The Two Georges

XVII

Bushell got off the line quickly after letting Phyllis Stanley know Sam had come through the surgery well. That gave the assistant director’s secretary an agreeable surprise; by his expression, he’d thought Bushell aimed at bankrupting the hospital with his extravagant telephone habits. His suspicions returned when Bushell asked for the use of a razor, shaving soap, and a showerbath in an unoccupied room, and redoubled when Ted Kittridge not only asked for the same things but blew smoke in his face doing it. His plaintive cries were, however, overruled, and he went off to sulk in his tent while the two RAMs bathed in the advantage of their heroic stature.

Putting back on the suit he’d been wearing so long irked Bushell, but not enough to make him want to go over to the William and Mary for fresh clothes. After he’d seen Sam would be time enough for that.

“Sir?” A nursing sister approached him - warily. When she seemed satisfied he wouldn’t bite, she went on, “Dr. Duncan says you can see Mr., uh, Stanley for a few minutes, provided you don’t tire him.”

“Oh, too bad,” Bushell said. “I’d been planning to take him out for a run around the block.” The nursing sister stared, shook her head, and reluctantly let him follow her to Samuel Stanley’s room. The chamber smelled of carbolic acid, even more strongly than the waiting room had. Arm swathed in splints and bandages, Stanley looked up at Bushell. His eyes were large and round and staring. “Hullo, Chief,” he said in a distant voice: he was awake, and alert enough to know who Bushell was, but still woozy from the medications they’d given him.

“Hullo, Sam. I told Phyllis you were all right.”

“Oh, she’d be sure of that any which way. She knows I was born to hang.” Stanley giggled, not the sort of sound Bushell was used to hearing from him.

“You’re feeling no pain,” he observed.

Stanley shook his head. Each back-and-forth motion seemed to require a separate effort of will. “It’s there,” he said. “I know it’s there. It’s just that it’s there and I’m - over here.” He raised his right arm and waved it around to indicate some immense distance. Then he giggled again. Bushell didn’t know what to make of that. Standing here in the white room, looking at the white bandages, reminded him of how close they’d come to failing, too. He didn’t want to think about that, so he said, “I wish you’d been plainer about what you thought of Bragg.”

“That tight-arsed, Negro-hating old statue?” Stanley couldn’t have been a great deal plainer if he’d tried for a week. With his head buzzing from anesthetic and morphia, he didn’t care what he said. “You liked him, though. I never could figure that out, but what the hell? I just thought, Nobody’s smart about everything, and went on about my business.”

“Nobody’s smart about everything,” Bushell repeated. “Bragg damn near was. Even after we found out he was the villain, he almost -“ He didn’t want to say it. The British Empire hadn’t suffered regicide in more than three hundred years. God willing, another three hundred would go by before the Empire had to worry about it again.

“Put that vile thing out this instant, do you hear?” a nursing sister said out in the hall, her voice unwontedly loud and angry. When Ted Kittridge came into the room a moment later, he did so sans cigarillo.

He stopped a couple of paces in from the doorway and stood looking toward Stanley. “Glad you’re going to be all right, Captain,” he said, more words than Bushell had heard from him in all the time they were waiting.

“I suppose I am,” Stanley said. “Glad you were driving. Glad we got there in time. Glad -“ His smile was broad and foolish. He seemed to know it, saying, “Listen to the medicine talking.”

Kittridge waved that aside - wordlessly, as usual. The nursing sister came in and said, “That will be enough of that, gentlemen.” She was short and thin and elderly - and no one in his right mind would have thought even for an instant of disobeying her. Under her stern, bespectacled gaze, Bushell and Kittridge left the room.

Once out in the hallway, Bushell asked her, “Have you got a cafeteria in this place?” As if to punctuate the sentence, his stomach growled like an irritated mastiff. He hoped the nursing sister didn’t hear it.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Ground floor, west corridor, most of the way back from the street.”

Bushell made it to the cafeteria without too much trouble. Ted Kittridge accompanied him. They filled their trays and found an empty table: not hard, since most of them were empty. As soon as he dug in, Bushell understood why. “This is worse than what they feed you in the army,” he said, being unable to come up with any stronger dispraise on the spur of the moment.

“And you don’t have to pay for that,” Kittridge agreed, dismayed into using a complete sentence. After he’d eaten as much as he could stomach, which didn’t take long, Bushell once more bearded the assistant director’s secretary in his den. That worthy, assured Bushell did not intend to strain the hospital’s accounts by ringing long-distance yet again, grudgingly vouchsafed him the further use of a telephone.

He dialed the number for RAM headquarters. When he identified himself, the switchboard operator shouted in his ear, then managed more coherent congratulations. “Has Major Williams got in yet?” he asked.

“Not half an hour ago, sir,” the operator answered. “He’s one of the men questioning the traitor now.”

His voice showed cold fury. No longer was Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg the longtime, well-respected commandant of the Royal American Mounted Police. He’d found a shorter, harsher label, the one he’d take down in history.

“Ring me through to him,” Bushell said.

“Stay on the line, sir. Someone will have to call him out of the interrogation room, which may take a minute or two.”

Bushell stayed on the line. Within the promised interval, Micah Williams picked up a telephone. “Here’s to cabals, Colonel,” he said; his gruff voice had a purr in it, like that of a lion that has made a kill. Then, quickly, the purr changed to concern: “How’s Captain Stanley?”

“He should be all right. He’s come through surgery, and I’ve spoken with him.”

“Thank God for that,” Williams said. “I thought you and he and Kittridge had lost your minds, running out on us like that. But you knew what you were doing, all right, and thank God for that, too.”

“It was a damned near-run thing even so,” Bushell said. “What has Bragg got to say for himself?”

“Not much,” Williams answered. “Why should he talk? They’re going to stretch his skinny neck already, so he hasn’t got a thing to gain by speaking up. The bugger actually seems smug about what he’s done, as if he were proud of himself, as if he hadn’t lost the game.”

“Well, he bloody well has,” Bushell said. “After His Majesty speaks tonight at six - hell, by now, I suppose, what with the news going out over the wireless - it’ll be worth a man’s life for anyone to find out he’s a Son of Liberty.”

“And a good thing, too, says I,” Micah Williams answered. “Of course, I’ve been saying it’s a good thing these past twenty years, same as you. But now people will listen when we say it.”

“If that happens, it will be pretty fine,” Bushell said before returning to the business at hand. “Have you found out yet where Bragg was when he said he was at the dentist’s?”

“Not yet,” Williams said. “We’ll grill him through the full forty-eight, though, before we let him ring his solicitor. We’ll see what comes of that. It worked with the villains we rounded up in Georgestown, even if we did have to squeeze ‘em like a bid-whist player trying to get a last trick out of a hand.”

Bushell thought of something else. “How’s Sally Reese taking this?”

“I wasn’t here, of course, when news of what happened down by the docks came in,” Williams said, “but they tell me the shriek she let out frightened people on three different floors. She’s crushed, Colonel - flat as a griddle cake. Somebody - I think it was Patricia Oliver, but I’m not certain - took her home a little while ago.”

“Whoever it was should stay with her for a while, make sure she doesn’t slash her wrists or stick her head in the gas oven,” Bushell said. “I was afraid you’d say something like that. She’s just had her world cave in. And what about Cecilia Bragg?”

