Conflagration (42 page)

“Kiss me.”

Their lips touched.

“Now kiss me again and I’ll forgive you for the way you treated me before.”

Cordelia kissed Harriet again, and her breathing quickened. “Oh, by the Goddess…”

Harriet Lime was gently stroking her breast. “By the Goddess indeed.”

“There’s something not right about this.” But Cordelia reached for her anyway. She could feel athletic muscles under warm porcelain skin.

Harriet Lime positively purred. “Do you care?”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“No.”

RAPHAEL

If Argo had not already managed to cool the brewing conflict between Jesamine and Windermere, the appearance of Garth would certainly have done it. Although Madame de Wynter’s chauffeur/manservant/bodyguard entered the sitting room quietly and with due deference, his sheer size and appearance were enough to slow the rancor. “Madame?”

“Yes, Garth?”

“There is a reporter on the telephone.”

“A reporter from where?”

“He says he is calling from the
News Chronicle
.”

“He wants to speak to me?”

“He wants to speak to Major Jesamine. Seemingly the
Chronicle
wants to offer her money for what he kept referring to as her ‘story.’”

Jesamine looked horrified and seemed about to choke, but de Wynter calmly gave Garth his instructions. “Tell the man from the
Chronicle
that the Major is not taking calls, and then take the telephone off its hook, please.”

“Yes, madame.”

“If anyone really needs to get us they can use the unlisted line.”

“Yes, madame.”

“And Garth…”

“Yes, madame.”

“Have the early editions of the morning papers arrived?”

“They were delivered by cab a few minutes ago.”

“When you’ve given the wretch from the
News Chronicle
his marching orders, bring them in, will you?”

“Yes, madame.”

“And you’d better bring the good scotch. We may need it.”

“Yes, madame.”

Garth was gone for perhaps two minutes before he returned to the sitting room with a large tray on which was a neatly folded pile of most of the city’s twelve morning papers, a cut glass whiskey decanter, and seven glasses. He set down the tray on a side table.

“You brought a glass for yourself?”

“Yes, madame.”

Argo held up the cover of the
News Chronicle
. The headline blazed …

KENNEDY GAL QUIZZED BY SPECIAL BRANCH

Jesamine gasped, and de Wynter shook her head. “It’s worse than I imagined.”

Argo glanced at Jesamine. “No wonder they wanted to buy your story.”

Two pictures had been run side by side beneath the banner headline. One was a formal portrait of Jack Kennedy that made him look distinguished, but a black border that indicated he was unmistakably dead. The other was a candid and lasciviously unflattering shot of Jesamine, obviously snapped by one of the mob of photographers on the Bristol pier. She was stumbling on her high heels, her uniform skirt had hiked up, exposing her long legs, and she was being pulled into the car by Jane Tennyson. The layout was arranged so Kennedy appeared to be posthumously staring at her legs. Argo read aloud. “The woman, known only as ‘Major Jesamine,’ but alleged to be the mistress of the Albany PM, was being kept under wraps by government officials even before the shooting.”

Windermere leaned forward in his chair. “You Albany folk may get your second front if the
Morning Tribune
has its way.” The headline on this paper was three huge letters and a question mark.…

WAR?

Windermere read an excerpt. “Although no official statement has been made linking the Empire of Hassan to the killing, Khurshid Nawaz, the Mosul chargé d’affaires in London, is being held under house arrest as the massive investigation into the assassination of Albany Prime Minister John Kennedy moves beyond the dead assassins, and focuses on possible darker forces behind the scenes. Sir Harry Palmer, the commander of the Metropolitan Constabulary Special Branch, was quoted as saying, “Excellency Nawaz is only being held for his own protection … blah, blah, blah…”

Windermere stopped as Jesamine suddenly sobbed. She had found the
Morning Examiner
. That too had a one-word headline …

CARNAGE!

Most of the page, however, was taken up by a huge grainy photograph of Jack Kennedy’s corpse sprawled in the wreckage of the ruined carriage, legs twisted, arms outflung, just as Raphael remembered him, except the blood that covered his head and soaked his clothes was turned a horrible inky black by the monochrome print and cheap paper. Dawson’s dead hand was in the very bottom of the frame. Raphael remembered how the policemen had pulled Argo and Jesamine off the photographer. He should have moved in and smashed the camera. Sir Harry Palmer’s damned detectives had confiscated his and Argo’s guns, but hadn’t bothered to seize the exposed plate from the man’s camera. Now the hideous image would be part of history forever. He definitely should have smashed the camera.

