Ghosts of Columbia (7 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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“Someone seems to have looked out for me.”
“No one that we know of,” vanBecton said blandly.
“Perhaps it was fortuitous.” I offered another shrug. “Murders occur, but rarely are they openly investigated by the Spazi. That was just obvious enough to show your interest.”
VanBecton steepled his fingers together. “A nice touch, I do believe. I trust that it will make Doktor duBoise more reliant upon your protection.”
I didn’t have to force a frown. “I doubt that you are paying expenses merely to encourage Doktor duBoise to rely upon me. If anything, my traveling here right after the murder would make her somewhat suspicious.”
“You will have to work to allay her fears, Doktor.” He smiled broadly, fingering the standard-issue pen.
“But of course.” I returned his smile with one equally as false.
“You can be quite convincing.” VanBecton cleared his throat before continuing. “According to Colonel Nord.”
I held my temper. “Considering my patriotism cost me my son and later my wife …”
“I am certain that Minister Reilly handled it as well as he could.”
“… and that the Spazi blocked further treatment in Vienna, treatment she wouldn’t have even needed …”
“You knew the risks. As we know, Doktor Eschbach, the Austro-Hungarians only
claim
to have an effective treatment for degenerative lung fibrosis.”
“The Health Office of the League of Nations has verified it.”
“The League of Nations also verified that General Buonoparte used no poison gas on the French strikers in Marseilles.”
I forced a shrug of reluctant agreement. Nothing I offered would convince vanBecton. He was one of the true believers, and nothing existed beyond his narrow vision of the world. In a way, his attitude reinforced my reluctant support of Ralston, though I suspected Ralston, in his indirect way, was the more deadly of the two.
“Does it really matter, Doktor Eschbach? We’re men of the world. Only perceptions count, not reality.” He smiled again.
“And what else do you want?”
“If you could trouble yourself to find out why Professor Miller was murdered, and why she wanted to discredit you—certainly in your interest—it would be helpful.”
“It’s also clearly in your interest not to have me discredited.”
“Not so much as you think, Doktor Eschbach. It could be merely embarrassing for us.”
“I so appreciate your concern. I presume I will be hearing from you again.”
“As necessary.” He stood.
I followed his example.
“I assume you know the way out.” He gestured to the rear door.
“I have been here once or twice.”
“I look forward to seeing you again.”
“And I, you.”
The narrow corridor had two one-way doors, both steelcored in steel frames, before it opened onto the main hall. The second door looked more like a closet door than one to an office. Overkill, in a way, given the guards in and around the building.
Just to make matters a shade more difficult for whoever might be following me, I retraced my path back to the Natural Resources building, except I had to show my identification to the guard on the Spazi side of the tunnel. Then I went up to my old offices on the fifth floor.
Estelle was there. She smiled as I walked in. “Minister Eschbach! It is so good to see you.” Turning to the black-bearded young man beside her, she added, “Doktor Eschbach was the subminister before Minister Kramer.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir.” He edged back ever so slightly. Clearly, he had heard of me.
“I should only be a bit, Stephan,” Estelle said brightly. “We don’t get to see Doktor Eschbach much anymore.”
“I’ll check back in a few moments.” Stephan looked at me once more before he stepped past us and out into the main hallway.
“How do you like being back in New Bruges?”
“It’s definitely a change.” I laughed. “But not so much as I’d thought. The teaching is interesting. Other things aren’t that different. What about here?”
Estelle glanced around, then lowered her voice. “It hasn’t been the same since you left. Everyone worries about whether the Hartpencers will go after them.”
“Hartpencers?”
“The Speaker put his own people everywhere—” She broke off and forced a smile as the door to the right opened. “Minister Kramer—do you remember Minister Eschbach?”
“It’s good to see you, Kenneth. I hope the job is treating you well.” I gave a half-bow.
“It has been an education,” my successor offered. “And Estelle has been most helpful.” He glanced toward her.
“I understand. Perhaps the next time I’m in the Federal District …”
They both nodded. I stepped into the corridor, then made my way to the Seventeenth Street exit. From there I took a cab up to the Ghirardelli Chocolatiers right off Dupont Circle. Llysette would enjoy some chocolates, even as a peace offering.
