Gossamer Wing (13 page)

“
Oui,
monsieur,” the boy said, practically jumping out of his chair in his eagerness to distance himself from the frightening Coeur de Fer.

Martin smiled. It was the sort of smile that might make the angels despair. He tapped the desk with one metal finger as he pondered the tasks before him.

“Why are you here, Lady Hardison?” he whispered, tracing the outline of a feminine profile on the wooden surface. “Who are you, when you’re not pretending to be somebody else?”

* * *

THE FACTORY WAS
a wonder. Murcheson billed it as such, “Murcheson’s Modern Wonderworks.”

“The finest craftsmen in Europa or the world, if you don’t mind my saying so, Hardison.”

Dexter let the remark pass. Charlotte could tell he was impressed, perhaps not so much with the quality of the work as with its sheer scale. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of journeymen and apprentices plied their trades on the factory floors of the large complex. Woodworkers and clockmakers toiled side by side with machinists and metallurgists, all focused on producing more goods for the newly expanded European trade.

Dexter kept his thoughts on all of it to himself for the most part, though he was quick to point out at least one item of interest.

“Look, sugarplum. They’re assembling one of your curio boxes.”

A team of aproned, goggled workers hunched over a broad table, one of hundreds spread out over the vast main factory floor. As one finished assembling an intricate system of tiny gears, another inserted the mechanism into the appropriate place within the unfinished wooden framework. The completed boxes would, when activated, spring open to reveal a unique collection of drawers, compartments, spinning display surfaces. Some played music. Most had secret storage areas. All were works of art as much as craft.

“Oh, you’re right, sweetiekins! How charming they are already! Mr. Murcheson, will we see any of the finished boxes?”

“Of course, Lady Hardison,” he assured her. He kept an admirably straight face, Charlotte thought, in the face of the escalating war of endearments. “I thought Lord Hardison might be interested in seeing the ironworks first.”

They continued to another building, an enormous hangar of a structure, to see a great deal of molten metal. Charlotte could have done without that stop on the tour. Even staying on the platform near the entrance, far from the actual equipment, the heat in the forge was literally breathtaking. She tried to focus on the conversation between Murcheson and Dexter, but it quickly surpassed her comprehension when they began to discuss technical specifications and metallurgy. The reinforced leather and steel panels that turned her corset into stealthy armor hardly helped.

The spark-laden air was swimming in front of her by the time Dexter took her arm with a look of concern. “I think we should continue the tour and find something a bit cooler. The heat doesn’t agree with the Baroness.”

She leaned on his arm, grateful for the support, and reveled in the splash of cooler air once they left the demonic building.

“Time for the final stop on our review of the facilities, I think,” Murcheson said cheerfully. He waved off the assistant who had been following him throughout their tour. “I won’t need you, Tom. Just going to show them the warehouse and then back to my office. I believe I’ll be a bit late tonight, would you be a good fellow and get a message to my wife?”

When the other man had scuttled away, Murcheson nodded to Charlotte and Dexter, who followed him quickly. They walked in the direction of the warehouse, but Murcheson took a sharp turn between two buildings before they arrived, and glanced all around before opening an unobtrusive door and ushering them into what appeared to be an unused storeroom. A few boxes stood against one wall, looking like losers in a fight against nesting rodents. Beside them, a chair missing one leg leaned in a corner. The grubby window let in barely enough light to make out even that much detail.

Along the wall opposite the door, Murcheson quickly located a panel that Charlotte hadn’t even discerned in the faded gray woodwork. He pressed one hand there, opening a hidden doorway, and again ushered them through. The little space they entered was a gleaming brass frame with a floor of highly polished mahogany, and a bright lantern hanging from the ceiling. But the walls . . .

“Windows?” Charlotte stepped closer to the nearest wall and pressed her fingers to the surface, trying to peer past the glass into the darkness beyond, as Murcheson turned a key and they started to descend.

ATLANTIS STATION, BENEATH THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

DEXTER’S FIRST THOUGHT
as he saw the rock walls sliding past was a single word that carried a great weight of concern.

