Ghosts of Columbia (47 page)

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Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia
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Bruce eased the door closed. “We do take certain precautions here, but they don’t work against personal eavesdropping, only against electronics.”
I offered a faint smile as he opened the top of the box and extracted two silver cylinders.
“These are a pen and pencil set. They work, but I won’t guarantee how well or how long.” He lifted a squared-off hand calculator from the box and set it on the desk beside the silvered pen and pencil. “This won’t do as much as its size says it should, but it does operate.” He smiled wryly. “You put them in the jacks at the bottom and point. The delete key is the activator, but it won’t work that way unless both pen and pencil are in place. It uses standard batteries, but they’re only good for two uses, three at the outside. I’d suggest bringing some spares.”
Llysette shivered, and I understood why. I felt like shivering myself. Firearms, bad as they were, felt cleaner, but there was no way I could carry firearms into Deseret. I squeezed her hand.
“Now this… .” Bruce lifted the electric hair blower and bowed to Llysette. “Rechargeable batteries in the base, and they’ll recharge if you just plug it in. The batteries only work for the special function.” He offered a wry smile. “When the temperature switch is down to the ‘C’ and pushed in and the blower is on low, when you hold the blower trigger you’ll get the de-ghosting or spirit removal effect.” He looked at me. “I thought your bride should have some protection also, something … appropriate.”
Llysette could handle a Colt-Luger. I still had several white scars on my shoulder and back to prove it. So I had no doubts that she could handle Bruce’s blower/de-ghoster. “Thank you.”
“I also,” offered my soprano, with a warm but ginger smile.
“Think nothing of it.”
“You haven’t lost your touch,” I said.
“There are definitely times that I wish I had, Johan.”
“Me, too—except about that time, I find I’d be dead if I had.” I counted out the bills, eight hundred dollars’ worth. “I hope that’s enough.”
Bruce gave a crooked grin. “So do I. I’d rather not deal with your insurance.”
“I’d rather you didn’t have to either.”
“When do you leave?” Bruce asked as I lifted the box.
“Not for another few weeks. Right now, it looks like we’ll be there a bit over a week. Llysette’s doing three performances and giving some master classes.”
Bruce inclined his head to Llysette. “I wish I could be there to hear you.”
“You are kind.”
“No … selfish. One doesn’t get to hear the greatest diva of the generation often.”
Llysette blushed, but she needed and deserved the praise—it wasn’t flattery, but praise.
“This could lead to closer engagements,” I pointed out.
“I certainly hope so.”
I looked down at the box. “Thank you … again. You’ve been a great help when no one else cared.”
“We aim to please.”
I let it go. Bruce didn’t seem to want to accept my real gratitude, and I’d have to find another way.
The sun was still shining and the white clouds still puffy as I carried the SII box out to the Stanley and slipped it into the trunk. Then I seated Llysette, and then myself, lighting off the steamer.
“To Borkum … shopping and a good meal.”
She smiled, and for a time we pushed away the implications of the box the steamer carried.
O
n Tuesday, we boarded the early-morning Quebec Express in Lebanon and rode it into New Amsterdam. We had an hour wait there, spent mostly at a corner table at a so-called café off the main station floor, before we boarded the Columbia Special to the capital. At least, I hadn’t received any more of the ominous clips and no one had attempted any more burglaries, but I had few doubts that the respite was more than temporary.
The Special went to the Baltimore and Potomac station just off the new Mall, and even with stops, it was less than seven hours after leaving Lebanon that we stepped out into the seemingly perpetual drizzle that covered the Federal District in late fall.
“That is?” asked Llysette, pointing to the mist-shrouded marble obelisk to the west end of the Mall—almost on the edge of the Potomac.
“The Washington Monument. They finished it five years ago, but it was started more than a hundred and forty years ago.”
My soprano shook her head. It was hard for me to believe, too, especially since the Congress was talking about a memorial to Jefferson. Why did they think that would be any different?
The drizzle was warm, steamy, unseasonably hot, even in the former swamp that was the Republic’s capital, and I wiped my forehead with the cotton handkerchief. Llysette appeared cool and composed in her pale green suit.
“You like it warmer.”
“For me, it is pleasant, like Paris.”
I glanced around for an electrocab, finally managing to flag down a dark blue one, bearing the hand-painted logo of “Piet’s Cabs.”
The driver opened the door. “Where you bound?”
“Upper northwest. Spring Valley—Forty-seventh and New Bruges.”
“That’s a minimum of five.”
“It’s usually four,” I pointed out.
“Cab commission finally upped the rates,” said the ginger-bearded driver with an embarrassed smile.
