Ghosts of Columbia (74 page)

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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H
arlaan oakes was indeed waiting at the foot of the steps to the landing area once the Republic turbo squeaked to a lurching stop at VanBuren Field, outside of the Federal District and once we walked down the steps and into the cold misting rain. He looked at Llysette.

Her eyes were cold as she returned his glance.

Harlaan looked to me.

“No,” I said coldly. “Her life has been played with enough. She knows. You and Minister Jerome’s replacement are going to protect her even more than before. She’s going to be doing international tours, now, I imagine. A cultural ambassador, for President Armstrong.”

“You’re presuming a great deal, Johan.” He glanced back at the turbo.

“I don’t presume, Harlaan, and I don’t play games. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Have you gotten the follow-up invitation from First Counselor Cannon?” I offered a smile.

He winced slightly. “Speaker Hartpence isn’t pleased.”

“He’ll be less pleased as events unfold. The president should be happy, and that should be your concern.” I paused. “I presume you have transportation for us to the B&P station. We’re ready to go home after we’ve debriefed you.” This time I was doing the debriefing, rather than being debriefed. It felt good.

“I thought it might be something like this. I have a secure limousine.”

Two soldiers carried our luggage to the limousine, and I enjoyed that a great deal. I kept a tight grip on my datacase, although I had prevailed on the embassy to
use their duplicating equipment to make a second set of plans, now in the lining of Llysette’s luggage.

None of us spoke, not until the limousine was steaming back toward the Presidential Palace—or the B&P station on the Mall. The panel between us and the driver was closed, and Harlaan sat with his back to the front of the limousine.

I held out the flexible mesh helmet. “Do you know what that is?”

Harlaan winced, almost in spite of himself.

“I take it you recognize this. Ferdinand’s agent in Deseret was wearing it. He had orders to kill me, and probably Llysette. According to Ralston’s briefings,” I lied, “only Branson-Hay had figured out the helmets. I never had one. I only saw them once, in his laboratory, and his research was totally funded through the Spazi. They were supposed to be destroyed, as I recall, by Minister Jerome.” I pocketed the helmet.

“Johan, there could be other explanations… .” He paused. “What happened to him?”

“He’s dead, but the Deseret security chief knows he was an Austrian agent.”

“There could be a dozen explanations… .”

I waved off his words. “Now, the other thing is that there was a complete duplicate of my home SII system waiting for me in Deseret—in the hands of the Revealed Twelve. The system had to have been duplicated when the Spazi had my house under complete surveillance. Even the files were there, as well as some equipment duplicated from a hidden storage room in my house.”

“That’s a serious charge, Johan. I know the Spazi and you have not gotten on well, but that seems beyond anything anyone would expect.”

I was getting tired of his explanations. “Also, the schismatics were all armed with Austrian weapons, new Austrian weapons.”

“That would figure,” he admitted. “It’s to their interest to keep us at odds.”

“Something else of interest was a pressure switch bomb that I detonated at our house in New Bruges. Jerome wired me the next morning and suggested I leave such matters to the Spazi, but the problem is that where I detonated the bomb wasn’t visible to his observers. So how could they have known what it was that exploded? He didn’t ask, by the way—he told me.”

Harlaan’s mouth twisted.

“Needless to say, Harlaan, I’m not very happy with these events, nor would I be thrilled if I were President Armstrong, because it looks like someone wanted us both dead, with a trail back to you and the president.” I smiled. “There’s also one other small problem.”

“Oh, Johan?”

“There’s a very smart head of security in Deseret who is very close to the First Counselor and who won’t be very happy dealing with Minister Jerome. The First Counselor has also indicated that he would not be pleased to deal with a
government whose minister of security would support Austrian agents in Deseret.” I was elaborating slightly, but Cannon had conveyed almost that much indirectly.

“Why is that a problem?”

“Because if I were the president, I wouldn’t be very happy if the First Speaker of Deseret were to stall negotiations because of Jerome’s actions, especially given his Austrian … contacts. And the message both the president and the Speaker received this morning offers a far better option.”

