Island of Doom: Hunchback Assignments 4 (The Hunchback Assignments) (2 page)

Modo carried out this surveillance to break the monotony
of his day. He hadn’t had an assignment for months and consequently his skills hadn’t been tested by either Tharpa, his weapons trainer, or his master, Mr. Socrates. They continued to train Octavia, his fellow agent and friend; every day she was in the courtyard huffing and puffing and practicing martial arts or shouting her way through elocution lessons with Mrs. Finchley. But Modo was persona non grata—an unwanted agent.

Three months ago he had twice disobeyed a direct order from his master to send innocent Australian natives into battle. Mr. Socrates had not forgiven him his trespasses.

Modo threw himself back on his bed and opened his copy of
Middlemarch
. The arrival of the courier would likely be the most exciting thing to happen this week. Occasionally, to entertain himself, Modo would go through the painful process of shifting his deformed body and face into one of the many personae he had perfected, such as the Knight, the Doctor, and others. He would wander out to the market to practice his French, though the Quebecois spoke a different dialect than Parisians. He did enjoy this little city in the Canadian wilderness with its French citizens, Irish merchants, and British magistrates. It was like several small countries all rolled into one. But he always returned to Montreal House and his life in limbo.

He scratched at the little finger on his left hand. It often itched; the skin was fresh and pink now, but in a few weeks it would shed. He had lost the finger to an enemy saber only three months before, and, to his great and absolute surprise, it had regenerated itself: proof that he was the oddest, strangest human being to have ever walked the earth.

He tried not to think of the woman who had wielded that saber, Miss Hakkandottir, one of the leaders of the Clockwork Guild. The Guild was an organization bent on the destruction of everything British, as far as Modo could tell. The Permanent Association, his organization, was bent on preserving Britannia. Modo had last seen Miss Hakkandottir fleeing into the jungle. He hoped she’d ended up in the gullet of a particularly nasty crocodile. He imagined the beast spitting out her metal hand and couldn’t keep from chuckling.

Alas, even if she were dead, someone else would rise up to take her place. The Clockwork Guild was not a small organization; it could strike anywhere in the world with ease. After all, it was most likely the Guild that had burned down Victor House, Mr. Socrates’ home in England, forcing them to flee here.

At least the Guild had left them alone for several months. Modo turned a page in his book and tried to disappear back into the world of
Middlemarch
. Would Dorothea ever marry Ladislaw? He was tempted to flip to the end, but stopped himself. He’d done that with
Wuthering Heights
and regretted it still.

There came a hard knock on his door and before Modo could say “Enter,” or even reach for his netting mask to cover his monstrous face, Mr. Socrates was standing at the side of his bed. His master had dark circles under his eyes, and his white hair was longer than usual. He looked as though he’d aged ten years in the past few months. The stress of hiding from the Clockwork Guild was obviously keeping the poor man up all hours of the night.

Modo had been raised by Mr. Socrates. Or not raised, but
trained
, for Mr. Socrates had never been a parent. He’d bought Modo from a traveling curiosity wagon. He’d never changed Modo’s diapers or soothed his bruises. He’d given orders for Modo to be shaped, from age one, into a secret agent at Ravenscroft, his secluded country home. Modo didn’t leave the house for thirteen years.

“May I help you?” Modo asked.

Mr. Socrates extended his arm. At first Modo thought he wanted to shake hands, but then he saw what his master was carrying: “This most mysterious letter has arrived for you,” Mr. Socrates said.

Modo took the envelope, briefly touching his master’s hand. How he wished, just once, that hand had patted his shoulder or his head in a gesture of kindness.

Modo cast aside these silly feelings and examined the letter. His name was written neatly along the front, and below that was the address of Montreal House. “But how can this be addressed to me? No one is supposed to know that we’re here.”

“Not entirely true,” Mr. Socrates answered. “Since our
great retreat
from London, I’ve cut off the majority of communication with the other members of the Permanent Association, but I have left a few trusted channels open.” So, Modo thought, the Permanent Association still operated! The secret organization had employed him for most of his life; its single goal was to keep Britannia ruling forever. One woman and six men, including Mr. Socrates, had created and now controlled the association. Even Queen Victoria didn’t know of its existence.

Modo’s master jabbed a finger toward the letter. “This was delivered to a trusted courier by a French contact.”

“But what would the French want with me?”

“Ah, that is the question of the hour. I’m here to discover the answer.”

Modo held the envelope up. “It’s already open.”

“Of course it is!” Mr. Socrates replied, lowering himself into the chair across from Modo’s bed. “Several eyes have studied it along the way. But the letter is in a code that no one, including me, has been able to decipher. Open it.”

Modo pulled the single page out of the envelope and unfolded:

“But it’s just numbers,” Modo said after scanning the first couple of rows. “Without a key it will be impossible to crack. Have you tried the Vigenère cipher?”

“Do you think I am a fool? That was the first code we applied. The day the French discover that we cracked their cipher will be a bad day for our intelligence gathering. No, whoever sent it has likely used a key only you would be able to decipher. They would know that you are part of the Permanent Association and that other eyes would attempt to read the missive.”

Modo paused. Had he heard that right?
You are part of the Permanent Association
. Perhaps his exile was nearly over.

Another knock at the door. An unusually busy morning!
As was his habit, he drew his netting mask from the bedpost and pulled it over his face. He barely had his eyeholes straight before Octavia entered in her exercise outfit—black pantaloons and a black sweater. Her sandy blond hair was tied back, sweat still on her brow.

“Please, Octavia!” Modo exclaimed. “You really must wait for permission to enter!”