“I don’t know about her,” Micah Williams said. “We’re going to have to question her, I suppose, and find out whether she knew anything. Lord, what an ugly mess this will be when all’s said and done.”

“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Bushell agreed. “My guess is that Bragg kept things from her, the way he did from everyone else.” He remembered what Irene had told him of that party he’d thrown for Bragg on the occasion of his knighthood. “He was always good at that. But you never can tell. Cecilia might have been good at it, too. As you say, we’ll have to sweat her to know.”

“Yes, sir,” Williams said. “What are you going to do now, sir?”

“Me?” Bushell was only just beginning to think about that. “Get some sleep, maybe, and see how Sam is doing after that, and then - I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get one more ride from Sergeant Kittridge and come back to headquarters to help you people sort through things.”

“If it hadn’t been for you, sir, we’d be out fifty million pounds, and God only knows what would have happened to His Majesty.”

“Stubborn counts,” Bushell said. “Sometimes I think it counts more than anything else.”

Micah Williams laughed. “You’re talking to a police officer. Tell me something I didn’t know.”

“Never mind that,” Bushell said. “If you can’t tell me something I didn’t know, I’m going to ring off and see if they’ll give me someplace where I can close my eyes for a while - and see how big a fit they pitch when I ask for it.”

To his surprise, almost to his disappointment, the powers that be in the hospital didn’t pitch a fit. Instead, a nursing sister led him to a room currently without any patients. When he walked in, he understood. There on one of the beds lay Ted Kittridge in his stocking feet, derby down over his face to hold daylight at bay. From under the derby came more than respectable snores.

Bushell got out of his own shoes and lay down on the other bed. He feared Kittridge’s racket would keep him awake. And so it did - instead of falling asleep in thirty seconds, he tossed and turned for sixty, or perhaps even ninety.

The first thing he noticed when he woke up was that the light had changed: the sun had traveled across the sky and was no longer shining in the window. The second thing he noticed was that Sergeant Kittridge was sitting up in the other bed. “What time is it?” he asked, hearing how blurry his own voice sounded.

Kittridge took out his pocket watch. “Quarter of five,” he answered. He glanced over at Bushell. “You snore . . . sir.” •

“So do you,” Bushell said. Both men chuckled. Bushell swung his feet down onto the floor. He went on, “I feel much better now. I’m all the way up to ancient and decrepit.”

“Uh-huh,” Kittridge said - as much a grunt as a word. Sam, now, would have given an answer worth having. Sam, though, wasn’t in hospital to catch up on his rest, though Bushell hoped he was able to do that, too.

Bushell’s backbone crunched and creaked as he bent to pick up his shoes. “You suppose they’ll throw us out on the street if we try to see Sam again?”

“No,” Kittridge said: an economy of expression difficult to match.

Under other circumstances, Bushell might have contemplated grabbing a bite to eat before he went to visit his adjutant. Given the quality of the hospital cafeteria, he decided to do without. He clapped a hand to his forehead. “Lord, if that’s what they serve the guests and the doctors, what do the patients get?”

“Slop, I expect,” Kittridge answered.

The broth and stewed prunes on a tray set on Stanley’s bed fit Kittridge’s definition well enough. “I want a beefsteak,” Stanley said, “a big, juicy beefsteak. Beef builds blood. Doesn’t that quack of a dietitian know anything about how to feed a man?”

“Me, I wouldn’t fancy a hospital beefsteak unless my shoes wanted resoling,” Bushell said. “But even if they gave it to you, how would you cut it?”

Sam mournfully contemplated his wounded arm. “If I had a good, true friend, I suppose he might give me a hand,” he said. “It would take a mighty good friend, but - “

Bushell laughed. “You don’t want a friend. What you want is a slave.”

“No, no, that’s Bragg,” Stanley said, laughing, too. But he quickly sobered. “He really does, you know. If the Sons ever got their way, I wouldn’t care to be the color I am, not in the North America they’d give us.”

“It’s fifty million pounds and one painting further from happening than it was this morning,” Bushell said.

“Now we need to find out if it was Russia backing the Sons all through this plot, or if the Holy Alliance was trying to pull a fast one on us.”

“Could be war,” Ted Kittridge said. “Could be a big war.”

“Abetting the assassination of a sovereign?” Bushell weighed the gravity of the charge. After a moment, he nodded. “You might be right.”

There hadn’t been a big war, a world-bestriding war of the kind Kittridge meant, since the eighteenth century, not long before the North American Union came into being. Since then, the British Empire had been too strong for any other power to challenge head-on. But an Empire cast into confusion by the murder of its chief and perhaps by an uprising of the Sons of Liberty might have been vulnerable to attack from a foreign foe. Bushell weighed the odds. “If there’s war now, we’ll win it.”

“Hell, yes,” Kittridge said. “Would have anyway. For sure now.”

“The Sons who really make me angry are the rich ones,” Stanley said, following his own thought. “Bragg was doing fine where he was - why does he think he needs his plantation back? Joseph Kilbride, Stanage, Morton Johnston: they’re all rich. They’ve got no business conspiring with foreign kings, wanting to tear down the Empire that let them do so much.”

“That’s right,” Bushell said vehemently. “I can understand why somebody like Michael O’Flynn might become a Son. You earn your little wage setting powder charges way underground, never sure whether the roof’s going to come down on your head or the mine will blow up ... you live like that, any change looks good. Maybe Eustace Venable had his reasons, too: a cabinetmaker’s not going to be able to retire rich at forty-five, no matter how good his work is. But some of the others we’ve hauled in -“ He shook his head.

“Rum old world,” Kittridge said. Bushell and Stanley both nodded. There wasn’t a police officer in the British Empire - there probably wasn’t a Franco-Spanish inquisitor or Okhrana man in Russia - who didn’t sing that song a dozen times a week.

“And the rich ones use the poor ones, and most of the time it’s the poor ones who get caught,” Stanley said. “Even now - what was the word Williams used for Bragg, Chief? He’s still smug? Is that it? I don’t care how smug he is. The Mint doesn’t stamp out enough sovereigns to hire the solicitor who could get him out of the prisoners’ dock now, because there’s no such man.”

“Good thing, too,” Bushell said. “He’ll get what he deserves, and he deserves -“ He didn’t go on. His own anger at Bragg was as much rooted in his betrayal of friendship as in his betrayal of country, but if a man could do the one, it was easier to see how he might also do the other.

“Sorry it worked out this way, Chief,” Sam said, guessing some of what was going through his mind.

“I’d sooner have put Sir David’s head up on the wall, and that’s a fact,” Bushell said. “You can’t always get everything you want, though, and we did pretty damn well here.” He hesitated, then made a grudging admission he’d never expected to hear from his own lips: “And Clarke isn’t - quite - the bastard I always thought he was.”

Samuel Stanley turned to Sergeant Kittridge. “Take this man back to his hotel, Ted. He’s spent so much time in hospital, he’s come down with softening of the brain.”

