Mendoza in Hollywood (41 page)

“Ah, but the Yankees
don’t
know everything now,” he said. He pushed his lank hair back from his forehead with the flat of his hand and set his hat straight on his head. “If they did, they wouldn’t be after the valise. Whatever else we do, it mustn’t fall into their hands.”

“Shouldn’t we destroy the papers, then?” I asked.

“No. If we can salvage any part of this, we’ll need them. And, my dear, the game’s not over yet. Alfred’s an idiot, but at least he’s a British idiot, and despite the business with the valise he’s managed to accomplish successfully another part of his task.” He glanced down involuntarily at his watch pocket. “So. All we need do is evade our Yankee opposite numbers until we can get across to Santa Catalina Island. My compliments to Abraham Lincoln, I must say. Certainly no one thought he had the resources to spend anything on counterespionage in this corner of the nation. But he can’t keep it up for long, I think. And if the Union loses to the Confederacy, it won’t matter whether he knows about us or not.” He rose to his feet briskly and extended his hand to me. “We’ll triumph yet. Are you still game, my love?”

My love
. The earth wobbled in its orbit, just for a second, there. Against all my better judgment I let him pull me to my feet, and tried to look every inch the fearless secret agent’s girlfriend. “I’ll go with you, señor!”

So much for my attempt to seduce him away from his duty. He was unstoppable, señors, and he always had been. What an operative he’d have made for Dr. Zeus, eh? Our agents are always so adroit at stepping in and whisking away unwanted children. Where were they when Nicholas Harpole made his unwelcome entrance into this world, or Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax? Sublime bastards both of them, with a courage and determination and nobility of character I’d never possessed. What imbecile chance selected me for immortality, when
he
could have made so much better use of an eternal life? He didn’t fit the optimum physical parameters, I’ll admit; and that was absolutely the only bar I could see.

Consider his ability to inspire. I had been lost in the dark wood, on this wretched posting, and despair owned me. I’d seen at last the future we’d all been promised, and I knew it for the hard and ugly thing it was. I’d seen the madness that descends on older immortals, and it wasn’t an enjoyable prospect to contemplate for myself. Nevertheless,
others of my kind have in their differing ways found a certain happiness, a sense of purpose, even love. I had my work; but the work dried up, like the seasonal streams of this accursed place, and in its absence I had glimpsed the hideous dry void it covered. What if the Company gave me new work? The void was still there. Besides, I had now the growing suspicion that the work was meaningless, a pointless series of tasks devised to keep busy a thing that couldn’t die, since its creators could find no way to unsay the spell that had set it in motion.

But this man walked back into my life and changed everything.

Surely, I thought, his mere existence argued that there was a greater power than the Company, that there was more going on here than our pitiful creators imagined! You see? There might be a point to this eternal life business after all, a purpose and a meaning I couldn’t see. Had he not come back to me, like a good angel in my darkest hour, and started my dead heart beating again?

Theobromos, please. Thank you. You want to know what we did next, not listen to my opinions. I see, though, that some of you recognize the feeling. Yes, and some of you are as frightened of the future as I am. Your eyes give it away. So much the worse for you. What’s the old saying, don’t rejoice at my troubles, because when they’re old news, yours will have just started? You have no refuge, any more than I; unbearable Time is master of us all, who thought we had defeated him. Will he treat you with more charity than he’s treated me?

We rode, señors, by devious and careful paths, down from that ridge and quickly across the grade to Dark Canyon Road. The plan was to work our way around behind Mount Hollywood, then cut across the lands of the old haunted rancho on the other side, crossing the river at some point. Los Angeles being what it was, this could be done with dry shoes most years; especially so in this year of drought. Edward looked around him in wonder as our horses picked their way through the sand and river cobbles.

“But—this is the principal river in southern California,” he murmured.

“So it is,” I said. “Not at its best just now, unfortunately. In a normal year, however, it is at least two feet across. Sometimes even three.”

He frowned and fell silent. I imagine he was wondering how even the most brilliant British engineers could irrigate this desolation to the point where cotton could be grown.

“Wheat might grow here, señor,” I said helpfully. “Cotton, never, unless you bring water down from the north. Plenty of water up there. It’s a green paradise; parts of it even look like your England. You would like it there.”

He wasn’t comforted. Perhaps he was beginning to doubt the feasibility of the grand design after all. In a pigeonhole in some fine antique oaken desk in Whitehall, there was a map of southern California; and some Briton had looked at this wavy line that described itself as a river and made plans accordingly, without understanding that Los Angeles never plays by the rules, whether of geography, law, or anything else.

And of course I knew, I who rode faithful at his side, that the whole business would fall to pieces anyway. Even now Alfred Rubery was probably sitting in a San Francisco jail, having been unable to get any part of his mission right. The British would never own California. Edward and I would at least enjoy a holiday on Catalina Island first. But when the piracy case hit the world newspapers, surely Britain would throw in the towel and call its operatives home.

And what would we do then? What would I do in England, on which I’d turned my back with the earnest hope that the island sink entirely into the sea? I hadn’t seen the place since before the Industrial Revolution. It had been crude, cold, and violent, still largely medieval then, with all the attendant lustful bawdiness that implied. What would I make of the new Victorian propriety? What would I make of the mill towns and mine towns that had turned the green fields black? There were railways there now, and canals, and no one was burned at the stake anymore; all peace and prosperity. Except for the workhouses, of course, and the children freezing in alleyways and drinking gin to warm themselves, and the typhus and tuberculosis . . . But what
other nation in the world hadn’t the same problems, or worse? No gunfights in the public streets, at least.

