Her Majesty's Western Service (17 page)

“
At ease, Perry, and sit down.”

“Yes, ma’
am,” Perry said stiffly, taking a chair. Her office was as sparse and ordered as she was; no glory photos, minimal decoration. Against a piece of oak on one wall behind her was a scorched piece of propeller, a remnant of the action in which she'd exchanged her hand for a DFC.

“Have a drink, Perry.”
She poured scotch into two glasses.

“No, ma
’am. Thank you.”

Richardson poured another finger of scotch into one of the glasses and
passed it across the smooth, dark wood of her desk.

“
Drink it, Vice-Commodore, and that's an order.”

“Yes, ma
’am.” Perry sipped. It was good whisky, he did have to admit.

“
Finish it, please. And then tell me what happened. Here, I’ll say, has been chaotic. One of the larger Federal mercenary organizations has been threatening to quit; the Feds are concerned, and I've had to give them the reserve squadron. Just in case negotiations with the Special Squadrons
do
fall through.”

“The
Thirtieth?”

“
Yes; sent them across to Missouri just in case. And intelligence - I don't know if you've heard about the war?”

“
The
war
?” Perry asked in shock. He'd glanced at a newspaper in Chicago, nothing of that kind!

“
I had dinner with Deputy Director Fleming the other night. He's aged five years in two weeks. In fact, didn't you carry three of his men here?”

“
Yes, ma’am.” Perry sipped the scotch again. "I heard the Russians, or somebody, wiped out their headquarters. I didn't consider it appropriate to ask further.”

“
The Scotch is to relax you, Vice-Commodore. So is the small-talk, although it never hurts for you to be informed. No, this isn't classified. That is, of course it is, but we're both cleared. There was an attack in New York City about three weeks ago. The Yanks got some tip, didn't bother to consult us – beyond getting one of the local agents to come along - and wiped out the Russian station there.”

“Isn't that a good thing?”
Perry asked.

“
No, apparently the spies normally tolerate each other. Monitor each others' stations, don't attack them. The Russians considered this an unprovoked attack, thought it was at our bidding – anything the Yanks do in this regard normally
is
– and retaliated by sending a hit squad to our station in New Orleans. Killed everyone in the place. We responded to the deaths of nineteen agents by destroying their station in Houston. And so forth. Have another drink.”

Perry had finished his.

“No, ma’am. Thank you.”

“Another glass.”
She took his, poured two fingers into each of theirs, gave his back.

“
Very good Scotch, ma'am. And thank you.”

“
Fleming and his counterpart
would
have negotiated a peace, but his counterpart – the head of operations in North America, one Lavrentiy Beria – had been killed in the New York City attack. Everything has to go through St. Petersburg, which means it has to go to London first. And meanwhile, our agents and the Russians are busy butchering each other. Fleming's drained dry.”

“
Those guys in Chicago looked unhappy, ma’am.”

“
They knew what was happening. All too well. An eye for an eye until Official Diplomatic Things happen, or both sides are blind. They're not going to stop killing us and we're not going to let them. Fleming's pulling his hair out and drinking more than he usually does.”

“
A
very
unfortunate situation,” Perry said. “There are times I'm glad I'm Air Service, not Secret Service.”

“
A justly-decorated Vice-Commodore of the Air Service,” said Richardson. “Now, Marcus, have another Scotch if you like and tell me, exactly what happened. I have the written reports. I want to know what
did
happen.”

When Perry was done,
Richardson steepled her fingers and was silent for almost a minute.

“
This is going to look bad, Perry,” she eventually said.

“Ma'am. I know. Ma'am.”

“Not to me.
I
understand these realities. You were steeply under-crewed and actively engaged. The pirates seemed to know exactly what they were doing, and you – and your bridge officers' reports confirm this – made all reasonable resistance. But Whitehall won't think about that. Whitehall will see a brand-new line-class lost to pirates without a shot fired or a casualty inflicted.”

“Yes. Ma'am.”

Richardson sighed deeply. “A shame. Now, I have new orders myself. One of your wings – I think Secundus, transfer one of the Primus ships over - is to go out on convoy duty. The other two ships, I need here. Lord Charles” – that was Lieutenant-General (retired) Charles Lloyd, Governor of the Hugoton Lease – “wants to enlarge the permanent security presence. Fleming's all but blind, and two more ships here would allay the Governor's fears a bit.”

The Squadron's being broken
up
.

Richardson saw the look in Perry's eyes.

“
No
, Vice-Commodore, this is not a punishment. This would have happened anyway; it’s why you were called back from Chicago post haste, without a convoy to guard. Besides, I can read. Implications and body language. Vice-Commodore, you are free to take over Secundus Wing if you so desire, and ordinarily you would either do so or run the squadron's elements from an office here. But if you had complete freedom of action right now, how would you pursue your duty?”

“I'd hunt that pirate down,”
Perry said, the alcohol making his mouth act before his brain. “I'd hunt her down, retrieve 4-106, and restore the honor of my Service.”

“
I thought so. Your desire came through clearly in the report, and I'm glad I shared my Glenlivet. Very well. I'm granting you detached duty. You have an appointment with Deputy Director Fleming at one o'clock.”

Deputy
Director Sir Ian Fleming leaned back in his chair and reached for his glass. It was empty. Sighing – an old bullet wound, a Frenchman's gift from Jamaica in `43, was acting up again – he reached again for the bottle. He didn't feel like getting up.

