Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences (34 page)

‘Return my son unharmed immediately… face my wrath…This is your only warning… I’m a bloody lunatic.’

“OK, I added that last bit meself, but you get the point. I think you’d prefer to deal with me than him, sensible and level-headed man of action that I am. Here are your choices: accept a trade of the boy for me, or refuse, and be shocked and angry when I leave with Amboy’s junior, and you have nothing.”

Scharnusser frowned, paced slowly along a wall of books, bringing his bulky frame to rest at an unfamiliar marble bust mounted on a pillar. Bruce Campbell looked around blindly for a few seconds, then pulled the goggles back to hang at his neck.

“Mr Campbell, while you did play a role in the events of my father’s murder, I recognise that you were blameless in the act. There’s nothing to settle between us. I likewise don’t hold your Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences responsible for my twin brothers’ deaths. The guilt lies solely with Zachary Amboy. Each night, a raven flies in here and lands upon this bust, speaking my father’s name, taunting me with his death. Amboy will answer for it. His son will not be released; he will die before his own father’s eyes, when Amboy shows that he’s man enough to come here himself.”

Campbell looked directly at Kuro. “Seriously, mate. Everyone in the Americas is buggering mad, aren’t they?” The Samurai made no reply. “So Roddy, this kidnapping isn’t actually Usher business, is it? You’ve gone rogue with some personal revenge scheme? How are your superiors going to like that?”

Roderick struck the marble bust with his fist. “Enough! You have wasted my time, Mr Campbell. I shall send a courier to your ex-O.S.M. friend informing him that his son will be executed at twilight tomorrow. He can come and watch with you if he likes. In the meantime, you can rot in a cell. Samurai,” and with a wave of his hand, motioned for Kuro to take Campbell away.

Kuro bowed. The Australian locked eyes with him, but stood and allowed himself to be escorted.

Beverly was waiting outside, tendrils of blonde hair escaping from tight braids to cascade along the pale white of her neck. Campbell’s height and muscular girth loomed large over them both. His eyes immediately fell to the expanse of flesh from her collarbone to her corset. “Well, hell—”

“Can it, Agent Outback,” she said, her voice taut.

Puzzlement mingled with his charm. “Have we met?”

“Yes, two years ago in Arizona, on my uncle’s train. The day he was killed. Walk.” The three of them began down the staircase nearest the study.

“No, miss, begging your pardon, I’d have noticed you.”

“You did. You shook my hand.”

Campbell’s mouth hung agape now. “Cor, I do recall now. Blimey! From gentlewoman to hired muscle, how did that happen?” He looked at them both a moment, and his mouth dropped again. “And wait, you’re with the little guy here? My lord, really?”

Kuro blushed, but otherwise betrayed no reaction.

“Keep walking, Outback,” Beverly said. To his surprise, she looked equally flustered. “If you give us information on Amboy, you might just survive this.”

“What’s to tell that you don’t know? Retired from service a few years ago for unknown reasons, left Arizona for a little island off of Vancouver. He’s madder than a croc dentist. The O.S.M. must miss his inventions, though; I’ll give him that. As clever a clankerton as the Ministry’s wanker of an archivist. Zachary’s wagon ornithopter was a pretty amazing piece of work, before your ninja boy here and his mate blew it up on their kidnapping mission. But you should see what he’s done to his little gunboat. Hell of a ship.”

“Which would be a problem if we fought him at sea, or on his island,” Beverly said. “You’ll notice that our fortress here is five miles inland.”

“Be that as it may, you’re fools to provoke that lunatic. Especially with no government agency to leash him.”

Bruce then looked around. “Speaking of your rice-powered help here, where’s the other one?”

Kuro glanced at Beverly. After holding her gaze for a moment, he looked forward. “Enough chatter, Outback,” she said. He raised his hands in mock surrender.

They continued in silence across the compound, into a gas lit hallway lined with closed doors beneath another monastery building. The samurai’s thoughts went to Hideo’s burial mound, on the nearby hilltop where he’d taken his own life.

“All right, I can’t hold it back any longer,” Campbell said, staring at Kuro’s brass right forearm. “What happened here? Did your hand go bad?”

Kuro replied in English, without hesitation, “There was an incident in my homeland. Your Ministry colleague, Kitty O’Toole, was there when it happened. You should ask her about it.”

Bruce moved quickly, grabbed the metal hand, held it up to his face. Kuro’s left hand went to his sword grip, Beverly drew her pistol; but Campbell only gave the glove an inquisitive look.

“I will, mate,” Bruce replied. “I’ll also ask her about the English teachers in the Land of the Rising Sun. You got a real command of the language there.”

Now it was Kuro’s turn to arch a brow. This one was far more clever than he led others to believe.

