The Company of the Dead (33 page)

He dismissed her from the office with a wave.

A guard was waiting for her outside the room. Still reeling from the meeting, she allowed herself to be ushered into a waiting elevator.

Webster keyed a switch at his desk console. A portion of the wall behind him slid open.

Agent Williams entered the room. He was holding a transcript of the conversation.

“Did you get everything?”

Williams nodded.

“What do you make of it?”

“Are you testing
me
now, sir?”

Webster examined the tobacco stains on his palm and wiped them off with a cloth. He said, “They expect melodrama and I hate to disappoint. Did she take the memo?”

“Yes, sir. And left a fairly decent facsimile of it behind in case we checked. She must have learned something in Evidence Response.”

“I should hope so.” Webster eyed the transcript in Williams’ hands. “What do you think?”

“She has the makings of a decent analyst, sir, but that’s not why you signed her up.”

“No, it’s not. Make sure it’s no secret that she’s attached to the case. Let’s capitalise on the blunders of New York. I want him to know she’s looking for him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Williams backed out of the office.

Webster lit up another cigar and permitted himself a smile. He was looking forwards to his next meeting with Assistant Director Kennedy.

Malcolm felt the bulk of the envelope clasped between her fingertips and became uncomfortably aware of the memorandum she had taken from Archives, scratching against her thigh.

The guard left her by one of the basement offices. Within, a bored duty officer, seated with his feet crossed on the edge of his desk, glowered at her over the top of scuffed shoes.

She said, “I’m here to sign on.”

“I’m just about done here, miss. Can we do this in the morning?”

She held the envelope out.

“Honey, this had better be good.” He rose from his desk languidly. “You anxious to get started with your clerical duties?”

He snatched the envelope from her grasp and returned to his station. He leaned back in his chair, eyeing her with irritation as he slit the letter open with a penknife. Scanning the contents, he rose from his chair with a start. “Jesus, ma’am, I mean, sorry, Agent, I mean ...
Christ
.”

He said “Agent” like he meant it. He walked over to a cabinet that stood against the back wall. He opened it and inserted a key in its rear panel. He slid the panel open and withdrew a copy of the dossier she’d formulated two days earlier. He handed it to her along with another sealed package. He issued her with a standard nine-millimetre Dillinger and two boxes of ammunition. He punched her ID into one of the computer terminals and assigned her a new watchword.

“100364, Guinevere. This gives you Level B clearance. Only the director and the President have higher.” There was no mention of Joseph. “Sign here, please.”

The names on the register above her own were a who’s who of senior Bureau personnel.

“Welcome to the major leagues, Agent Malcolm. Welcome to Project Avalon.”

By the time she returned to her own office it was early evening. She cleared out her desk, leaving her open cases heaped in a pile in her out-tray. She drove home in the rain.

Reaching the relative safety of her own kitchen, she made herself a coffee and opened the package, scanning the documents twice before replacing them, along with the memorandum.

Camelot. Stronghold of Arthur Pendragon, where knights inspired by ideals of courage and honour held vigil. Avalon. Arthur’s final resting place. Webster’s perverse coda to Joseph’s schemes.

I thought you were better than this, Joseph.

She packed her bag and waited for the phone to ring.

Shine and Rose had reached Quebec airspace only to discover that their scout plane had become part of a fleet of aircraft that had been re-routed to Jean Lesage International airport in the wake of the Berlin incident. They’d circled the skies above the city for more than an hour before finally receiving permission to land.

While mechanics scoured their plane, a black sedan swerved off the tarmac and headed directly towards them. The back of the hangar was dark, thrown into deep shadow by the oncoming headlights. Shine didn’t think twice.

There was an emergency exit by one of the workbenches. They gained the terminal by a service entry, their flight jackets passing for crew uniform. There they found themselves caught in the squeeze of a shocked and hostile crowd. People swarmed the check-in counter or sat with their faces in their hands while security officials pressed their way back and forth.

