The Two Georges

VI

WELCOME TO PRINCE RUPERT, THE HALIBUT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, said the sign in the train station. A faint fishy odor that persisted through steam and coal smoke and tobacco made it plain that was no idle boast.

So did the bill of fare of the station cafe, which had opened to receive early-arriving passengers while the rest of the town slept on. Along with the usual eggs and sausage and bacon and hot and cold porridges, all quite dear not only because the cafe enjoyed a clientele with few other choices but also because Prince Rupert was as far from where processed foods were produced as any place in the NAU, the menu featured fried halibut, poached halibut, dried and salted halibut, smoked halibut, halibut croquettes, and halibut balls in cream gravy.

Bushell had never before breakfasted on poached halibut, but it was far from bad. “You order this in a fancy restaurant in New Liverpool, it would set you back six or eight quid, not seventeen and a tanner,” he said.

“It’s good smoked, too,” Felix Crooke said. His choice - the nearest thing to a bloater available - did not surprise Bushell. Samuel Stanley, a resolute conservative, worked his way through fried eggs and saveloy sausages.

Twilight brightened as the three men ate. The sun rose early, as it had set late. The cafe boasted a large, west-facing window. From Kaien Island, on which the town of Prince Rupert sat, Bushell looked across Prince Rupert Harbor to Digby Island, which shielded the island from storms. Fishing boats were already putting out to sea. Clouds of gulls wheeled and swirled above them, hoping to scavenge some of the day’s catch.

Bigger ships also sat in the harbor: merchantmen to carry coal and grain and lumber brought into Prince Rupert by rail, the ferry that would take Bushell and his comrades across the Hecate Strait to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and several lean, gray frigates and corvettes with four-inch guns, a reminder that Russian Alaska lay not far to the north.

It was about half a mile from the train station down to the harbor, and a light rain was falling. Bushell hired a cab for the journey; walking so far through drizzle carrying heavy bags did not strike him as an appealing prospect. “Going across to the Queen Charlottes, I’ll lay,” the driver said. “You must have some work with the Royal Navy, eh?”

“You might say that,” Bushell answered.

“I knew it,” the cabman said smugly. “I’m right clever about such things, I am.” He was clever enough, apparently, to be one of the few human beings on the face of the earth who did not recognize Bushell. Happy in momentary anonymity, Bushell said not a word to enlighten him. The ferry, the Northern Lights , was smaller and more elderly than the shiny, modern boats that plied the San Francisco Bay. Only a handful of Bushell’s fellow train passengers boarded the Northern Lights. Most of the men on it wore the bell-bottomed trousers and dark caps of the navy; many of them were muffled in sou’westers or duffel coats against the rain. Their expressions showed them to be less than ecstatic at the prospect of returning to Skidegate.

“To them, Prince Rupert must be bright lights and the big city,” Felix Crooke said. Bushell looked back at the halibut capital of the world. “Poor devils,” he said with feeling. Several of the crewmen of the Northern Lights had coppery skins and black, black hair. Every now and then, as they chattered back and forth with one another, they’d use a word or a phrase that didn’t sound like English. Bushell wondered if they were some of the Haida Indians of whom Kathleen Flannery had spoken. He also wondered what Kathleen was doing. He hoped she’d gone back to Victoria and, when the latest issue of Common Sense arrived in her mailbox, had thrown it straight into the wastepaper basket.

The ferryboat let out a deafening blast from its steam whistle and then, black coal smoke pouring out of its stacks, pulled away from the pier. It steamed around the southern tip of Digby Island and then west across the Hecate Strait toward Skidegate.

Most of the sailors went below; for them, the ocean was a place to work, not something conducive to sightseeing. A couple, perhaps men who had indulged too strenuously in the fleshpots of Prince Rupert (if such there were), leaned far over the lee rail and rid themselves of what ailed them. The passage did not strike Bushell as particularly choppy. He’d expected worse in the northern Pacific. As the morning advanced, the sun began to break through the low clouds. Samuel Stanley pointed northward. “Look, there’s an aeroplane,” he said.

One of the ferry’s crewmen said, “Nothing to be surprised at, sir, not up here. You’ll see ‘em all the time, coming back from patrol off the Alaskan coast. They have a field on Digby Island, and another not far from Skidegate, too.”

“Ever see any Russian aeroplanes?” Bushell asked as the biplane Stanley had spotted buzzed away toward the east.