“The rubber grooves on the fingers give me a secure grip,” Kuro said, snatching his hand back from Campbell. He unlocked the third cell door and held it for him, thankful that Amboy’s son in the next room made no noise.

“That arm chugs louder than a locomotive, mate.” Bruce snorted as he stepped into his cell. “I guess you Japanese will never be known for your technological devices.”

“Our koala guest is quite impressed with himself,” Beverly said. “Is he a worthy opponent?”

Kuro looked Campbell from head to toe. “Agent Campbell carries himself like a true warrior. But I don’t think there’d be any honour in dying by his hand. He’s too—”

“Foul? Uncouth?” she suggested.

“Crude.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Bruce said, beaming.

Miss Beverly’s smile was colder. “We’ll meet again, Mr Campbell.”

The agent stepped into the cell. “Planning to keep me company tonight?” He winked at Beverly as the door shut in his face.

They nodded to the guard on watch and ascended the basement steps. Kuro walked in silence, his thoughts returning to the bombastic adventurer locked away in the depths of the Fortress. The man cast a shadow across his duty that unsettled him.

“What do you think about his warning?” she asked, snapping him out of his reflection.

Kuro paused, squinted in the grey twilight. “I fear that we have woken a sleeping giant.”

Kuro felt no surprise to be woken at three o'clock in the morning to the clamour of alarms and whistles.

He dressed quickly, wound the gears in his arm, and bound his long black hair with a rawhide cord, recalling the days in Japan when he’d shaved the top of his head, in the chonmage style befitting a Samurai. Beverly met him in the hallway. She somehow looked even lovelier to him in her half-awake state, bedecked in long cotton nightclothes, tousled hair clinging to her scalp. He was tired enough to consider telling her, but neither said a word.

They instead went silently to the basement cellblock, where Roderick Scharnusser stood listening to a visibly quaking guard’s report. The doors all appeared intact and locked, save for two. These both hung ajar on their hinges, severe scorch marks around where the bolts had been. Two other guards lay inert on the floor near each of these.

The lone conscious guard held up a pair of goggles with shattered lenses for his employer to see, his hands trembling. Kuro recognised them as Campbell’s. “We did search him, but the goggles—there were two lenses in each frame. The cufflinks were keys, and they unlocked the frames.” Kuro’s eyes darted to the goggles, and protruding from the curve of each frame were Campbell’s fine gold cufflinks. “Hidden inside each of the compartments must have been some explosive compound.”

Absent his usual air of menace, Roderick smiled gently through the entire report, nodding encouragement to the young soldier. He said, “I understand that our two prisoners have escaped through a gap in the incomplete wall?”

“I think s-so, sir.”

At the word, “think”, Roderick Scharnusser’s face switched from kindness to fury. He grabbed the guard by the throat. The young man’s eyes rolled, a sickening sound in his throat as his body shook with convulsions, and that was when Kuro caught a glimpse of the Tesla-gloves under Scharnusser’s coat sleeves.

The guard fell from his grip, slumped to the floor, the only sound in the hallway was the crackle of the deadly gauntlets. His face was still twisted in a rictus of anger, Scharnusser looked up and pointed directly at Kuro. Sparks of blue leapt from his insulated finger.
“You,”
he snapped. “You were with me when he put those blasted goggles on in my study. You should have seen the threat. So now you will lead a team to fetch me Campbell and the Amboy child. Dead, alive, slightly unwell—it don’t matter. You make this right.” His hand lowered, but his cold gaze never left Kuro. “This is family business, so take my cousin with you. And you better make sure you don’t kill the boy unless Zachary Amboy is there to see it. You all hear me?”

No one spoke. No one moved.

“Get to your goddamn shadow zeppelins,” he barked.
“NOW!”

Their small airships were prepping for flight at the compound’s modest landing field when they arrived. A light snow-drizzle deepened the November morning chill. The other henchmen went straight to the two-seater cockpits of their craft. Kuro spotted Beverly by the airfield’s hydrogen pump, watching his approach across the gravel. He’d taken the time to return to his room and put on his Samurai armour before meeting her. The weight of its metal plates felt right, along with the leather scent of its bonds and padding. She smiled appreciatively, looking him up and down, and whacked him across the arm with her cold steamsword; steel ringing off of brass.

“You’d better ignite your weapon,” he said.

“Not near the hydrogen-filled balloon, thanks,” she said. Her smile was radiant in the gaslight glow.

“Do we have a plan?”

“Not exactly. How about—” Her eyes suddenly grew wide, and she flung herself upon him, burying her face against his breastplate, speaking with exaggerated, breathless desperation. “Oh, Mista Campbell, sir. My cousin and that awful Chinaman are keeping me prisoner back there. Please take me with you, oh please!”

Her hair smelled of lavender. He could feel his face growing hot. “Do you think he’s that much a fool?”