardly mattered in the context. Zaza handed her a black velvet choker with a cheap imitation cameo pinned to it. “This should help you look the part.”

“I’m going to need some lipstick and stuff if I’m going to blend with you girls.”

Zaza gestured to a makeup table and a dim, flyblown mirror. “Help yourself to what you can find. And don’t be too ladylike about it, if you want to look like one of us.”

“What makes you think I’m ladylike?”

“I can tell.”

Zaza straightened up from the trunk, having found what she was looking for. “Here, you’re going to need this when you leave here. It looks like shit, but it’s warm and the nights are still cold.” She held up a coat that was nothing more than a small-sized Mosul greatcoat, dyed black, and with some fancy buttons sewn on it.

“When I leave here?”

Zaza and Hilde exchanged glances. “You thought you’d been brought here to…” They both broke up, laughing hysterically. “You thought you’d been dragged across the water for a life of flatbacking and cocksucking in this place?”

Cordelia stopped putting on the layers of thick bordello makeup and was frankly bewildered. “I…”

“You don’t have a clue what’s going on, do you?”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“You hide it well.”

“I suppose so.”

“You really didn’t know that this was just a stop on the line for you?”

“I know precisely nothing beyond what I’ve observed.”

At that moment, Rotk returned, full of bluster, and made a massive show of sending the two women back to work. They shrugged, rolled their eyes, and left, but not before Zaza had winked her good eye knowingly at Cordelia. Having spent the day in a state of undress, Cordelia was happy to shrug into the warmth of the dyed greatcoat. Zaza was right. The best you could say about it was that it was clean. She turned to Rotk. “So?”

“I suppose you’ll do.”

Adopting a tone that implied she knew more than she did, Cordelia faced the pimp, hands planted squarely on her hips. “And how long will I have to remain here?”

Rotk avoided looking directly at her, turning instead and helping himself to a cigar from an open box of Caribbeans. “That’s hard to say. They’ll come for you when they come for you. These things don’t exactly happen on a schedule.”

“I suppose not.”

Rotk sat back on the edge of the table as he lit his cigar. “There’s one thing you’ve got to remember.” He puffed on the cigar, and exhaled. “While you’re here, you’ll be pretending to be one of my regular girls, and although I’ll do my best to keep the customers away from you, we got Zhaithan and Teuton officers coming in here who don’t take no for an answer.”

Was Rotk actually suggesting that Cordelia was supposed to work for her keep while she was in the house? “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that, if a punter wants you to go upstairs with him, you’d be well advised to go, and no fuss. Fuss is something we need to avoid at all costs right now.”

Cordelia carefully hid her distrust. “Flatbacking it like a regular jade to preserve my cover?”

“You’re no blushing virgin, are you, girl?”

“I can hold my own when needed.”

He flicked the ash from his cigar suggestively. “Then we understand each other?”

“It would seem so. Is that all?”

“There’s one other thing.”

“I thought there might be.” Cordelia sighed and straddled a chair next to the table. “I think I need to sit down.” She deliberated sat with her coat open and her legs spread. She almost smiled as Rotk’s already small eyes turned beady as he looked at her casually spread thighs. Did he really think she was going to fuck him to make it through this stage of the still undisclosed game? “Why do I think this is something about you and me?”

Rotk smiled nastily. “I’m good to my girls. I take a lot of lip from them, and I probably don’t beat them enough, but that’s just my way. I just don’t want you making any mistakes. I’m the man here, and…”

“And you expect a certain, how shall I put it? Tribute?”

“I’ll just say that it behooves girls like you, the ones who pass through here, to be a bit nice to me. You’ll come to realize that I can make the process a whole lot easier for you, and it’s better you know that now than when it’s too late. Can’t say fairer than that, now, can I?”

“You can’t say fairer than that, Rotk. You don’t mind if I call you Rotk, do you?”

Rotk leaned across and put a hand on Cordelia’s thigh. “You can call me what you like, darlin’. And now we’re properly acquainted, why don’t you show me a bit of what you’re made of?” Cordelia noticed that Rotk bit his fingernails. She left the hand in place, but treated the pimp to a knowing look. “It’s been a long day, Rotk. How about a drink, before I get down to any behooving?”

Without removing his hand, Rotk poured a stiff measure of raw scotch into a chipped china cup with an ugly floral pattern. He was just passing it to Cordelia when Hilde came through the door, and took in the scene between Cordelia and Rotk with the expression of one who had seen it too many times before. She halted, her lip curled, and she shook her head. “Forget it, Rotk. You try the same tired shit on every bitch they send through here. The order that she was to get to Paris untouched couldn’t have been more fucking plain.”

Rotk quickly took his hand off Cordelia’s thigh, but she deftly seized the scotch before he could take that away, too. He began to protest to Hilde. “We were only fucking talking.”

“Talking about how it was part of the deal for her to suck your cock.” She glanced at Cordelia. “Am I right?”

