Novel - Airman (18 page)

The buzz of coronation excitement had communicated itself through the prison, and many of the prisoners hooted through their windows or dragged tin cups across their barred windows. Surprisingly perhaps, most of the inmates showed monarchist leanings in spite of their incarceration at Her Majesty’s pleasure. A ragged chorus of “Defend the Wall,” the Saltee national anthem, bounced off the walls and under Conor’s cell door. He found himself humming along. It was strange to hear the words
King Nicholas
already replaced by
Queen Isabella
.

How could you believe Bonvilain’s lies? Why did you not send for me, Isabella?
Confusion bred heat in his forehead, and Conor felt the strength of it cloud his brain. His senses piled on top of one another. Sight, touch, smell. Grime in the wrinkles of his forehead. The cell door seemed to shake in its housing. Sweat, damp, and worse from his cell. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose. One of Victor’s tricks, brought back from the Orient.
Breathe in cold air, clear the mind.

Conor pushed thoughts of Isabella aside. Time now to concentrate. Billtoe’s steps were on the flagstones outside. One last time through the checklist.

Mud on his back?
Yes. He could feel it crusting inside his collar. At last, a use for the damp wall. There is always a use for everything, Victor had told him. Even pain.

The device secured?
Conor reached around under his loose jacket, tugging at the rectangular pack concealed on his chest. The ropes groaned at his pull, but they were homemade and imperfect. Woven from raggy ends and cut-offs. Spliced together and daubed with candle wax.

The cuff peg?
Concealed in his palm. A jagged ivory cone, measured by pressing the cuffs’ ratchet hard into his palm when Billtoe was removing them. The cuff peg was an old escapologist’s trick and would only work on a set of single-lock cuffs with some play in the bolts; but Billtoe’s cuffs were old enough to have belonged to Moses, and Conor had been yanking at the bolts for half a year now. There was enough play. When Billtoe slapped the cuffs on, Conor would quickly plug the hole with the ivory peg. The ratchet would be deflected while appearing to close.

Mud, devices, pegs! This plan is lunacy.
And as such could never be anticipated. Conor stepped on his uncertainty with a harsh boot. There was not the time now. This plan would liberate him or kill him, and both were preferable to more long years in this hell pit.

Billtoe’s key clanked into the ancient lock, turning it with some effort. The guard shouldered the door open, complaining as usual, but with one cautious hand on his pistol. “An angel is what I am, sticking it out with you clods, when a man like me would be welcomed into any discerning society in the world. I could be a prince, you know, Finn. An emperor, darn it. But here I stays, so that you can tell me my twelve-shot revolver is not ready yet.”

“It is ready,” blurted Conor, playing the excited, eager-to-please prisoner. “I have the plan here.”

Billtoe was canny enough to be suspicious. Lesser brains would have lost the run of themselves, and the price of their distraction would be a stove-in skull, but Arthur Billtoe’s prime instinct was self-preservation. “Where exactly, now, would that plan be? I won’t be doing any bending over, or fumbling in shadows.”

“No. Lying on the table. Shall I hand it to you?”

Billtoe cogitated. Coughed up a lump of recently swallowed rations for a rechew.

“No, soldier boy. How’s about I cuff you as per usual, then have a little look-see at the plan myself.”

Conor extended his hands, happy to comply. “Do I get my walks, Mister Billtoe? You promised I would.”

Billtoe smiled as he clamped on the cuffs, one eye on the table. “It’s your beard that has me grinning. A pathetic shrub. It ain’t ready for growing yet. You ought to trim it back, thicken it up. The Rams ain’t going to be ordered to by some runt with a bare gorse on his chin. And we’ll talk about walks after I have a good study of this drawing.”

Billtoe plucked the page from the table with two grubby, fine-boned fingers.

“You know, I’ve been talking to a few mates. Apparently there’s a German makes twelve-shot revolvers.” He spat a stream of tobacco juice on the flags to show his displeasure.

“But small caliber,” argued Conor. “To accommodate the bullets. With this design the cylinder is actually a screw, so the bullets can be as big as you wish, and the weight is spread out more efficiently, so it will work for rifles too.” The design was preposterous and utterly unworkable, but looked pretty on paper.

“I don’t know,” grumbled Billtoe. “A screw, you say?”

“Have one made. Like the balloons. Do a test.”