Bushell snorted but didn’t argue. Without a word, Kittridge led him off to the carpark alongside the hospital. The local RAM turned the key to ignite the burner; he’d killed the pilot when he pulled into the carpark. Bushell leaned back in his seat and waited for steam to come up in the boiler. Idly, he took out his pocket watch and glanced at it. Maybe he’d be back at the William and Mary in time to catch His Majesty’s speech on the wireless, or maybe he’d have a proper supper at the hotel restaurant and walk over to RAM headquarters afterward.

Kittridge had time enough to smoke one of his odorous little cigarillos down to the butt before steam pressure built to the point where they could get rolling. Bushell lit a cigar of his own in self-defense, but the smoke from Kittridge’s was pungent enough to overcome the milder tobacco he favored. He rolled his window all the way down when the steamer got moving. The breeze got rid of some of the cigarillo stink, but replaced it with the hot, muggy air of Victoria in high summer - a bargain, perhaps, but not the best one he’d ever made.

He was close to dozing, in spite of the rest he’d had back at the hospital. Like a gourmand looking for a snack to fill up a tiny empty space after some gargantuan repast, he worried at the question of why Horace Bragg remained smug after his plot had utterly failed. Was he proud of taking a brewer and a coal-mine powderman and a cabinetmaker down into ruin with him? That seemed a perverse sort of pride, indeed.

A street-corner trafficator ordered a halt. Kittridge obeyed it, then reached into his waistcoat pocket for the case where he kept the dock-scrapings he called cigarillos. Bushell eyed the move with what he hoped was well-concealed resignation.

Suddenly he jerked the door of the motorcar open, jumped out, and ran over to a red public telephone box near the corner. Kittridge shouted something at him. Ignoring his fellow RAM, he fed a shilling into the coin slot. When an operator came on, he said, “Ring me the All-Union Art Museum.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the operator said after a moment. “All lines are engaged at the moment - hardly surprising, what with His Majesty’s visit and the excitement of the day. Perhaps you’d do better to try another time.”

“The excitement of the day’s not done,” Bushell snarled. He slammed down the phone and dashed out of the box without getting his shilling back.

Ted Kittridge was still sitting at the corner, though the trafficator’s arms gave him the right - indeed, practically commanded him - to move. Klaxons blared behind him; irate, sweaty drivers leaned out their windows to discuss his ancestry. As far as he was concerned, they might as well not have existed. He glanced toward Bushell with mild curiosity on his face. “What’s up?”

“Where’s the All-Union Art Museum from here?” Bushell demanded. “The map inside my head’s all twisted around.”

“You want to go to the museum?” Kittridge asked. Bushell nodded vehemently. “Not the hotel?” the sergeant persisted, picking now of all times to be talky.

“No, I always say I want to go one place when I mean the other,” Bushell answered. “Don’t you?”

Kittridge considered that, grunted out an economical bit of laughter, and sent the steamer spurting across the intersection just as the trafficator arm swung up to bar his way. The drivers behind him who hadn’t got across shouted more curses. The drivers on the cross street, who had been about to roll through the intersection themselves, blew savage blasts of protest on their horns. As far as Kittridge’s demeanor showed, he might have had the boulevard to himself. After a couple of minutes he glanced over at Bushell and asked, “What’s wrong now?”

“Maybe nothing,” Bushell said. “I hope to God nothing, as a matter of fact. But if we’ve got a Son in gaol who’s a dab hand with blasting powder, and if the late, unlamented Eustace Venable was a master cabinetmaker, and if The Two Georges has that big, fat, fancy frame around it - “

“ - And if Bragg doesn’t give a damn that they’re going to hang him,” Kittridge said, thoughtful enough to expend a whole sentence to complete Bushell’s thought. On top of the first, he added a second: “We’d better hurry.”

“Yes,” Bushell said, and let it go at that. The ten minutes they’d spent waiting to get up steam pressure suddenly felt like a squandered eternity. If he was right, and if they got to the museum a couple of minutes too late to do anything about it - what would he do then? The only thing that occurred to him was, Crawl in a bottle and never come out.

Kittridge scraped a lucifer against the dashboard and used it to light another cigarillo. The sulfurous smoke from the lucifer was better than what came out of the cigarillo, as far as Bushell was concerned. Kittridge took a couple of puffs, coughed, and then asked, “What if you’re wrong?”

“Then I’m going to look like the biggest damn fool the world has ever seen, and I’ll do it in front of all the millions of people listening to His Majesty’s speech on the wireless.”

“Charles’ll forgive you,” Kittridge said, blowing out another cloud of vile smoke. “He’d better, considering.”

“He may forgive me,” Bushell answered. “Nobody else will.”

The All-Union Art Museum was a neoclassical building with a marble stairway leading up to a colonnaded front modeled after that of the ancient Roman Temple of Concord. Bushell and Kittridge reached the grounds surrounding the museum at 6:13. Bushell hadn’t heard any ambulances or constabulary vehicles clanging their way to the site or, worse, away from it, and took that as a good sign. He needed all the good signs he could find.

By then, he was used to barricades manned by red-uniformed RAMs. This time, Kittridge didn’t have to crash through any of them. The RAMs waiting at the roadblocks stumbled over themselves shoving them aside and waving his steamer forward. “You’re a hero,” Kittridge said as he rolled up to the entrance.

“See what it gets you?”

“Into more trouble,” Bushell answered. He got out of the motorcar as soon as it stopped. So did Kittridge. They bounded up the steps together, as he and Sam Stanley had on the way up to the first floor the night The Two Georges was stolen. He wished Stanley were at his side now. Had it not been for Sam, though, he might not have made the connection between the knowledge the Sons of Liberty had and the remaining danger to Charles III.

Provided, of course, he told himself as, panting, he pulled at the heavy glass-and-bronze doors to the museum, there is any remaining danger. If there wasn’t . . He shook his head. He’d been through that already.

Just inside the doors, more RAMs stepped forward to block his path. When they found out who he was, they went from wary and hostile to eagerly helpful in the space of a heartbeat.

“Yes, sir,” one of them said. “His Majesty is speaking in the Heritage Room. Down that corridor, turn left, and then right at the first door. Here, let me come with you and clear a path.”

Bushell didn’t argue, but set off for the Heritage Room at the best pace he could manage. It was almost 6:20 now. If there was a bomb in the frame around The Two Georges, the Sons wouldn’t have set it for much after six. They’d know the King-Emperor would start to speak right on the hour, for the benefit of the wireless broadcasts that would beam his words across the NAU, all through the British Empire, and around the world.

The RAM guards at the door to the Heritage Room were not carrying pistols. They had Lee-Enfield rifles with bayonets fixed, and brought them up as Bushell, Kittridge, and the RAM from the front entrance bore down on them. At that RAM’s urgent gesture, they lowered their weapons. “What the devil’s going on?” they demanded, almost in chorus.

“Trouble,” Bushell answered. One way or another, that was true. Either the King-Emperor was in trouble or Bushell momentarily would be.

He thumbed the latch and yanked the door open. The sudden sharp noise made heads turn all through the Heritage Room. Up at the podium, Charles III never faltered, but continued with his address: “. . . bound to one another by ties of blood and friendship, of unity and amity, we go forward together and . . .”

Press photographers, gaudy security badges pinned to their jackets like decorations from minor German powers, stood against the walls of the Heritage Room. Flashbulbs popped as Bushell and Kittridge trotted to the front of the hall. One went off almost in Bushell’s face. Ignoring the blast of light, he hurried past the photographers.