“That seemed to be the way it was going.”

“Well I just did you a big favor.”

Rotk looked confused. “Favor? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“This lady has gotta be important, real important.”

Rotk was at a total loss. “Important?”

“Because no less than Sera Falconetti herself has personally come to collect her.”

“You’re joshing me.”

“There’s a big, black, cherry-ass, gleaming petrol Benz parked out back in the alley, just like the high command came to visit, and Sera Falconetti herself is sitting in the back.”

Cordelia didn’t have the slightest clue who Sera Falconetti might be, but the sound of her name seemed enough to scare the shit out of Rotk. Hilde smiled vindictively. “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t fuck the lady?”

Cordelia downed the cup of scotch in a single burning gulp. In addition to not knowing who Sera Falconetti was, she was also puzzled by the mention of Paris. According to all the history that Cordelia had been taught, the city of Paris had been totally destroyed by the Mosul many years earlier.

JESAMINE

Jesamine had always wanted to see moving pictures, but not like this and not these pictures. She sat between Argo and Jane Tennyson, on the hard folding chair, wanting to cover her eyes and hide her face, but having too much pride to do either. Acute and terrible instinct told her that these flickering, indistinct images of Jack Kennedy would be the ones to haunt her for the rest of her days, maybe more so than her real memories of the man himself, the one she held in her arms and around whose body she had so gloriously wrapped her legs. The room was much larger than the one in which she had been questioned by Windermere and Sir Harry Palmer, but just as bare and featureless. They were all there, sitting on folding chairs and watching in rapt silence, Argo and Raphael, Jane Tennyson, who seemed to have been delegated to look after her, Palmer and Windermere, and a number of men to whom no introductions had been made. A portable screen and a projector had been set up to run the
Biograph News
celluloid, and now the machine was whirring away, and the pictures were dancing on the white surface of the screen. The first shots were of the procession coming out of Jutland Square and moving down the wide street called Whitehall. Tiny black and white pipers marched past, and crowds silently cheered. A close-up of Jack in the back of an open carriage, smiling and waving, distinguished and debonair in an immaculate morning suit, almost wrung a plaintive groan from her. He seemed so alive and handsome, but they all knew what was coming and the knowledge was painfully grotesque. Tennyson leaned close to her and whispered, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Jesamine stared fixedly at the screen. “I don’t want to do it, but I have to.”

The film of the parade ground on, moving to its inexorable climax, but even though Jesamine knew and feared the forgone conclusion, the terrible moment took her by surprise. She was looking at a medium shot of Jack and Governor Branson in the back of the carriage when Jack suddenly jerked, back and to the right, and it seemed, in the less than perfect focus, that a small piece of his scalp detached and flew away. She wanted to see what happened next, but the camera jumped elsewhere, suddenly showing four men in long overcoats pushing through the protective line of police that was keeping the crowd on the pavement, breaking out and running towards the lead carriage, pulling guns from under their coats. One of them fired, and the English Governor rocked in his seat, but the others didn’t start shooting until they were close to the carriage. The puffs of smoke only appeared from the muzzles of their pistols when Norse horsemen were already breaking loose from the ordered ranks and charging towards them. Jesamine wanted to scream at the relived horror, but a fact suddenly struck her. She could not believe that she, of all people, was the only one to notice that all was not right with the sequence of events they were seeing.

“Wait!

Argo looked sharply at her. “What?”

“Wait a minute, stop the film!”

Tennyson attempted to be comforting. “Jesamine.”

“I’m not having an emotional crisis. I saw something!”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m okay. I’m watching my lover being shot to death, and it hurts more than I can bear, but it doesn’t make me stupid.”

“What do you mean?”

“This film has to be chronological, right? I mean it hasn’t been cut or spliced or anything?”

Windermere shook his head. “It’s straight from the camera.”

“Well, Jack was shot
before the assassins came out of the crowd.
”

“What?”

“Spool it back, or whatever you do, and look for yourself? You see Jack being hit the first time. I don’t think the camera operator noticed, because he was distracted by those bastards coming out of the crowd. But when Jack was hit the first time, they were still back on the sidewalk pushing past the police, and their guns were still hidden. There had to be another gunman, a sniper on a building or something.”

CORDELIA

“A big, black, cherry-ass, gleaming petrol Benz” described the car perfectly. It stood in the alley with its engine running, smoke rolling from its exhaust pipe, looking quite as large and sleek and dangerous as the two men who stood on either side of it. They were burly and broad-shouldered, and dressed in identical leather coats. One hefted an old model Bergman, the one with the fat drum clip, while the other held a revolver down by his side. As Rotk let her out of the knocking shop’s back door, the man with the machine gun called out to her by name in a heavy Frankish accent. “Lady Blakeney?”

Cordelia answered hesitantly. Things were moving with an all-too-alarming rapidity as she seemed to jump from fire to frying pan and back again. “Yes. I’m Cordelia Blakeney.”