I showed a five. “I won’t argue with the commission.”
“Me neither, sir.” He stepped out and opened the trunk, and I slid the two valises inside—and the long hanging bag that held Llysette’s concert gown.
The driver didn’t talk as he headed west on Constitution.
“That,
qu’est-ce que c’est?
” Llysette pointed to the heavy-walled marble monstrosity that the Smithsonian had built to house the Dutch Masters—the remnants of the collection of Hendrik, the former Grand Duke of Holland, yet another casualty of Ferdinand VI’s armies in their sweep across the Low Countries. When I’d been subminister, I’d objected to the design, but since Columbian Dutch, the oil people, had paid for the building, the Congress had ignored my objections.
“That’s the Dutch wing of the Smithsonian Gallery. I’ve avoided it—call it a protest, not that mine have made much difference.”
“A French gallery is there?”
“They have some van Goghs and Degas, but no one volunteered to build a gallery the way Columbian Dutch did.”
“Always the money.”
That was the way it seemed to me also.
The cab turned onto New Bruges Avenue and headed northwest, north of most of the official sector of the Federal District, past the Ghirardelli Chocolatiers and around Dupont Circle.
We passed up Embassy Row, beginning with the huge structures belonging to Japan and Chung Kuo, facing each other across New Bruges Avenue, and I pointed
out each, including the still cordoned-off section of sidewalk where the ghosts of ten Vietnamese monks still wailed—fifteen years after they had immolated themselves there in protest. The Chinese could see the ghosts, especially at twilight—but their continued presence hadn’t changed anything. In fact, I wondered if the Chinese secretly enjoyed such a reminder of the futility of protest to their endless expansion.
I swallowed as the cab eased around Ward Circle and into Ward Park beyond the seminary. Within a half-dozen blocks, the driver turned off New Bruges and onto Sedgwick.
“The houses … they are large.”
“Yes.” The upper northwest in the Federal District reeks of money, with tile or slate roofs, manicured lawns, trimmed hedges, sculpted gardens, and shadowed stone walks. Once the upper northwest had been far enough from the capital itself that it served as an interim retreat for Speaker Calhoun, but now such retreats were farther, much, much farther, from the Capitol building.
The Tudor house set on a large corner plot was Eric and Judith’s. They’d walled the entire back of the property, not long after Elspeth’s death and my notoriety in the Nord case. Their car barn had space for three steamers, and the house was thoroughly alarmed.
“This the place, sir?”
“It is.” After I reclaimed the bags, I tipped the driver three dollars. “It’s a long ride back.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Judith opened the Tiffany-paneled front doors even before we were halfway up the walk. She’d cut her silver hair short, but she still wore a blue suit, as she often did, from what I recalled.
“Llysette, this is Judith.”
“I am pleased to see you, and I am so glad you could stay with us.” Judith sounded glad, but I could sense Llysette’s wariness. “You are lovely, and that’s without singing a note.” As always, Judith’s words were genuine and warm, as were her gray eyes, and her smile. “As Johan may have told you, I remember hearing you once in Paris, just before the fall of France. You were at the Academie Royale back when I did my fellowship there—one of the last ones before Ferdinand.”
“Few remember those years.”
“Few want to,” answered Judith, half warmly, half ironically. “It was not our finest hour.” She gestured toward the dark blue carpeted circular staircase. “I’ll lead the way. Johan was the first guest, and you two are the first couple we’ve had since we remodeled.” With a nod, she turned and slipped up the stairs past the large crystal chandelier that hung in the two-story front foyer. We followed her to the guest rooms at the end of the hall, overlooking the front garden.
Llysette glanced from the triple-width bed with the green satin brocade spread to the pair of upholstered chairs that flanked the wall table and then to Judith. “This …
c’est magnifique.
”
She was right; it was. Eric and Judith had always exhibited good taste, and they’d made enough to be able to indulge that taste.
“We like our guests to be comfortable, and I especially wanted you to feel welcome.”
“Pourquoi—”
“Because you and Johan deserve happiness.” Judith inclined her head toward me, ever so slightly. “He has had to worry about too much for too long. From what little I know, so have you. I am so glad you will be singing tomorrow. I hope you are.
“The occurrence is strange.” Llysette shrugged, glancing toward the window hangings that matched the spread, then back to Judith. “But a singer must sing when she can. These things we do not choose, and …”
“After your engagement in Deseret, you will be able to choose where you sing,” the older woman predicted.
“One would hope.” Llysette’s smile was skeptical. “We will see.”
“Would you like some
café,
or tea, or chocolate? Or some wine?”
“The wine I would like, but that must come later.” Llysette smiled, more warmly.