The cab waited, for an extra dollar, then eased through the heavy afternoon traffic in a stop-and-go fashion.
Up New Bruges Avenue, I could see the rising-sun flags where the massive Japanese embassy stood on one side of the avenue, less than two blocks above DuPont Circle. While I could not see it from the cab window, the embassy of Chung Kuo stood across from it, just as the two Far Eastern empires squared off across the Sea of Japan. I also could not see the cordoned-off section of the sidewalk where the ghosts of ten Vietnamese monks still wailed fifteen years after they immolated themselves there in protest. Still, I knew they were there, and so did the Chinese—not that it seemed to stop them. They seemed to like the reminder of the futility of protest to their endless expansion.
Although the Chinese Empire was far larger than the Japanese, even the Chinese understood that Japan was unconquerable, especially because the Japanese were fortifying every island and creeping ever closer to isolated Australia. Once the Low Countries had fallen to Ferdinand, the Chinese and the Japanese had intensified their efforts to annex the former Dutch possessions in Southeast Asia. Again, I wondered how long the Philippines would last.
It wouldn’t be in our lifetime, but what would happen when the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Austro-Hungarians finally assimilated Asia and what was left of Russia?
The cab jerked forward and around the circle, turning back onto New Bruges and thence back to the Mall and directly to the B&P station. Although I would have liked to have made some other stops, the stops would not have been fair to those people. So I caught the five o’clock to New Amsterdam.
A
fter my breakfast, exercise, and shower, I dressed and took the Stanley down to the post centre to see what had arrived in my absence.
As always on Saturday, the square was crowded with steamers, the flagstone sidewalks filled with dark-clad shoppers. I had to park over by the church and walk across the square.
“Greetings to you, Doktor Eschbach,” offered the young watch officer who had known about ghosts.
“And to you, Officer Warbeck,” I said politely enough, finally close enough to read his name plate.
He smiled politely and walked past, up toward the college, while I continued north to the post centre.
“Good day, Professor Eschbach,” offered Alois Er Recchus with a broad smile as I went up the steps to the post centre. His dull-gray work jacket was thrown open by the expanse of his abdomen, and he wore bright red braces over his gray work shirt and trousers. I hadn’t thought him the type for red, even in braces.
“Good day. I don’t see the dean.”
“She’s off to some conference in Orono. Something about the need for interlinking among women in academia.”
“Interlinking—that must be the latest term.”
Alois shrugged, smiled, and waddled down toward the hardware store. I went inside and opened my box. Besides three bills and an announcement from the New Bruges Arts Foundation, there was an invitation. The return address was clear enough: the Presidential Palace.
I closed the box, preferring to wait until I got home before opening anything. After another handful of casual greetings, I retreated to the Stanley and headed back across the river, waiting for several minutes at the bridge for a log steamer to cross.
Of course, once at home and in my study, I dropped the post offerings on the desk and opened the invitation first. It was standard enough—the envelope within the envelope, the inner envelope addressed to the honorable Johan Anders Eschbach, Ph.D. The wording was also standard:
President and Mrs. Armstrong
request the honor of your presence
at a state dinner
honoring his excellency
,
Yasuo Takayama,
ambassador of
the Imperial Republique of Japan,
Thursday, October 28, 1993,
at seven o’clock.
Répondez s’il vous plaît.
A nice gesture, certainly, and my presence might be listed as one of many in the
Columbia Post-Dispatch
, if that. The timing of the invitation indicated I was a late addition to the guest list, since it was for the coming Thursday. I didn’t have much choice about going, since Ralston had clearly had the invitation sent to get me to the Presidential Palace for further instructions. Things were moving. David would not be averse to my going, even if I had to cancel classes on Thursday and Friday. My students would certainly like the break.
I set aside the card announcing the New Bruges String Quartet’s performance
at the university for Llysette to see; their presence resulted from the dean’s infatuation with strings of any sort. After leafing through the bills, I stuffed them into the top drawer to do all at once later.
For a time, I sat behind the Kunigser desk and just looked out over the veranda into the patchy clouds in the deep blue of the fall sky. Finally I picked up the handset and dialed in Llysette’s wire number.
