The Great Game (6 page)

  At the corner with Waterloo Place there was the Athenaeum, a large, imposing building and another club, where Smith had once done an excision on a visiting politician. At any rate, he did not aim for any of the clubs, but rather for an unmarked, and rather drab, door in the side of a building along the Mall, said building being a small, red-brick establishment, with no sign, but clearly belonging to a trade of some sort.

  And
trade
, on the Mall, was as good as being invisible.

 

It had begun to rain by the time he reached the building. The rain revived him, but he was glad to find shelter. The door opened as though on its own. In some uneasy moments Smith had the feeling the building was somehow alive, and watching. He knew that, in reality, the door was watched by human operators deep inside the building, and that, upon recognising him and establishing that he had clearance, the door was opened for him. The door, otherwise, never opened. Yet still, despite the knowledge, the feeling persisted, as if the Bureau itself was somehow alive.

  He went inside and the door shut behind him noiselessly. He found himself in a quiet corridor. Small windows set in the wall allowed only a modicum of grey light in. The corridor smelled of industrial cleaning products and the windows were grimy with dirt. When he walked along it his feet squeaked on the bare floor.

  He followed the corridor to its end. A simple second door blocked the way. He waited, and presently there was the sound of gears and steam and the door opened onto a small lift. He stepped inside and the door closed behind him and he began to descend.

 

The Bureau was cold and quiet. He went past the cipher room and the door was closed and he could hear faint voices behind. He ran into Berlyne in the corridor, Berlyne rubbing his hands together, muttering, "Damn cold, old boy."

  Smith said, "Where is everyone?"

  Berlyne shrugged. "All about," he said mournfully. "You here because of Mycroft?"

  Smith wasn't fooled. Berlyne had been longer at the Bureau than anyone. There was little he didn't know, or had a hand in.

  "I'm here to see Fogg."

  "Yes, he did mumble something to that effect, come to mention," Berlyne said. "He'd be in his office."

  "What's going on, Berlyne? Are there any leads?"

  Berlyne shrugged again. "Harvester," he said, not without affection. Smith flinched.

  "I retired," he said.

  Berlyne shook his head. "Yet here you are," he said. "No one ever retires."

  It was said he had a string of ex-wives in the colonies, that he could never afford to leave his salaried post. In his youth he was a promising agent, but an encounter on a South Pacific island changed him, made him mournful and jumpy, and he had had to be retired to a desk job. The file on that encounter, as on most Bureau missions, did not exist.

  "Well," Berlyne said. "Good luck with it." He took out an enormous, not-too-clean handkerchief, blew his nose noisily, and departed down the corridor. Smith looked after him suspiciously for a moment, then went in search of Fogg.

 

"Ah, Smith. You've finally decided to show up."

  Fogg's office had a fake fireplace, all the rage two years before, and the hiss of gas filled the windowless room. "What took you so long?"

  Fogg looked irritated. He was leafing through a sheaf of papers on the desk. A chart behind him had names, and places, linked by lines. Smith saw ALICE – BANGKOK, a trail leading to HOLMES – LONDON.

  Something else, too, which gave him pause.

  AKSUM – WESTERNA – DEVICE.

  He wondered what it referred to. Filed it away.

  "Someone's been trying to kill me," he said.

  Fogg snorted. "Well," he said. "That's only to be expected, isn't it."

  Smith said, "Is it?"

  Fogg said, "I imagine there are plenty of people who wish to kill you."

  "Why now?"

  And then he thought – that trail of bodies, Alice to Holmes – where will it lead to next? And it occurred to him it was just possible Fogg thought – or hoped – that it was leading to
him
, to Smith.

  Was that possible?

  He kept his face carefully blank as he thought. Did Fogg wish to use him as
bait
? It almost made Smith laugh. Almost. And could Fogg be right? Could this new, unknown Harvester be heading his way?

  It didn't make much sense. He didn't
know
anything. He was not a part of whatever it was this
Erntemaschine
was looking for. Which meant Alice
had
been. And Mycroft.

  And suddenly Smith wanted, very badly, to know what it was.

  Fogg said, "It was not inconceivable that other powers would become involved. Our side is not the only one to have suffered… unexplained deaths."

  "But why go after me?" Then– "Wait, you
knew
?"

  Fogg looked amused. "We figured you could take care of yourself," he said. "Clearly, since you
are
, in fact, here right now…"

  Smith was almost flattered. He said, "Who else has died?"

  Fogg pushed a sheet of paper in his direction. Smith took it.

  "There's a list," Fogg said. "Make sure it does not leave the building."

  Smith looked at the page, memorised it. Handed it back. He would review it later.

  "Come with me," Fogg said. He pushed himself out of his chair. "Something I want you to see."

  They were never going to give him all the information about a case. Smith didn't expect them to, either.

  We're pieces in their game, he thought. They send us off into the field and let us find the questions for ourselves. No preconceptions.

  So Fogg would be keeping information from him. He expected that. He'd give him just enough to follow his own chain of reasoning. Die in the process, possibly. Fogg should be happy with either outcome.

  He followed the tall man down the corridor, a left before the still-closed cipher room, and down a flight of stairs. He knew then where they were going.

  The Bureau's own mortuary.

  It was icy down there and the light was cold and white, running on Edison bulbs, powered by the Bureau's own, hidden steam engines. Fogg pushed the metal door open and Smith followed him inside.

  He did not like mortuaries.

  Which was ironic, he knew. Just as he knew that, one day, sooner or later, it would be his turn to end up in one. He suppressed a shudder as he walked into the cold room. Metal cabinets set in the stone walls. An operating table sitting unused. Fogg went to one of the metal drawers and pulled it open.