Charles III went on with the speech until the very moment Bushell came up beside him. Among the dignitaries seated behind the King-Emperor was Kathleen Flannery, who looked lovely in a gown of shining, dark green silk Bushell hadn’t seen before. She got to her feet, saying, “What - ?”

Bushell leaned forward so the microphone would pick up his words. “I’m sorry,” he began, thinking, I’ll be sorrier if I turn out to be wrong, “but you must clear the hall at once. We have” - some - “reason to believe an explosive device may be concealed in the frame of The Two Georges.”

He’d used the euphemism on purpose, to try to hold panic to a minimum. But people didn’t take long to realize explosive device was just a five-syllable synonym for bomb. They didn’t quite stampede out the doors at the back of the Heritage Room, but they weren’t perfectly chivalrous, either. Bushell turned to Charles III, who showed no inclination to leave. “That means you, too, Your Majesty. Especially, that means you. If there is a bomb and if it goes off and catches you, the Sons win in spite of everything else we’ve done today.”

The King-Emperor considered that, looked unhappy, and finally nodded and retired, much less rapidly than most of his subjects. Kathleen said, “Why do you think - ?” Again, she didn’t finish the sentence.

“I’ll explain later,” Bushell said. One way or another, he added to himself. “Go on now - get out of here while you can.” When she looked mulish, he told her, “The King-Emperor listened to me.”

“It’s not the King-Emperor’s museum,” she said, and didn’t budge.

“No point getting blown up to no purpose. This is your life we’re talking about,” he said, and shoved her toward the RAMs staring in from the hallway. “Get her out of here.” Ignoring Kathleen’s vehement protests, the RAMs did just that.

“Help me get it down off the wall,” Bushell told Ted Kittridge. They lowered The Two Georges. Bushell examined the frame, front and back. It looked fine. It would, he thought. Venable was a hell of a cabinetmaker.

Raising his voice, he called to the RAMs who had taken charge of Kathleen:

“Have we got an explosives expert handy?” Nobody said anything or came forward. He rubbed at his mustache. “Looks like it’s amateur night,” he said to nobody in particular. He took out his pistol, unloaded it, and used the barrel to tap at the frame. It sounded like solid wood. He tapped again, a couple of inches farther along the oak. That sounded like solid wood, too. Seeing what he was doing, Sergeant Kittridge took the cartridges out of his own weapon and started tapping at the other side of the frame.

Tap, tap. Thunk, thunk. Tap, tap. Thunk, thunk ... Bushell turned the corner on the frame. Tap, tap. Thunk, thunk. Tap, tap. Thunk, thunk. Tap, tap. Thunk . . . thok. Bushell paused and tapped at the second place again. Thok. The sound was distinctly different. He glanced over to where the picture had hung on the wall of the Heritage Room. That part of the frame would have been right behind the King-Emperor, and about chest-high. He stared at the frame. It still looked fine. He put on his reading spectacles and brought his head so close to the gilded wood, his eyes crossed. Was that a hair-thin straight line that didn’t belong in the rococo exuberance of the carving? He couldn’t be sure. He ran his thumbnail across it. He couldn’t be sure there, either.

“Only one way to find out,” he said, and, reversing his pistol so he held it by the barrel, brought the butt down on the picture frame as hard as he could.

Wood chips flew. He smashed at the frame again, and again. Without warning, he broke through into a hollow cunningly concealed in the very heart of the oak. Wires ran from a timing device to a large sausage of explosive a couple of inches away. He reached in and tore their connections loose. That done, he lifted out the timer. It was based on a small alarm clock. He glanced down to see the hour for which the clock had been set, then pulled out his pocket watch.

He wasn’t the only one looking from the face of one timepiece to that of the other. “Cutting it close,” Ted Kittridge remarked.

“Five minutes, I make it - all the time in the world.” Bushell got to his feet. He caught Kittridge’s eye.

“Let’s hang it back up so His Majesty can finish his speech.”

The door to the interrogation room at RAM headquarters opened. Horace Bragg came in. Without being told to, he sat down in the hard chair reserved for prisoners. The pyjama-like suit of coarse cloth with the broad arrow on it hung like a tent from his gaunt frame.

From under bushy brows, he stared across the table at Thomas Bushell. Something - the vital spark was gone from his eyes. Bushell had seen that before, in other prisoners who had given up.

“Hullo, Tom,” Bragg said. Something had gone out of his voice, too. He sounded as if he saw the hangman’s noose looming large in his future - and he had reason to sound that way.

“Hullo,” Bushell said, and then formally, for the record: “As you have indicated of your own free will the wish to speak, I must inform you that this is not required, and that what you say may be used against you in a court of law.” A colored clerk recorded his words and Bragg’s; he wondered if the Negro’s presence was salt on his friend’s - his former friend’s - wounds.

A bit of impatience came into Bragg’s voice: “I ought to know that rigmarole, Tom; I helped revise it, after all. Go on. Ask your questions.”

“Then you also know I’m required to go through it with you,” Bushell answered. We don’t want any possible errors a smart barrister might exploit. He didn’t say that out loud; Bragg would be able to figure it out for himself. Instead, he did as Bragg had said and asked his questions: “Where were you when you claimed to be visiting your dentist?”

“Where do you think I was?” Bragg tried to smile, as if that were no more than light badinage, but he managed to keep the corners of his mouth pressed upward for only a couple of seconds.

“I think you were with Comte Philippe Bonaparte,” Bushell answered. “We’ve found a waiter in a cafe just off Embassy Row who says he saw the two of you together there at times when you were supposed to be in the chair getting your crown.”

“If you already know the answers, why ask the questions?” Bragg said, a little sullenly.

“Because sometimes they give us new answers,” Bushell said. “Suppose you had assassinated the King-Emperor? What then? What did you hope to gain from all this?”

“Freedom,” Bragg said. “A new chance to make America what it was meant to be, not tied to the apron strings of an island full of busybodies far across the sea. In the chaos, we would have seized the moment and - “

“Lost,” Bushell put in.

“When the risings began - “

Bushell interrupted again: “What risings? Who on earth besides your handful of fanatics ever wished the Empire and the NAU anything but good?”

“Risings for freedom, all across America,” Bragg said. “We’ve endured this tyranny for two centuries and more, endured its robbery for a century and a half.”

“Robbery? A century and a half ago?” Bushell scratched his head. Then his eyes widened. “Good God, Sam was right all along - you are still angry the Crown freed the slaves way back then, even if your however-many-times-great-grandfather got paid off for them.”

“It was robbery,” Bragg insisted. “Yes, he got a pittance for the Negroes, but how could he go on working his land without them? How the family suffered afterwards -“ He waved a scrawny hand. “But that isn’t what you asked. Of course there would have been risings. Some the Sons would have aided, yes, but others, hundreds of others all across the land, would have erupted and spread like wildfire. From Drakestown to Victoria - “

“You would have been hunted down like dogs,” Bushell said. “Oh, there would have been risings, all right - risings against the regicides.” He wondered how the mining country would have gone, but refused to give Bragg the satisfaction of saying so out loud. There would have to be changes in Pennsylvania and Franklin and Virginia; he’d realized that much. And in almost all the NAU - “There wouldn’t have been enough constables and RAMs to keep the mobs from lynching every Son they could catch.”