“Hello.” Her voice was definitely cool.
“Hello. Is this the talented and lovely Professor Doktor Llysette duBoise of the enchanting voice and the charming manner?”
“Johan. Where are you?”
“At home. Where else would I be? I took a late train and got home rather late last night—or, more accurately, early this morning. I slept as long as I could, then got up and did chores. I do have a few, you know. Then I called you.”
“Your trip to the capital? How did it go?”
“I got paid, or I will. But I’m afraid it may be a dead end. This client wants a great deal, but he isn’t really very specific.” I laughed. “I’ve told you about the type. You know, the ones who want the world, but they only say something like ‘find out what you can.’ Whatever you find is never enough. In any case, if you want to know the details, I can tell you later … assuming that you would be interested in company later.”
“Johan, I am not feeling terribly well, but it will pass—as these feminine matters do. I would be more appreciating of your company perhaps tomorrow.”
“How early tomorrow? Perhaps right after midnight?”
She did chuckle for a moment, I thought, before she answered. “Dear man … you are impossible.” She pronounced “impossible” in the French manner.
“That’s my specialty—impossibility.”
“At three, would that be agreeable?”
“Of course. Have I taken you to the Devil’s Cauldron?”
“
Mais non
. The Devil’s Cauldron—what is that?”
“That is a place up the river valley where the river has hollowed out a cauldron. They say—but I will tell you that tomorrow.”
“As you wish …” Her voice trailed off.
“Then I will see you at three o’clock tomorrow, for a drive to the Devil’s Cauldron.” I paused. “I have one other problem. Perhaps you could help.”
“And so?” The suspicion resurfaced in her voice.
“Miranda. I remember that she loaned me a book, something she thought I should read. I never did, and now I can’t remember what it was. I think Marie must have reshelved it.”
“Ah, Johan, and never in all those shelves could you find it. So polite you are … but no one would know if you kept it.”
“Alas, I would—even if I don’t remember what it was.” I laughed. “I feel rather … rather stupid. Did I ever mention it to you? I hoped I might have.”
“Non
. But outside of the music, I think—I do not know, you understand—but once she asked me to read something by a Doktor Casey, excepting he was not a real doctor.”
“An Edgar Cayce? Perhaps that was it.”
“That may have been. I do not know.”
“I thank you, and I trust you will be much improved by tomorrow afternoon.”
“I also. But also see to your own sleep, dear man.”
“That I will, even if I must sleep alone in a cold bed.”
“You will survive.”
“Cruel lady.”
“You think the truth is cruel?”
“Sometimes, and sometimes you are a truthful lady.”
“Point toujours,
I hope. Some secrets I must keep.”
“Well, keep them until tomorrow, and take care.”
“You also.”
I set down the handset and leaned back in the chair for a moment, my eyes flicking across the massive Dutch Victorian mirror set between the windows overlooking the veranda. With its overelaborate gilt floral designs and bosses, it was one of the older items in the house. I kept thinking about replacing it, but since it was literally built into the wall, I had put off undertaking such a chore, and had instead replaced the lace curtains and about half the paintings. I didn’t have to have lace in my study, and even Marie hadn’t said anything about that—but she had washed and pressed the box-pleated blue curtains.
With a head shake at what I had yet to do, I slowly got up and walked over to the bookcases, starting at the far right. I always go through things backwards. It’s faster for me that way. I tried to find a book that would suit my purpose, one that would fit the psychic mold, one that Miranda was unlikely to have had.
When I saw the title after having scanned nearly two hundred books, it didn’t exactly leap out at me:
The Other World
—
Seeing Beyond the Veil.
But I pulled it out and studied it. It was a sturdily bound book, published by Deseret Press, but not an original, written by Joseph Brigham Young, a former elder in the Church of the Latter Day Saints and later the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Church.
After leafing through
The Other World
, I decided it would do. An entire section dealt with the spirituality of music and the role of music in “piercing the veil.” While it was a gamble, the only one who was likely to call me on it was dead.
I found some brown paper in the kitchen and wrapped the book in several layers of paper, tying it carefully with twine I had to fetch from the car barn. I debated writing something on the paper, but then demurred. The whole point was not to leave the book, but to talk to young Miller and his wife.