Shine nudged Rose and pointed to the flight board, saying, “No one’s going anywhere tonight.”

Rose hailed a cab. By the time they arrived at the hotel, they resembled any other Confederate travellers. While Rose reached for the first of many beer bottles, Shine turned on the television. He watched Prussian tanks clank across a rubble-strewn Brooklyn Bridge. A woman pressed her charcoal-stained bundle into the camera’s lens. New York smouldered.

Rose had apparently made some wordless pact that involved emptying the bar fridges in both their rooms. Each time he appeared he had a fresh glass of liquor in his hand, a divination at his moist lips.

“World’s gone to hell,” he said. Watching a fly make its way sluggishly across the french windows, he added, “That’s us, boy. Nowhere to turn, and nowhere to run.”

Shine couldn’t muster a single emotion beyond frustration.

Tension manifested itself in the small things. He hungered between meals only to pick at his food, and found it harder and harder to tolerate Rose’s banter. He kept to himself, and lost hours trying to book a flight south. He checked the train stations and the bus depots. Nothing was running. The Canadian border was locked down.

With nothing else at hand, he slept.

One minute he was back in the scout plane, roaring out of the
Shenandoah’s
hangar. The next, he saw Kennedy and Lightholler walking the dust of an untravelled road while behind them the wreckage of a plane glowed. Hardas and Morgan were flying west over the Atlantic towards an ever-receding sanctuary.

He awoke at dusk, stared at the television, and was stunned when Kennedy’s face filled the screen. It gave way to granular pictures of Morgan and Hardas in rapid succession. Then Morgan and Kennedy were on a street near the Lone Star, caught mid-stride, running. The shots were blurred. They were both wearing long grey coats.

Are they back in New York?

Shine upped the volume.

“...wanted in connection with the murder of eight men. They may be associated with radical factions of a German splinter group, though the German embassy offered no comment as to...”

Eight deaths? Shine could only account for five.

“...are believed to have passed through Quebec City within hours of the attack. If you see these men, please notify local authorities immediately. Citizens are urged not to approach...”

There was something about the images that didn’t gel. The angles seemed wrong. He’d taken Morgan and the major down to the Lone Star himself that day.

The photos were fakes. They had to be.

Webster
.

The door to Rose’s suite was unlocked. Shine cracked it open to find him sprawled on his bed, asleep. A bottle lurked near his open palm, yielding a dribble of red on the muslin. Shine placed a stack of thousand-dollar bills carefully on the bedside table.

He took a cab back into town. He returned to the airport. He purchased a brown pinstriped suit and a full-length coat of darker brown that he buttoned to the lapels. He watched the departure times flicker. A clock above the display ticked away the minutes but it might have only been measuring the regular movement of its own hands across its bland white face.

He turned away. A television mounted on the wall flashed its images mutely. Glimpses of a vast cloud, pierced by sprouts of red flame and topped by the shells of burnt-out towers. The image was replaced by earlier footage of the
Kamikaze
floating above a Berlin reborn. A city where countless buildings held countless people. They still lived on the screen; breathed and went about their business. Was it possible that somewhere, even now, caught in time, they were still breathing?

He wondered how many people might be staring at a television screen, thinking the same thought right now. Wishing for the magical words that might send the airship sailing away into some better future, or bring everything back as it was.

He said, “Red Rock.”

Nothing happened.

Even though he’d paid off Rose, there was more than enough money in his wallet to pick any destination on the board. There were no flights to the Union, of course. And all Confederate flights had been cancelled or re-routed east via Bermuda. Fly west and all points beyond Vancouver led to Japanese territories. Fly west and keep flying, past Bermuda, and another world lay in wait. A world where Nevada was just a yellow smudge on the map.

That wasn’t an option.

He felt the eyes of a security guard wash over him. Shine was black, but he was well dressed. He might have been a thief or he might have been a diplomat. It looked like the guard favoured the latter. There wasn’t any trouble.