It occurred to me that I’d like to go to Rochester, to the open place near the cathedral where Nicholas was burned. To walk there in my Victorian clothes, on the arm of my Victorian Nicholas, and laugh in the face of Death.

I’d have to make some accommodation to the Company, explain my actions and propose a plan that would serve its interests as well as mine. Hadn’t they been understanding of Porfirio’s needs? After all the years I’d served them, surely they could afford to make some allowances for me. Yes, and it should even be possible to break the truth to Edward. What was the Company, after all, but the ultimate expression of the civilizing force to which he’d dedicated his life? And if he too should become a double agent? Oh, but of a much higher order than a flunky like Souza. It would have worked, señors. We could have made it work.

So I rode over that barren ground, with my head in the rainy clouds of England.

We went up into the foothills to avoid Sonoratown as we approached Los Angeles, though scanning from a distance, I could tell that it was virtually deserted. Best to be safe. We climbed, screened by laurel and oak scrub, until we were peering down on the city we’d left in such haste only the night before. It looked flat and desolate, the whole scene filtered through a yellow haze of dust raised by cattle and horses. Terrible dust, for of course there’d been no rain. And the smell of manure rose up, and of roofing tar, and mesquite smoke, and, faintly under all these, the smell of death.

But out on the horizon, what was that poking up blue into the high clean air?

“Catalina Island, señor,” I said, stretching out an arm. “If only we could fly there.”

His face was somber as he surveyed the distance, and his gaze dropped back down to the uninviting prospect below us. “I must warn you, my dear, that our road to the sea will be watched. It would
be pleasant to think that they’ve simply posted a man to observe the stage line to San Pedro; but I rather think they know I’ve got wind of them by now. Is there a fairly straight route to the sea that avoids the pueblo?”

There would be, when the 710 freeway was built. I accessed information hurriedly and superimposed a twentieth-century grid over the present-day map. No reason why we couldn’t follow the freeway route through the sagebrush and sand. It would take us right down to the future site of Long Beach, just south of Souza’s landing. I plotted a course and nodded. “This way, señor,” I said, urging my horse forward, and Edward followed.

So we went down across the wide plain, keeping the smoke of Los Angeles on our right, through a wilderness that would one day be East Los Angeles and various urban housing tracts called Maywood, Bell Gardens, South Gate, Downey, Compton. Such orderly Yankee names for a place that was now only a desert of trampled earth and bleaching cattle bones. Would there be an interval of little Yankee towns with gardens and cottages here too? And would they too vanish in their time, asphalted over, shadowed by the steel towers that would themselves vanish in the urban wars? And what pair of lovers would one day pick their way across a desolation not of sagebrush but of rust and broken paving, under a poisoned sky, past the bleaching bones of men? Full circle for this place, but not for me. With any luck I’d never see Los Angeles again. I’d be off to Great Britain. I’d have to find some way of persuading Edward to give up this nonsense about dying for Queen and country, though . . .

We had gone on our way about an hour when I edged my horse close enough to speak to Edward in a low voice.

“A question, señor. You understand that I have every confidence in your ability, and absolute faith in your word. To look at the matter coldly, however—what shall I do if we do not succeed? What will the Yankees do if they apprehend us?”

He gave a brief, humorless laugh. “My government is in no position to come to my assistance. The Yankees, for their part, cannot
fight a war with Britain just at the present moment, being preoccupied with rather more pressing matters. They’d dearly love to obtain all the particulars of our business here, make no mistake about that. But I doubt very much they’ll go to the trouble of declaring me persona non grata and paying my passage home. Much more likely, I’ll quietly vanish into a shallow grave, and the contents of the valise will be forwarded to Washington. This is, you understand, the worst possible chance; but it is a possibility. All the more reason to avoid capture, my dear.” He looked up and gave me a brisk smile, cold and bright as the winter sun. “Are you reconsidering your offer? I should, if I were you. You see what it is to be a pawn on this particular chessboard.”

I might demoralize him, but I couldn’t dissuade him.

With his gloved hand he reached over and took mine, and held it tight. “Dolores,” he said. He stopped and drew breath. “I don’t know what impression of me you’ve formed in the last twenty-four hours, but I think you see clearly enough that I’m unlikely to end my days quietly. Men in my profession do not. Women in my profession (and there are a few) are as much at risk, indeed at risk of worse. I will never marry you, I will never settle in a pleasant cottage by the sea with you, and we will never raise children together. You are clearly intelligent enough to have perceived this.”

“I know, señor. Your life is not your own.”

He gripped my hand more tightly and went on. “And it’s not that it isn’t a glorious life. Giving yourself to a noble cause. True, sometimes one must disregard certain moral considerations to achieve a desired end. One might go to a great deal of trouble to obtain a useful tool, sharp and bright and perfect for the job, a really remarkable tool to find in so unlikely a place. One might have no intention of discarding that tool, either, when its use had been served—though the use might well destroy the tool. A man who seduces a girl into prostitution is vile enough; what would you call a man who persuades a girl to risk her life?”

“Not a liar, at all events,” I said with a shrug. “Your conscience should give you a rest, señor. I understand the danger here.”

“But I did not, twenty-four hours ago. The ground has shifted since then. Don’t share a shallow grave with me, my dear.”

“I have no intention of dying,” I replied. “And you’re not a dead man yet. Catalina, señor, look at it out there, isn’t it beautiful? Only a few more miles of this hideous desert, and then it’s all blue water. We’ll make it, and then we’ll have all the time in the world to discuss what further use I can be to Imperial Export.”

“By God,” he said, looking away from me. “If only we’d met some other place or time.”

We had. It hadn’t worked out; would it work out now?

We rode on in silence.