“I haven’t myself, sir,” the sailor answered, “but I hear tell they’ve landed at our fields a time or two, when they had engine trouble and couldn’t get home. They fly patrol same as we do, after all; I reckon our flying machines have used their fields every once in a while, too. Up here, the wind and the ocean are worse enemies than the Russians and us are to each other.”

That’s what you think. Bushell, Stanley, and Crooke met one another’s eyes, each with the same thing in his mind. None of them spoke.

Luncheon was more halibut, baked or steamed. Not long afterwards, the Queen Charlotte Islands came into sight in the west: a low, gray-green line rising up between sea and sky.

“You can see both the biggest islands from here,” a seaman said. “That’s Graham - where we’re going to the north and Moresby to the south. Just looks like one, though, because Skidegate Inlet narrows down to a narrow little channel between them. You don’t want to sail there unless you have charts and you’re with someone who knows the local waters. It’s never the same twice, on account of the tides.”

Bushell had no interest in sailing narrow tidal channels, nor indeed in sailing of any sort. As far as he was concerned, ships were utilitarian conveyances designed to take him from hither to yon when yon happened to lie across more water than he felt like swimming. But he let the crewman rattle on; policemen soon figured out that you couldn’t tell in advance when you’d learn something useful. The fellow pointed ahead. “There’s Skidegate Village, where a lot of the Haida live.” He chuckled.

“One of my great-grandmothers was Haida, though you wouldn’t guess it from my blue eyes. If you look sharp now, you can see a couple of totem poles standing in front of the houses. Skidegate proper’s at the end of the spit of land, a mile or so south of the Haida village. You can spy the navy ships at anchor there.”

“Yes, I see them.” Bushell nodded. “I’d think they’d base them in the far north of the island, to keep watch on the Russians.”

“There’s torpedo boats and such up at Masset,” the crewman answered, “but the harbor there’s not deep enough to let large warships come in.”

Next to the corvettes and the looming bulk of an armored cruiser, the Northern Lights seemed even smaller and dingier than she really was. As the ship tied up at the dock, Navy men shouldered duffel bags and resignedly, queued up by the gangplank, then filed off the ferry. Struggling with their luggage, the three RAMs followed.

“Where now?” Samuel Stanley asked, setting down his bags with a grunt of relief.

“Hotel first, or whatever passes for one here,” Bushell said. “Then the local constabulary - there won’t be a RAM station - and then the naval commandant. And after that” - he let out a long breath of anticipation -”the post office.”

Getting to the Skidegate Lodge proved no problem. Cabmen fell with glad cries on everyone not wearing navy blue who disembarked from the Northern Lights. The driver who took the RAMs to the hotel chattered on about the theft of The Two Georges , and seemed indignant when his passengers replied only in monosyllables. “Up here, by heaven, we care about our country, we do,” he declared.

“Down south, you ask me, they take it for granted.”

“God save the King-Emperor,” Bushell said, and still would not talk about the case. Skidegate, he saw as the cabby took him and his companions through it, was a town whose principal function was to serve the local Navy base and to separate sailors and Royal Marines from their money as enjoyably as possible. It abounded in grogshops, dance halls, and, for those who had already spent their money but still had other chattels, pawnshops. Most of the people on the sidewalks wore navy blue, and most of the rest Marine khaki; the cab rolled past several detachments of truncheon-toting military policemen in white armbands. The truncheons notwithstanding, the redcaps always seemed to travel in groups of two or more.

The Skidegate Lodge was apparently the hotel in town. A stuffed bald eagle glared at Bushell with eyes of amber glass from its perch on the registration counter. His first thought was of the Independence Party flag, which made suspicion flare in him. But a great many eagles soared majestically over Skidegate and rooted, less majestically, in the rubbish pitch at the edge of the naval base. He decided he was overreacting - the bird did make a splendid trophy.

Seeing him eye it, the desk clerk asked, “Will you be going hunting, sir? Game laws say you can’t shoot an eagle within five miles of the town limits, and they’re strictly enforced.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Bushell said, not directly answering the question. “Have you a town telephone directory I might see?”

“Certainly, sir.” The clerk reached under the desk and pulled one out. He passed it across the polished cedar surface to Bushell. who had to hide a smile as he took it. He was used to the New Liverpool directory, a book thick and heavy enough to make a good bludgeon. By contrast, a skinny little pamphlet served all of Skidegate’s needs.