“We would have had help,” Bragg said. “The Holy Alliance would have - “

“Lost,” Bushell said again. “And even if you’d won, you wouldn’t have got free. You’d have been a Franco-Spanish cat’s-paw instead of a piece of the British Empire. Damned if I can see any improvement there.”

Horace Bragg let out a long sigh. “No, I suppose not. I had such hopes for you, Tom. You always seemed so - American, so ready to be free. But you never would take off the King-Emperor’s dog collar, not even when you were left all alone after you divorced Irene. That bloody well drove me mad, let me tell you.” He shook his head. “Finally I had to send you away.’

Bushell stared at him. New answers indeed! Had Bragg seduced Irene to try to wreck his marriage and make him more vulnerable to recruitment by the Sons of Liberty? Bushell wouldn’t ask that with the clerk listening; he didn’t need it in evidence. But it made more sense than any reason he’d come up with till now. As for the other - “You had to send me away? Why? For fear I’d notice what you were up to?”

“Of course,” his former friend answered, eyes widening as if no other reply were imaginable.

“How long have you been working toward - not this exact scheme, maybe, but something like it?”

“My whole life,” Bragg said simply.

Bushell wondered if he’d ever really know the man on the other side of the table at all. He got to his feet and walked out to the two RAMs who waited in the hall. “I’m done with him,” he said. “Take him back to his cell.”

When Bushell was summoned to America’s Number Ten now, it was not to the Green Room, nor to confer with Sir David Clarke. A servant in the livery of the previous century conducted him to Sir Martin Luther King’s administrative office.

If Governor Burnett’s desk back in New Liverpool had been a dreadnought, aeroplanes might have landed or taken off on the surface of the one Sir Martin Luther King used. The governor-general rose from behind it to shake Bushell’s hand.

“Just take a seat here, Colonel,” he said, waving to a velvet-upholstered chair with elegant Chippendale lines. “I expect my other guest to arrive shortly.”

About five minutes later, the same servant escorted into the office Comte Philippe Bonaparte. The Franco-Spanish ambassador was wearing a suit of Savile Row cut, but a Savile Row tailor would sooner have sliced his wrists with a pair of pinking shears than turn out a suit of crimson velvet with gold embroidery on the lapels and collar of the jacket. The worst thing Bushell could find to say about the ambassador’s cravat was that it made the rest of the outfit conservative by comparison.

“Good day to you, Sir Martin,” Bonaparte said in fluent if accented English, half bowing to the governor-general. He turned to Bushell with a broad, friendly smile. “And here we have the man of the hour! It is an honor to see you again, Colonel.”

“Comte Bonaparte,” Bushell said with the same expressionless tones he might have used to begin an interrogation.

The ambassador from the Holy Alliance started to take the seat next to Bushell’s. “I did not invite you to sit, Comte Bonaparte,” Sir Martin Luther King said, ice in his voice. He hadn’t risen to shake hands with the diplomat, either.

“So you did not, Your Excellency,” Bonaparte said, straightening. “I assumed, however, you did not summon me here for the purpose of insult only.” His eyes glittered. “Perhaps I was wrong.”

“Perhaps you were,” Sir Martin said. “I summoned you here to inform you that, as you have become persona non grata to the North American Union and the British Empire, I request and require you to leave our territory within forty-eight hours of this moment.”

“On what grounds?” Bonaparte cried.

Sir Martin nodded to Bushell, who continued his flat recitation: “On the grounds that you conspired with Sir Horace Bragg and other Sons of Liberty to raise a rebellion against the lawful government of the North American Union, and that this conspiracy involved the theft of The Two Georges and the attempted assassination of the King-Emperor, Charles III.”

“Of this last I knew nothing,” Philippe Bonaparte replied. “It was the inspiration of Bragg and his fellow what is the word they use? - patriots; yes, that is it. As for the other -“ He shrugged a Gallic shrug. “It is my duty to enlarge my country’s prospects, just as it is the duty of the British ambassador in Paris to do likewise for your Empire.”

“And if the British ambassador is caught meddling as your sovereign deems he should not, he is expelled,” Sir Martin said. “You have been caught at something rather worse than meddling, sir. Count yourself lucky we content ourselves with your expulsion and do not go to war.”

“You would not,” Bonaparte said. “It would send the whole world up in flames.”

“That did not concern you when you gave aid and comfort to the Sons of Liberty,” Sir Martin Luther King replied. “My opinion is that the prospect of losing concerns you more than the prospect of war.”

“You are of course entitled to your opinion.” Bonaparte gave the governor-general another half-bow; even expelled, he lost none of his urbanity. After a moment, he added, “And speaking of opinions, mine was never that this effort had - or deserved - a large probability of success.” He turned to Bushell. “I gave you a warning, you will recall, during the reception at Duke Orlov’s.”

“If that was a warning, you’d been ambassador to Delphi before you came to the NAU,” Bushell said. Bonaparte nodded to show he appreciated the classical allusion. Bushell went on, “If you didn’t think your plot deserved to succeed, why the devil did you cover up what you were trying to say? Why didn’t you just come right out and tell me - tell somebody - what you meant?”

“But I could not do that, Monsieur!” Now Bonaparte sounded genuinely shocked. “I had my duty to my own sovereign and to his requirements of me to consider first. Within those limits, I told you everything I possibly could. Does not your Empire, your duty, come before your own personal feelings?”

The shaft hit close to the mark. Had Bushell paid less attention to his duty and more to his personal feelings, he might well have remained married to Irene - and how would that have affected his chances of dealing with the theft of The Two Georges! The very way he framed the question showed how deep a hold duty had on him.

“All right, Monsieur le Comte,” he said. “There is some truth in what you say.”

“Some, perhaps, but not enough,” Sir Martin Luther King said. “Our Lord said, ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’ Doing one’s duty renders unto Caesar, but doing what is right renders unto God.”

“It is not to be doubted, Your Excellency, that you must have been formidable as a man of the cloth, even if you suffered the misfortune of Protestantism,” Bonaparte said. “There must of necessity, however, be a difference between the views of a man of the cloth and those of a man of the world. Is this not so, Colonel Bushell?”

“It’s so,” Bushell said, not caring to agree with the Franco-Spanish ambassador - the ex-Franco-Spanish ambassador - but not about to lie, either. “I wish it weren’t.”

“I also wish it were not so,” Sir Martin Luther King said. “As a man of the world, Comte Bonaparte, I repeat to you that you now have something less than forty-eight hours to remove yourself and your personal effects from the territory of the North American Union. I do not say au revoir, sir. I say good-bye.”

“I obey under protest,” Bonaparte said, and turned to go.

“So long as you obey,” Sir Martin said to his retreating back.

The taxi pulled to a halt halfway down the block of attached homes. The driver pointed. “There you are, sir - number 41,” he said, then glanced at his meter. “That’ll be four pounds, three and sixpence.”

Bushell gave him a fiver and walked toward the door through evening twilight without waiting for change. Like all the other homes on the block, number 41 was neat and well kept - a far cry from the grim dwellings of the miners in Charleroi, even if built to the same basic principle. Before Bushell could ring the bell, Kathleen Flannery opened the door. She looked cool and comfortable in a flower-printed shift of thin cotton. “Come in,” she said, smiling.