  A large corpse lay on it, covered by a sheet. Smith came and stood close to Fogg, looking down at the body. Fogg, with a moue of distaste, lifted up the sheet.

  
Mycroft.

  The fat man looked peaceful in death. Fogg said, "Help me turn him over," brusquely. Smith complied.

  Mycroft's flesh was soft and pliable and cold to the touch. The room stank of disinfectant. Carbolic acid, if Smith was right. The fat man moved surprisingly easily. "There," Fogg said, pointing.

  Smith bent down closer. Looked at the fat man's neck.

  A tiny hole, dug into the base of the skull.

  So someone had stuck a stiletto blade into the man's remarkable head, piercing the brain in the process.

  And had he seen something like that before?

  "Is this what killed him?"

  "There are no other marks," Fogg said.

  Smith straightened. If he'd hoped for any sudden revelations, none were forthcoming.

  
Do it the hard way, then.

  
The way he'd always done it.

  "What are you not telling me?" he said.

  Fogg shook his head. He looked tired, Smith suddenly realised. And worried. It ill-suited him. "You're on your own," Fogg said. "As of this moment you're back on active. You report to no one but me. Get what you need from Accounting. I'd tell you to sign up with Armaments but I know your preferences. You'll be issued travel documents as needed, and currency – but do keep all the receipts, would you, Smith? These aren't the old days."

  Smith gently rolled the fat man back over and covered him again with the sheet. Goodbye, Mycroft, he thought.

  Fogg pushed the trolley back into the wall.

  "Let's go," he said.

 
 

 
 
 

Smith sipped a rare cup of coffee, in the continental style, as he waited for his contact to come in.

  He was thinking through his meeting with Fogg.

  The man had seemed nervous, Smith thought. He was sparse with information, almost too sparse. Smith had tried asking what Alice had been working on, before she was killed. Fogg only said, "She was like you. Retired."

  He didn't know, Smith thought. Something linked Alice and Mycroft, but Fogg had not been a part of the chain.

  He couldn't picture Alice as ever retiring. What had she got herself into, that got her killed?

  And that hush at the Bureau. The sort of hush that came with bad news. Before he left he had run into Berlyne again. "Watch your back," the man advised him mournfully, rubbing his hands together against the chill. He had regarded Smith for one long moment before adding, almost too softly to hear – "Mycroft's not the only one who's no longer around."

  Smith sipped his coffee and thought about his next steps and waited for his contact. He'd signed up with Accounts, waved away the offer of weapons at Armaments, and was out of the building before he knew it. The door shut behind him softly and he had the sudden, sinking feeling it would not be opening again.

  He was not a fool.

  He knew Fogg was using him. As bait, or decoy, he didn't know. Fogg was in over his head.

  And it made Smith think of something else that had been bothering him, namely, the attempts on his own life.

  Why go for him now, after all these years?

  If it wasn't something in the past then he had to conclude it had to do with this new investigation.

  Which suggested some interesting possibilities…

  The most prominent of which was the simple assumption that, whatever Alice and the fat man had been killed over, someone, or several someones, wanted very much to keep it a secret.

  He was sitting upstairs at the
Bucket of Blood
, by Covent Garden. They staged bare-knuckle boxing there but that would be later and for now the place was quiet. They served good pie and bad coffee and they didn't serve bluebottles, crushers, coppers, or whatever your term for the agents of the law may have been.

  Which suited Smith.

  He waited and presently there came the soft steps he had been waiting for, and he saw him – it – he never really knew what they preferred – come up the stairs.

  He stood up. The other came and stood by him. His gait was slow and mechanical, and his blank eyes always terrified Smith, false eyes that were meant to suggest humanity, but somehow didn't.

  "Byron," Smith said.

  The Byron automaton extended his hand for a shake. His flesh was soft and warm. It was made of rubber of some kind, Smith knew. The automaton, despite his age, looked younger than Smith remembered. Clearly he'd been well maintained. He had ascended in power since the council of eighty-eight brought an end of sorts to lizardine control of the empire, and had given human and machine, for the first time, equal say. The Queen still reigned, of course – but the machine faction had grown stronger, though it was not like France, where it was said the Quiet Council held absolute – if quiet – power.

  "Smith." Byron's voice was still the same old voice, scratchy in places, a voice made of numerous recordings of a real human voice, mixed together, played endlessly back. Babbage Corps. – Charlie Company, they used to call it in the old days – had built him, one of the early prototypes, and he was, Smith knew, second in command in the automatons' mostly hidden world. Machines feared humans, relying on them for survival. Byron – and his master – preferred to act, as much as possible, behind the scenes. "It is good to see you again."

  They had crossed paths a couple of times, the automaton and him. No one knew the city better, nor had a wider net of informers and listeners. Machines listened, and most people never gave them a glance. They had worked the Prendick case together, successfully fighting the Dog Men Gang, a case which had left its scars on both of them. Smith had been taken captive by the gang and flayed, and on some nights he still felt the fine, white criss-crossing network on his back as though it were inflamed… "I wish I could say the same," he said, and the Byron automaton nodded mechanically. He understood.

  "I am sorry about Mycroft," the automaton said. "He was a good man."

  Smith snorted. "That's a lie, and you know it."

  "Very well," the Byron said. "He was a useful man, an empire man. His loss is our loss."

  He was speaking for the automatons. And Smith nodded, understanding.

  "What do you know of his demise?" he said. The automaton didn't reply. His strange blind eyes moved as though scanning the room. How the automatons saw was a mystery to Smith. He knew that, between themselves, they communicated by means of in-built Tesla sets, and that was something he needed to find out about. There had been more and more traffic on what was coming to be called the Tesla Network, and while most shadow operatives dismissed the automatons, Smith didn't. He knew better than to underestimate Byron and his kind.