The Hangman's Revolution (16 page)

But then, Otto began visiting the works, dressed as the commodore and spouting such Americanisms as:
Those drains better be done by nightfall or there’ll be hell to pay,
and
I am prepared to pay top dollar for premium workmanship
. It was a jolly gas, and Malarkey warmed to the role. And when he’d hired Figary as overseer and general butler, that had sealed the deal. Malarkey loved everything about the commodore; his cavalier mannerisms, how the genteel ladies sneaked peeks at him from behind their fans, the constant warring with Figary. He adored the entirety of the experience, and now that the house was nearing completion, he found himself loath to give it up.

“But give it up I must,” he concluded. “For Grosvenor Square ain’t more than a brief trot from the Haymarket, and some cracker casing a swell’s digs or flying the blue pigeon in the vicinity would be sure to cop a squint of my lovely hair; then it’s off to Highgate for old Golgoth.”

Figary’s piano hands went crazy. “Desist please, Commodore. If you are to be a resident of Grosvenor, then this Cockney double-talk must be knocked on the head, so it must. What are you saying, man? Pigeons and crackers? It’s gibberish concocted by criminals.”

Riley and Chevie exchanged amused glances. It was incredible to them that King Otto would react to his butler’s impertinence with no more than a resigned grimace.

“Betterment of the self is a hard road,” said Otto, reading their looks. “And betimes a cove must swallow down what he would ordinarily chuck to the floor and stamp on.” He shot Figary a dark glare of foreboding that would have most men leaving town without taking the time to pack a suitcase. “But take heed, Michael Figary, for every man has his breaking point, and when King Otto breaks, he breaks uncommonly violent.”

“Tush,” said Figary. “Tush, bah, and fiddlesticks, Commodore. King Otto’s days are numbered, but thanks to me, Commodore Pierce will enjoy a long retirement in high society.”

Chevie felt that, amusing as it was to see Otto Malarkey chastised by his Irish butler, there were probably more important things they could be discussing.

“Maybe we should talk about the Rams, Otto. My guess is that Farley’s boss wants to step into your boots.”

“The tattooist said as much,” said Otto. “He said the Rams would be part of a new world order, those that took the shilling.”

Chevie kneaded her knuckles. “The Rams are the key. Box’s foot soldiers took the city for him; without the Rams he’s nothing. How loyal are your men, Otto?”

Malarkey spat on the carpet, which had Figary back at the brandy decanter. “Loyalty among thieves, is it?” said Otto. “That only exists when there ain’t cash involved. As soon as it becomes a transaction, then it’s ‘the king is dead, long live the king.
’
”

Chevie stood. “I mean to stop Farley and the whole lot of them. How about you, Malarkey?”

“Farley killed my brother. And for that I’ll see him and anyone who stands with him at the bottom of the Thames.”

“So we’re all of a mind,” said Riley. “But how are three hunted individuals to take on an army with weapons like Farley was toting?”

“We need to see the lay of the land,” mused Otto. “Find out which way the Rams are blowing. My boys are greedy coves, yes, but they are also suspicious, and cautious. My Rams need to be approached like actual rams. Real careful-like. One wrong word, and Farley could find himself with a hole in his gullet.”

“We need eyes on the inside,” said Chevie. “One of us has to go into the Hidey-Hole. And it has to be today. This is Emergence Day. Box attacks today.”

“But who?” wondered Riley. “Chevie made a spectacular impression the last time she was here. Farley himself did my ink. And as for you, Your Majesty, even the glockiest duffer in your outfit would point the finger from a mile off.”

“The Rams know us all,” said Chevie.

Otto Malarkey stroked sheaves of his long hair from root to tip. “Not all of us, they don’t.”

It took a second for the penny to drop, but when it did the Irish butler actually hooted in surprise and slopped some of his beloved brandy on the rug.

“Me? You want Missus Figary’s only son to venture into a den of maniacal thugs and pirates? Michael Figary, raised on buttermilk and scholarly discourse, in amongst the muck snipes and gutterflies, is it? Well, you can blow that idea right out of your head.”

“So you can,” Chevie added.

She couldn’t help herself.

Things that shouldn’t happen do happen. Things that should happen don’t. It’s a maze in a minefield on a fault line.

—Professor Charles Smart

C
olonel Clayton box.

The Blessed Colonel.

A god who walked the earth.

But he hadn’t always been. Once upon a nonanointed time, there had simply been Clay Box, a kid from Texas who grew up surrounded by men with big guns and women with smaller ones tucked into their purses, because you never knew when the Second Amendment might need to be upheld. Clay’s father, Clayton Sr., had taught him to shoot a .22 rifle when he was eight years old, and the boy was shooting a Competition Pro model by the time he was twelve. Pop Box was overjoyed to find that his son had a real passion for sharpshooting. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Young Clay did not have a passion for shooting, or anything else for that matter; the reason he was so proficient at putting rounds through the bull’s-eye was that he treated the entire procedure as a mathematical equation. He was completely dispassionate, and when he shot, it was almost as if he was watching himself from above, considering the challenge, adjusting his scope, factoring range and wind speed. For Clay, marksmanship was no different than skinning a frog in biology. The important thing was efficiency. Winning a ribbon meant little to young Clay, but losing it because of some lack of efficiency would have infuriated him beyond words.