“Thanks.” Bushell hung his hat on the tree just inside the door - a lone fedora among cloches, pillboxes, berets, a couple of broad-brimmed picture hats, and others of styles whose names he’d never bothered to learn. Then he kissed her. She prolonged the kiss. His arms tightened hungrily around her. When they separated, she waved him down the short front hall. “Go on, sit down - make yourself at home.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Bushell paused in front of the sofa to look around before he sat. Books, prints, a phonogram and wireless receiver in a cabinet of blond wood, furniture upholstered in a green, lustrous fabric, rusty-brown carpet a few shades darker than Kathleen’s hair. He nodded once, decisively. “I like this place. It looks like you.”

That made Kathleen peer around the room, as if seeing it in a new light. “It does, doesn’t it?” The breeze from an electric fan on a bookcase tugged at her hair. Probably without noticing what she was doing, she smoothed it down as she said, “Do sit down. I’ll be right back.” She went into the kitchen. Her heels tapped on the tiles there. Bottles clinked together. Ice cubes clattered musically into glasses. She came back with two drinks, handing Bushell the amber one and keeping the clear one with a slice of lime for herself. “Thanks,” he said again, and sipped.

“Is it all right?”

“Jameson,” he said. “Ice. Hard to go far wrong.” A stack of cork-bottomed coasters with medieval-looking paintings of knights on them stood at a corner of the polished oak coffee table. He picked one up, examined it, set it down, and put his glass on it. After a moment, he passed her one, too.

“The clerk from Adler Cubicles came by today - with Marge,” she said. “I shot them to the front of the queue, the way I said I would.” She paused to drink from her gin and tonic. “Marge was very impressed.”

“At seeing The Two Georges or at the VIP treatment?”

“Both,” Kathleen said. “I got the idea she didn’t believe he could deliver. When he did, it left her speechless.”

“That must have made the clerk even happier than he was already.”

Kathleen’s scowl would have been more effective had it been less severe. Bushell smiled back at her, bland as butter. The scowl faded. “You are an impossible man,” she told him. “I believe I’ve mentioned that once or twice already.”

“I believe you may have,” he agreed. “I do try.” He wondered if that would draw another glare, but she gave him a thoughtful nod. He sipped the Jameson, set the glass on the coaster again. “We’re well matched.”

“I think so. I’m glad you do, too.” Kathleen peered down into her gin and tonic, as if the little bubbles that rose and burst there told her something she needed to know. Without raising her head, she asked, “How long are you going to stay in Victoria, Tom?”

Bushell took out his cigar case. “Do you mind?” he asked. Kathleen shook her head, again brushing back a lock of hair that got in front of her eyes. The ritual of getting the cigar lighted gave him something to do with his hands, and gave him half a minute or so in which not to answer her question. After he’d savored the first mouthful of smoke and blown it out, he said, “It’ll be a while yet. Brigadier Arthurs needs . . all the help he can get.”

“He’s trying to hose out the Augean Stables,” Kathleen said. “He knows you’re clean.”

“There is that,” Bushell said, and let it go. Normally, he might have been pleased to turn the conversation from the personal direction in which it had veered to his work. Brigadier Benjamin Arthurs, however, left him sad. The man was earnest, affable, and not very bright. Bushell wondered if Horace Bragg had aided his rise precisely because of that blend of qualities. Arthurs had spent several years not noticing a thing. Now, all at once, he was supposed to purge the Victoria RAM office of whatever Sons of Liberty Bragg had infiltrated into it. At least he realized he was out of his depth - or perhaps he’d had orders from the governor-general’s residence. Bushell didn’t know, or want to know, about that. Kathleen finished her drink and set down the empty glass. She started to say something, stopped in surprise, and began again: “I was going to make us both another one, but I see you’ve not finished your first.”

“I can fix that,” Bushell knocked it back. But as he handed her the glass, he said, “I haven’t been as deep into the bottle lately, seems like. Will you get angry if I call you a good influence?”

“Probably,” she answered. “I sound angry, don’t I? With The Two Georges back, the strain’s off everyone.” She got up, went into the kitchen, and returned in a couple of minutes with fresh drinks. Bushell savored the Irish whiskey for the way it tasted, not for the thick, transparent wall it built between him and the world. He hadn’t drunk like that for a long time, not since ... his married days. But the thought of Irene didn’t make his belly knot, didn’t make his brain and his mouth crave the smooth, musky taste of Jameson. “Must be love,” he murmured.

Kathleen slammed her glass down onto the coaster. “You say that. You even mean it - I think. And so?”

She stared a challenge at him.

Now he wished he hadn’t lighted the cigar so soon. Down along the disputed border between the NAU and Nueva España, the soldiers of the Holy Alliance had the charming habit of sowing fields with land torpedoes and then covering them up so cleverly you never knew they were there . . . till you walked on one.

He picked up his own drink. All at once, his hand and his mouth remembered the urge he thought he’d escaped. Deliberately, he contented himself with a small sip. Wherever he put his foot, something was liable to blow up on him.

“I don’t know,” he said, after the pause had stretched longer than it should have. Kathleen’s mouth drew down into a thin, bitter line. “It’s been fun, Dr. Flannery,” she said, putting words in his mouth with irony sharper than a scalpel. “I’d like to go on having fun as long as I’m in Victoria, Dr. Flannery, and after that I’ll be off to New Liverpool, Dr. Flannery, and it’ll be all done. So long, Dr. Flannery.”

“That would be easiest,” Bushell said. She gave him such a withering gaze, he looked for a better word, and found one: “That would be - safest.”

“Everything we’ve been through, and you talk about - safety?”

He nodded, and then did finish the drink after all. The wall of whiskey kept the world from coming in and him from coming out. Facing Kathleen was terrifying in a way facing bullets had never been. In combat, you just reacted. Here . . . “Falling in love with a police officer isn’t a good idea.”

“Since I’ve already gone and done that, it’s a bit late to worry about it, wouldn’t you say?” she answered. “And he says he’s fallen in love with me. But -“ She shrugged.

“Falling in love is easy,” he said harshly. “What comes afterwards isn’t.” He imagined coming home one afternoon and finding Kathleen in the arms of another man. The mental picture was shockingly vivid. And why not? He’d been through that once. Did he dare risk it again?

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she answered, and he remembered he wasn’t the only one with sorrows in his past. “But if you run away from it for fear of what might happen afterwards, what’s the point of doing it at all? What do you have from me that you couldn’t find on a street corner for a ten-pound note?”

He blinked. Women were seldom so forthright. One thing he’d found about Kathleen was that she was seldom anything she was supposed to be. “Do you know,” he said slowly, “that’s a damn fine question.”

“I wouldn’t mind a damn fine answer, then,” she said, which made him notice he’d used a word he didn’t normally employ in feminine company.

“I haven’t got one,” he admitted. That didn’t seem enough, either to him or, obviously, to Kathleen. He looked with longing toward the glass he’d emptied. “If we go on as we have gone on,” he said, eyes on the ground for land-torpedo tripwires at every word, “then you’re right: we ought to see how long we can go on.”