“Chocolate?”
“Something warm … but tea, perhaps?”
“Tea I can do. You’ll want chocolate, Johan?”
“Of course.”
“If you want to unpack or get settled, I’ll be downstairs. Just come down when you’re ready.” With another smile, Judith turned and departed.
“Little she holds back,” offered Llysette.
“They have been supportive when few were.” I opened the closet so that Llysette could hang out the gown she would wear the next night. Then I hung up my own suits—one for meeting with Oakes and the formal wear for the dinner.
Once we hung up anything that would wrinkle, or wrinkle more, we went downstairs.
The chocolate and tea were set out in the nook off the kitchen—sunny there when the sun actually shone in the Federal District, but not under the gray drizzle. The old bone china teapot was also there, steam rising from its spout.
In addition to the two pots, Judith had set out the butter biscuits I was too fond of and
galettes.
Llysette took a
galette
with her tea. I had two biscuits.
“Good this is,” murmured Llysette after a sip of tea, but I could see her eyes strayed toward the parlor and the silent Steinbach.
“Something hot is good after traveling, especially when it’s so damp.” Judith looked at Llysette. “Have you been in the Federal District recently?”
“Mais non …
not since first I arrived in Columbia, and little do I remember.”
“I doubt it has changed much.”
I agreed silently, taking another biscuit. Nothing happened quickly, not in a
city that had taken more than a century to finish the monument to the general who had freed the colonies. “The buildings all look the same.”
“They are talking about moving the railway station on the Mall,” Judith ventured.
“Again? Where would they put it?”
“They’re talking about refurbishing and enlarging Union Station.”
“That would take some doing.” I reached for another biscuit.
“Johan… .” Llysette paused, and I knew what she was thinking. I’d gulped down four biscuits in as many minutes. But that was because I was nervous. I always ate too much when I was stressed or worried—another reason why I needed exercise.
“I know.” I grinned.
Llysette smiled faintly. After a moment, her eyes went toward the sitting room, and she shifted her weight in her chair and set down her cup.
I got the message, and since Llysette wouldn’t ask, I did. “Could Llysette use the Steinbach in the sitting room to practice a bit?”
“Oh … I should have offered. Of course.” Judith turned back to face Llysette. “Let me show you. You are welcome to practice anytime you wish. Anytime,” she emphasized with a smile. “You can close the doors … or not, as you please. We do miss the music. Since Suzanne left, no one plays. The piano is really hers, but she has no place for it, and we keep it tuned.”
The two headed for the parlor, and I let them, listening as Judith tried to make Llysette feel welcome.
When Judith returned, after closing off the doors so that we wouldn’t distract Llysette, I poured more chocolate. “Would you like some more?”
“A half a cup. Let me check dinner. Eric should be here before long.”
I poured the chocolate and waited, listening to Llysette. Even through the doors, she sounded magnificent. She’d finished a run-through of both pieces before Judith slipped back into her seat.
“I hope that didn’t get too cool.”
“It’s fine.”
“I appreciate your trying to make her feel welcome… .”
“She’s beautiful. She plays well, too,” Judith added as her eyes went toward the closed French doors.
“She’s always telling me that a singer needs keyboard skills, and she’s always bemoaning the fact that her students never want to work on the keyboard. I did get her a piano—a Haaren, nothing compared to yours.”
“You spent more than you had, knowing you.” .
I had, but … what else was new?
“Most of our students couldn’t handle the training she’s had,” said Judith. “I can tell it wasn’t easy for her.”
“No. Not much has been, and I’ve been no bargain in that department, either.”
“You’ve been hard on yourself, Johan.”
“With some reason,” I pointed out.
“You’ve never had too many options.”
I heard steps and stood as Eric entered the kitchen.
“Like the proverbial clipped coin, you’ve returned.” He held both his case and a folded copy of the
Post-Dispatch
but leaned over and kissed Judith. “You look and smell good.”
“You had a hard day, then.”
“Such a skeptical woman after all these years.”
The piano stopped. Llysette came to the parlor door, and I opened it.
“This is Eric. Eric, Llysette.”
“Johan is indeed a lucky chap.” He bowed in that charming way he had, with that boyish and disarming grin.
I reseated Llysette and poured more tea into her cup. Eric took the empty chair but did not pour himself anything.
Judith slipped out of the nook and back into the kitchen.
“It’s really amazing,” Eric continued. “Here I am in my own house, sitting across from one of the great divas of the century. I’d count myself lucky to meet her, let alone find she’s married to this … shirttail relative.”
I suspected Eric had wanted to say more but realized it might raise implications.

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