Lammas Night (49 page)

“Ummm, Cardinal Wolsey, I think—and I'm pretty sure there may have been some Anglo-Saxon examples, but I can't recall any specific—”

He broke off to yawn again, shaking his head in apology, and William caught himself yawning, too. Feeling more groggy by the second, William started to remark about how stuffy it had got. He started to crank down his window for some air when he noticed that Michael was slouching over the wheel and yawning yet again. His window control was not moving. Even as William opened his mouth to tell Michael, he saw that his companion was frowning and trying unsuccessfully to open his own window.

“What the—?”

“Can't—open—mine, either!” William managed to mumble, catching himself clumsily against the dash and trying to help steady the wheel for Michael as he gave up on the window.

But Michael was already applying the brakes and skidding the car erratically across the center line and onto the opposing shoulder, one hand fumbling at the ignition to shut off the motor.

“Got to get out!” Michael gasped, trying futilely to open first the door handle on his own side and then the window again.

William tried his door, too, but had no better luck. His vision was tunneling and blurring as he flung his shoulder repeatedly against the door panel and wrestled with the latch, and his head seemed stuffed with cotton wool, which made it impossible to think, muffling the pounding in his temples. He turned in what seemed like fighting through thick red honey to see Michael beating on the window with the butt of an automatic pistol, finally shattering the glass only after the fourth or fifth desperate blow.

Panting, Michael forced his arm and shoulder through the shards of the safety glass still clinging to the lamination and managed to open the door from the outside, nearly tumbling out on his head as it finally gave. Immediately, he lurched back to grab William by the lapels and drag him out onto the grass. Both of them lay gasping for breath for several minutes until William finally turned his head to glance at his rescuer.

“Mr. Jordan, I ordinarily find your company highly stimulating,” he said with a weak grin. “I
know
it wasn't the conversation that was putting us to sleep.”

Michael's answering chuckle had an edge of near hysteria to it, but then he shook his head and sobered as he sat up. “No, sir, I don't think it was. Are you all right?”

Wincing, William rolled over on his side and struggled to a sitting position with Michael's help, cradling his head in both hands as the pulse began pounding again behind his eyes.

“Damn! That headache you threatened earlier just materialized. What happened?”

“A carbon monoxide leak, I think,” Michael muttered. He heaved himself to hands and knees and dragged himself over to peer under the rear of the car. “Exhaust manifold seems to be intact, but—hello, what's this?”

William twisted around painfully to look, still trying to slow his breathing and cope with his throbbing head. Michael unlocked the back door and opened it, then bent to peer underneath and on the floor of the back seat several times. After a moment, he sat down cross-legged, hard, stretching to collect his weapon from the grass as he shook his head disbelievingly.

“The bloody sods must have done it while we were—begging your pardon, sir, but this was no accident! Take a look for yourself.…”

As his voice trailed off, William mustered enough energy to crawl closer and look where Michael pointed. Extending from the exhaust and back up into the passenger compartment in the back seat was a length of one-inch black rubber hose.

C
HAPTER
20

The oddly parked Daimler attracted a fair amount of attention in the next quarter hour. Several drivers slowed to eye them curiously, a few even stopping to offer assistance, but Michael politely but firmly declined all aid as he and the prince worked to make the car safe to drive again. If the tampering had been done in Canterbury, as was almost a certainty, then someone must have followed them there from London, for no one had known of their destination beforehand besides themselves. They might have been under surveillance for some time—and could still be. The perpetrators might well try again.

“Thank you, no,” Michael said as yet another would-be Good Samaritan pulled alongside. “If you'd be so good as to send the first police constable you see—Yes, thank you.”

As the car drove away, William peered over Michael's shoulder to watch him blocking up the hole in the floorboards.

“I'll bet this was a retaliation for Wells,” he muttered dismally. “Gray was worried something like this might happen.”

Michael finished with the hole and tossed the length of hose under the driver's seat.

“I suspect you're right, sir. On the other hand, this is wartime. Maybe some Nazi thought he'd strike a blow for the fatherland by doing in a member of the Royal Family. For that matter, there's always the odd maniac who feels compelled to kill someone with a royal title.”

Further speculation was cut short as a black police Wolseley pulled up and two elderly constables climbed out. A second car was not far behind. Once the officers recognized William, there was no question of keeping the sabotage attempt from official notice. The smashed glass in the driver's window spoke for itself, as did the still-jammed door locks and the obvious shakiness of the prince and his bodyguard. The hose and the plugged hole clinched it. The constables knew their duty to their royalty even though both victims insisted they were fine. More reinforcements arrived before William could insist otherwise.

By the time the official uproars subsided, several hours had passed. The prince and Michael were whisked to the nearest hospital for medical evaluation, and Scotland Yard took a report and towed away the Daimler for further investigation. A Palace liaison officer was also notified of the incident, all over William's objections. Had the King and Queen not been away from London, more stringent measures might have been imposed.

As it was, William had to threaten a royal scene to prevent the doctors from keeping him and Michael overnight for observation. An offer of 'round-the-clock detective protection from the Yard was less emotionally but no less firmly declined. As a compromise, William and Michael spent half an hour flushing out their lungs with oxygen, assuring the hospital staff that they would see a Palace physician when they got back to London, and then let the Yard's chief inspector drive them back to the Palace, since they had no other transportation, anyway. A royal surgeon was waiting for them in William's quarters. After admonishing them to get a good night's sleep and maintain a relaxed schedule for the next few days—advice that made both men laugh—the doctor at last gave them a clean bill of health and departed. It was nearly four by the time they could start trying to track down Graham.

