‘They are with me and harmless,’ he explained away his Lazaran company, before adding out of honesty: ‘for the moment. Things are afoot…’
‘Hmmm…,’ assessed Ada, just like her old self.
Julius took stock of the battlefield scene behind Ada’s shoulder. One, two, three, deceased interrogators were visible, slumped as they had fallen. Frankenstein indicated his close study should be taken as a silent question.
‘Neither you nor God seemed minded to intervene,’ said Lady Lovelace, ‘so we had to save ourselves. Poor Foxglove couldn’t hold out much longer.’
‘But how?’ Julius persisted. The last time he’d seen them both were bound.
‘Time hung heavy whilst we scoured France for you,’ Ada said, glancing up and down the corridor to confirm privacy continued. ‘So I had this fitted.’
She lifted her right arm and let her sleeve fall. A sudden upward flick of the wrist caused the previously seen stiletto to shoot out with speed. It quivered to a halt mere inches from Frankenstein’s face.
Julius was doubly impressed. The weapon emanated from under the skin and must be lodged alongside the long bone.
‘One of the precious few advantages to Lazaran lack of feeling,’ Ada explained. ‘Muscles can be arranged to either fire or retract it.’
She admired the now tarnished blade against the light.
‘Pretty much immune to body searches!’ Ada paid tribute to someone’s workmanship. ‘Leastways, the frogs didn’t detect it, so I sawed through my restraints and beckoned a torturer close. Then…-’
‘… He came close,’ interrupted Foxglove, made bold by feeling the fairer sex shouldn’t swap murder-notes. ‘Suffice it to say, Milady dispatched him and came to my aid whereupon I…-’
His turn to be cut off in full flow.
‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Julius, waving aside the doubtless vile tale. ‘My imagination will supply all additional detail. Meanwhile, suffice it for me to say well done: hurrah! Also time runs short: will you join me?’
‘That was our intention,’ snapped Ada, ‘even if only to use this on you…’ Again she raised her armed-arm. Her point made, she then retracted the stiletto into its fleshy holster. Julius heard springs creaking and finally the click of a catch.
Yet Julius was not yet totally absolved. Nor trusted.
‘How come you keep company with Fouché?’ Ada quizzed him, her enhanced limb still poised.
‘Who?’
It took a tense second, but happily Lady Lovelace chose to believe the innocence and ignorance in his eyes. It took her two more seconds to blow ‘the Bureaucrat’s cover. Frankenstein could be left to judge for himself the significance of such a well-oiled weathervane working for Napoleon. There can never be two powers in any land, not for long; nor, as Scripture says ‘in sundry places,’ can one man serve two masters. The Convention’s own Minister for Police was showing in the most practical way possible who he thought would win.
‘So,’ Ada said, ‘it seems you haven’t betrayed us—not consciously at any rate. Perhaps we may walk together once again. For a while.’
Talk of treachery was a bit rich coming from her. Frankenstein could easily have brought up the scene at the aerodrome, for instance. But he was in a forgiving mood—and they were in a corridor in compromising circumstances…
‘Then, madam,’ he said, ‘by all means let us walk—and in haste. I have pressing business and this place will not lay undiscovered forever…’
Ada nodded agreement.
‘‘Tis true—but give me one further moment: there is something I must do…’
Before anyone could argue she rushed back into the room and did it. One of the dead interrogators on the floor got the benefit of Lady Lovelace’s pointed toecap in the face. Repeatedly. She grunted with the effort put into each savage kick. Frankenstein averted his eyes. Foxglove looked pained, as though it was he suffering under the blows.
When Ada returned she was smiling.
‘That one,’ she said, ‘I particularly disliked.’
In reality that was all, but for form’s sake she felt the need to add:
‘And he was very cruel to Foxglove…’
At the ‘secret door’ Frankenstein occupied himself with his Lazaran attendants, fussing and dressing their ranks till an inconvenient brace of servants had gone by. By that time ‘Team Frankenstein’ was augmented by Lady Lovelace and Foxglove, marching concealed in their midst. Ada needed no blending in, but Foxglove’s battered features and hands were whitened with wig powder Julius had brought along for that purpose.
Further forethought emerged from a knapsack one of the Revived soldiers was carrying. Out came a supply of small packets similar to that fed to the Lazaran earlier: though these were less well wrapped. Frankenstein bustled round to ensure each was swallowed as per his system.
‘Eat!’ he commanded, as before, and the slack jaws complied.
Then Frankenstein drew a deep breath, declining to look into the abyss yawning before him—and knocked on the door.
Nothing. Maybe. Or was that just the slightest sound of someone coming to the alert, someone keen that no one else should know of it?
‘Dr Frankenstein here,’ he said to the door. ‘Reporting with a fresh treadmill team. The old one’s for recycling.’
There: he’d spiced it up as much he dared, without overdoing things to the point of suspicion. It had the authority of his name, the prospect of novelty for a bored guard, plus a hint at grim fate for some present. Added together it ought to add up to persuasion.
And it did. The door opened. Behind stood one of the Old Guard; perhaps even the one he’d seen before, because the breed tended to a muchness. The man presented arms but, as scrutiny ticked off all the expected sights, degree by degree the firearm and its threat descended.
‘That’s news to me, monsieur,’ the man said warily.
The worse thing Julius could have done was try to justify himself. In the little-big world of Versailles, indeed in the wider world outside, Frankenstein’s kind was up there and the Guard’s sort down there. The man should regard it as completely normal not to kept informed.
So it proved. Frankenstein didn’t deign to answer but implied by every non-verbal sign the birth of impatience. He moved forward and the crucial moment for resistance passed. Julius and gang passed through the door and mobbed the stairwell.
Suspicion remained however—though that was probably just as natural to the guard as deference.
‘Shouldn’t the new lot be in lift-team uniform?’ he asked. ‘What they’ve got on belongs to shock-brigade grenadiers. Some staff-officers what come through here are picky about that kind of thing…’
The intelligence was flooding in now. So, this route was frequented by those powerful enough to be pedantic.
‘Perhaps so,’ replied Julius, anxious to spin things out. ‘I wasn’t informed. I can always get them to change clothes I suppose…’
The guard was sorry he’d spoke. Only those with very specialist tastes liked watching Lazarans disrobe. Particularly the ‘jigsaw’ jobs…
‘Well…,’ he prevaricated, calculating how long till he was off-duty and out of the frame. Meanwhile, as the man sought for suitable delaying words something else caught his eye. Alertness flared anew.
‘Hang about: one of ‘em’s a woman!’
‘Was a woman,’ corrected Julius, clutching at straws now.
‘Was, is; don’t matter!’
‘Oh, but it does,’ said Julius, ‘because…’
The guardsman waited politely for a while, but when the meat of the sentence failed to arrive…