“Chalk?” He couldn’t keep a note of alarm out of his voice. If the station, or even this lift shaft, were built on one of the veins of chalk running across the channel floor, the last place he wanted to be was inside any of it. Chalk was notoriously unstable, and hardly suitable for building on or in.

Murcheson chuckled. “Directly adjacent, yes. But we’re far enough inland here to be clear of it. Different lithosome, you know. This is clay.”

“I see.” Dexter had known their route to the submerged base would be unconventional. But he hadn’t quite expected anything like
this
.

A million questions raced through his mind, nearly as quickly as the lift raced downward to its destination. By the time he could isolate one and begin to frame it they had arrived, coasting to a gentle landing. Dexter was amused when the lift control emitted a soft, pedestrian “ding” as the lift settled into place.

“Next leg of the trip,” Murcheson said blithely, clearly enjoying his guests’ reactions. “Hope you both have strong stomachs.”

Charlotte grimaced at Dexter behind Murcheson’s back as he led them down a tunnel carved in the native rock toward a sort of coach that resembled a giant teacup on wheels. It sat on the right-hand set of two pairs of tracks that extended down the dimly lit passage as far as the eye could see.

Dexter admired the beautiful joinery and the clever brass fittings of the vehicle as he handed Charlotte up and slid in next to her on the wide, padded velvet bench.

“Sit well back, and prepare for a bit of a lurch,” Murcheson advised. Before he climbed into the coach himself, he cranked a handle on its side. On the third rotation, a motor turned over then purred to life, vibrating the vehicle slightly. It felt like a horse, eager to leave the gate. As he secured the crank and hoisted himself to the seat, Murcheson slapped another nearly invisible panel on the wall. All along the passage, tiny green-tinted lights flickered to life below the plain gas sconces. “And away we go!”

Slowly, at first. As the motor warmed up, their speed gradually increased. Dexter tried to ascertain the specific power source, craning his neck around the little semi-enclosed cabin. There was no evident steam, scarcely any exhaust.

“Do you want a hint, Lord Hardison?” Murcheson asked after a few minutes.

Dexter wanted to smack the smug expression right off Murcheson’s face, but he wanted to know about the little tram’s engine even more. They were tripping along at a nearly frightening pace now, the gray walls of the tunnel blurring and the lights appearing as mere streaks.

Finally curiosity won out over irritation. “How?”

“Modified Stirling engine.”

“Too small,” Dexter said instantly. “Not with a payload like this.”

“Carbon-cooled cold reservoir. Increases the efficiency and allows us to reduce the size. We’re also,” he confessed, “on a gradual downhill slope. The ride back will be a bit slower, I’m afraid.”

Dexter’s fingers itched to open the tram’s carapace and examine the engine, a closed system of what sounded like almost perfectly efficient heat exchange. He had seen similar devices, but if Murcheson’s description was correct this would be more than incrementally better.

What other wonders awaited them at the end of the tunnel?

It wasn’t long, twenty minutes or so, before they started to slow, then eased to a seamless stop at the far end of the track. The walls of the tunnel were every bit as undistinguished, cold and stony as they had been on the starting end. The door at one end of the vestibule they’d fetched up in was mahogany with brass fittings, highly polished but otherwise unremarkable.

Charlotte, like Dexter, surveyed the space all around as they disembarked, her sharp blue eyes detailing every element of the scene. Her cover persona was completely gone now, the agent showing through clearly in her every wary movement and expression. She was on high alert, strung tight as a bow.

A dangerous woman, his wife. It was the first time Dexter had considered that, the darker aspects of her training. Suddenly it struck him that this tiny gamine in pale periwinkle and lace could probably kill him a dozen different ways.

It did not lessen her appeal in the slightest.

The door led to a corridor, and Dexter got a general impression of more polished mahogany, more brass and steel, and black marble underfoot. It all felt new, almost unfinished it was so free from wear. At the end of the corridor was another substantial door, and Murcheson couldn’t resist a dramatic, sweeping gesture as he opened it. “My lord, my lady . . . welcome to Atlantis Station!”