Billtoe folded the page roughly, stuffing it into a pocket. “That I will, Master Finn. And if this turns out to be a scatterfool’s daydream, the next time you see daylight will be on the day I toss you from the south wall.”

Conor nodded glumly, hoping his excitement did not shine from his forehead like the Hook Head lighthouse. Billtoe had made a mistake. In his eagerness to see the revolver plan, he hadn’t noticed Conor’s sleight of hand, plugging the Bell and Bolton handcuffs, diverting the ratchet to one side. His hands were free, but it was not yet time to make use of this.

“This is no daydream, Mister Billtoe. This is our future. You can register the patent, then perhaps pay a few bribes to get me out of here.”

Billtoe feigned great indignance. “Bribes! Bribes, you say. I am deeply offended.”

Conor swallowed, a man holding his nerve. “Let’s speak plain, Mister Billtoe. I am in this hole for life, unless you can pull me out of it. I’m not expecting freedom right away . . .”

Billtoe chuckled. “I am relieved to hear it. The pressure is on, says I to meself. Immediate freedom or no deal. But you’re not expecting freedom, so there’s a worry lifted.”

“But I would dearly love a cell on the surface. Or near it. Maybe a mate to share with. Malarkey would be suitable, I think.”

“I bet he would. Lovely and cozy, all Rams together. No wheedling now, Finn. First I have the model made, and when it doesn’t explode in my face, then we parley.”

“But, Mister—”

Billtoe held up a flat hand. “No. Not a word more, soldier boy. Your balloons have not taken flight yet. I may be coming for you in the morning with a Fenian pike.”

Conor hung his head in defeat, in reality hoping he had not overplayed his role. The entire revolver notion was merely misdirection, any magician’s meat and potatoes. Fill Billtoe’s mind with notions so that he would be less attuned to what was unfolding in front of his eyes.

“Now, let’s be off to work. Well, work for you. I’m off topside to supervise your . . . my . . . coronation balloons.”

Conor sidled past Billtoe, through the doorway, careful to keep his mud-caked back on the guard’s blind side. His plan was a house of cards, a
citadel
of cards. One unlucky glance could bring the entire structure down.
No time for that now. Begin your count.

His count. Another largely theoretical card in the citadel.

Conor had long since discovered that there was a blind spot in the corridor between his cell door and the diving bell wing. One of the mad wing’s occupants had been in front of him six months previously on the walk to the warden’s weekly speech. The man was tiny, with a disproportionately large head, especially the forehead that sat atop his eyebrows like a porcelain slug. It was the man Billtoe had called Numbers, because inside his strange head, everything was reduced to mathematics, the purest science. He would spout long streams of digits and then laugh as though he were watching cabaret in Paris.

On that morning, half a year ago, Conor had watched the man lope down the line before him, muttering his numbers, counting his steps.
Fourteen
was the last in his list. Then Numbers took a sideways hop, and disappeared.

No. Not disappeared, but certainly not as visible. There, in sudden black shadows, shaking with mirth at his own joke. A joke that could see him hanged.

Numbers held his position until Pike noticed him missing, then hopped from his hiding place. “Fourteen,” he exclaimed in a screeching shriek. “Fourteen, eighty-five, one half!”

Pike did not get the joke, proceeding to cuff Numbers around the ear hole several times. There were no more demonstrations from Numbers, but Conor learned quickly. He had seen the trick once and set about dissecting it.
How do you unravel a magician’s secret? Start at the reveal and work backward.

There was a natural blind spot in the corridor, something magicians and escapologists created artificially onstage with lights, drapes, or mirrors. A tiny spot of isolated darkness surrounded by stimuli that drew the eye. A patch of near invisibility. It would not stand up to any scrutiny, but for a second, in frenzied circumstances, it would do.

For the next few weeks, Conor watched the space and analyzed the numbers.
Fourteen, eighty-five, one half.
It was no deep code. Numbers had taken fourteen steps from his cell door along the path, then hopped half a step, eighty-five degrees to the right. Into the belly of the blind spot. Conor simply added the five steps necessary to find the spot for himself.

Once there, he was amazed how obvious it was. Overlapping layers of shadow, untouched by torchlight, further shaded by a slipped cornice stone, with a spume of spilled crimson paint on the flagstones a foot to the left. A cylinder of blackness that would take no more than a heartbeat to pass through. But once inside, it formed a cloak of near invisibility that could be enhanced by further misdirection.