“And how long would you like to see us go on?” Kathleen asked.

“If I’d known this was what you meant by ‘coming to court,’ I’d have brought a barrister,” Bushell replied. He wasn’t used to being on the defensive; his style was to push hard himself. But when it came to matters this intimate, he found himself barely able to move at all. Did that justify Kathleen’s prodding at him? Maybe it did, if you looked at things through her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said; maybe she was trying to look at things through his. But then she shook her head.

“No, I’m not sorry. It’s something I need to know, because it’ll tell me more about how you really feel.”

“You’re right,” he told her, which, by the way her hand groped for and missed her drink, surprised her more than anything else he could have said. He went on, “I’d like to see us go on for - years.” He couldn’t say forever, not even now; it felt too much like asking for trouble. “I don’t know yet if we can, but I’d like to see it.”

“All right.” Now Kathleen hesitated. “You don’t - have anyone waiting back in New Liverpool?”

“The way that Lozovsky blackguard had a lady friend waiting back in Tsaritsin, you mean?” he asked. Kathleen nodded. He shook his head. “No, nobody like that.” He spoke with assurance, for about the first time since he’d sat down on the sofa.

Kathleen noticed as much, too. “That’s good. I didn’t think so, but . . it’s hard being sure.”

“Lord, isn’t it!” Bushell exclaimed. For that moment, he and Kathleen understood each other perfectly. He looked around the room. His eyes narrowed slightly. “I just noticed - you haven’t got a print of The Two Georges here. All these other lovely things, but not that one.”

“Of course I do,” she said, and then, a moment later, “I keep it in the bedroom.”

“In the bedroom?” he echoed, surprised himself now - it wasn’t a painting he would have hung there.

“Well - de gustibus non disputandum.”

“You don’t believe me,” Kathleen said indignantly.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You meant it.” Kathleen jumped to her feet. “Come with me, then. I’ll show you.” She headed for the stairs, not looking back to see whether he followed or not.

Follow he did. He was only a couple of paces behind her when she flicked on the bedroom lamp and waved him in ahead of her. A fine print of a Fragonard hung on one wall, and a smaller reproduction of Greuze’s portrait of Sophie Arnould on another, but - “There’s no Two Georges here.”

“You’re right,” Kathleen said from behind him. “I lied.”

“Why?” he asked, turning.

Mischief filled her face. “Can you think of a more - decorous - way for a lady to invite a gentleman into her bedroom?”

“Can’t be a gentleman all the time,” he said, and took her in his arms. The telephone rang. “Oh, God, what now?” Bushell said, spinning his swivel chair away from the typewriter wherein sat a report recommending the dismissal from the Royal American Mounted Police of Drinkwater, Lieutenant Obadiah J., on the grounds of allegiance to an organization aiming at the subversion of the North American Union and the British Empire. “Hullo? Bushell here.”

“Colonel Bushell?” a female voice said. “One moment, please. His Excellency the governor-general desires to speak with you.”

What’s gone wrong now? Bushell wondered. The thought had hardly formed before Sir Martin Luther King came on the line: “I’m sorry to disturb you, Colonel, but could I ask you to come to my residence as soon as may be convenient for you?”

In plain English, that meant immediately, and Bushell knew it. “Is this something we could possibly do by telephone, Your Excellency?” he asked, with hope but without any great expectation of success.

“I’m afraid not,” Sir Martin answered. “Some matters are too important to be entrusted to such means.”

Fewer than you think. But Bushell didn’t say that out loud. Maybe the governor-general was like a horse shying at shadows - and maybe something dreadful really had erupted. After the past few weeks, how could you be sure? “I’m on my way,” Bushell said, and hung up.

He was heading for the bank of lifts when he came upon Ted Kittridge walking in the same direction, a couple of thick manila folders under one arm. “Where are you off to with those?” he asked.

“America’s Number Ten,” Kittridge answered sourly. He hefted the folders. “They think they’re smarter than we are.”

“If they were half as smart as they think they are, they’d be right,” Bushell said. Kittridge let out a brief chuckle. Bushell went on, “I’m on my way to the same place, matter of fact. Somebody’s had a brainstorm, or thinks he has. Can I take up some space in your steamer?”

“Why not?” Kittridge chuckled again. “What with the last couple of rides we had, I oughtn’t to let you near it. But they turned out right, so - “

Once they were in the motorcar, he lighted another one of his poisonous cigarillos. Bushell already had his window down, the better to stir the hot, soupy air of Victoria summer. Some of the smoke blew away. Some, unfortunately, didn’t. As he had before, he fired up a cigar of his own to fight the stink. At the entrance gate to the governor-general’s residence, RAMs in dress reds meticulously checked Bushell’s badge, then Kittridge’s. They saluted and waved the two men through. “Better than crashing a barricade, eh?” Kittridge said. Bushell nodded. For Kittridge, that was an amazing show of loquacity. When the steamer pulled up to the residence, Sir David Clarke came out to meet Bushell, who started worrying in earnest. If Sir Martin sent out his chief of staff, he did think something was going on. Whatever it was, Clarke was tight-lipped about it, saying only, “Come with me, Colonel.”

Bushell came. Kittridge followed along behind, carrying those manila folders. “What’s all this in aid of?”

Bushell asked. “Sir Martin didn’t want to say much over the telephone.”

“I really think I’d better let His Excellency make the required explanations,” Clarke answered, glancing back over his shoulder at Sergeant Kittridge. That set Bushell worrying again. If Clarke didn’t care to talk in front of a man who’d helped save the King-Emperor’s life not once but twice, whatever was going on had to be horrid. Either that, or the governor-general’s chief of staff deserved a clout in the teeth for slighting Kittridge - and, with Clarke, that was always a possibility. The office to which Kittridge had to deliver his precious folders was only a couple of doors down from Sir Martin’s sanctum. “Meet you downstairs,” he told Bushell, who nodded. Before they went into the governor-general’s office, Bushell tried again: “Anything you can tell me? I hate walking in blind.”

Sir David Clarke pointed to the closed door. “As I said, Colonel, Sir Martin will fully inform you inside.” Damn you, Clarke, Bushell thought. Only the memory of the hour Sir David had wheedled out of the Sons of Liberty kept him from grabbing the chief of staff and shaking the truth out of him right there in the corridor.

He might have done it in spite of that memory, but Clarke’s hand was already on the latch. He relaxed, yielding to the inevitable. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d gone into a briefing cold, and likely wouldn’t be the last, either.

The door opened. The hum of conversation inside Sir Martin Luther King’s office quieted. Hearing any talk at all in there startled Bushell, who’d been expecting to confront a grim-faced Sir Martin alone. What with the governor-general’s urgent efforts at maintaining secrecy and those of his chief of staff, with whom could he be conferring?

“Go on in, Colonel,” Sir David said.

Bushell took two steps into the office, then stopped dead. That was when Samuel Stanley, his left arm still splinted and supported by a sling, handed him a glass of champagne. “Ha! We did fool you, Chief,” he said, his expression triumphant. “I can see it in your face - and Kathleen owes me a fiver. She guessed you’d tumble to it.”