The only thing or person that Clayton actually loved was his mother, Nancy. He had often asked himself why he felt so strongly about his mother and not about his father or TV, but he could never find an answer that satisfied him.
Perhaps I came from her and so she is part of me, and the closest I can come to loving myself is to love her.

Clayton had no interest in making friends, but he did accept a young Hispanic neighbor, Luis Chavez, as a companion, as the boy was desperate for a buddy and willing to do whatever Clayton suggested in order to strengthen their bond. He had no way of knowing that Clayton valued him about as much as he did the frogs from biology.

Clayton’s suggestions included hiking out to the scrublands with their rifles and shooting at rabbits and buzzards. Real-world shooting helped Clayton refine his technique and adapt to the unexpected. He felt not a shred of remorse for littering the brush with bloody animal corpses. Those creatures had served their purpose, and they meant no more to Clay than drawings of them would.

Clayton Sr. was over the gosh-danged, star-spangled moon. His boy—HIS BOY, who folks said had a
strangeness
about him—was ripping up tournaments all over the country. He whipped that army brat Jennings Kreuger, and that snot-nosed Ivy Leaguer Holt Whitsun-Bang. The press were all over Whitsun-Bang when he won silver at the nationals; wait till they got a load of his Clay. At the last qualifiers, fourteen-year-old Clayton put a cluster of three in the bull, so tight it looked like a goddamn shamrock.

Clayton allowed his father to be happy, and he practiced smiling in the mirror so his mom would stop asking him what was the matter. And as long as his parents didn’t interfere with his development, he could let them stay alive.

It was not strange for Clayton to seriously consider killing people. He thought about it every day. And surely the ultimate point of weapons training was to kill humans. And didn’t his father support that by buying him a gun in the first place?

Clayton fired his competition weapon as often as he could over the next few years and trekked out into the wilderness for night shoots with Luis whenever possible. Pretty soon the wild critters presented no challenge and Clay felt himself losing his edge. After placing second in the prestigious Green Creek Shootout, he decided that the stakes would have to be higher.

Luis and Clay spent a couple of weeks picking off neighborhood pets, but that was tiresome, as the bodies had to be removed and buried, an arduous task that was of no benefit to Clay’s development, as far as he could see. And so one night, when Clay sent Luis into a garden to fetch the corpse of Laddie the Labrador from old Mrs. Wang’s garden, he found himself drawing a bead on his young friend and wondering whether shooting a human would affect him like books and TV said it would. Would he be traumatized, or permanently scarred, even? Clay doubted it, and almost before he knew what he was doing, he thumbed a round into the breech of his rifle, screwed an eye to the night vision sights, and shot Luis from five hundred yards.

Hell of a shot, Clay,
he said quietly, impersonating his father.
Hell of a shot.

He sat and waited for something to happen inside his brain. Hoping that he would feel something. But nothing came. Shooting a human was like shooting a paper target. He knew that now, and so the experience had been worthwhile.

When the police arrived, Clayton was sitting on the bluff, finishing a bag of Oreos he’d brought along as a snack.

The gun went off,
he said over and over again, doing the sad face he’d learned from TV police procedurals.
The gun went off.

And they had believed him, as he knew they would, for he was a clean-cut honors student, and the alternative was too terrible.

Three months later, Clayton was accepted into West Point in New York State. The army was a natural place for a boy like him and, truth be told, relationships had been more strained than usual in the Box house since Luis’s shooting, so his father was glad to see him pack his gear.

Two years and this boy will make the Olympic team,
the admissions officer told Clay Sr. and Nancy.

Nancy cried because she would miss her son terribly, but also because a part of her was relieved to have Clay and his bag of lethal tricks out of the house. Maybe now the whispers would stop.

Clay felt an unfamiliar jauntiness as he boarded the Greyhound bus for New York. There were big things ahead for him. He was certain of it.

C
AMDEN
C
ATACOMBS
, L
ONDON
, 1899

The zealot’s smile that had been pasted across Vallicose’s face since meeting Clayton Box was shaken a bit by the Blessed Colonel’s quarters. In the future, these quarters would be preserved for posterity, but they would not look like this. On the historical tour she would take, this room was undecorated except for a painting based on Michelangelo’s
Pietà
. A room that made it abundantly clear that the inhabitant cared not a jot for worldly possessions, and, in fact, Vallicose had modeled her own quarters in the academy’s officers’ wing on Box’s. No embellishments besides a miniature version of the same print. And now she found herself in an underground palace that was more opulent than even the Jax president’s residence, which was said to have carpet so deep that small dogs had gotten lost in it, and so much gold leaf that the floors had to be reinforced against the weight. Vallicose had seen a photograph taken with a spy-cam.

It was disgustingly decadent.