Billtoe walked beside him, muttering about his lack of respect for his superiors.

Twelve.

“And the warden? Don’t talk to me about the warden. That man makes decisions that boggle the mind. Too much time in the Indian sun if you ask me. Bloomin’ Calcutta fried his mind.”

Fifteen.

“The money that man wastes. The cash money. It makes my heart sick. I fair feel ill just talking about it, even to a Salt.”

Nineteen.

Billtoe clicked his fingers at Conor, meaning, Stop where you are.

Now comes the vital moment. All strands converge. Live or die on this instant.

Billtoe stepped to the wing door, tinging the bell with his fingernail. No response for a long moment, then a familiar mocking voice from the spy hole above.

“Ah, Billtoe. Is it out, you want? From the mad wing? Are you certain sure that’s the right direction?”

Billtoe’s posture stiffened. A dozen times a day he had to endure this ribbing.

“Can you not simply open a bolt, Murphy? Turn the wheel and lift the bolt, that is all I require from you.”

“Sure, I know it’s all you require, Arthur. The rest is free, a little daily gift. I am the funny fairy, dropping little lumps of humor on your head.” Six feet up, the wheel was turned and the bolt lifted. The door to the mad wing swung open.

“If I could put into words how much I hate that man,” muttered Billtoe, turning. “Then Shakespeare himself could kiss my . . .” The final word of Billtoe’s sentence turned to dust in his dry throat, because his prisoner had disappeared. Vanished into the air.

Not my prisoner, thought Arthur Billtoe. Marshall Bonvilain’s. I am a dead man.

* * *

While Billtoe stood glaring skyward into the spy hole, Conor found himself rooted to the spot. He had imagined this moment so often that it seemed unreal to him now, as though it could never really materialize. In his mind’s eye he saw himself confidently put his plan into action, but the flesh-and-bone Conor Finn stayed where he was. One and a half steps to the left of the corridor’s blind spot.

Then Billtoe began his turn, and Conor’s life to come flashed before him. Five more decades under night and water until his skin was leeched of all color and his eyes were those of a tunnel rat.
Act!
he told himself.
It is a good plan.

And so he acted in an exhaustively practiced series of movements. Conor took a pace and a half to his right, spun around so his muddied back faced Billtoe and tossed his open handcuffs into the grate of the nearest sealed chimney. The rattle drew Billtoe’s eyes away from the blind spot.

“Stupid boy,” he groaned. “He’s gone up the spouts.” The guard hurried past Conor, who huddled, camouflaged, in his hiding place, his brown jacket blending effectively with the corridor walls. Billtoe kicked the grate angrily, then bent low to holler up the chimney. “Come down from there, halfwit. They are sealed, all of ’em. The only thing you’ll find up the spouts are the moldering remains of other scatterfools.”

There was no response, but Billtoe imagined he heard a rustle. “Aha!” he shouted. “Your clumsiness betrays you. Down now, Finn, or I will discharge my weapon. Do not doubt it.”

Conor moved like a prowling cat, stealing sideways to the open wing door. He must not reveal himself. This plan would only succeed if nobody worked out that he was gone. To be spotted now would mean a brief chase and a long time recovering from whatever beating the guards decided to dish out. He edged beneath the spy hole, searching for a face. There was none, just the tip of a boot and the lower curve of a cauldron stomach.

Conor slipped across the door saddle, and the closeness of freedom sent him light-headed. He almost bolted for the outer door. Almost. But one stumble now could kill him. It was so close, tantalizing. Only a dark wedge of stained wood separated him from the outside world.

The door opened and two guards strolled through, sharing a snide sniggering joke. I will have to kill them, decided Conor. It will be easily done. Snag the first’s dagger and gut them both. I can make a run for the balloons. He flexed his fingers slowly, making ready for the lunge, but it wasn’t necessary. The guards simply did not see him; they turned toward the mining wing without once pointing an eyeball his way.

I could have murdered them, realized Conor. I was ready to strike. Even this thought could not delay him for long. Little Saltee guards were not to be seen as normal people. They were cruel gaolers, who would gladly toss him from the highest turret into the maws of the sharks that patrolled the waste pipes.