Dexter’s jaw dropped, his mind shifting and recoiling at the attempt to make sense of what he was seeing.

Big
.

“Our command center,” Murcheson said proudly as he led them down a curving flight of steps to the walkway forming the perimeter of the room. “Dug into the bedrock. It’s on an outcropping of clay, Mr. Hardison, not chalk. No worries there. The bulk of the construction was done in Brighton, then the pieces were assembled here a bit at a time. Air venting through a system that runs adjacent to the tunnel we just arrived by. Also controlled via a facility in one of my factory buildings, although the employees who maintain the system on that end believe they’re working on a cooling device for some machinery at the factory.

“The ceiling, I admit, is almost pure folly. Still it’s very impressive, wouldn’t you say, Hardison?”

“Ceiling?” Dexter looked up some thirty or forty feet to see that the ceiling, which obviously rose above the bedrock and extended up through the channel floor, was a dome of steel and glass panels. Murky and dark at this depth, the ocean above still conveyed a sense of movement, of organic life and the transmission of filtered light from above.

“Amazing.” Charlotte made no attempt to hide the fact she was flabbergasted. “I had seen reports, but I really had no idea.”

The control station was teeming with dozens of men and a few women, all obviously hard at work on tasks Dexter could not immediately identify. Their navy blue and white uniforms stood out in clean, sharp lines against the warm tones of the construction. As he watched, a youngish man separated from a group of conferring officers and joined them, taking the half-dozen steps from the main floor to the walkway in two graceful bounds.

“Mr. Murcheson, sir! And you must be Lord Hardison.”

Introductions were made and then the young lieutenant—Phineas Smith-Grenville, whose relations in America happened to know Dexter’s family quite well—led them around the room to the opposite end and another set of doors.

“Lady Hardison may find this of particular interest,” he said as he ushered them through to yet another tunnel, this one leading to a twisting flight of stairs that seemed to be taking them back to the level of the ocean floor. Or above it, Dexter realized, as the monotony of the steel paneling was broken here by regularly spaced portholes.

They passed through another door and traveled back down a bit, to get to the chamber where a dainty submersible bobbed gently in a pool of water. It took Dexter a moment to deduce that the circular pool, which was level with the floor of the chamber but walled in by a low, broad metal parapet, was actually a docking bay. Behind the craft he could make out the faint outline of the tunnel mouth through which the submersible must travel to get into the water of the channel proper.

Charlotte studied the sub closely for a moment, and said, “It’s . . . very small.” Dexter wondered about her willingness to enter the thing, but she seemed charmed despite herself by its delicate beauty and began asking questions of the technician. She showed no inclination to continue on the tour. A quarter of an hour later, the lieutenant finally left her in the technician’s care and continued along the passage to take Dexter to his own destination—a small interior room where two officers and three civilians sat arguing and puzzling over a workbench full of equipment and sketches.

Three of the four walls were covered with blackboards, on which nearly every square inch of available space was taken up with equations and more hasty sketches. A bleary white underlayer of smeared chalk dust suggested that many, many erasures had taken place since the boards had last been cleaned. The men, even the officers, appeared bloodshot and slightly bedraggled, and all of them looked up like hunted animals when their workshop door opened to admit Dexter.

“Gentlemen,” the polite young lieutenant began, “May I present Baron Hardison?”

When he got no reaction but a room full of blank stares, Dexter cleared his throat. “You may know me as Mr. Dexter Hardison.”

And they were off.

* * *

“ALL WE KNOW
of Dubois,” Murcheson told Charlotte, gesturing to the thick portfolio he’d slid across the desk toward her. He’d come back to the submersible bay after seeing Dexter settled, and pulled Charlotte into his office for the briefing she’d been expecting since her arrival. “In addition to what you already have, of course. Three months ago, we intercepted some correspondence between Dubois and Maurice Gendreau, who’s been in voluntary expatriation on St. Helena since the end of the war. It’s almost laughably obvious that the letters are in code, though we haven’t worked it out yet. They’re far too bland and patently harmless to be real. Especially not given what we know of Gendreau’s politics, and what we’ve long suspected about Dubois’s.”