But this chamber was sumptuous beyond even the Palais de l’Élysée. Lavish beyond words. The individual pieces could be described, but the combined effect left the visitor overwhelmed. The walls were lined with illuminated tapestries depicting medieval Crusades to the Holy Land. The hard floor was heaped unevenly with Oriental rugs weighed down on the corners with vases veined in gold. Several chandeliers hung from the ceiling, all gleaming with electric light, their crystals casting rainbows on the walls and furniture. The gilded chairs were hand-carved and strewn with velvet cushions. Incense burned from golden pots, making the cavernous chamber with its high arches seem like some form of temple.

Box waved vaguely at the decoration. “All this. The decoration. I’m toying with it. I’m not sure if it’s a good fit for me. Gadhafi made it work. And old Saddam. Saddam spent millions on his homes. Billions. And to a lot of cultures, wealth is power. They don’t understand modesty, just can’t fathom it as a concept.” The colonel flicked one of the several dozen tassels in the room. “But if you want the military’s loyalty, then you need to appeal to their basic instincts. Traditional values: country, family, self-sacrifice.” Box tipped a jade warrior statue with his foot. “This hardly says self-sacrifice, does it?”

Witmeyer kept her face bland, unwilling to respond one way or the other.

“No, Lord Colonel,” said Vallicose, eyes respectfully downcast. “It does not.”

Box sat on the lip of his desk. “No. It doesn’t. I think humble might be the way to go for appearances’ sake. Perhaps with a holy picture.”

“The
Pietà
,” blurted Vallicose.

Box turned his striking blue eyes on her. “The
Pietà
. Yes. Son and mother together. It doesn’t get much more
family values
than that. Well done, soldier.”

“Thank you, Lord,” said Vallicose.

Box pushed out his lower jaw, then moved it from side to side, as though working out a kink. This was his
thinking
face.

“Lord,” he said finally. “You referred to me as
Lord
. That’s interesting. I can only surmise that my plan was—will be even more successful than I anticipated.”

“The Boxite Empire covers most of the globe, Lord.”

“Most?”

“France, Lord. France holds out. And parts of South America.”

Box frowned. “That is…inefficient. The Boxite Empire,
my
empire, should be more efficient.”

“The Thundercats are making headway in Normandy.”

“Thundercats?” Box did his version of a smile, which seemed more like a grimace. “Ah yes, my cartoon friends. I found that show mildly amusing. And so I must have appropriated the name for my police. Which branch are you?”

“Sister Witmeyer and I are special agents in security and counterintelligence,” said Vallicose.

Box walked around the desk, folded his lanky frame into a chair, and opened a ledger on the leather tabletop.

“Very well, my Thundercat future soldiers. I need you to tell me everything, starting with the history of that striking symbol on your coat.”

Vallicose began to talk, slowly at first, but soon the future facts flowed out so fast that Box had trouble writing them all down. When she paused to draw breath, Witmeyer took over. And as the Thundercats filled in the details, Clayton Box experienced a warmth in his chest that he rarely felt.

I am happy, he realized. I am satisfied.

When Vallicose and Witmeyer had finished describing their snapshots of the future, Box looked over what he had written.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, yes. That all sounds most efficient. Most efficient.”

Though the Thundercats could not have realized it, this was the highest compliment the colonel could have paid, and in a roundabout way, he was paying it to himself.

Box called Rosenbaum and issued some commands.

“Destroy the landing pad on Half Moon Street. I want things to stay the way they are going to be. No one comes, no one leaves.”

“Yes, Colonel. I’ll get a squad over there right away.”

“And I need death warrants written up, date sensitive, for Professor Charles Smart, who will live on Half Moon Street. And Cadet Chevron Savano, who will be a student in the Boxite Academy, which I will found after the second round of Boxstrike, apparently.”

Rosenbaum jotted down the details in a notebook.

“Method of execution?” he asked.

Box waved his hand. “Oh, at the executioner’s discretion, but both terminations must take place at Smart’s residence.”

“Discretionary, Colonel,” said Rosenbaum. “Noted.”

“I need a picture of the
Pietà
to hang behind my desk, and begin moving all this junk out of here.”

Rosenbaum could have pointed out that they were leaving the catacombs the following day, but the colonel was not fond of people questioning his orders.

“Send a cleanup crew to the Orient. I want all those bodies dumped in case they lead back to us at this crucial moment.”

“At once, Colonel.”

Box pointed at Vallicose’s coat. “And I would like this symbol, the Boxite symbol, stitched onto all uniforms.”

Rosenbaum nodded. “The dual symbolism is quite clever.”

“It is efficient,” corrected Box. “It conveys our ethos and loyalties in the minimum amount of strokes.” He bent to his ledger and was sketching the Boxite symbol when Farley entered the room, looking a little the worse for wear but a lot less terminal than he had when the Thundercats had found him in the orchestra pit.

“Colonel,” he said, “Malarkey’s bug is pinging loud and clear. He has run to his Grosvenor Square address. I would wager that Savano is with him. Let me take a small group of men…”

The colonel raised his large, bottom-heavy head from the twin waves of his ledger.

“No, Major,” he said. “I need you at the Hidey-Hole, to make the offer. The Rams know you. And Grosvenor Square is a privileged area; there will be plenty of police around. We need someone quiet and deadly. Rosenbaum, you are the sneakiest of us. Do you think Malarkey is a man you could kill?”