Jesamine was sitting stiffly, tears rolling down her face. De Wynter glanced at Garth. “Garth…”

“Yes, madame.”

“You’d better pour the scotch.”

“Yes, madame.”

Jesamine spoke very softly. “We have to get out of this fucking country. We have to go. We have to get Cordelia and…”

“And?”

Jesamine shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t really know. All I do know is that, if we stay here, the newspapers alone will make it impossible for us to go anywhere except into hiding, and that, I swear to the Goddess, is not why I fucking came here.”

Raphael spoke for both himself and Argo. “It wasn’t why any of us fucking came here.”

Garth handed him a scotch. Raphael drank a little and shook his head. He had been trying to duck the thought, but it refused to be avoided. “It’s happening again, isn’t it.”

Argo looked at Raphael doubtfully. Windermere was watching intently. “What are you saying?”

“A force is acting on us again.”

“A force?”

“We’re being moved to the Land of the Franks aren’t we? It’s all happening again.”

Jesamine slowly turned her head in Raphael’s direction. She had stopped crying. “I know what you mean. Like when we came together in the first place. We didn’t have a choice, we were pulled like a fucking magnet.”

“And it’s happening again, except everything is pulling us to the south, to the Frankish Territories.”

Argo still wasn’t getting it. “How do you figure that? Okay, so Cordelia’s in Paris and we have to get her out of there, but that’s hardly any mystic pressure. Unless there’s something I haven’t heard about.”

“There may be something none of us has heard about.”

Windermere and de Wynter remained silent. Garth stood in the background. Raphael took a deep breath. “So much had been happening that I didn’t think of it until just now, until Jesamine found Cordelia in Paris.”

“What?”

“At the reception, at the Palace of Westminster, I met a Caribbean called Country Man.”

Windermere nodded. “We know Country Man.”

Raphael continued. “He said something was being built in the Frankish Territories. He talked about stonework and slave laborers. ‘Big magick’ he called it. ‘Real big magick.’ He thought it might be a power source, or some kind of weapon, and that the Ahrachs are behind it. I tried to get more out of him a little later, but he near as dammit blanked me.”

“Country Man can be a tease. He’s his own manipulator.”

Jesamine looked at Windermere. “Did you know about this thing being built?”

Windermere met her gaze, but only after a brief hesitation. “We’ve had reports. There’s definitely something going on in the Frankish countryside near Amiens.”

Argo caught the hesitation. “Is it connected with Cordelia’s kidnap, or the White Twins?”

This time Windermere met him head on. “It could be. We honestly don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

“I would imagine for the same reason Raphael didn’t tell you about Country Man’s story. There’s been one fuck of lot going on to keep us distracted.”

Surprisingly, Jesamine accepted this without question. “That’s true enough.”

Argo leaned back in his chair and held up his glass. Garth poured him a refill without a word. “Seems like the next line is ‘so what the fuck do we do about all this?’”

Raphael nodded. “That also is the fucking truth.”

Jesamine thought for a few moments and then began to offer a bitter summation. “As things stand, we make our way to the coast, we acquire a boat, we row or sail it across the English Channel, we infiltrate a heavily defended enemy coast, we hike however far it is to a ruined city, we find Cordelia, rescue her from well-organized gangsters, and then do the whole thing all over again in reverse. Which would put us back in the NU just in time for me to be questioned again by Sir Harry fucking Palmer as ‘the Kennedy Gal.’ Can anyone come up with something better than that?”

Windermere smiled. His first in a long time. “I think I can.”

Jesamine regarded him coolly. “Then I would really like to hear about it.”

CORDELIA

Sera Falconetti found them intertwined, naked under the fur cover. “You two make a pretty picture.”

Cordelia had been dozing in the pleasant aftermath of a long sleep and was not at all happy for the world to intrude so soon. “Make it all go away.”