Bushell almost dropped the champagne flute. He felt like a man who’d been hunting for reverse and by mistake found top gear instead. He stared around the room. There was Kathleen, next to Sam. There was Brigadier Arthurs, pink-faced, white-mustachioed, looking like everyone’s favorite if ineffectual grandfather although decked out in full dress uniform. There flanking him stood Micah Williams, Walter Manchester, and Toby Custine; they wore dress reds, too. Off against the other wall, there was Irene . . . Clarke. She waved to him and said something he didn’t catch because coming toward him, hands outstretched, were Sir Martin Luther King and Charles III.

“Your Excellency,” Bushell said, and then, a moment later, “Your Majesty.” The ceremonial uniform Charles III had on outdid those of the RAMs as the sun outshone the moon. Bushell wondered how he stayed standing with all those decorations weighing him down. And the blade on his belt was more like a broadsword than the usual dress saber.

Magically relieved of file folders, Ted Kittridge came into the governor-general’s office. Bushell rounded on him. “You were part of this plot,” he said severely.

“Plot?” Kittridge tried, without much success, to look innocent.

“If Colonel Bushell can uncover the deep-laid plans of the Sons of Liberty, we must expect him to see through ours as well,” Sir Martin Luther King said. People laughed and clapped their hands. Bushell shifted the glass of champagne Sam Stanley had given him back to his right and raised it high.

“His Majesty, the King-Emperor!” he said. Everybody who had a glass - except His Majesty, the King-Emperor - drank to the toast. Making it was, so far as Bushell knew, the only act proper at any and all times throughout the British Empire.

Then Charles III raised his champagne flute. “Colonel Thomas Bushell!” he said, and people drank again, amid more applause.

Servants went around filling glasses. Kathleen came over to Bushell. Even if she had lost her bet with Sam, she looked smug. She put a hand on his arm. “Congratulations, Tom,” she said.

“All in a day’s work,” he answered. Her expression said he hadn’t managed to bring that out as pat as he’d hoped. Toasting the King-Emperor in person and having him toast you back knocked the props out from under the most thoroughgoing cynicism. He tried a different tack: “You had something to do with congratulations’ being in order, you know.”

She shook her head, brushing the hair back from her face with that familiar automatic gesture. “This is your time. Enjoy it.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he said, and gave her a smart salute. She made as if to pour champagne on his shoes.

“Go ahead, Chief - you should enjoy it,” Sam Stanley said, knowing that didn’t always come easy for Bushell. “You’ve earned it, by God.” His wounded arm was mute testimony to the price of earning it, but when he saw Bushell’s eyes go to it, he shook his head. “I’ll be fine - see?” The fingers of his left hand stuck out from the bandages that wrapped the splints. He wiggled them, to show he could. Sir David Clarke drifted over to a spot a few feet away and politely waited for Bushell to notice him; his manners, as always, were impeccable, even if the same word did not apply to the rest of his behavior. After everything that had happened, Bushell found it impossible to snub him. When he nodded, Sir David said, “I do hope you won’t mind my having brought Irene. She was quite insistent, so much so that I found it impossible to say no. She is . . fond of you.”

“It’s all right,” Bushell said. “We’re all on the same side today.”

Clarke’s handsome face lit up in a broad smile. “Well said!”

If he thought that meant Bushell forgave him, he remained mistaken. Bushell was, though, willing to grant him neutral status, at least for the day. Considering his feelings toward Sir David a little while before, that in itself was, if not a miracle, as close to one as mankind commonly had the privilege of seeing. Samuel Stanley said, “I wish Phyllis could have been here to see this, Tom, but they only told me about it last night. You can’t get from one coast to the other in less than a day, not unless you’re a military pilot in a hot aeroplane.”

Bushell almost asked, Been here to see what? He stopped with the question unspoken, feeling foolish. How many commoners had the King-Emperor toast them at a reception in their honor? Not bloody many, he thought, and stood straighter with pride.

He found a different question to ask Stanley: “How long will you have to wear that thing?” He pointed to the boards and bandages that stabilized his friend’s arm.

“Not too much longer,” Sam answered. “I may even miss it.” When Bushell let out a highly dubious snort, he explained, “As long as I have it on, I can clout villains without waiting to grab for a sap.” He lowered his voice. “And if I get the chance to talk with Brigadier Arthurs for five minutes alone, by this time tomorrow there’ll be a regulation ordering every RAM in the NAU to put on splints for the good of the service.”

Bushell laughed, then thought better of it. He wouldn’t have given odds of worse than three-to-two against Stanley’s being right. “He means well,” he said, also quietly.

“Oh, his heart’s in the right place,” Sam agreed, “but he hasn’t got the head he needs for the job. Bragg, now - Bragg had the head, but not the heart. We found out about that. It was worse than the brigadier’s way, at lot worse. The service needs somebody with both.” He turned a mild and speculative eye on Bushell.

“Listen, Sam, if you think I’m going to let them chain me to the commandant’s desk, you’re out of your “ Before Bushell could finish, he was interrupted by someone affectionately rumpling the hair at the back of his neck. He spun around, annoyed Kathleen would take such a liberty at a gathering like this. But it wasn’t Kathleen; it was Irene. He didn’t know whether to be angry or sad. No point to anger, he decided, not today. He sighed and said, “Thank you for coming.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” she answered. “I am proud of you, Tom, in spite of . . everything.” Her voice trailed off the same way Sir David’s had.

“Thanks,” Bushell said again.

Then he got a glimpse of Kathleen, who glared daggers at Irene’s back as his ex-wife walked away.

“She has no business touching you like that,” Kathleen hissed. “No business.”

“No, but she thinks she has,” Bushell said. “Right of prior possession or former possession or whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t mean anything to me. I know when I’m well off.”

That got through to Kathleen. “You’d better,” she said, and gave a grudging nod. Charles III cleared his throat. Instantly, every head in the room swung toward the King-Emperor. He said, “One of the pleasures of my post is that, on occasion, its privileges are commensurate with its duties. This is one of those happy occasions: beyond the ability of most men, I have the power to reward favors given me.” His voice took on a tone of command beyond any a mere field marshal could assume:

“Colonel Bushell, Captain Stanley - attend me!”

“Me?” Sam said, his eyes widening. “I thought it was him.” He pointed to Bushell.

“I knew it was both of you,” Kathleen said. “You ought to give me my fiver back.”

Bushell still didn’t know what it was, but when his sovereign ordered that he attend, he obeyed. Then Charles III drew that impressive sword. As light glittered off the polished steel of the blade, Bushell understood. “Kneel, gentlemen,” the King-Emperor said.

Kneeling, Sam whispered, “It was supposed to be you.”

Bushell contrived to tap his friend’s splinted arm through the sling as he went to his right knee.

“Battlefield commission,” he whispered back, staring down at the carpet.

“A happy occasion indeed,” Charles III said, “and a most appropriate one, to create two new Knights Commander in the order of chivalry reserved for those dwelling in this broad western land, the Most Illustrious Order of the Two Georges.” The sword touched first Bushell’s shoulder, then Stanley’s.

“Arise, Sir Thomas! Arise, Sir Samuel!”

Cheers rang out as the two new knights got to their feet. Bushell looked from Sam to the King-Emperor to Sir Martin, to Irene just for a moment, and last of all to Kathleen’s delighted face. He had never been prouder to be an American.