Ghosts of Columbia (65 page)

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Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia
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“Downstairs or upstairs?” I asked when he stepped into the inn’s lobby.
Llysette shrugged.
“Are you hungry? Pasta? Soup?”
“To finish the concerts, that is what I wish.” She marched toward the elevator.
I followed but said nothing until the couple with the three children exited at the fourth floor. “Are you angry with me?”
“Mais non …
I am angry with this place.” .
“It is different. It—”
“Did you not see?”
“What? That there weren’t any women by themselves, unless they had children?”
“You did see,” she answered with that tone that indicated that what she meant was perfectly obvious.
With a slight
cling
, the elevator stopped at the sixth floor.
“You’re angry that the only place you’re getting a chance to sing is one where women are treated this way.” I paused, then decided against pointing out that the women I’d seen hadn’t seemed depressed or oppressed. It could have been that I wasn’t seeing those women.
“I cannot sing in France. It is no more. I cannot sing in Columbia, except to make … someone look good.” She left the elevator with a shake of her head. “These things … I must wait. Tonight, I will sing.”
“Did I do something?” What had I missed?
“It is not you.”
I wondered, but she did smile, and I opened the door. A large stack of cards lay on the small side table under the mirror—more, I supposed, from flowers sent to Llysette.
With my diva’s touchiness, I tried to remain in the background, guessing at the pasta she wanted for dinner and making the arrangements, fielding Jensen’s wirecall to notify Llysette that a limousine would be waiting to avoid problems.
The Browning limousine, with Heber at the wheel, was waiting, and we rode silently the long block to the underground entrance.
“Thank you.” I opened the door for Llysette one-handed, her gown in the bag I carried in the other.
“You’re welcome,” answered the driver.
We followed another functionary in a green coat up the ramps.
“How do you feel?”
Llysette didn’t answer, and I didn’t press. Once she wanted me out of her dressing room, I went to find Jensen. He wasn’t in the corner office, but I tracked him to a lower level where he was talking to three men in gray jumpsuits carrying tools and wearing equipment belts.
When he saw me, he turned and hurried over.
“No matter how you plan, some technical thing always goes wrong in a concert hall.” He laughed. “What can I do for you, Minister Eschbach?”
“I wondered if anyone has found out anything about the man who tried to attack Llysette last night.”
“No. We haven’t heard anything much. One of the … security types … said something about his being zombied.” He shrugged. “I just don’t know.” After a pause, he added, “We’ve put on another fifty guards, half in plainclothes, and the city police have doubled their patrols in the area around the complex.”
“Is there any other reason to worry?” I asked pleasantly. “Besides last night?”
“Not that I know of.” He glanced back toward the workmen.
“I won’t keep you.”
I decided to remain backstage, but I positioned my stool a little differently—where I could watch the approach area to Llysette’s dressing room, and the stage. That meant I would see Llysette performing from the side and behind.
Despite the dimming lights and the chimes, the concert was even later in starting than the previous two nights. Saints seemed to have this proclivity to be somewhat tardy. I had peeked earlier, and the hall was going to be standing room only. It made me wish that Llysette were getting a percentage of the tickets, because someone was going to make quite a stash.
With the lights down, the notes rose from the Steinbach, and Llysette’s, and Carolynne’s, voice shimmered out of the light and into the darkened space. I could almost imagine the notes lighting the darkness.
The Handel was good, the Mozart better, and the Debussy extraordinary.
Again, I kept out of the way at intermission.
The second half was every bit as good as, if not better than, the night before. Llysette’s voice seemed at times to rip my heart from my chest and at others to coax tears from me—or from a statue.
If I’d thought the applause the previous two nights had been thunderous, I’d been mistaken. The stolid Saints stood and clapped and clapped and clapped, and clapped some more.
Llysette and Dan Perkins finally capitulated and did a second encore—another Perkins song, simpler, but it didn’t matter to the crowd. They stood and cheered and clapped, and they kept doing it.
Llysette deserved it—more than deserved it—both for what she’d endured to get there and for the sheer artistry of what she had delivered.
I met her at the back of the stage. “You were wonderful. More wonderful than before.”
“My head, you will turn, but you love me.”
“You were wonderful,” added Dan Perkins. “And I’m not married to you.”
At that she did flush, and the blush hadn’t quite cleared when the admirers began to appear.
After several anonymous well-wishers, a familiar face appeared.
“You were wonderful.” Joanne Axley smiled at Llysette, then turned to Dan Perkins. “You were right.”
“Magnificent,” added the short man with the Deseret University voice professor.
“I wish more of my students could have heard you,” added Axley.
“They should listen to you,” said Llysette. “I told them all those things which you—”
“Thank you.” Joanne Axley and her husband slipped away.
Was she upset? I wasn’t certain. I just stood back of Llysette’s shoulder and surveyed the small crowd lining up to say a few words to either Perkins or Llysette.
“I’m sorry about Joanne,” Perkins said quietly.
“I would be upset, were I her,” answered Llysette quietly. “She has sung here?”
“A number of times, but she’s never moved people the way you did.”
“That is sad.”
A heavyset woman with white hair stepped up. “You remind me of that Norwegian. You were wonderful. Are you any relation?”
“Thank you. I do not think so. All my family, they come from France.”
“Magnifique, mademoiselle, magnifique!”
