"Come in, Erasmus."
She sounded amused. Erasmus-Rudolf no more-set his shoulders determinedly and stepped forward. No avoiding it now, he told himself, feeling a curious sinking feeling as he met the opening door and the presence behind it.
"Ma'am." Most of the girls downstairs bared their shoulders and wore their fishtail skirts slit in front to reveal their knees, in an exaggerated burlesque of the latest mode from Nouveau Paris. The woman in the doorway was no girl, and she wore a black crêpe mourning dress. After all, she was in mourning. With black hair turning to steel gray at the temples, blue eyes and a face lined with worries, she might have been a well-preserved sixty or a hard-done-by thirty. The truth, like much else about her, lay in between.
"Come in. Sit down. Would you care for a sip of brandy?"
"Don't mind if I do." The room was furnished with a couple of overstuffed and slightly threadbare chairs, surplus to requirements downstairs: a bed in the corner, too narrow by far to suit the purposes of the house, and a writing desk, completed the room. The window opened onto a tiny enclosed square, barely six feet from the side of the next building.
Erasmus waited while his hostess carefully filled two glasses from a brandy decanter sitting atop the bureau, next to a conveniently burning candle-the better to dispose of the desk's contents, should they be disturbed-and handed one to him. Then she sat down. "How did it go?" she asked tensely.
He took a cautious sip from his glass. "I made the delivery. And the pickup. I have no reason to believe I was under surveillance and every reason not to."
"Not that, silly." She was fairly humming with impatience. "What word from the palace?"
"Ah." He smiled. "They seem to be most obsessed with matters of diplomatic significance." His smile slipped. "Like the way the French have pulled the wool over their eyes lately. There's a witch hunt brewing in the foreign service, and an arms race in the Ministry of War. The grand strategy of encirclement has not only crumbled, it appears to have backfired. The situation does not sound good, Margaret."
"A war would suit their purposes." She nodded to herself, her gaze unfocused. "A distraction always serves the rascals in charge." She glanced at the side door to the room. "And the… device? Did you give it to our source?"
"I gave it to him and showed him how to use it. All he knows is that it is a very small camera. And he needs to return it to us to have the, ah, film developed. Or downloaded, as Miss Beckstein's representative calls it."
Margaret, Lady Bishop, frowned. "I wish I trusted these alien allies of yours, Erasmus. I wish I understood their motives."
"What's to understand?" Erasmus shrugged. "Listen, I'd be dead if not for them and the alibi they supplied. Their gold is pure and their words-" It was his turn to frown. "I don't know about the aliens, but I trust Miriam. Miss Beckstein is a bit like you, milady. There's a sincerity to her that I find more than a little refreshing, although she can be alarmingly open at times. There are strange knots in her thinking-she looks at everything a little oddly. Still, if she doesn't trust her companions, the manner of her mistrust tells me a lot. They're in it for money, pure and simple, Margaret. There's no motive purer than the pig in search of the truffle, is there? And these pigs are very canny indeed, hence the bounteous treasury they've opened to us. They're our pigs, at least until it comes time to pay the butcher's bill. As Miss Beckstein says, money talks-bullshit walks."
She nodded. "The mint, and the ability to debase the currency, has always been the criminal-in-chief's best weapon, Erasmus. He could buy out the bourgeoisie from under our banner in a split second, did he but recognize their importance. It's time we recognized that, and acted accordingly."
"Well." Erasmus took a sip of brandy. It was fine stuff, liquid fire that warmed his old bag of bones from the inside out. "Judging from what your 'intimate source' told me, even if he recognized its importance he probably wouldn't act on it until it was too late. Indecisive doesn't begin to describe this one, milady. Stranded in a well-stocked kitchen John Frederick could starve himself to death between two cookbooks. He looks solid with the machinery of state behind him, but if he's forced to make tough choices he'll dither and haver until he's half past hanging."
"Well, that's his look out," she said tartly. "Was there anything else we can use?"
"Yes. If you don't mind risking the source-at least, this week. It's so big that it will leak sooner rather than later; the French have exploded a corpuscular petard. Caught the navy napping, too; they weren't supposed to have that high a command of the new physics. The flash was visible from Blackpool, apparently, and the toadstool cloud from Lancaster."
"Oh." Her eyes widened. "And with wars, and rumors of wars-"
"Yes, milady. I think something is going to have to happen, sooner or later. The situation in Persia if nothing else is a source of friction, and the temptation to send a message to the court of the Sun King-I wouldn't place money on it starting this year, but I can't see him lasting out the decade without strife. John Frederick wants to leave his mark on the history books, lest his son is followed rapidly by a nephew or cousin in the line of succession."
"Then let's start making plans, shall we?" She smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. "If the leviathan is determined to drink the blood of the people, there's going to be plenty to spare for the ticks."
Erasmus shivered. "Indeed, milady."
"Well then." She put her glass down. "Which brings me to another matter I have in mind." Her smile vanished. "I think it's past time you arranged for me to meet this Miss Beckstein, who you say is so like me. I have many questions for her; I'm sure we can trade more than toys once we understand each other better."
Spook Summit
Twelve weeks earlier:
Mike Fleming was on his way home from his office at the DEA branch, completely exhausted.
Sometimes, when he was extremely tired, he'd lose his sense of smell. It was as if the part of his brain that dealt with scents and stinks and stuff gave up trying to make sense of the world and went to sleep without him. At other times it would come back extra strong, and any passing scent might dredge up a slew of distracting memories. It was a weird kind of borderline synaesthesia, and it reminded him uncomfortably of a time a couple of years ago when he'd been on assignment in some scummy mosquito-ridden swamp down in Florida. The hippie asshole he was staking out had made the tail, and instead of doing the usual number with a Mac-10 or running, had spiked his drink with acid. He'd spent a quarter of an hour in the bathroom of his hotel room staring at the amazing colors in the handle of his toothbrush, marveling at the texture of his spearmint dental gel, until he'd thrown up. And now he was so tired it was all coming back to him in unwelcome hallucinatory detail.