He gave the board a final glance and walked towards the exit. There was a bench outside, along the road, sheltered by an awning that kept the worst of the wind at bay. It was just shy of ten o’clock. The last flight of the evening departed in ninety minutes.

Bermuda
, he decided. Bermuda and then back south.

He heard a cough and someone behind him drawled, “Hey, boy, where you runnin’ to?”

Diamond Shoals Lookout was less than fifteen nautical miles west, by Hardas’s reckoning; Cape Hatteras was another fifteen from there. Beyond the sandy islands of the Outer Banks and across the still Palimco Sound lay the breadth of North Carolina.

It was early evening and the boat they sailed was a dim silhouette on darkening seas.

Morgan, near-delirious with exhaustion and morphine, sat hunched by the
Parzifal
’s engines and listened. Hardas and Newcombe were talking, two shadows by the boat’s wheel in the burgeoning dusk. Their words were hammered into nothingness by the engine’s insistent clamour.

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Or so they say.

Fingers of the sun’s last light smeared the horizon in daubs of burgundy-blue.

The wine-dark sea.

Morgan sat and listened. The ocean, churned and channelled through the ship’s propellers, spoke to him. If there were no sea there would be no message, just the dry scream of spinning metal. If there were no boat, there would just be the gentle slap of wave upon wave, as it had been since the Deluge.

And I need to sleep.

He couldn’t forget the frenzied escape from the
Shenandoah
, just two days earlier. The setting sun of New York behind them, lost like Atlantis beneath the waves. The dark skies above and the dark seas below, until the first glow of the German flotilla greeted them; a glittering crucifix that resolved into a carrier’s flight deck.

They’d arrived aboard the
Prince Bismarck
as refugees. A lengthy interview between the carrier’s chief officer and Hardas, coupled with the
Luftwaffe
’s success over Manhattan, elevated them to the status of tentative allies.

The following morning they’d been given a tour of the ship, and watched as a flight of planes catapulted skywards to deliver fresh supplies to New York’s new masters. There was a fuzz of cloud on the horizon, and everywhere the security of metal and concrete and men going about their business in disciplined celebration. The battle seemed far behind them, and Berlin’s destruction was too terrible to grasp, so they had watched and joked and laughed for no reason Morgan could fathom, save perhaps that they’d spent an evening amongst the dead to wake with the living.

Their scout had been secured in one of the hangars. They were given restricted access to most of the carrier but had no way off-ship. “SentCon Three”, Hardas had said. No civilian flights, in or out, until the Germans stood down.

Sentinel Condition Three. Level one was standard for all fleet ships at sea; two was employed in war games and police actions, as when the Germans had dealt with the Haitian revolt in 1997. Four was full-scale war; five was theoretical—the deployment of tactical atomic weapons, which, of course, officially did not exist.

Later that day, heralded by the distant sound of thunder, the morning’s fuzz formed a canopy of grey. The last of the supply planes returned and they’d taken a mauling. A fresh squadron of Japanese Zeroes—rerouted from the West Coast—had caught them over Long Island. Despite the setback, however, it appeared as though the gods still smiled upon Germany. Aeolus had thrown up a curtain of cloud, low and thick, over the entire battle group, whilst Poseidon remained at rest, his murky waters surging gently, a mild chop against their hulls.

Hardas suggested that it might be worth checking the scout’s cargo hold to see if any of their belongings had survived the flight. He led Morgan below deck, and when they were alone he assessed their situation.

“Clouds won’t stop the radar,” he said. “But in this soup, no one’s going to fly close enough to do us any harm.”

The rest of the German battle group was approximately one-hundred-and-fifty nautical miles due south, he said, and steaming towards them. It was commanded by Admiral Merkur, the officer who’d been present at Hardas’s
Titanic
salvage. Merkur had at his disposal three troop ships brimming with Confederate marines, along with two carriers of his own. Four carriers would make this fleet the most powerful to sail the Atlantic since the European War. Hardas explained that with eighty-five aircraft and about five thou crew apiece, the carriers were deployed worldwide in support of German interests and commitments from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea.