The Two Georges

XIV

Irene Clarke - formerly Irene Bushell - stood poised in the doorway, as if uncertain whether to go up to him or to flee. “I’m fine,” she said after a moment’s hesitation, and then, “You’re looking very dashing in your dress uniform.”

He laughed harshly. “Score one for Chalky Stimpson,” he said.

“My God,” Irene exclaimed. “They haven’t retired old Chalky yet?”

She wouldn’t have heard much about the RAMs since her marriage to Bushell . . ended. He tried another laugh on for size. “Age cannot stale nor custom wither his infinite embroidery,” he paraphrased. The allusion went past Irene. As she often did when momentarily confused, she reached up and patted at her hair with the palm of her hand. Bushell remembered the gesture as if he’d last seen it the day before. But it hadn’t been yesterday; it had been years. Reminded of that, he looked at her as she was now, not with the eyes of memory. She was a little heavier than she had been, he decided. Gray frosted her dark brown hair. She wore more powder and paint than she had, the better to hold Father Time at bay. Still - “You look lovely tonight,” Bushell said, not lying too much.

“Thank you.” She started to smile, but then her red-painted mouth drew into a thin, hard line. “I would have liked hearing that sort of thing more often when we were married.”

“Too late to worry about it now, wouldn’t you say?” Bushell answered. “You made bloody sure it’s too late. Besides, I expect Sir David pays you compliments all the time . . . whether he means them or not.”

“Don’t you start that,” Irene said, her gray eyes snapping. She’d started it herself, but noting such things was not her long suit. She went on, “David has taken good care of me over the years - better than you ever did, that’s certain.”

“Sir David takes care of all sorts of things. It’s what he’s good for.” A little too late - as he’d been too late in everything about their marriage, including realizing anything was wrong with it - he tried to be conciliatory. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

“Happy? I should say so.” She tossed her head, another habit he remembered achingly well. “I’ve seen the world, Tom. I’ve been to London and Paris and St. Petersburg and Vienna. I’ve seen Rome and Athens and Constantinople and Delhi and Honolulu. And David’s a knight, of course, and he’s bound to get a higher title later.” She stared at Bushell with a mixture of scorn and pity. “No knighthood for you yet? No, I’d have heard. None likely, either, I’d say.”

Bushell shrugged. She’d been something of a social climber when she was his wife; being married to Sir David had evidently nourished that character trait. He said, “As long as I know I’m doing my job well, I don’t care whether I have a Sir in front of my name.”

“I know you don’t,” she said with a dismissive wave - almost a push - of her hand. “But what about your, ah, friend with the red hair? Pretty little thing, even if she is rather young.”

What about Kathleen? Bushell didn’t know, but he was damned if he was going to tell that to Irene.

“You’ve got no business taking that tone with me,” he growled. He wished he hadn’t been to the bar before he ran into his former wife. He’d moved into a hotel the very day he’d found her and Sir David Clarke together; after that, their conversation had been entirely through solicitors. He had things - years’ worth of things - he’d never told her. With whiskey in him, with her standing in front of him, all the stored-up anger was liable to come spewing out. He hadn’t known how much there was, not till now, not till it heaved against all the restraints he’d built to hold it back, bubbling upward like lava under a volcano that had been - had been - dormant.

“Why not?” Irene said. She kept her voice down, remembering where they were, but she sounded angry, too. That’s pretty funny, he thought: her angry at me . “Why not?” she repeated. “We’re both in the same place at the same time for once, so you can listen to me for a change.”

“And what the devil is that supposed to mean?” Bushell demanded.

“Just what it says,” Irene answered. “You were never there when we were married, that’s for certain. If you weren’t on the road, you were at the office, and if you weren’t at the office, you were sitting in front of a typewriter, pounding out endless stupid reports no one would ever read. You never gave me the notice you’d pay a florin slug fished out of a stamp-selling machine, not unless you were hungry or you wanted to go to bed with me - sometimes not even then.”

“That’s a lie,” Bushell said, though it had an unpleasant ring of truth. “I did work for a living, you know. I still do, as a matter of fact.”

“God help your pretty little friend, then,” Irene said.

“Leave Kathleen out of it. She’s none of your business - you made bloody sure of that, didn’t you?”

Irene tossed her head. Under her makeup, she flushed; that shot had got home. “I had to do something, didn’t I; to remind myself I was alive. Better than waiting for you to notice me, that’s for sure.” She made a small, purring sound, deep in her throat. “A lot better, let me tell you.”

He wanted to slap her face. Remembering they were years divorced and in public came hard, hard. He shuddered with the effort of not taking a step toward her. “What was the point of talking about my work with you, Irene?” he asked wearily. “You never paid any attention when I did, so I thought I might as well not bore you. All you wanted to talk about was - “

“Life?” she suggested. “Whatever you call it, it was more interesting than the dusty things you were always puttering over.”

“It was my life,” Bushell said. “It is my life.”

“That’s what I said: God help - Kathleen, did you say her name was? What a boring, useless life it was. It’s no wonder that I -“ Irene stopped.

“That you what?” Bushell demanded. He still found himself knowing, as if by instinct, when Irene wasn’t saying something that mattered. She might not have thought he was paying attention to her, but he was, even if not in ways she would have wanted.

“Don’t you badger me,” she said. “It’s none of your affair.” She laughed, unpleasantly. “Certainly not that. Boring.” She gave an emphatic nod, as if that proved the truth of her description. Then she threw more fuel on the fire: “What a gray way to pass the days. Do your work, write your reports, go through forty years, and what do you get? A pension. A gold pocket watch. A funeral, because you hadn’t noticed you were already dead. So what? I wanted someone who would stay interesting, someone who was going somewhere, someone who would take me with him. I found someone like that, too.”

“Oh, yes, you found Sir David,” Bushell said. “You welcomed him with open arms, in fact - and open legs, too.” Irene gasped; that one stung, too. Bushell went on, “You just wanted to live out your silly dreams, even though you knew they were silly. RAMs mostly don’t get knighted, no matter what they do, and you know why. The work is like an iceberg: nine tenths of it never comes up above the waterline to be noticed.”

“What about your dear chum, Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg?” Irene said. Bushell didn’t fancy the way she flung the question at him. “There are exceptions to everything,” he answered, trying to take no notice of her tone. His private opinion was that Bragg had got the knighthood by stubbornly going after it till at last it fell into his lap. That was how Sir Horace got everything. A couple of more deserving men might have been up for consideration, but no one would have made the merits he did have more visible to the right people.

“Do you remember the party we had for him when his name went onto the list?” Irene asked. A nasty glow kindled in her eyes.

“Yes, I remember,” Bushell said shortly, as if he were in the witness box, trying to admit as little as possible to a barrister. “So what?”

“So what, is it?” she snapped. Something - unshed tears? - roughened her voice. “After I put up with so much from you, that’s all I get? So what? God damn you to hell, Tom Bushell, I’ll tell you so what.” She took a deep breath. “Do you remember that party? Do you?”

“I already said I did.” Rubbed raw by her tone, he fired back at her: “And I’ll tell you what else I remember: I remember what a shockingly bad hostess you were. You kept disappearing, and I can’t imagine where you got to.” Amazing, he thought, how annoyances from years before could suddenly spring to life again when watered.

He’d thought - he’d hoped - the gibe would anger her even more. To his surprise, she threw back her head and laughed. She was plumper; he took a certain malicious glee in noting the onset of a double chin. But she was still angry, too: she said, “Then you haven’t got much imagination, have you? I’ll tell you just where I was: I was helping Sir Horace celebrate his knighthood with something better than cocktails and canapés.” She twitched her hips to leave him in no possible doubt about her meaning. A reminiscent smile spread over her face. “Quite a lot better, if you must know.”

“I don’t believe you,” Bushell said automatically.

“I don’t care,” Irene answered. “It’s true whether you believe it or not.”

To his horror, Bushell did believe it. Just as he’d always known when Irene was leaving something out of what she was saying, he’d also always known when she was telling nothing but the truth, no matter how crazy it sounded. He heard that ring of truth in her voice now, he felt it in his belly - and how he wished he didn’t.

She sniffed. “I don’t know how you’ve hung on so long in police work, Tom, when you can’t see the nose on your face. All these years, and you haven’t changed a bit. It’s too bad. I’d hoped you might have. It could have been - interesting.”

Dully, he realized he’d borrowed his odd use of that word from her. He also realized she’d been thinking about putting horns on Sir David with him, just as she’d put horns on him with Sir David - and with Sir Horace? The revelation shook him as if the unsteady ground of New Liverpool rocked beneath his feet. Irene twitched her hips again. “Do you want me to tell you all about it?” she asked.

“No,” he said, his voice not angry now, but absentminded: he might have only half heard her. He looked straight through her toward the far wall. He wasn’t ignoring her existence; he’d just forgotten about it. Her mouth narrowed again. She’d seen that faraway look in his eyes during their married days. It meant he was thinking hard about a case, generally to the exclusion of her. She’d made it all too plain she’d had too much of that then. She turned and walked away. Bushell’s eyes never wavered.

“Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg,” he said in slow, quiet wonder. “I can’t believe it.” He’d known Horace Bragg for going on thirty years now. He couldn’t imagine his old friend being able to keep that kind of secret from him. And he’d never had the slightest inkling of it, not even after he’d found out Irene was being unfaithful with Sir David Clarke. Good God! If anyone had helped him get through the dark times after his marriage burned like an airship full of hydrogen, Horace Bragg was the man. He blinked, then chuckled softly. He was less angry with Irene now, knowing what she’d spewed out at him, than he had been while they were quarreling. With the quarrel past, it felt over, done, abruptly years old, not immediate, harsh, painful. Maybe taking up with Kathleen really had soothed some of his bitterness there - or maybe he’d needed to get that last fight out of his system. Maybe Irene had, too. But what the devil was he to do when he saw Sir Horace, which he was liable to do in a matter of seconds and would certainly do no later than tomorrow morning? How could he keep working with Sir Horace to recover The Two Georges!

He squared his shoulders. Thinking of it that way helped put matters in perspective. He’d served with plenty of men for whom he didn’t care: he was, after a fashion, even cooperating with Sir David Clarke, whom he despised. He tapped his left hand against the side of his thigh. He still thought Sir David the likeliest conduit through whom the Sons of Liberty might have learned of the King-Emperor’s plans to visit the NAU, but he had only suspicions, no evidence to support them. But this would be different from cooperating with Sir David. He’d never liked Clarke, even before the man took Irene away from him ... or she departed, however that had been. He and Sir Horace, though Something else struck him. He hadn’t seen Cecilia Bragg here at the embassy. She’d always been the self-effacing sort; Sir Horace might not have brought her along tonight. But he’d brought her to Bushell’s house that night years ago. Bushell remembered kissing her on the cheek as she and Sir Horace came through the door.

Where had Sir Horace kissed Irene, later that night?

Bushell shook his head. He couldn’t afford thoughts like that, not now. He glanced back at the icon of the Virgin. He had no great piety, but couldn’t help wishing Irene had found a different place to tell him what she’d told him. Then it occurred to him that even a pious man would agree no man - or woman save only the Virgin’s Son was without sin. Maybe the little chapel hadn’t been the worst place for such news after all.

He went out and walked back to the bar. He stiffened when he saw a red coat there, but Samuel Stanley was wearing it. Sam, who was holding a pint pot, glanced over at him as he ordered another Jameson. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” Stanley remarked. The unspoken question How many of those have you had? lay behind his words.

“I’ll drive you back to the William and Mary, if you like,” Bushell replied, answering what his adjutant had asked rather than what he’d said.

“We’d disappoint the poor fellow waiting out there for us if you did,” Stanley said, but let it go at that. He glanced toward the bartenders to make sure they couldn’t overhear before lowering his voice: “Learn anything worthwhile?”

“Oh, a couple of things,” Bushell said. Stanley brightened. Then Bushell added, “They haven’t got anything to do with the case, though, worse luck. How about you, Sam?”

“Me? I’ve learned pickled herring goes right well with ale, and I’ve learned I ought to brush up on my French: I know I’m missing half of what goes on around me. That hasn’t got anything to do with the case, either. I was hoping you’d have better news - you must have been poking into odd corners.”

“Oh, I was,” Bushell said, “and I ran into some odd people, too.” He let it go at that. Running into Irene would have been trying enough without what she’d told him. With that news... he knew he needed to do a lot more thinking.

Sam Stanley straightened to a semblance of attention, just ostentatiously enough to show Bushell he was doing it. Bushell could think of only one reason why Sam would do such a thing. He turned to find Sir Horace Bragg approaching.

“Here we are all together, a flock of Robin Redbreasts,” Bragg said, his jovial tone contrasting oddly with his usual dolorous expression. “We can give the damned Russians something to stare at.”

“Yes, sir.” Bushell brought the words out with an effort, as if he were much drunker than he was in fact. How could Sir Horace have taken Irene to bed when he and Bushell had already been friends for half a lifetime? Friends didn’t - or friends shouldn’t - do things like that. And how could he have gone on about his business afterward as if nothing had happened? It was a puzzlement. Bragg leaned close to him. “Any luck?” he whispered, breathing Scotch and tobacco into Bushell’s face.

“No, sir,” Bushell answered, as woodenly as before.

Sir Horace set a hand on his shoulder. He almost shook it off in unthinking rejection, like a horse twitching its ear to be rid of a fly - that was the hand that had cupped Irene’s breast, squeezed her bum, and then clasped his own hand in friendship. Years ago, all years ago, he reminded himself, and stood still. “We’ll get the bastards tomorrow, then,” Bragg said. He sounded very sure of himself. “It’s heading toward midnight now, though. We should break away if we’re to be good for anything in the morning. This affair will go on till all hours.” His bushy eyebrows came down in stern disapproval. “Why not?

Most of the people here don’t have to work for a living, not really.”

“I suppose not,” Bushell said - he could come out with more than two words at a time. The more he tried, the easier it became: “Let me find, uh, Kathleen.” He’d almost said Irene. To cover the near-slip, he went on, “Your driver will be wanting to get home, too, I expect.”

Bragg tried to fit a smile onto the narrow, bony contours of his face. “You always did take good care of the men in your command, Tom.”

“It’s the mark of a good officer,” Samuel Stanley observed. Half a beat too late, he added, “Sir.”

“Come on, Sam, you can help me round up the lady,” Bushell said in his best facetious tones. He wanted nothing more than to get away from Sir Horace Bragg, and, after that last dig, Stanley needed to escape the commandant.

Bushell found Kathleen near the buffet, discussing early nineteenth-century art with Comte Philippe Bonaparte. “I hold you personally responsible, Colonel, for depriving me of the company of this charming young lady,” Bonaparte said.

“I’ll survive,” Bushell said dryly. The Franco-Spanish ambassador chuckled. Bushell went on. “I have to say, Monsieur le Comte, that I may owe you an apology.”

“For taking Dr. Flannery away?” Bonaparte asked. “Other than that, you have done nothing to cause offense, I assure you.”

“No, not for that,” Bushell answered. “I’ve been thinking. You may have been right about the trouble a merely competent man can cause.” Kathleen Flannery looked a question at him. He pretended he didn’t notice.

Maybe Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg had actually got himself a good night’s sleep. Maybe he’d just fortified himself with several cups of coffee or strong tea. Whichever was the case, he seemed alert, energetic, and enthusiastic when Bushell and his companions walked into RAM headquarters the next morning.

“Here - come see,” he said, directing them to a storeroom where RAMs were methodically going through a couple of file cabinets’ worth of documents. “We pulled these from Eustace Venahle’s home and cabinetry shop yesterday. We haven’t seen everything there is to see, but you were right, Tom - he is definitely linked to some men in and round Victoria who are known to be affiliated with the Sons of Liberty. We’ll pay them visits today.”

“That’s - first-rate, sir,” Bushell said. Regardless of whether Sir Horace had taken Irene to bed, his minions looked to have come up with important evidence. If dealing with the evidence meant dealing with Bragg, too, Bushell was willing to make the sacrifice. Solving the case was more important than whether his friendship survived. A huntsman’s eagerness stirred in him. “I want to go along on one of those raids.”

“So do I,” Samuel Stanley said.

“Me, too,” Kathleen added. Before Bragg could say anything, she went on, “Pity you didn’t send your men to Venable’s house and shop a day earlier, Sir Horace. Then they could have been raiding while we were at the embassy banquet last night.”

The RAM commandant, who had been lighting a cigar, suffered a coughing fit. When he’d stopped hacking, he said, “I do regret that, Dr. Flannery. Of course you may accompany Colonel Bushell and Captain Stanley. I have no doubt that you will discover something they overlook.” The irony was thick enough to slice. Kathleen didn’t care. She looked smug. She’d goaded Sir Horace into giving her exactly what she wanted. And, as far as Bushell was concerned, she’d been dead right about when the RAMs should have gone out to Eustace Venable’s residence and business.

“Where do you propose sending us, sir?” Stanley asked. He had no interest in quarreling with Bragg. All he wanted to do was to help push the case forward in whatever way he could.

“Based on the evidence we found at Venable’s shop, we’ve obtained a warrant to search the home of Phineas Stanage,” Bragg answered. Now it was his turn to be smug.

Bushell jerked as if stung by a wasp. “Stanage!” he said. “We never could touch him before. Not enough evidence, the judges kept saying - he’s a sharp devil, and a careful one. But we’ve got it now, by God! Kilbride was visiting with him, that tea-seller up in Boston told me. If Venable is - was - connected to Stanage, too, odds are good he’s up to his neck in the Two Georges case.”

Sam Stanley looked at Bragg with respect perhaps grudging but no less genuine for that. “If you’ve talked a magistrate into granting us a search warrant for Phineas Stanage’s house, sir ... we ought to break things wide open.”

“Let’s hope so,” Bragg said. Bushell nodded in understanding. He and Sam had both thought the case was about to break wide open several times, only to be disappointed. Here in Victoria, Sir Horace must have been sliding from exhilaration to gloom along with them. Now he added, “Stanage isn’t the only chap we’ve tied to your cabinetmaker, either, Tom.” He spoke several other names, two or three of which were familiar to Bushell.

“They’re all guilty as sin, no doubt. Let somebody else bag them, though.” Bushell’s face went predatory. “Stanage is the one I want. Cut off the head and the body dies.”

“Pity you didn’t find anything leading you back to John Kennedy,” Kathleen remarked. Yes, she could hold a grudge: Bushell took note.

For the first time, Sir Horace Bragg looked on her with something other than glowering disapproval, no doubt because it was the first time she’d said in his presence anything with which he agreed. “That is a pity,” he said in musing tones. “Well, no matter. I presume you want to be after the foe.”

Bushell nodded, replying with a couplet from Pope’s Essay on Man: “ ‘One master-passion in the breast, I Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows all the rest.’“

Kathleen smiled; maybe she recognized the quotation. Bragg obviously didn’t. He wasn’t one for poetry or classics - law books suited him better. A competent man, Bushell thought. Philippe Bonaparte notwithstanding, competence was useful and more than useful in a police officer. But could you truly understand what if you’d never thought about why?.

He put aside such musings as unprofitable as he went out to the steamers that would take him and his companions, along with several local RAMs, to Phineas Stanage’s home. The locals were armed. Bushell nodded again, this time in grim approval - Bragg was taking no chances. Bushell had seen Stanage’s home before, when RAMs surveyed it in the hope of discovering something actionable there. The oaks in front of it and the magnolia to one side were taller than they had been years ago. Sometime in there, Stanage had changed the paint on the two-story building from white to light blue. Otherwise, all was as it had been.

No, Bushell found one more difference: now he didn’t have to watch the home from afar. Along with the rest of the RAMs and Kathleen Flannery, he marched up to the front door. The knocker was a shiny brass eagle. He took primitive pleasure in making a racket with it.

The door opened. A servant in a long black skirt and frilly white shirtwaist stared out at the RAMs. “Oh, God,” she said.

One of the local officers brandished the search warrant. In a fine bureaucratic drone, he said, “By authority of His Majesty’s court here in Victoria as symbolized in this warrant, we are authorized to search the property and premises of Mr. Phineas W. Stanage. Please stand aside, Miss, and let us perform our duty.”

“Mr. Stanage, he isn’t going to like this,” the servant predicted.

“What a shame the warrant doesn’t cover his opinions,” Bushell said. He stepped over the threshold. The servant got out of his way.

He - and no doubt the other RAMs with him - took a certain malicious glee in going through the home of a Son of Liberty. By the time they’d been inside for a couple of minutes, the place looked as if a tornado had hit it. The contents of drawers were dumped out onto the floor, then the drawers themselves, then furniture cushions. After that, chairs and sofas got overturned so the RAMs could make sure nothing was lurking in their linings.

Kathleen watched in amazement as what had been a neat and orderly establishment was turned inside out. The maidservant who’d admitted the RAMs and the rest of the staff watched, too, in something more like horror. Bushell felt a certain amount of sympathy for them. Once the RAMs had left, they were the ones who would have to clean up the mess.

Phineas Stanage arrived about half an hour after the RAMs went to work. Bushell presumed one of the neighbors had called him. He was a corpulent man in his mid-fifties, with a close-trimmed white beard and gold-framed bifocals. He wore a suit of Donegal tweed that Bushell wouldn’t have minded having, and looked like what he was: the chairman of a prosperous brewing company. He took one look at the chaos in the front hall and bellowed, “This is an outrage!” He proceeded to embellish and elaborate upon that theme for several minutes, with ever-increasing heat and sulfur content. Bushell listened in considerable admiration. Whatever Phineas Stanage was now, at some point in his life he’d been a soldier, a sailor, or a scatologist’s assistant.

When Stanage started repeating himself, Bushell whistled a couple of bars of “Yankee Doodle.” “That’s a filthy lie!” Stanage shouted.

“Is it?” Bushell said. “Eustace Venable didn’t think so. Do you want to tell me about your dealings with him?”

He hoped Stanage would be furious enough to do just that. But the brewing magnate said, “I wouldn’t tell you my name without my solicitor present.”

“Good to hear someone knows it,” Bushell murmured, which set Stanage spluttering anew. It was not an informative sort of spluttering; after a minute or so, Bushell stopped listening to it. A call came floating down the stairwell: “We’ve started up here on the first floor, sir. All sorts of lovely things to take apart and paw through.” Bushell glanced at Phineas Stanage. The man’s cheeks and forehead were noticeably redder than they had been when he first reached his home. Would he fall down in a fit of apoplexy? Bushell wouldn’t have missed him, but he stayed resolutely - and irately - upright. Sure enough, when Bushell went upstairs he found Sam Stanley and a couple of other RAMs tossing clothes out of Stanage’s closets and going through the papers in three tall oak filing cabinets. Kathleen had joined the sport, too. The cabinets had presumably been locked before the RAMs got to them, but any search team brought along someone gifted in the art of making locked things open.

“Anything juicy?” Bushell asked in hopeful tones.

Stanley made a sour face. “We haven’t found anything yet. I don’t care for his politics, I don’t care for the people he associates with” - he gestured toward some of the file folders strewn on the floor to show how he’d drawn his conclusions about those - “but nothing out-and-out illegal, not yet.”

“I don’t know about that.” A local RAM held up a copy of the scurrilous pamphlet about the imperial princesses that Titus Hackett and Franklin Mansfield had printed in New Liverpool - paid for with Russian roubles, Bushell remembered. “If this isn’t obscene, what is?”

Regretfully, Bushell shrugged. “I don’t know, Captain, but a jury decided that it wasn’t.”

The local RAM rolled his eyes. “Juries do strange things sometimes.” Every RAM in the room nodded solemn agreement to that.

Phineas Stanage came clumping up the stairs. He clapped a melodramatic hand to his forehead. “Good God! The minions of the Grand Inquisitor in Madrid couldn’t do worse than this!”

“You’re wrong in two particulars,” Bushell answered. “Inquisitors wouldn’t bother with a warrant, and they’d take you apart at the same time as they would the house.”

“Only a barbarian, a Cossack, would boast that something could be worse,” Stanage retorted. One of the RAMs searching on the ground floor knocked something over with a crash. Stanage groaned and dashed down there to find out what the newest catastrophe was.

Kathleen Flannery pointed to the file cabinets. “Do those drawers come out?” she asked. “He might have hidden something behind one of them.”

“Next item on the agenda, ma’am,” a RAM said, and whipped out a long-shanked screwdriver. He attacked the file cabinets, one after the other. Out came the drawers. He set them on the floor, none too gently. Then he peered into each cabinet, shining a little electric touch to make sure he missed nothing. “If he has stashed anything away, he didn’t do it here,” he said in disappointed tones.

“Who says he didn’t?” Kathleen reached out and plucked free a folded sheet of paper that had been taped to the back of one of the drawers. With a flourish, she presented it to Bushell. The gleam in her eyes said she had a sharp comeback waiting for Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg.

“Well, well, what have we here?” Bushell said. The other RAMs and Kathleen crowded round to see what they had there. Bushell unfolded the paper, holding it at arm’s length so he could read whatever message it contained. That message, eight typewritten characters’ worth, did not make immediate sense: HM 1608 DC

“What the devil does that mean?” asked the RAM who’d dismantled the file cabinets.

“I can figure out part of it, I think,” Kathleen said. Everyone looked at her. She colored a little, but went on, “His Majesty is coming to Victoria on the sixteenth of this month - the sixteenth of August - isn’t he?”

“So he is,” Bushell said, nodding approval: three fourths of the riddle solved in one fell swoop.

“Nicely done,” Samuel Stanley agreed, just as quietly. At the praise from him, Kathleen’s face lit up like a sunrise. It brightened even further when the RAM with the screwdriver clapped his hands together twice. She could pull her weight here, and was proving it to everyone. Bushell stared at the last two characters, the ones Kathleen hadn’t deciphered. In a musing voice, he went on, “We have what. We have when. What does that leave?” He often used Sam for a sounding board; now he noticed he was talking to Sam and Kathleen both. Before either of them could speak, he answered his own question: “Who was sending the message, maybe.”

“Who’s DC?” Kathleen asked.

“Haven’t you ever heard of Defore Christ?” asked the RAM with the screwdriver. Kathleen gave him a disgusted look. Bushell didn’t blame her, but saw something she missed: the banter meant the RAMs had accepted her as one of their own.

And, with a light like the sun breaking through on a cloudy day, he knew who DC might be. Without another word, he folded the paper again and put it in his inside coat pocket. He wondered if Captain Patricia Oliver could match the typewriter on which the message had been produced. If she couldn’t, he’d suggest some possible comparisons.

Samuel Stanley nudged him. “You don’t think - ?” He stopped, his eyes widening. “You do think.”

“Do you know what, Sam?” Bushell said. “I hope I’m wrong.” That surprised him. For years, he would have liked nothing better than to see Sir David Clarke held up to public obloquy. Now that the chance appeared before him, he found it was liable to cost more than it was worth. Betraying your sovereign was a much darker business than stealing another man’s wife. He didn’t want to imagine even Clarke capable of it.

Kathleen realized who DC might be a few seconds after Bushell and Stanley. “I hope you’re wrong, too, Tom,” she said, “for - for everyone’s sake.”

“For everyone’s sake, I’m going to arrest Mr. Phineas Stanage,” Bushell said. “We’ll see what questioning him back at RAM headquarters will get us.”

When Stanage found out he would have to go with the RAMs, he put on a display of cursing that made his previous efforts sound uninspired. Bushell showed him the paper that had led to his arrest. “You are an idiot, a cretin, a moron, a one hundred percent unadulterated jackass,” Stanage boomed. “That, if you must know, is the password I have to furnish at the Bank of London, Victoria, and Alexandria to gain access to my safety-deposit box. My solicitor can arrange to prove that for you. He can also arrange a suit for false arrest, and I have no doubt that he shall.”

“You’ll come along with us anyhow,” Bushell answered, which produced more bravura blasphemies from Stanage. Inside, though, Bushell worried. Bank records were hard to alter, and he’d never heard of the Bank of London, Victoria, and Alexandria’s being connected to the Sons of Liberty. On the contrary: it was, so far as he knew, a solid, conservative financial institution.

“Don’t let it bother you, Chief,” Sam Stanley said as they drove back to RAM headquarters. “Let him sue all he likes. There’ll be enough in those papers of his to keep him in hot water for years.” He sounded as if he relished the prospect.

“I know,” Bushell answered. “But there’s one particular kind of hot water I want him to be in.” He looked at the sheet Kathleen had found, then shook his head. “No, no one would believe this didn’t have something to do with The Two Georges, not even a judge ... I hope.”

Several teams of RAMs had already returned from their raids when Bushell and his companions got back to headquarters. They cheered when they found he’d come back with something worth pursuing; most of them had had little luck. “From what we found by looking, you’d think the miserable Sons were all deacons and altar boys,” a disgruntled RAM complained.

Bushell took the paper with the single typewritten line on it to Captain Oliver. He explained where he’d found it and what he thought it was. “Very good,” she said with a brisk nod, and examined the line. “Yes, that’s a Quiet Writer, a popular brand here in Victoria. I use one myself, as a matter of fact.”

“And Victoria’s the typewriter capital of the NAU, along with every other kind,” Bushell said. “How can you be a bureaucrat if you don’t have a typewriter? That makes things harder.”

“Not necessarily.” Patricia Oliver reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a jeweler’s loupe, which she set in front of her eye to look at the characters more closely. “Yes, I thought so. The C rides slightly above the line, and the H slightly below. And there is - I think there is - a slight flaw in the left-hand stem of the M. If this comes from any machine Sir David Clarke was likely to be able to get his hands on at the governor-general’s mansion, we should be able to identify it.”

“Good. I hoped you’d say that.” Bushell paused for a moment. “If he has a typewriter at home, you might want to check that, too. Discreetly, of course.”

She took off the loupe and glanced up at him. “So discreetly he never finds out about it? So discreetly a judge never finds out about it?” Bushell didn’t answer. He made a point of not answering. Patricia Oliver gave him a knowing smile different from the one she’d used in the Grosvenor Hotel bar on the other side of the continent. “That might be arranged . . . discreetly, as you say. If we learn anything interesting from it, I expect we’ll be able to bring it to the attention of the proper authorities . . discreetly, again.”

“Fine,” he said. “I thought you’d be able to manage something along those lines. Getting type samples from machines you want to check must be hard sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” she agreed. “One way or another, though, I generally manage to get what I want.” When Bushell didn’t rise to that, she said, “I must introduce you to my husband one day while you’re here.”

“I’d like that,” Bushell said. “I suspect he’s a luckier man than even he knows.”

Patricia Oliver laughed. “You’re so quiet most of the time. That makes you twice as dangerous when you do let fly.” An expression he couldn’t quite read replaced the amusement on her face. “I gather your current . . friend wasn’t hampered by the inconvenient presence of a bit of jewelry?” She spread the fingers of her left hand. The diamond on the fourth one sparkled: a large stone, and a fine one, if Bushell was any judge.

“No, Kathleen’s not married,” he said steadily.

“Not yet,” Patricia murmured. More directly to him, she went on, “I hope you end up happy, however that turns out.”

Bushell hadn’t thought about being happy in a long time, not as a continuous as opposed to a momentary condition. He found the notion unlikely. “I suppose stranger things have happened,” he said, and left before Patricia Oliver found a reply.

More teams of RAMs were coming in, bringing with them little evidence but a lot of unhappiness. “By what my gang found, you’d think the bloody Sons knew we were coming,” growled a major with a beard that didn’t quite hide a scar on his right cheek.

He might not have meant his words literally, but they produced an appalled silence from his colleagues. Then, from the doorway, Sir Horace Bragg said, “I heard that.” The local RAMs were appalled all over again; several of them seemed to be looking for places to hide. Bushell didn’t blame them. Sir Horace might be good at holding things in, but when he lost his temper, the results could be memorable. Remembering what Irene had flung in his face, Bushell realized just how good Bragg was at holding things in. For one frightening instant, Bushell teetered on the edge of throwing himself at the man who had cuckolded him and then gone on about his business as if nothing had happened. His right hand twitched, starting to make a fist; the muscles in his shoulder bunched, as if he were about to throw a punch. Making himself ease away from that animal rage was one of the harder things he’d done. Not now, dammit, he told himself fiercely. No matter how good it would feel, not now. Bragg, oblivious - as Bushell had been oblivious for so long - looked around with his large, sad eyes and said, “Williams, I fear you may be right.”

“My God, sir,” said the scarred major - Williams, evidently. “That would mean the Sons have a source here.” He turned through 360 degrees, as if to scan everyone’s face to try to spot the traitor.

“The day before yesterday,” Bragg said, biting his lip in anger, “I had the distinct displeasure of sacking a pair of Royal American Mounted Policemen at our Richmond office, on the grounds that they had cooperated with the Sons of Liberty there to impede investigation of several local crimes of which various Sons were suspected. This cooperation had apparently been going on for some time before it drew notice. If it happened there, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that it could be happening here. I have instituted an investigation to determine whether that is in fact so.”

Now every RAM was looking at all the others. No one bore the mark of Cain on his forehead. Bushell rubbed at his mustache. If the RAMs couldn’t trust their own friends in the investigation, that would make things a lot harder. You wouldn’t want to share what you’d learned. You’d hold it and keep it to yourself. And if Fred over there might usefully have combined it with something he knew . . . well, too bad.

“Sir, I hope you find the - “ The presence of Kathleen and a couple of RAMs of the female persuasion inhibited Bushell in his choice of words, but he packed as much temper into that silence as Phineas Stanage had into a whole string of incandescent obscenities.

“So do I,” Sir Horace said wearily. “I heard on the wireless this morning that the Britannia has set sail for the NAU. We haven’t much time left.”

The gathered search teams broke up after that, some to examine the meager haul of evidence they’d found, others to pursue new leads. Bushell went off to find a telephone. The busier he kept himself, the less chance he’d have to think about what Bragg had said. He didn’t want to think about that. He couldn’t do anything about it anyhow, except to be careful to whom he spoke. Trying to get The Two Georges back before Charles III arrived and trying to make sure Victoria was safe for him when he did arrive would keep him busy enough, or rather more than busy enough.

He rang Captain Jaime Macias back in New Liverpool. A few days before, Macias had been on the point of telling him something important, and he still didn’t know what. Time to find out, he thought. The connection went through smoothly. Given Victoria’s massive telephone exchange building, he would have been surprised and annoyed if it hadn’t. And, for a wonder, Jaime Macias was at his desk. “Tom!” he said when Bushell reached him. “Good to hear from you, friend. By what I see in the papers and hear on the wireless, you’re not having a dull time of it.”

“That’s a fact,” Bushell agreed. “This case has given me a whole new appreciation of what a lovely word routine is, let me tell you. You sit at your desk, you sift through the clues, you go out and arrest the villains, and you fling them into gaol where they belong. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Having the buggers greet you with bullets and grenades isn’t.”

“Adventures are nasty things that happen to other people, eh?” Macias suggested. They both laughed. Bushell said, “Last time I managed to get hold of you, you sounded like a man on the trail of something good. I never did find out what - that was when I got to make the acquaintance of Mr. Eustace Venable, or rather of his hand grenade. So what’s the word?”

“We have a little more checking to do, to make the case as gastight as a coronium bladder in an airship, but in another few days, we’re going to drop on the chap who shot Tricky Dick. We’ve got him under twenty-four-hour surveillance now; he won’t get away. We need to nail a last couple of things into place before we get out the warrant.”

“That is good news,” Bushell said, leaning forward on the desk as if to go after the villain himself.

“How’d you come to suspect him?”

“We went over every bloody square inch of that brush-covered knoll across from the governor’s mansion about a dozen times,” Macias answered, his voice full of remembered weariness. “Not far from where we think the gunman fired, we found a good, clear footprint of a size eleven and a half shoe. And ever since then, we’ve been following up on Sons of Liberty whose gaol records show they have size eleven and a half feet.”

“Good Lord,” Bushell said in profound respect. “Talk about needles in haystacks! And you found a match, did you? Who is he?”

“His name is Zack Fenton,” Macias said. “He’s not your typical Son, by any means: he has a Nuevespanolan common-law wife, for instance. Only political arrest was for disorderly conduct at an Independence Party rally a few years ago, at which time pamphlets from the Sons were discovered on his person. But he has served two stretches of time for poaching on the property of His Majesty’s Wildlife Parks.”

“He’ll know how to handle a rifle, then,” Bushell said, nodding even though Macias could not see him.

“Good circumstantial evidence. If you can get someone to put him at the scene of the crime at the right time, he’s yours.”

“That’s what we’re working on,” Jaime Macias answered. “He’s supposed to have been at a card game, but one of the chaps there is starting to go, ‘Well, he might have stepped out for a little while, but maybe he didn’t, too’ - you know what I mean?”

Bushell nodded again. “Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s a police officer in the NAU who hasn’t heard that song a time or six. Make this Fenton’s chum sweat - if you can break the case open from that end, it’ll do me a good turn on this one. Let me know whenever something happens. If you can’t catch me here at headquarters, I’m staying at the William and Mary.”

“The William and Mary,” Macias repeated, probably as he was writing it down. “All right, Tom, you’ll hear from me as soon as I know anything.”

“Thanks, Jaime. Good luck - and be careful.” Bushell had given that warning to a great many officers since The Two Georges disappeared. He still lived in the hope that people occasionally listened to what he said, though he hadn’t evidence of it to take before a judge.

He got up and started off to carry the good news to Sir Horace Bragg. Before he made it to the door of the office he’d borrowed, the telephone rang. He frowned, wondering if the call could be for him. Only one way to find out. “Hullo? Bushell here.”

“Colonel Bushell?” a RAM operator asked, confirming that precious few people listened to him. When he’d declared his identity once more, the man said, “Colonel, I have Sir David Clarke on the line for you.”

“The devil you say!” Bushell exclaimed. He was hard-pressed to think of anyone less likely to want to talk to him. “Ring him through, ring him through.”

“Colonel?” Yes, that was Sir David’s pleasant baritone. Bushell admitted he was himself. Clarke went on, “Colonel, why have a squadron of RAMs been tapping at the typewriters in the governor-general’s residence for the past hour? I don’t think they’ve missed a one of them.”

“Good,” Bushell answered. “They’d better not. As for why -“ He hesitated, weighing the pros and cons of telling Clarke what he’d found. To see what reaction he’d get, he explained. A long silence followed. At last, Sir David said, “Colonel, I’ve given you reason to dislike me.” He sighed. “Good God, I’ve given you reason to hate me, and I know it.” He paused, waiting for Bushell response. Bushell didn’t say anything. Sir David sighed again, then went on, “I will be damned, sir, if I know what reason I’ve given you to think me a traitor to my country.”

In Clarke’s shoes, Bushell would have said exactly the same thing in exactly the same tone of voice. Was the chief of staff a good enough actor to put that injured outrage into his words? Did Bushell dare think he wasn’t?

Telephoning him had taken more nerve than he’d supposed Clarke owned. Damn it, he didn’t want to paint the man who’d taken Irene from him in any color but black. He tried to strike a businesslike note, saying, “You understand, Sir David, that, having found the lead, we must pursue it.”

“Colonel, my first thought was that you had planted that lead, intending to use it to destroy me,” Clarke answered.

Bushell looked up at the ceiling. “Had I thought of it, and were the matter on which it bore less urgent, I might have done just that.”

“The second part of your explanation is the one that matters,” Sir David Clarke said, and Bushell found himself nodding, as he had for Jaime Macias. Agreeing with Sir David was a new and disagreeable experience. The governor-general’s chief of staff went on, “I believe you are willing to put your country above personal animus, as I am, so I also believe you when you say you are not trying to frame me. But someone is, by heaven. I held the date of the King-Emperor’s arrival in strictest confidence until its release was authorized. Think of me as you like, but that is the truth.”

“Let everything be exactly as you say,” Bushell replied. “Once I found the piece of paper in Phineas Stanage’s file cabinet, I’d still have to see whether it matched a typewriter to which you had easy access.”

“I suppose you have someone out burglarizing my home even as we speak,” Clarke said bitterly. Since Bushell did - or at least hoped he did - he kept his mouth shut. Sir David sighed once more, then continued, “All right, Colonel, I see your point. But I remind you that I am not the only one with access to that information. Even if you didn’t frame me, someone else certainly has.”

“We’ll look into that possibility, too, I assure you,” Bushell answered. He’d meant that to come out cool and matter-of-fact, but it sounded more sincere than he’d thought it would. He drummed his fingers on the nicked wooden surface of the desk. He couldn’t quite figure out how he’d come to believe Sir David Clarke, but he had. “We’ll look into everything, or as much of everything as we can in the time we have left.”

“Irene has always said you were evenhanded to a fault,” Sir David said. It was the first time he’d ever mentioned Irene to Bushell save to bait him. “I suppose I shall have to hope she was right.” He hung up. After a moment, so did Bushell. He sat staring at the telephone for a few seconds, then got up and went off to see Sir Horace Bragg. The commandant listened to his summary of the conversation with Sir David Clarke and dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “What do you expect him to say, Tom?”

“What he said,” Bushell admitted. “Not a word different. The way he said it, though - I’ve done a lot of interrogations, and if he’s a liar, he’s a bloody good one.”

“He’s a politico. Of course he’s a good liar,” Bragg said, which was hardly a thought alien to Bushell.

“We’ll check the typewriters first,” he said. “That will tell us something, even if not as much as we’d like.” He re-gathered his enthusiasm. “It isn’t really what I came in here to talk about, anyhow.” He told Sir Horace of what he’d learned from Jaime Macias. “We may get help from that side of the case, sir.”

Bragg’s bristly eyebrows came down in a fearsome frown. “Good God in the foothills, Tom,” he burst out, “I might have thought you had more important things to worry about than who blew the head off Honest Dick the Steamer King. It’s a goddamn sideshow: that’s all it is, nothing else but. You’ve been moaning how you haven’t got time for this and you haven’t got time for that, but somehow you have got time for something that hasn’t got anything much to do with where The Two Georges is. Drop it, that’s all I can tell you. Let the New Liverpool constables do their job. You do yours.”

Bushell stared at the RAM commandant. He couldn’t remember the last time his old friend (who’d laid his wife - but there was a piece that didn’t fit into the jigsaw puzzle) had been so flustered by a case. Sir Horace didn’t slip back into the North Carolina accents of his youth unless he was very upset. Cautiously, Bushell said, “Sir, it looks to me as if what they’re doing back in New Liverpool is liable to be important to what I’m doing here.”

“It doesn’t look that way to me,” Bragg declared. “Even if they do catch Tricky Dick’s killer, that’s not going to give us The Two Georges. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir, I do -“ Bushell began.

Before he could say anything more, Sir Horace seemed to deflate before his eyes, like a balloon with a coronium leak. Bragg leaned forward and buried his face in his hands for close to a minute. When he straightened, he seemed more himself. “I’m sorry, Tom,” he said. “I shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that. Trying to come up with that miserable, stinking painting has taken twenty years off my life, I swear it has. I haven’t slept. I’ve been eating like a pig, too, trying to make up for it.”

That sounded like the Horace Bragg Bushell knew. The RAM commandant was, if anything, skinnier than ever.

Bragg went on, “I did mean what I said, though. The murder case isn’t your responsibility; it belongs to this Munoz - “

“Macias,” Bushell corrected automatically.

“Whatever his name is,” Sir Horace said with an impatient wave. “You have more important things to do. Seeing whether Sir David Clarke is a traitor to the Crown springs to mind, for instance.”

Most of the time, Bushell would have risen to that like a trout to a fly. Now - “I’ve got that well under way, sir,” was all he said. Bragg nodded, apparently satisfied. Bushell himself was rather less so. Some of the triumph of proving the man he hated a villain had evaporated in the conversation he’d had with Clarke. And Sir David turned out not to have been the only man with whom Irene had betrayed him. Sitting across the desk was another one.

Sir Horace proceeded down the track of his own train of thought: “If we can disgrace Sir David or show that he’s a villain, maybe Sir Martin will listen to a man of sense instead.”

“That’s possible, sir,” Bushell agreed. “Sir Devereaux Jones seems to have a good deal of common sense buried under the politico’s exterior he wears.”

“Perhaps.” By the way Bragg said it, Sir Devereaux Jones was not the man of sense he’d had in mind. In grudging tones, he admitted, “I suppose anyone would be better than that scoundrel Clarke. After what he did to you - “

“Yes, sir.” Bushell got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me -“ He managed to smile at Sally Reese as he went past her, but it wasn’t easy. How could Bragg tax him about Sir David’s iniquity when his own matched it? Simple, Bushell though. He doesn’t think I know about his. The dining room of the William and Mary was so packed, anyone should have had an easy time getting close enough to spy on someone else. But it was also so noisy, no one at one table could make sense of what anyone at the next table said. You had trouble enough hearing what anyone at your own table said. Over crab cakes and sweet potatoes in a glaze of molasses, cinnamon, and ginger, Bushell took advantage of that relative anonymity to say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Sir Horace. His heart just doesn’t seem to be in this case. If he were a musician, he’d always be coming in a beat late.”

He didn’t say anything about Irene. What had happened there was relevant to his friendship with the RAM commandant, but not, he thought, to tracking down TheTwo Georges.

“I’ve noticed the same thing, Chief,” Samuel Stanley said after swallowing a bite of crab. “I kept my mouth shut, doubting I could be just. But if you see it, too, I’d say it’s really there.”

“I’m afraid it is,” Bushell said. “When I tried to tell him about what Captain Macias is digging up out in New Liverpool, he told me to leave Macias alone and concentrate on what’s going on here in Victoria. That’s not like him, Sam; he’s always been one for sweeping in all the evidence from wherever it shows up. He taught me that, for heaven’s sake.”

“Maybe the safety valve is stuck on his boiler,” Kathleen Flannery said. “Sometimes, if too much piles onto people, they do blow up. This isn’t the best time for him to do it, though.”

The understatement there was enough to make Bushell raise the glass of Jameson to his lips. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “Sam and I have known Sir Horace for - a long time now, and I don’t think either one of us has ever seen him act anything like this.”

“Not even close,” Stanley said emphatically. “Either the steam pressure in there is way too high, or else he’s playing some game of his own.”

Bushell realized what Stanley meant was, Or else he’s a villain. The suggestion should have shocked him more than it did. Also speaking obliquely, he said, “I know how we can find out.”

“Good,” Stanley said, and turned the subject. “What news about Sir David Clarke?”

“He called me this afternoon and denied everything,” Bushell answered, “but I wouldn’t have looked for him to do anything else, not after a swarm of RAMs took typewriter samples from America’s Number Ten. As best we can tell, though, none of those samples matches up with the one on the note we found at Phineas Stanage’s home. Neither do samples from the typewriters at Sir David’s residence. A couple of points for him, but nothing conclusive.”

“How did you get typewriter samples from Sir David’s home?” Kathleen asked. Bushell paused to take another bite. After he’d swallowed, he said, “I may have had better crab cakes in Baltimore, but I wouldn’t swear to it. These are pretty tasty.” He sipped his drink. When Kathleen realized that was all the reply she’d get, she started to say something angry. Bushell raised his hand in warning, just a little. She looked thoughtful. Then her face cleared. “Oh,” she said.

“That was unofficial, then.” Bushell still didn’t answer, but she seemed to have found out what she wanted.

Later that evening, lying beside Bushell up in his room, Kathleen said, “Why won’t you talk about what your people do unofficially?”

“Because if I did, I’d have to admit we do things unofficially,” he answered, “and if you admit to doing things unofficially, they almost become official.”

“But it’s only me,” Kathleen said. “If you can’t talk about unofficial things with me, with whom can you?”

“Don’t wheedle,” he told her, and watched her eyes kindle. Before either of them could take it any further, the telephone rang. “Saved by the bell,” Bushell said, and reached across her to answer it. His arm brushed her bare flesh, distracting him as he picked up the handset. “Hullo? Bushell here.”

“Tom?” A woman’s voice, familiar but He stiffened. “Irene.” Her name came out altogether flat. Kathleen’s eyebrows flew up. “What do you want?”

“Were some of your men here this afternoon?” she asked. “David told me what they were doing at the residence then, and what - what you suspect him of.” She spoke in low, hurried tones; he got the idea Sir David didn’t know she’d rung him. “Were they here, Tom, checking the same thing? I can’t prove it, but I’d swear I left the study window latched, and some of the papers by the typewriter there look neater than they ought to.”

“Searching a home without a warrant is illegal, Irene,” he said.

Kathleen nodded at him, apparently conceding the point that some unofficial business stayed unofficial for a reason. Then she found a way to be very distracting. Stop that, he mouthed at her. She shook her head and kept on.

“Pooh,” Irene said; in his mind, the part that wasn’t being distracted, Bushell could see the flip of her hand that would accompany the word. She went on, “Don’t forget, I used to be married to you. I know RAMs don’t admit to everything they do.”

“Then you should know I won’t admit to any of this,” Bushell answered. He wasn’t likely to forget they’d been married, either, however much he sometimes wished he could. Irene was doing her best to pretend they hadn’t flayed each other at the Russian embassy, which was more sensible than the way she often acted.

Irene said, “David hasn’t done any of the terrible things you think he has, Tom. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He loves the Empire with everything that’s in him. I know you don’t see eye to eye with him about policy. And I know -“ She sighed. “I know you hate him, and I know why you hate him. I can’t do anything about that, not any more. But if you go after him because you hate him and not because you’ve got evidence against him, you’ll waste effort you ought to use tracking down the real villains.”

She still knew how to put the argument so it would hit him hardest. Absently, he wondered if she had the same knack with Sir David. Picking his own words with care, he said, “We have some evidence that looks as if it may be against him. We’re trying to find out if it really is. We have to do that. I’m not treating him any differently because he is... who he is... from the way I would if . . if you and I were still married to each other.”

“All right,” Irene answered after a moment’s hesitation. No doubt she regretted that fight now. So did Bushell. What she’d flung at him then complicated his life in ways he didn’t have time for. She paused again, then said, “I believe you. I’ve always said - when I’m not angry I’ve always said - that, whatever else you are, you’re a just man.”

“Yes, Sir David told me as much this afternoon.”

“Did he?” Irene said. “He didn’t tell me he’d spoken directly to you. Well, you are, Tom. It wasn’t enough for me, but it is still true.” She paused once more, then used a quick whisper to say, “I’ve got to go now. He’s coming.” Her voice got louder: “Yes, of course I’ll ring you tomorrow, Madge. Good night.” She hung up.

Bushell had to shift to do the same. “Enough,” he said to Kathleen. This time, she listened to him. He laughed. “Of all the doings I’ll never be able to put in the memoirs I’m never going to write, the past few minutes go to the top of the list.”

“That’s nice,” Kathleen said equably. “Time shouldn’t just pass; things should happen.”

“On the whole, I agree with you,” Bushell said. “I could have done without several of the things that have happened over the past few weeks, though.”

“Well - possibly,” Kathleen said. “But would we have ended up together without them, and, if we wouldn’t have, would you have done without them?”

The only way to answer that was by avoiding it, a course Bushell took without hesitation: “If you want to play with might-have-beens, find one of the hacks who churn out those scientific romances the Sons love so well. Me, I have enough trouble figuring out what’s real to waste time worrying about what isn’t.” She took a deep breath. He saw she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. To forestall her, he said, “Now I have a question for you.”

“Do you, now?” she said. She was probably most dangerous when she sounded most Irish. “And what might that be?”

“This: when you left me that note yesterday, you blacked out a word in front of your name. What was it?”

She sat up and drew away from him. That they were naked together on the bed suddenly seemed irrelevant; it was almost as if they’d just met for the first time. “I didn’t expect you to ask me that,” she said quietly. “The word was love.” She thrust out her chin, as if to say, What do you make of that?

“I thought so,” he answered. “Why did you black it out?”

“Because you’ve used it twice, once when you were drunk and once for a joke, and it frightened me both times,” Kathleen said. “Because I’ve seen you still carry scars from . . . your former wife. Because after I wrote it, I was afraid that if you saw it, it would scare you away.”

“It’s safe enough now,” Bushell said. “We’re in my hotel room, so I can’t very well run.”

But sometimes you couldn’t hold up a quip for a shield and expect it to ward you from all human feeling. Bushell wished he had a bottle of Jameson handy. Had he had one, though, he probably would have crawled into it. He’d been shocked and horrified at Buckley Bay. Now he was frightened. He knew what kind of wounds he was risking, how deep they cut, how long they lasted. He looked at Kathleen, who was warily looking back at him. She knew about those wounds, too - oh, maybe not to the full bitter extent he did, but enough. He could wound her, if he chose to. She’d given him the chance, and now she sat waiting to see what he would do with it.

“We made love before we said we were in love,” he said slowly. “Bodies, sometimes, are simpler than brains. They just do things; they don’t have to try to understand what things mean. And when, before, with other people, things didn’t mean what we thought they - “

He ran down in the middle of his sentence, something he rarely did. After a moment, he saw it didn’t matter. He’d agreed they were in love, he hadn’t been joking, and he hadn’t run out of the hotel room though he hoped Kathleen never found out how tempted he’d been.

“Now we see where we go from here,” Kathleen said.

Bushell nodded. This felt different from what he’d been like when he first met Irene: less ferocious, less giddy. But he got the idea it could indeed go places. As for what those places might be - “If we don’t find The Two Georges, we can head into exile together.”

She looked at him. “If we don’t find The Two Georges, will we want to have anything to do with each other . . . afterward?”

“Now there’s a question.” He got up, walked over to his jacket, and took his cigar case from the inside pocket where it rested. He made a ritual of getting the cigar started. Only when surrounded by wreaths of fragrant smoke did he turn back to Kathleen and remark, “You know, I had reasons enough already to want to get the bloody thing back.”

He’d hoped she would laugh. Instead, she answered, “One more never hurts.” He thought that over, then nodded again.

Sir Horace Bragg looked up from the papers that, piled high on his desk, seemed to build a wall between him and the outer world. He smiled his lugubrious smile across that wall and said, “Good morning, Tom. You look ready to whip your weight in tigers today. I wish I could say the same.” “What now, sir?” Bushell asked.

“Stanage’s solicitor got him out on a writ yesterday evening.” Bushell made a face. “So that was his safety-deposit box password, eh? I wonder how long it has been. I’d give you long odds the judge never asked.” He and Bragg silently commiserated about the unfathomable ways of judges. Then he went on, “I had a good idea last night, or I think so, anyhow. I want to hear how you like it.”

“I’m all ears,” Sir Horace answered, reaching up to touch one of the rather fleshy protuberances in question. He wasn’t saying anything about Bushell’s conversation with Jamie Macias or his own reaction to it. Probably trying to pretend it never happened, Bushell thought. He said, “All the evidence we’ve developed in this case makes the Russians look to be the people feeding the damned Sons of Liberty gold and guns, doesn’t it, sir?”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Bragg said. “We’ve been over that ground again and again. Haven’t come up with anything I know of to make us suspect the Holy Alliance or somebody more unlikely like the Prussians or Austrians.”

“No, sir,” Bushell agreed. “Not a scrap. But one of the things we’ve been worried about is whether stealing The Two Georges was an end in itself or part of a bigger plot, one that would endanger the King-Emperor when he gets to Victoria.”

“As a matter of fact, Sir Devereaux Jones rang me up with that very concern not ten minutes ago,” the RAM commandant said. “He seemed genuinely alarmed, and he’s not a man to concern himself with trifles.”

Bushell had said the same thing the day before, but let that go. He’d succeeded in putting a flea in Sir Devereaux’s ear, all right. “It occurred to me that, if there will be an attempt on the person of Charles III, the Sons of Liberty may well need to get some weapon or piece of apparatus from the Russian embassy at the last minute. One way to keep that from happening would be to seal off the embassy grounds for the duration of His Majesty’s visit, let no one in or out during that time.”

“Duke Orlov would scream blue murder,” Sir Horace observed. “That’s not the sort of slight a diplomat will take lying down.”

“To hell with diplomacy,” Bushell said, not the first time he’d voiced such a sentiment. “Keeping the King-Emperor safe counts for more, if you ask me.”

“Oh, I agree with you,” Bragg said. “Don’t mistake me for a moment. All right, we’ll do it that way, and let Sir Martin or the foreign secretary pour oil on troubled waters. I won’t be sorry not to have the Russians sneaking around during the imperial visit, and that’s the God’s truth.”

“That’s very good, sir.” Bushell hoped the glad surprise he felt didn’t show in his voice. He dismissed as foolishness his fear that the RAM commandant was somehow involved in the theft of The Two Georges and whatever plot might be hatching against Charles III. The Russians, he was convinced, were part and parcel of that plot; if his old friend was part of it, too, he would have come up with any number of good reasons to leave the Russian embassy open. Instead, he’d agreed to close it down. Sir Horace had passed the test. It was the best news Bushell had had for days. The only problem with it was, it left the leak to the Sons of Liberty unaccounted for. He made a mental note to go after that leak, not that he had much hope of finding it unless the villain, whoever he was, made a mistake: when you asked a leaker if he was leaking, he wasn’t likely to say yes.

Bragg must have been following that same melancholy train of thought. His forehead corrugated into a badland of wrinkles. “I wish to heaven I could find out how the devil the Sons got word of our raids. When I do - if I do - someone’s head is going to go on the block, and that’s the God’s truth, too. If the Sons have infiltrated the RAMs, nothing and nobody is safe anymore.”

“I know,” Bushell said; glad once more to find Sir Horace thinking along with him. “How’s your tooth, sir?” he asked sympathetically.

Bragg rolled his eyes. “Don’t speak of it. I may have to go back to that quack of a Pendleton sometime in the next few days to get the nerve killed. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it, not when they put it that way? What they don’t tell you is that it means drilling a good, deep hole in your head. I think half the torturers in theOkhrana started out as dentists.”

Bushell, who had been through the procedure, nodded vigorous agreement. He said, “Have you got any idea who the turncoat might be?”

“I wish I did,” the RAM commandant answered, his voice even more melancholy than usual. “And speaking of turncoats, have they managed to match that note from Stanage’s to a machine handy for Sir David Clarke? Safety-deposit box password, my -“ His snort said his opinion of that was the same as Bushell’s.

“No, sir,” Bushell answered. “From what Captain Oliver says, it doesn’t seem to be any of the ones in America’s Number Ten.”

“Maybe one he has at home, then,” Sir Horace suggested.

“Neither of those, either,” Bushell said. “Unofficially speaking, of course.”

“Really? You do sail close to the wind, don’t you, Tom? And I’ve said that before, haven’t I?” Bragg sighed, then held out his hands, palm up. “It doesn’t signify, anyhow. Sir David could lay hands on a fresh typewriter as easily as he could lay hands on -“ He didn’t take that any further.

“So he could.” If Bushell’s voice came out cold, Sir Horace would attribute that to his still-smoldering anger at Sir David Clarke. And that anger was there, and likely would be for as long as Bushell lived. But now he was angry at Sir Horace, too, not only for bedding Irene but also for trying to manipulate him. He looked across the desk at the man he’d long thought his friend. I’ll work with you till we get The Two Georges back. After that, we’re quits. Had Sir Horace shown the slightest reluctance to shut down the Russian embassy while the King-Emperor was in Victoria, they would have been quits already. Bragg’s eyes were deep and dark and moist: sad spaniel eyes. If you looked into them, you’d swear you could see all the way down to the bottom of his soul. Bushell had thought he’d done just that. Only went to show you couldn’t tell by looking.

“One way or another, things will work out,” Bragg said. “We’ll whip the villains yet.”

“Yes, sir,” Bushell said. After that, we’re through.