There was a knock on the door of his office.

“Come in,” he said. It was Agent Connery, a tall, handsome, thirtyish Scotsman on recovery duty after a nasty little incident on the Sonoran-Mexican border. He walked with a crutch.

“
Dispatch from M, boss. Marked urgent. Just came out of decryption.”

“
‘M’ has a
name
, Connery,” said Fleming coldly. He was exhausted and pissed off; one by one his stations and reaction teams were being destroyed.

“
Dispatch from Director-General Lord Mountbatten,
sir
,” said Connery.

“Thank you. Have a drink.”
Fleming pushed over the bottle and an empty glass.

Fleming took the telegraph, printed on yellow paper. It w
as only a few lines, and it said that the Foreign Service was making trouble, wanting to know why
they
weren't being consulted. Mountbatten himself was unhappy, and thought it was a Foreign Service territory game at the expense of –
more than a hundred and thirty, so far
– MI-7 lives. Bureaucratic stupidity.

Do what you can
, the telegraph ended
, with what resources you have. Pretend you're improvising in the field again. You have my full authorization to act as you see fit.

Relevant, that. If unnecessary. Fleming had been a field agent for twenty-five years and, at least in his own opinion,
had accomplished more than any other agent in MI-7's history.
Most
of that had been through improvisation.

Fleming's telephone buzzed, the sharp two-tone that meant the front desk.

“Yes?”

“
Your one o'clock. Vice-Commodore Marcus Perry of the Imperial Air Service.”

“
Give me a couple of minutes,” he said, and put the phone down. Perry. He knew the name vaguely, one of the squadron commanders based out of here.

“Perry,”
Connery said helpfully. He produced a couple of files. “Here's his, boss. Here's another relevant one.” The second one was labelled ‘Pirates, North America; Ahle, Karen.’

Fleming
opened them, scanned them both as he finished his drink. It only took a couple of minutes.

“
Bring him in, Connery.”

Perry had been into MI-7's
offices before, but only to pick up reports. He'd never been into Deputy-Director Fleming's personal office, which was the opposite of his group commander’s. While Richardson's was austere, Fleming's was luxurious. Windowless, the walls were covered with heavy, laden bookshelves. The furniture was plush leather and the floor was thickly-carpeted.

Fleming was a thin, rectangular-faced man in his early
fifties, wearing a well-tailored black suit that looked as though he'd slept in it. His eyes were lined with stress.

“
Take a seat, Vice-Commodore. It's a pleasure to see you again.”

Again?
, Perry thought, then remembered that they
had
met in passing at various functions.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Have a drink?”

“
I had four an hour ago with my commander, sir. But thank you.”

“Only four? So what’
ll you have?”

“Really, sir. I'm quite fine.”

“Connery, get me a dry martini. And this time, please
don't
shake it? Stir it.
Carefully
. I've told you that enough times.”

“
Yessir. And one for the Vice-Commodore?”

“
If he won't ask for anything else. No? Then it’s a martini, Perry.”

When the aide had gone, Fleming got straight down to business. He leaned across the table and said
“You want Karen Ahle's head. Is that correct?”

“You know her first name?”

“Five foot eight, aged thirty-three, of North Carolina,” Fleming said. “Weighs about one thirty. One of those old families. Give us some credit, Vice-Commodore,” Fleming smiled thinly. “Spies
do
occasionally gather information. When we're not killing each other.”

“
I heard there was some trouble,” Perry said. “A shame, and my condolences for your men.”

Fleming shrugged, reached for a bottle.
“Part of why I gave you priority was that I could use some light relaxation. Pirates are
so
much easier to deal with than Russians. Let me give you a rundown on Karen Marie Ahle.”

“
I'm listening, sir. I'm
very
much listening.”

“
I'll give you a copy of the file when we're done. Here's the summary: Born in 1930; Wake Forest, North Carolina. One of those old Southern plantation families; one of her great-grandparents was a Confederate general. Family fortunes suffered when slavery ended, as all those people's did, but they held on through the Collapse.

“
Stayed more or less on top of things during the anarchy in the South - black guerillas in the countryside, workers’ militias in the big cities, renegade Union troops. You know it all. When reunification happens, the Ahles are still a wealthy Southern military family. Her father was an officer in the North Carolina State Militia.

“
In 1944. You know what happened in 1944.”

“
I'm afraid I really don't, sir. I was a first-year at Biggin Hill in `44.”

Connery came
crutch-walking back with the drinks. Fleming took his, made sure Perry accepted his, and dismissed the aide. Mostly out of politeness, Perry took a sip. Not a bad drink, although his own tastes ran more to the plain and straight.

“
Another of their rebellions. A big one. North Carolina went up in flames, and the Feds responded the way they usually do - no diplomacy, just heavy boots. A mercenary unit, the Special Squadrons, commanded by a nasty little Bavarian piece of work named Heinrich Himmler, went through the central part of the state. Federal orders were to execute Major-General Ahle. Himmler and his boys did just that.”

“I'm sure he deserved it.”

“At the family estate. They leveled it. Butchered his wife and family along with him. As I said, brutal even by Federal-mercenary standards, killing women and children. Their eldest daughter – our Captain Ahle – was off at a technical academy. When she heard the news, she fled to Sonora and somehow got hold of money her father had put in an account for that sort of emergency.”