It did not, however, serve his. After going through it, he said to the clerk, “Could you give me some help, please? I see no listing for a local constabulary.”

“No, sir, you wouldn’t find that,” the clerk said. By the wary look in his eye, he didn’t much care to have anything to do with anyone interested in finding it, either. But, after a moment’s hesitation, he condescended to explain: “The Navy, sir, deals with such matters all over the island. Only fair, I think, seeing as Navy men cause most of our trouble. When the swabbies or the bullocks” - by which he meant the Royal Marines - “have nothing to do with it, they ship the villains across to Prince Rupert to let the civil courts handle things.” He had the air of a man who knew from experience whereof he spoke.

“Who is the commandant of the Navy’s - what would I call it? - security detachment, then?” Bushell asked.

“That would be Commander Hairston,” the desk clerk answered. “His offices are in the Naval Administration Building, close by the docks.”

“Back the way we came,” Bushell said with a sigh. “Well, I suppose we’ll get settled in here before we go pay him a visit.” He glanced over to Stanley and Crooke, who both nodded agreement. Bushell turned back to the clerk. “One last question: is the post office close by?”

“Just around the corner here and then down Carlotta Street half a block. You can’t miss it,” the clerk said, with the sublime optimism all locals show when strangers ask directions. The desk clerk shook his head in bemusement. “I get asked about bear and deer and salmon and eagles all the time, but never till now about constables and patrollers and post offices. Why’d you gents come to Skidegate anyhow, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“To hunt,” Bushell answered. Smiling grimly, he and his companions went up to their rooms, leaving the clerk scratching his head.

As the clerk had promised, the Skidegate post office was easy to find. That being almost the first thing that had gone right with the investigation, Bushell cherished it. He, Crooke, and Stanley took off their hats and unbuttoned their coats when they went inside; it might have been the beginning of summer, but Skidegate was cool and shrouded in mist and drizzle.

A plump, bald, red-faced man looked up from behind the counter. “Help you gents?” he said. He swept away what Bushell thought was a book of word puzzles; business at the post office did not seem brisk.

“I’m looking for the postmaster,” Bushell said.

“You’re not only looking for him, my friend, you’re looking at him,” the red-faced fellow answered with a chuckle that was half cackle. “Rob Pratson’s the name. Now what can I do for you?”

“Mr. Pratson, I hope you’re not given to gossip,” Bushell said, displaying the badge that identified him as an officer of the Royal American Mounted Police. Sam Stanley and Felix Crooke followed suit. Pratson’s watery blue eyes got wide. “Ain’t never seen one of those up here before, ‘cept in the cinema, and now here’s three all together. Ain’t that a thing and a half?” He remembered Bushell’s question. “No, sir, I don’t gab, not me. You can’t do it, not if you’re postmaster in a small town and you want to have friends.”

“Good,” Bushell said. “Not gossiping may involve your neck, not just friendships. Do you understand that?” At Pratson’s nod, he went on, “Now, do you remember receiving one or more packages, shaped about like this” - he used his hands to draw a long, thin rectangular solid - “to be posted to New Liverpool?”

“Oh, that I do,” the postmaster answered. “We’ve had a good many of those go through, past six months or so.”

“Have you?” That was the last thing Bushell wanted to hear. He didn’t tell Pratson what the packages contained; the fewer who knew of such things, the better. Instead, he went on, “Who’s sending them?”

“I’ve had packages like that from three or four people, sir, I have,” Rob Pratson said. “Don’t rightly recall none of their last names; they just go by Geoff and Patrick and Elgin and . . . what the devil’s that other one called? I ain’t seen him but once or twice.” The postmaster snapped his fingers. “Benjamin, that’s it! I think that’s it.”

Stanley and Crooke both had out notepads and were scribbling down the names, just as Bushell was.

“Do these four men live in Skidegate?” he asked hopefully. Maybe, just this once, something would be simple and straightforward.

But Pratson shook his head. “Oh, God bless you, sir, no they don’t. They’re up at Buckley Bay, they are. Far as I know, they’re the only four people up at Buckley Bay.”

“Where the devil’s Buckley Bay, and why are these four chaps the only people there?” Sam Stanley asked. By his tone, he was as sick of complications as Bushell was.

“Buckley Bay ain’t nothin’ these days - hasn’t been for years,” Pratson said. “Used to be a logging town over on the west shore of Masset Inlet, right about in the center of the island here. But ain’t nobody done any logging there since I was a sprout, and that goes back a deal of years, don’t it just. Till them four moved in, the buildings, they just got left to themselves to fall to pieces one bit at a time.”