But Graham was not immediately reachable. He had tried several times that day himself to contact William without success. The train he and Selwyn had taken south from Humberside the morning before had been crowded and slow; both of them had spent most of the trip sitting in the aisle. By the time Denton collected them at Victoria Station, it was after midnight and far too late to ring the Palace, and Graham was far too exhausted to deal with William's inevitable questions, anyway. While Denton drove Selwyn on to Oakwood, Graham spent a fruitless few hours in the office trying to catch up on a little of what had gone on in his absence, then gave it up as a lost cause until he had gotten some rest and went home to bed.

He did not sleep immediately. When he finally did drop off, he dreamed variations on the same nightmarish images of the past week. In the one he remembered most vividly, he and William were galloping lightheartedly in Windsor Great Park—only suddenly their clothes were wrong, and Graham carried a longbow. All at once, Graham drew the bow and loosed an arrow into William's breast.

He woke gasping, looking for blood on his hands as he had so many nights in the past, but of course there was none. At least when he finally fell asleep again, the dreams did not return.

Despite instructions to the contrary, Denton let him sleep in on Lammas morning—he had his own instructions from the Earl of Selwyn. As a consequence, by the time Graham got back to the office at eleven o'clock—in sour temper despite the fact that he knew he had needed the rest—William had already left for the day. No, he had not gone on any official engagement, the prince's secretary informed Graham, but Capt. Jordan had been in attendance.

Their intentions were unguessable after so long a time without contact, so Graham gave up on William for the moment, trying to put both him and Lammas out of mind while he settled down once more to the business of catching up. In the days of solitude and soul searching with Selwyn, he still had not reached a decision about tonight, though he carried Dieter's measure in a breast pocket.

Some of the war developments he could have deduced from news that filtered through to Selwyn's ship en route to port. The Dover destroyer flotilla had lost three of its number in the past five days, along with eight war-laden merchantmen, and had finally been ordered to Portsmouth for greater safety. Desultory bombing raids over much of the southern half of the country had probed far inland, as seemed to fit an increasing pattern—though so far, the Germans had assiduously avoided London.

In addition, clear weather the night before permitted German mine-laying runs along much of the east coast from Dover to Tyneside, once more endangering shipping. Long-range weather forecasts were predicting more of the same—which was good news for Richard and Geoffrey, flying in from Pembroke Docks for tonight's working, but also good for the Germans. Against the Luftwaffe's losses of five planes the day before, Fighter Command had lost three—a far worse than average score. Even as Graham read, a report came in of another convoy attacked off Dover and more planes shot down.

The day continued on the note set early on, the capper a cipher translation that Grumbaugh handed him just as he was heading out the door for Oakwood at midafternoon. Hitler's latest directive on the proposed invasion had come through only minutes before. Indirectly, it underlined the reason for everything now in progress.

The German Air Force will use all available means to destroy the British Air Force as soon as possible. Attacks will be directed primarily against the flying units, ground organization, and supply installations of the Royal Air Force, and, further, against the air armaments industry, including factories producing anti-aircraft equipment
.

There was more, but Graham had no stomach to read it just then. Torn by the double dilemma of trying to stop the invasion and protect William and not knowing whether refusing Dieter would help or hinder either effort, he stuffed the copy in his pocket and stalked out of the office for the night. He could feel the tension tightening in his gut all the way to Oakwood.

“This only makes it clearer in my mind that tonight's working
has
to succeed,” he told Alix and the brigadier bleakly as Selwyn read through the new directive for himself. “But it isn't
going
to succeed if I make the wrong decision. I've been agonizing over it for days—just ask David. It still boils down to one ultimate question: is Dieter telling the truth?”

“What are the options as you see them?” the brigadier asked. “David has told us about Dieter's proposition. How many choices do we have?”

Graham sighed and laid both hands flat on the table in front of him, studying their backs. He had rehearsed the different combinations in his mind so often in the past few days that he hardly had to think about the words.

“One: if Dieter's lying about wanting to work with us and we join him, there's an awfully good chance that by the time I know that for sure, it will be too late to pull out in time. If I absorb the backlash, I can
probably
keep him from getting through to you right then—which would at least give you time to prepare—and I might even be able to deflect some of the attack back on him, but I may not survive it myself. I could accept that if it meant you and William would be safe, but with me dead, Dieter and Sturm could regroup and still make a try for you. I have no way of even guessing what their combined strength might be.”

“Well, I can't say I fancy that option,” Alix murmured. “Suppose we
don't
join him?”

Graham shrugged. “Two: if he's lying and we
don't
join him, there obviously can't be a backlash problem—but he and Sturm will probably launch a direct attack on us, anyway—or on William, which frankly terrifies me even more. Dieter hinted that Sturm has definite plans for William, but he either didn't know or simply wouldn't say what those plans are. In any case, I'm afraid we have to face the fact that an attack of some sort may occur whether Dieter is lying or not.”

“And if he's telling the truth?” the brigadier asked.

“Three: if he's telling the
truth
and we try to help him, we're deliberately pitting ourselves against a master black magician who is even farther out of our league than Dieter himself—maybe even more powerful than Hitler, for all we know. Sturm is supposed to be Hitler's protector, after all. But at least we'd know what we were getting into; we wouldn't be taken by surprise. If we lose, it's an honest defeat; and if we win, then William is safe, and what is even more important, what the grand coven is going to do tonight has a reasonable chance of succeeding.”

He rocked his chair onto its back legs and glanced at the ceiling. “Option four has almost the same result as if he were lying. If he's telling the truth and we
don't
help him, he may not be able to stop Sturm by himself, and we may
still
have to counter a direct attack from Sturm. Again, William is in danger. I don't like any of those choices—and there are no others.”