“All this is surmise.”

“Come now, Harlaan,” I chided him.

“Minister Eschbach, what do you want of me? I am merely an advisor to the head of state, not a cabinet minister.”

“In practical terms, Harlaan, I want the Spazi to stop trying to eliminate me—and Llysette—whenever they think they might be able to get away with it.” I paused. Time for another push. “There’s also one other thing.”

“I’m not sure Columbia can stand one more thing,” he said disgustedly.

Llysette’s eyes narrowed, and she smiled coldly. “You have not been in Ferdinand’s prisons. You have not watched your husband sacrifice himself for his wife and his country. You, do you plan to silence me? You, do you plan to put me away for small politics? Do you wish to upset the head of Deseret? He
would
be upset, if anything happened to me.” Her green eyes were as hot as the sun, as cold as midwinter eve in New Bruges, and as deadly as when she had held a Colt-Luger to my forehead.

Harlaan’s forehead beaded sweat, and he wiped it. “I can’t promise anything.”

“Harlaan,” I said gently, “you don’t have to promise. Just do what needs to be done. Now, there is one other matter. I’m working out some arrangements with FrancoPetEx.”

“Yes.”

“It appears that there is some New French interest in Columbia becoming more energy-independent. Through some personal contacts, of the type not available to Minister Jerome, I have finalized the agreement.”

“What did you agree to?”

“For services already rendered in Deseret, once they are confirmed officially, I will receive the entire plans, specifications, and design drawings, including proprietary technology, of a stage-three Saint synthetic fuel plant.”

“What services?” Harlaan asked tiredly.

“The murder of Ferdinand’s agent among the Revealed Twelve.”

Harlaan winced again. “Just how many bodies did you leave behind this time, Minister Eschbach?”

“None that will ever be attributed to Columbia. That’s all that counts, isn’t it?”

“You will do what is necessary,
n’est-ce pas?
” asked Llysette, a chill smile on her lips.

The president’s advisor shrugged tiredly. “Have events left me much choice?”

“No.”

“
Non.
”

“When can I promise delivery of those plans?” Harlaan asked after a time.

“When the Spazi situation is resolved,” I said. “I don’t think my contacts would feel comfortable with Minister Jerome’s attitude or position.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Minister Eschbach.”

I shook my head. “You and the president set the price when you drafted us. It’s only fair that it be paid.”

“This is going to change everything,” he mused.

Even Harlaan didn’t understand exactly how much, and I wasn’t about to tell him. After all, the journey is the fun, not the destination. Death is always the eventual destination, so there’s no point in hurrying the trip.

I smiled at Llysette and leaned back. She put her head on my shoulder, and the faint scent of her, and Ivoire, surrounded me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I
glanced out the kitchen window into the darkness of Saturday night. Less than three months had passed since Llysette had given a recital attended by the Deseret concertmeister, and our lives had changed dramatically.

Hartson James—the TransMedia mogul who’d been entranced at the Presidential Art Awards dinner—had indeed plugged Llysette and Dan Perkins’s disk, and it continued to sell briskly in Columbia. The indications were that the trustees of Vanderbraak State University would grant Llysette tenure at their next meeting, and Llysette had three upcoming concerts scheduled—one in New Amsterdam and one a week later in Philadelphia and, of course, the opening of the spring season in St. George in Deseret. The guarantees for each were triple her annual income from teaching.

There were a few more gowns in her closet and quite a few more dresses, but the Haaren remained in the music room because “a good instrument it is, and given with love.” And she was paying for our trip to Saint-Martine.

I could accept that.

Harder to accept was that Llysette had suddenly become as well-off as I, and shortly would become very well-off, I suspected, from what I saw through my activities as her de facto business manager—with Eric’s assistance. My former brother-in-law’s legal advice had also been most helpful.

