‘I’m being obtuse, I realize. Could you plod a little more?’
Cale closed his eyes, his irritation plain.
‘You must have thought about all the different stuff you could do in the face of the threat from the Redeemers, right?’
‘Explored alternative responses?’
‘Yes. That. I don’t want to know what you’ve decided. Don’t tell me. I don’t care. I just want one of the choices you didn’t make, whatever it is, and all the detail written down.’
A long pause.
‘I can’t write anything down. If it got out the Hanse could be ruined.’
It was not easy for Cale to avoid picking up the handsome ornament on the table next to him and throwing it at the wall. His head hurt and he thought he was probably going to die in the next few hours.
‘Listen to me,’ he said, ‘Kitty the Hare could eat you up and spit you out and a dozen more like you. He’s not going to accept my word for anything. He knows I’m a lying little shit, all right?’
‘Putting a lie in writing is as bad as telling the truth. It will get out – and if it’s written down people will believe it. I can’t.’
Now Cale’s head was throbbing as if it were expanding and contracting by a couple of inches with each breath.
‘What if I promise I’ll see it’s destroyed?’
‘How can you be certain?’
‘I’m giving you the word of someone who prevented your wife from being paunched while she was still alive – you ungrateful fuck.’ He looked at Wittenberg and decided he had nothing to lose. ‘And I’d have to tell Riba that you refused to help the three people who saved her life – even when one of them promised to keep you out of it.’
‘A particularly ugly threat, if I may say so – but I suppose you’re desperate.’
‘I’m an ugly sort of person.’
‘At any rate you are a very violent one.’
‘Luckily for your wife.’
‘But you’re very sick. Your skill in moving armies isn’t of much use if you’ve left those armies behind. Ugly or violent, you’re now ordinary. I can’t help you in this, no matter what my personal obligations are. Leave my house by midday tomorrow, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Actually I do mind.’
‘Leave it anyway.’
Cale went to his room, took out one of the small packets of Phedra and Morphine, tapped the tiny amount of white powder onto the back of his hand, put one finger to his left nostril, bent down and took a huge snort. He called out in pain; it was as if a packet of pins and needles had exploded in his head. The sensation took a minute to fade and once he had wiped the tears from his eyes he began to feel better. Then very much better. Then better than he had ever felt: sharp, clear and strong. On his way out he passed Riba. ‘You’ve been talking to Arthur,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘He’s not as dumb as he looks.’
As he walked to Kitty’s house it was through a city and a world filled with confusion. It was either the eve of destruction or the crisis had passed. Some people were leaving, some people had decided to stay. Prices had been rising on fears of a war, but now they were falling on rumours of peace. Men of experience were selling off gold, men of experience were buying it back. Things might go this way or things might go that. The first casualty, the day after the declaration of war, is the memory of the confusion that preceded it. Nothing fades from the powers of recall like the recollection of uncertainty.
On his way from the Embassy of the Hanse, Cale stopped briefly at a depot used by the outdraggers – tinkers who hired out their handcarts for deliveries of just about anything, though mostly the meat and vegetables from the market across the square. He gave one of them, angry-looking but beefy, five dollars and the promise of another five if he’d head for the street where Kitty lived and watch for two or three people coming out who might need to be carried away. He’d need to be quick, no hanging about.
‘Sounds like there could be trouble,’ said the man. ‘Ten dollars and then another ten.’
‘What’s your name?’
The tinker was careful about the business of giving names, but there was serious money involved. ‘Michael Nevin.’
‘Do the job and there’ll be more.’
‘More money or more jobs?’
‘Both.’
Knocking softly on Kitty’s door, Cale was admitted, searched, relieved of his collection of devices and then taken in to see Kitty. He was seated behind a large desk, his face indistinct in the semi-darkness. Sitting against the shutters at the back of the room were the two men who had come so close to killing Kleist and Vague Henri a couple of hours earlier.
‘You’ve disimproved since we last met, Mr Cale. Sit down.’
Cale’s fear at having two such obvious evil-doers behind him was not in any way eased by the oddness of the fit of the chair. It was slightly too low, the arms slightly too high, the seat awkwardly sloped. And it was fastened to the floor.
‘I have to talk to you alone,’ said Cale.
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Are they still alive?’
‘I wouldn’t worry about them, sick little boy.’
‘I have to know if they’re dead or alive.’
‘They are in a waiting room. The question is whether or not you are going to wait with them.’
‘Me? How have I offended?’
‘You, sir, have not delivered on your undertakings for which you have been paid and cared for.’
‘I’ve been a bad servant, I admit. I’ve come to put that right.’
‘Well?’
‘I’ve two things to tell you. The first is to repay what I owe you. The second is a swap for my friends.’
‘And why shouldn’t I make you give me this second thing without the cost of looking weak?’
‘Because I have to prove it as well as tell you. And the proof isn’t here.’
‘We’ll see. Go on.’
‘They leave.’
‘We’ll see after you pay me what you owe.’
Cale tried to give the impression that he was considering this.
‘All right. You’ve a map of the four quarters?’
‘Yes.’
‘I need to show you.’
It took a few minutes for the two men to unroll the map and hang it from hooks high up on one of the walls. It was obvious to Cale that Kitty would have commissioned a survey of some kind but he was surprised at its size and detail, better than anything even the Redeemers had made and they were skilled cartographers.
‘You’re impressed,’ said Kitty.
‘Yes.’
One of the men handed him a pointer with little more substance to it than a stalk of wheat – no chance of using it as a weapon. Cale looked at Kitty, hooded and in the shadows, still as a stump. If there had been anyone to tell him fairy stories as a boy, Kitty would have been a sight to bring back the true fear of the child’s nightmare. Cale had no choice, so he got on with it.
‘This is what I think, based on what I know,’ Cale said. ‘Some of it’s guesswork. But it’s there or thereabouts.’
There was a high-pitched wheezing sound from Kitty, laughter perhaps, and the smell of something hot and damp momentarily carried in the still air.
‘Your scruples are noted.’
‘The Swiss mountains make an attack almost impossible from anywhere except the north. As far as the Swiss are concerned, the other countries in the Swiss Alliance exist to act as a series of three buffers against any attack from there. Farthest north is Gaul, protected by the Maginot Line and the Arnhemland desert. The Axis think the strength of the defences in the Maginot Line will protect them and that Arnhemland is too wide and waterless for an army of any real size to cross. They’re wrong. Bosco has been delaying so he can dig a network of wells and water stores across the desert.’
‘And you know this because …?’
‘Because I thought of it. The Gauls think that even if an army does come through the desert and hit their weaker defences, an army that’s spent six days in Arnhemland isn’t going to be in much of a shape to fight – even weak defences should be more than enough to stop them until they can bring in reinforcements.’