Sera sat down on the bed, wide awake and businesslike. “Sadly it won’t.”

Harriet Lime opened her eyes, took it all in, and immediately sat up. “Good morning.” Without waiting for a response, she sprang quickly from the bed, naked, cold, and in a hurry. “I have to go to the privy.”

She vanished into a rough-cut hole in the stone. Too ragged and irregular to hang a door, it was covered by a blanket. The blanket closed behind Lime, and, moments later, Cordelia and Sera head the sound of running water, splashes and gasps, then Lime’s muffled voice. “This water is fucking freezing.”

“What do you expect in Paris?” Sera glanced at Cordelia, and deliberately lowered her voice. “I see you picked a simple and efficient way to keep watch on Mme. Lime.”

Was Cordelia being enlisted as an ally? “You think Mme. Lime needs watching?”

“Let’s just say that she charms my father, but I try not to turn my back on her.”

The splashing went on and on, as did the gasps. Cordelia frowned. “Does she do that every morning?”

Sera nodded. “She’s very hygienic. I didn’t know you … how shall I put it?”

Cordelia sighed. She felt better than she probably deserved. “There are men and there are women, my dear Sera.”

“But women understand some tricks that really please.”

“I think Mme. Lime has actually invented some that are totally original.”

Sera nodded. “I know.”

Cordelia was pulled up short. “Oh.”

Sera smiled. “She can be very persuasive.”

Before Sera could say more, Harriet Lime came back, wearing a floral silk robe of oriental cut, and Cordelia wondered from where she could have obtained such a thing. It was, after all, Cordelia’s room. Or was it? Was Lime the guest, and she merely the chattel? Harriet Lime went to a large chest and began sorting out clothes, but Sera turned in her direction. “Harriet.”

“What?”

“Don’t you think, before we go any further, we should maybe fill in Cordelia on why she’s really here?”

Lime turned. “Maybe we should.” She came back to the bed, still in her floral robe, and sat on the other side from Sera. “This will be something of a confession.”

Cordelia gestured somewhat peremptorily to Lime. “Pass me a shirt, before any confessions, darling. Sitting here in the nude makes me feel like the naked hostage.”

Lime didn’t look too happy but did as she was told. As she shrugged into her shirt, Cordelia looked to Sera. “Is there any chance of a drink?”

Sera seemed to think it was a little early to start drinking. “How about coffee?”

Cordelia negotiated. “How about both?”

Sera shouted. “Bonaparte, get in here.”

The small but decidedly intimidating Bonaparte entered. “Problem?”

“No problem, but do you think you could scare up a pot of coffee and a bottle?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard.”

As he left on his mission, Sera and Lime looked at each other, unsure of who should start. Finally Sera bit the bullet. “You have to realize an issue needed to be forced with the Norse, and unfortunately you were the most efficient lever we could find.”

Cordelia frowned at Lime. “What do you mean, an issue forced with the Norse? You’re the damned Norse.”

Lime paused. “Well … not exactly.”

“What?”

“I’m Morgana’s Web. Not the same thing.”

Sera shrugged. “And I’m Il Syndicato, even if daddy’s old school, and bellows that there’s no such thing.”

Cordelia closed her eyes. “Oh shit. This is turning complex, right?”

“You saw what’s going on at Amiens.”

“I saw the pyramid.”

“And it was something?”

“It was something.”

“It could be anything, right?”

“Right.”

“It could be mass mind control.”

Lime chimed in. “Or a paranormal deathray.”

Sera nodded. “The Zhaithan are putting so much into it, it has to be something. And even the Knights of the Rhine have become involved.”

She and Lime were double-teaming Cordelia. “The Norse had to be forced to take it seriously.”

“So you kidnapped me?”

Sera made the qualified admission. “Betting that the others would follow.”

“We wanted all four of you.”

Cordelia shook her head in disbelief. “Did you have to be so bloody drastic?”

Lime was defensive. “Would you have come into enemy territory on the say-so of some girl you were making out with at an orgy?”

“You could have made more orthodox contact and talked to the Four of us.”

“There was so little time. You were hemmed in by the whole social thing, plus ham-handed Norse security, and then you’d be off to Stockholm. We formulated the whole thing in advance.”