Hartson James had recently written about the possibility of using an Irish subsidiary as the vehicle for marketing the disk in Austro-Hungary, and if anyone could work those angles, I suspected the media magnate could. I also suspected that the royalties on a good-selling disk in a market of over 200 million people would be considerable.

“Johan, I have been thinking.” Llysette slipped up behind me and put her arms around my waist.

“Yes?”

“So skeptical you sound.”

I laughed.

“Was it not strange that the deputy minister, he committed suicide so soon after your return?”

“Do you really think so?” I asked. ,

“Suicide, it was not.
Non
?”

“No,” I admitted. “Not from what I know about the Speaker and the president.” Jerome’s “suicide” had made it very simple for them; it had all been the deceased Spazi chief’s fault. If I hadn’t pressed, though, I would have been the corpse … and possibly Llysette, in some terrible “tragedy.”

“Was he not the one who sent the bomb?”

“I think so.” I looked out the window. Bruce was a little late.

“Did he not work with the agents of Ferdinand?”

“He slipped them some information about us, and that sort of thing doesn’t set well even in the Federal District, not at that high a level. There’s no deniability.”

“Why did he dislike you so much, Johan?”

“Because spymasters dislike anyone who knows their operations and is not under some control and because Jerome was too young. He took my actions personally.”

“You think Minister Oakes, he will do better?”

“At least, Harlaan understands both sides of the fence, and can operate as a bridge between the Speaker and the president. The Speaker wasn’t happy about it, but given Jerome’s indiscretions, he preferred it not become public, and accepted the president’s compromise. Since Harlaan never wanted the position …” I shrugged. “The synthfuel plans confirmed that Jerome’s approach was too paranoid for this new and changing world.”

The world changed more slowly than our lives, but changes were coming. FrancoPetEx was actually talking about a joint venture on the first Columbian synthfuel plant—designed to convert northlands natural gas into kerosene—and with those kinds of cooperation between the North American nations, Ferdinand’s rhetoric had toned down. I snorted to myself. All that meant was that the Austro-Hungarians would expand southward, rather than westward.

As the flapping of Bruce’s Olds ragtop preceded the venerable steamer up the drive, I stopped mental philosophizing and hugged Llysette. We watched Bruce for
a moment while the snowflakes swirled around him. He extracted a large box from the passenger side, then went to the door and opened it.

“Greetings and congratulations!” Bruce shook off the scattered snow and stamped his feet. “And happy something.” He extended the enormous box, then grinned. “This should go in the music room … for now.”

So we followed him there, after I checked the oven to make sure the green bean casserole wouldn’t overbrown.

He opened the box and extracted a small box that looked like a miniature difference engine, with two disk slots. Then came two DGA speakers, relatively expensive, followed by a scanner. “There!”

“It is … what?” asked Llysette.

“You had mentioned the problem with accompanists for students.” Bruce beamed. “This solves that problem for practice, at least. You use this to scan the music, and then you can set whatever modifications to the tempo that you need. I figured that you need to stop at any time, too, given what I know about students, and this little gadget here”—he pointed to another little box with a stick—“lets you stop and back up to wherever you like.”

“Now, I know there’s no substitute for a real accompanist for performing, but this might help with practicing and with students.”

Llysette looked at the equipment, half-bewildered, half-bemused.

I drew Bruce aside. “How much … I mean … this was scarcely inexpensive.”

“Johan,” and Bruce smiled at me. “This is my treat. I get to solve a problem in a positive way and see a pretty woman smile.”

I also understood what he wasn’t saying, that things had changed and that we had to be equals, that he was no longer, if he ever had been, merely a contract employee.

“Fair enough.” I paused. “Just a moment. I’ll be right back.”

Bruce’s brows furrowed before I headed down to the cellar. Let them.

I brought back up six bottles.

“You liked the Sebastopol. Take these with you.”

“I couldn’t.”

I got to grin. “If we’re truly friends and not just business partners, then I get to give things, too.”

He smiled back. “It’s been a long time.”

And it had been, in so many ways. Then, I had to run to the kitchen because something was overcooking, but that was life, too.