That was the thin man with a trimmed mustache. “Claude Ruelle, the former French ambassador here in Deseret. After the Fall … I stayed. You, you have brought back all that vanished.” With a few more words along those lines, and a sad smile, he was gone.
Counselor Cannon appeared at the very end of the line of well-wishers, and he bowed to Llysette. “You have sung magnificently, and your warmth and charitable nature will do much for all of us. Thank you.” The voice and eyes were warm, but I still didn’t trust him.
Beside him were two other men I hadn’t met before. The dark-haired one bowed to Llysette, marginally. “You were outstanding.” The other nodded.
“Thank you.”
“Might we have a word with you, Minister Eschbach?” asked Cannon.
“Ah … of course.”
Llysette raised an eyebrow. “I will be changing.”
“I’m sure I won’t be long.”
She slipped toward the dressing room, not quite in step with Dan Perkins, and I watched for a moment.
“Minister Eschbach?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. You were saying?”
“She is truly amazing,” said the First Counselor. “You must be very proud of her.”
The idea behind Cannon’s words nagged at me. Was all of Deseret like that? Llysette was amazing and I certainly respected and admired her and loved her, but it really wasn’t my place to be proud. Her parents should have been proud, but I hadn’t done anything to create her talents or determination or to give her the will to succeed.
“Minister Eschbach … now that your wife’s concerts are completed … we had hoped that you would be willing to tour the prototype of the Great Salt Lake City wastewater tertiary treatment plant,” suggested the heavier-set man beside Counselor Cannon. “That way, you could report to Minister Reilly on our progress in water reuse and the continued progress on meeting the goals of the riverine agreements.”
Wastewater treatment? Minister Reilly might like that, but did I really care? “What did you have in mind?”
“Perhaps early tomorrow. We understand that you will not be leaving until Wednesday.”
“That might be possible.”
“We had also hoped,” suggested the thinner, unnamed man, “that you might be
free to see the water reuse section of the new stage-three synthfuels plant near Colorado Junction.”
What half of the Columbian government wouldn’t give for me to see that. “I hadn’t even considered that possibility.”
“We would be honored,” added Counselor Cannon.
At that instant, I heard—or felt or sensed—something chill and menacing. A faint scream? A cold feeling gripped me. “Excuse me.”
“Minister Eschbach … but …”
I pushed past the wastewater man, sprinting forward and right into Llysette’s dressing room. I also ran into something else, barely getting an arm up in time, and that was enough to send me reeling back into the door.
I staggered up, but the dark-shadowed figure literally disappeared.
My head throbbed, and Llysette’s dressing room was empty. Her gown lay on the floor, and her dress was gone. So was she. A few drops of blood led toward or away from the corner of the room.
I stood there fuzzily for a moment. No one had gone past me. Then I saw the air return grate, unattached and leaning against the wall. A man-sized section of the metal on the left side of the air grate ductwork beyond and behind where the grate cover had been cut out.
I didn’t bother to wait for whoever it was who charged into the dressing room behind me but scrambled through the grate aperture and then through the opening in the air return duct and into a room filled with pallets of paper products or something. I almost tripped but half-ran, half-tumbled out that door into a back corridor—just in time to see two black figures sprinting down a ramp.
I sprinted after them, but by the time I got to the lower garage, a steam van had hissed up the ramp and vanished into the darkness.
A pair of Danites and a uniformed policeman pounded up behind me.
“They’re gone.” I wanted to shake my head, but it might have fallen off if I had. I touched my forehead, and my hand came away bloody.
I followed them back to a small conference room in the center, where Brother Hansen and two other blue-uniformed officers waited. I didn’t wait to be asked but dropped into one of the chairs. I just looked at Hansen. “I couldn’t catch them.”
“This was on her dressing table.” A grim-faced Brother Hansen handed me an envelope. It had been opened, and that bothered me in a way.
I looked at it. In block letters that could have come from any of a dozen difference-engine printers was inscribed: “MINISTER ESCHBACH.”
The message inside was short—very short.
You will be contacted. Be ready. We do not want your wife.
I had a good idea what they wanted, and someone knew me well enough to understand that I was far more vulnerable through Llysette.
“What has anyone discovered?” I asked tiredly.
“Brother Jensen was surprised, bound, and gagged,” said Hansen coldly. “His keys were taken, with all the master keys.” Hansen seemed to have taken over the investigation, and the uniformed officers looked at him as he talked. “The steamer the kidnappers took was a common blue 1990 Browning, and the tags were covered. There are more than ten thousand blue 1990 Browning in Deseret. They wore gloves, it seems, and the security system was disabled on a lower garage door. Bypassed, actually. They wore standard staff working uniforms, and we think they wore flesh masks as well.”
“In short,” I said, “they left no traces at all. What about the tools?”
“They were all taken from the cribs on the lower levels. That was why they made the attempt tonight. They probably had all afternoon to get organized.”
“No working on Saturday afternoons?”
“Right. When did you last talk to Brother Jensen?”
“Before the concert, I talked to him briefly, but he had some problems. Maintenance problems, I gathered, because he was briefing or listening to several workmen.”
“Do you have any idea what they want from you?”
That was the question I’d been dreading, in a way. I took a deep breath. “It could be anything. Something about government in Columbia, information about … people I’ve worked with.” I shook my head. “Most of that I’d think they could get from other sources. I’ve been out of government long enough that things have certainly changed. And why they’d kidnap Llysette I don’t know.”

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