“Oh, Modo.” She waved away his protestations as if she were shooing flies. “Since when did we have such haristocratic stuffery between us?” He gritted his teeth. Yes, he had shown her his real face once, and he couldn’t stand the guarded look she’d given him. Now he thought of the event as the “yours is not the face I’ve dreamed of all my life” incident. Sometimes she seemed entirely oblivious to his feelings. “I’ve heard that a letter arrived for you.”

“Where did you hear that?” Mr. Socrates said.

“Tharpa told me.”

Mr. Socrates raised two doubting eyebrows. “He would not impart that sort of information.”

“Well then, I spied the delivery boy and saw you climbing the stairs through the picture window. You only go upstairs to lecture one of us, sir.”

“Mmm. Perhaps I’ve trained you too well. Please have a seat.”

She chose the end of the bed, nearly plopping herself down on Modo’s feet.

Modo was searching for something clever to say when another person came through the door: Mrs. Finchley, in a long gray dress. “Oh, is it an official meeting?” she asked. “Would you like tea?”

“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Finchley,” Mr. Socrates said. “Please return to your duties.”

“Actually, Mrs. Finchley,” Modo said, “would you kindly telegram the gendarmes or whatever it is they call their constables here? My room is becoming rather crowded with vagrants.”

She gave him a smile on her way out. “I shall send an urgent message.”

“Where’s the letter from?” Octavia asked.

“France,” Modo replied. “I don’t know anyone in France.”

“There is that French spy.” Octavia brushed a hand through her hair. “What was the little viper’s name? Coquette? I mean, Colette Brunet?”

“Impossible,” Modo said.

The penmanship had neither a masculine nor feminine appearance and it contained no flourishes, no hint of personality, as though the person had intended to mask his or her personal style. But the last two sets of numbers had the same number of characters as Colette Brunet’s name. He recognized that immediately—her name had come to mind often recently. Perhaps because of the French spoken in Quebec. If it was her name, deciphering the message would be relatively easy: each number likely corresponded to a letter in the alphabet. He just needed to know one of the words. Two would make it even easier.

“Octavia is correct,” Mr. Socrates said. “Use your faculties, Modo. I did not spend countless hours training you for nothing. Decipher the letter.”

“Now?” His heartbeat sped up. Nervousness? No, something else. Colette had written to him.
To him
. Colette, who
had fought alongside him on the submarine
Ictíneo
. She had been brave and feisty and—he could not lie to himself—bewitchingly beautiful. But when their battles were done, their enemy vanquished, and his defenses down, she had asked to see his face—his real face. They had been adrift at sea; they might never see land again. When he took off his makeshift mask, she had paled and turned away in disgust from the sight of him, then asked him to cover his face. He had relived that moment far too many times. He was stronger now, but it would always hurt.

“Translate immediately,” Mr. Socrates commanded.

Modo grabbed a pen and paper from his desk. If
C
equaled 10, then
O
would be—he counted—22. He wrote out the alphabet.
A
= 8;
B
= 9; etc. It was Colette! But when he went to decipher her last name, it was not Brunet, but
Csvofu
. What could that mean? Ah, it came to him. Every word had its own code. Instead of
A
equaling 8, it was 9 this time. Guessing that the pattern repeated itself, he was able to decipher the first word of the letter:
20-22-11-22: Modo
. He began to write it out, calculating rapidly, his mind so focused on the task that he forgot the peering eyes of Mr. Socrates. He didn’t even notice Octavia turning up the gas lamp. Soon the words were coming to him almost as quickly as reading regular text. As he deciphered he felt astonished.

“Well, what does it say?” Mr. Socrates asked. “Tell us, Modo.”

Modo looked Mr. Socrates directly in the eye. So much in those few sentences. He tried to find the most important point and surprised himself when he said, very simply, “If her words are true, then I am French.”

“You were born in France, yes,” Mr. Socrates agreed gruffly. “I brought you back to England when you were no more than a year old. I rescued you from a curio cage in a traveling oddity show.”

Modo sat stunned. He had known about the curio cage, but had always assumed he had been found in England.
Anytime he asked about his parents, Mr. Socrates had one reply: “That is not necessary information.” Modo had long given up on knowing about them.

In one breath he regained control of his emotions. “Then I was born in Nanterre,” he said. And if that one piece of information was correct, then the remainder of the letter was most likely also correct. Colette had somehow, for some reason, located his parents and they were being pursued by enemies. There was far too much to consider; Modo felt as though the constellations in the heavens had suddenly begun spinning in several directions at once. He took another calming breath.

“You’re French?” Octavia said. “That explains so much.”

“It’s no laughing matter!” Modo retorted.

“You’re British now,” Mr. Socrates asserted. “If not by birth, then by education.”

“My parents are alive.”

“I always assumed so,” Mr. Socrates said defensively. “Remember, Modo, that they abandoned you. Enough of this piecemeal information. Read us the letter.”

Modo sat up straighter and put his feet on the floor. He cleared his throat and read, struggling to keep his voice from cracking. When he was done, Octavia was the first to comment: “I’m most curious about the
bonne chance
friendship. She was a shyster.”

“She was not,” Modo said.

“The question remains,” Mr. Socrates said, “as to whether or not she actually wrote the letter. It may have been forged by another agent or agency.”

Modo lowered the paper. “But it sounds like her, the way she speaks.”

“Cadence and personality can be easily mimicked,” Mr. Socrates reminded him. “You of all people should know that. You make your living as a mimic.”

“I like to consider myself more than just a mimic,” he shot back. “Besides, she said ‘
bonne chance
friend.’ ”

“Is that what she called herself?” Mr. Socrates asked. “
Bonne chance
is a common enough French expression.”