The day was sunny, and I decided to sit on the veranda and catch up on reading. I had several potential texts to review, although I was dubious about the authors, since they had spent little time in the federal city and not that much time
dealing with the environment. I didn’t want to write a text, and the Carson text I was using was badly outdated.
Comfortably ensconced in the canvas sling chair, I struggled through thirty pages of the Edelson text, but it was too journalistic, sacrificing accuracy to a golly-whiz crusading spirit. After discarding Edelson, I wandered back to the kitchen, made iced tea, and finally walked back out to the veranda, moving my chair into the shade by the dining room windows.
The Davies text wasn’t much better. While the environmental science was good, he didn’t understand even basic Columbian politics. After forty pages, I set it aside and got more tea. Then I just sat and enjoyed the view and the scent of the fallen leaves, listening to their rustling as the light wind occasionally picked them up and restacked them.
The more I learned about Miranda’s murder, the stranger it seemed. Why would anyone murder Miranda? There could be reasons to murder Llysette, me, probably Gregor Martin, certainly Gerald Branston-Hay, and those reasons didn’t count normal jealousy, either personal or professional. It was also clear that vanBecton intended to set me up to discredit the president in the undeclared struggle between the Speaker and the president. That meant trouble and more trouble, unless I could come up with a solution fairly soon.
Could vanBecton have had Miranda murdered, just to set me up? It was possible, but who did the actual deed? I shivered. Who was on whose payroll, and why? I knew the dangers of being on Ralston’s “payroll,” although I’d never received a cent directly, just an early retirement indirectly arranged. I doubted vanBecton had known all the details—until now, when his agents certainly could have found enough to point indirectly at my involvement with the Presidential Palace. There was nothing on paper, but both vanBecton and Ralston were old enough hands to know that by the time you had real evidence, it was too late. That was my problem—if Ralston or vanBecton wanted me framed for something or out of the way, by the time I could prove it, someone would be digging my grave and Father Esterhoos would be saying the eulogy.
After a deep breath, I drank the last of the iced tea as the sun dropped into the branches of the apple tree halfway down the lawn.
After a light supper in the kitchen—cold leftover veal pie—I drove the steamer down Emmen Lane, out to the bungalow owned by Miranda Miller, noting the lights in the window. The curtains were white sheers, not the white lace of New Bruges. I pulled into the paved area beside the house next to the steamer that had been Miranda’s. Knocking on the door, the wrapped book in hand, I waited until the young, clean-shaven man I had seen at the memorial service opened the door.
“Doktor Miller? I’m Johan Eschbach. I teach in the Natural Resources Department. I saw you at the service, and I wanted to return this.” I held up the package. “I would have just left it, but since you were here, I didn’t want to slink away and leave you with something else to worry about.”
“Please come in, is it … Professor?” He stepped back.
“Technically, Doktor or Professor, but …” I slipped into the small foyer, but waited for an invitation to go farther.
“I’m Alfred.” He turned to a young woman in slacks and a cardigan sweater over a synthetic silk blouse. “This is my wife, Kristen.”
“Pleased to meet you.” I bowed. “I wish it were under other circumstances.”
“So do we,” she answered in a calm but strong voice.
“You are Miranda’s younger son?” I asked, again lifting my package as if unclear what to do with it.
“The medical doctor,” he acknowledged with a brief grin that faded almost immediately.
“She was proud of you,” I said. After a brief pause, I added, “But I am wasting your time, and I had just meant to drop this off.”
“What is it?” asked Kristen Miller.
“It is a book she had suggested I read, that I might find interesting. Something called
Seeing Beyond the Veil.”
“Mother—she was always looking for something beyond.” Young Alfred shook his head as he took the wrapped book. “I appreciate your kindness in returning the book.” He gestured toward the sofa and chairs. “At least sit down for a bit. You don’t have to run off immediately, do you?”
“No. I would have returned the book sooner, but I had to take a short trip yesterday—I do some consulting in addition to teaching. I did not think it would have been appropriate to descend on you Thursday night.” I took the couch, since it was lower and left them in the more comfortable superior position.

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