“What do these four men do there, then?” Bushell demanded. “How do they make their living? How long have they been there?”

The postmaster shrugged. “Been there two, three years, I guess - that’s how long they been comin’ into Skidegate, anyways. They mail their packages, buy a few things down to the grocer’s shop or the ironmonger’s, head on out again. Dunno just how they get by. Hunting and fishing, I reckon, and I hear tell they take sightseers around sometimes, show ‘em the best spots for salmon and I don’t know what all. Whatever they do, nobody ever said they was lackin’ a quid they had need of.”

“Why does that last observation not surprise me?” Felix Crooke said. Pratson would not have known a rhetorical question had one come in to buy a stamp of him. “Dunno, sir, why don’t it?”

“Never mind,” Bushell said. “Thank you, Mr. Pratson - you’ve been very helpful. Let me repeat that you’d be wise to keep this to yourself. If you’re a married man, don’t even tell your wife.”

“Sooner or later, Myrtle will find out someways, and then I’m in the soup,” Pratson said resignedly. “But I won’t blab. Still and all, I wish you’d tell me what this here’s all about. What have them four fellers gone and did?”

“I don’t know yet,” Bushell said. “But I promise you: I’m going to find out.”

Commander Nathan Hairston was a big, bluff man with muttonchop whiskers and a walrus mustache.

“Pleasure to meet you gentlemen - pleasure,” he said as a sailor hurriedly brought a couple of spare chairs into his office. “Haven’t seen RAMs here since Hector was a pup. What can I do to help you?”

Bushell explained. By the time he was nearly through, Commander Hairston’s mouth had fallen open in amazement. He finished, “Do you know these men? Geoff, Patrick, Elgin, and Benjamin the postmaster called them. He didn’t recollect their surnames.”

“I don’t either, I’m afraid. I know the men you mean, or know of them, rather - so far as I was officially aware, they’d never given anyone a moment’s trouble.” Hairston shook his head like a man coming out of a showerbath. “Colonel, to be frank with you, the civilians hereabouts are mostly dull as dust, except every once in a while when they’ve had too much to drink. To think of this sleepy, godforsaken place involved in what has to be the most outrageous crime since the Duke of Philadelphia’s daughter was kidnapped fifty years ago ... I tell you, sir, I can hardly believe it.”

“Not much room for doubt, Commander,” Samuel Stanley said. “Tricky Dick was killed with a Nagant to distract us while the Sons stole The Two Georges, and people here are posting Nagants down to New Liverpool. That would want looking into even if we left the painting out of the bargain.”

“It certainly would,” Felix Crooke said. The expert on the Sons of Liberty went on, “This is a smuggling avenue about which we haven’t had to concern ourselves before. Have you had much trouble along those lines?”

“Smuggling, you mean?” Hairston said. “Never firearms, at least never that I knew till now. We do have men with small boats sneaking down from Alaska every now and again, but we’ve never caught them with anything worse than Russian vodka, the kind that’s strong enough to kick off the top of your head. I suspect they pass off more of that to fishermen on the high seas, too, but it’s all bloody difficult to prove, as you must know.”

“Commander, I am not accusing you of being derelict in your duties,” Bushell said quickly. “This plot must have been a long time hatching, and closely concealed.” His lips twisted in a bitter smile. “It certainly took me by surprise.”

“Mm, yes.” Hairston sent him a sympathetic look. “I asked you once in a general way, but now I’ll be more specific: what can I do to help you?”

“Do you have one particular judge likely to issue a speedy search warrant?” Bushell asked. He still had the blank but signed ones he’d got down in New Liverpool, but he wanted to save those if he could. Commander Hairston surprised him by throwing back his head and letting out a Jovian laugh. “My dear fellow, the Queen Charlotte Islands are in their entirety a military reservation, under the direct jurisdiction of the Royal Navy and Royal North American Navy. If we do something altogether outrageous, the judges in Prince Rupert will quash it, but you seem on most solid ground here.”

“The next time I feel on solid ground in this case will be the first,” Bushell said. “Most criminals are bloody stupid.” Hairston and both RAMs nodded at that. Bushell went on, “Whoever’s behind this theft, though, he’s no fool. But never mind that. All right, Commander - you have the jurisdiction.” The desk clerk at the hotel had told him as much; he should have thought through the implications. “What help can you give me?”

“How would you like a couple of squads of Royal Marines first thing tomorrow morning?” Hairston asked. Seeing Bushell’s flabbergasted expression, the Navy man laughed again. “Colonel, this isn’t supposed to be a fair fight. If we’ve got four villains out by Buckley Bay, the idea is to make them give up without a fight or make damned sure we win it. Good heavens, man, did you even bring weapons with you from New Liverpool?”

“We have three pistols,” Bushell answered. “If we needed anything more, we expected we’d be able to draw it from you.”

“Good for you, then,” Commander Hairston said. “From what I’ve seen of a lot of civil police, they forget the nasty chaps can get very nasty, indeed.”

“I would have,” Felix Crooke said. “Colonel Bushell didn’t let me.” He smoothly made the change back to formal address. Bushell sent him an approving glance. Crooke hadn’t had to admit his own naiveté, but he’d done it - a man of integrity.

“If you want rifles, you may certainly have a couple of ours,” Hairston said. “I wouldn’t care to carry anything less, I’ll tell you that.”

Bushell and Stanley both nodded right away. Crooke said, “It’s been so many years since I had a rifle in my hands, I expect I’d be more dangerous to my friends than to the villains. I’ll stick to my revolver, if it’s all the same to you; I’m familiar with it, which counts.”

“However you like, Lieutenant-Colonel,” Hairston said with a shrug of his wide shoulders. He got up from his desk and stood beside the large-scale map of the Queen Charlotte Islands on the wall behind it.

“How do you gents have in mind getting to Buckley Bay? There are no roads on the western shore of Masset Inlet. No reason to have ‘em - hardly anybody lives there. You can go by road to Port Clements, here on the eastern side of the inlet. From there, the road up from Skidegate heads due north to Masset.”

“We don’t want to take a boat straight across the inlet to Buckley Bay, I shouldn’t think,” Bushell said.

“If they saw us coming, they’d just fade back into the woods, and then your Marines might have a hard time running them to earth.”

“I’m afraid you’re right about that,” Hairston said mournfully. “If they’ve been living as trappers and hunters, they’ll know the land in that area better than my men will. How’s this, then: suppose you sail across the inlet from Port Clements to a point, oh, five miles north of the old logging town? Your men won’t think anything’s amiss even if they do see the boat. You can move down to Buckley Bay and nab them at your convenience.”

“That sounds good to me, Commander,” Samuel Stanley said. “Coming at villains from a direction they don’t expect is always a good idea.”

“I agree,” Bushell said, and Felix Crooke nodded again. That Stanley thought well of the plan was in itself recommendation enough for Bushell. Ever since his army days, he’d had reason to admire his adjutant’s tactical sense.

“We’ll do it that way, then,” Hairston said. “Have you brought along clothing and shoes that will stand up to a five-mile hike through woods and brush?”

“I haven’t,” Crooke said. “I took clothes suitable for New Liverpool when I came out from Victoria. I’m afraid the Queen Charlottes are both cooler and damper than I was prepared for.”

“Yes, they would be, if you came from New Liverpool.” Nathan Hairston glanced at Bushell and Stanley. “You two have what you need? I’m impressed. Lieutenant-Colonel Crooke, we’ll send you off to the quartermaster and outfit you as a Royal Marine. You gents are out at the Skidegate Lodge? I’ll send a driver round for you at half past four, then.”

Samuel Stanley looked martyred. “After three mornings in a row of getting up ungodly early, I should be growing used to it. But I’m not - all I’m growing is old, too bloody fast.”

“Think of it this way, Sam,” Bushell said helpfully: “if you’re awake all the time, you’ll seem to live longer.” By Stanley’s expression, that offered insufficient consolation. Crooke went off to be outfitted, and returned to Hairston’s office a little later with khaki tunic and trousers, a rubberized cape of the same color, a webbing belt in Royal Marine red, stout boots with rawhide lacings, and a slouch hat. “Thank you very much for your help, Commander Hairston,” he said.

“My pleasure,” the Skidegate security chief answered. “I’ll give you chaps a lift back to the Lodge, too. Colonel, Captain, we’ll have the rifles waiting for you here when you set out, if that’s all right. You won’t want to have to explain how you came by them when you walk through the lobby.”

“That’s true,” Bushell said. “In fact, if you can get a bag - a civilian-style bag - for that uniform, it would help. And I hope you’ll take us to and from the hotel in civilian steamers. We don’t want word of who we are and what we’re about getting to Buckley Bay ahead of us.”

“I like the way you think, Colonel,” Commander Hairston said with a brusque nod. “Just being in this business makes us take a good many chances. You don’t seem to take any you needn’t.”

A young sailor, grinning from ear to ear at the chance to wear mufti, however briefly, drove the three RAMs back into Skidegate in Hairston’s personal steamer. “Here you are, sir,” he said to Bushell as he pulled up in front of the Skidegate Lodge. “Now to get back before the commander figures I’ve wrapped it around a tree.” Still grinning, he sped away.

“What say we go up to our rooms and then meet in the lobby for supper?” Bushell said. “The Haida Lounge attached to the hotel looked - interesting. They say New Liverpool has every sort of restaurant in the world, but there are no Haida Indian eateries there.”

“They say the same thing about Victoria,” Felix Crooke said, “but it hasn’t got any, either. I’m game for something new. Just let me stow my kit here” - he hefted the bag that held the Royal Marines uniform “and I’ll be with you directly.”

The Haida Lounge was a smoky place. Bushell had been in any number of smoky taverns and restaurants in his time, but without exception their haze sprang from tobacco. Here the smoke was an integral part of the decor; the chef worked at a grill over an alderwood fire in the center of the room. Fans sent some of the smoke toward an opening in the ceiling, but not all. Bushell had expected to find venison and halibut on the menu, and was not disappointed. Sealmeat steaks, salmon cheeks, and dried herring eggs on kelp, however, made him raise an eyebrow, and a couple of items left him altogether at a loss. “What the devil is a fiddlehead?” he said to the waiter.

“No reason for you to know, if you’re a stranger here.” The waiter himself looked to be Haida, at least in good part; his English, while fluent, held a hissing, guttural undertone. “Fiddleheads are the shoots of sword ferns. They curl around on themselves at the tip, like the end of a violin’s neck. We serve them boiled, with butter or with hollandaise sauce.”

“I’ll try some, then - with butter, I think - and for my main course I’ll want the seal.” Bushell reflected that both butter and hollandaise were imperfectly authentic additions to native Haida cuisine, but he hadn’t come here to quibble. “I’ll start with the island salad here, the crabapples and fireweed and cow parsnip.”

“Very good.” The waiter nodded, perhaps pleased by his sense of adventure, then turned to Sam Stanley.

“The venison and wild rice for me,” Stanley said, “and a bottle of your Caribou Ale to wash it down.”

“Yes, sir.” After writing down his order, the waiter looked expectantly to Felix Crooke.

“I’ll have the herring eggs and kelp,” Crooke said, “and the wild rice to go with them. I might almost be eating in a Japanese restaurant.”

“Interesting you should say so, sir,” the waiter remarked. “We sometimes get Japanese here, buying fish or timber. They often order those same dishes. And would you also like an ale?” At Crooke’s nod, the young man turned to Bushell. “And what will you have to drink, sir?”

“Have you got Jameson Irish whiskey?” Bushell asked. The waiter’s blank look said they didn’t. Bushell shrugged. “In that case, bring me one of these Caribous, too.” As the young man hurried off to fetch the ales, Bushell turned to his companions. He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Damned if I know what sort of wine goes with seal meat, anyhow.”

The seal steak was richly marbled and had a somewhat fishy flavor, no doubt because of the seal’s diet. The fiddleheads tasted nutty; Bushell enjoyed them. The well-hopped ale complimented the meal better than any wine he could think of; he patted himself on the back for a good choice. Sam Stanley demolished his cut of venison and looked ecstatic doing it. And Felix Crooke ate his dried fish eggs and kelp with every sign of relish. “You’d pay thirty pounds in Victoria for a meal like this,” he said.

“I wouldn’t,” Stanley said. He was proud of his conservative tastes.

“Our Haida sweet is whipped soapberries,” the waiter said as he gathered up supper plates. “It’s surprisingly close to ice cream. Would any of you gentlemen care to try it?”

Bushell and Crooke nodded. Sam Stanley said, “Soapberries? No, thank you,” and ordered another Caribou Ale instead. Conservatism had its own punishment; the berries, despite their off-putting name, were sweet and delicious.

After a cigar, Bushell said, “I’m turning in. We shall be busy boys tomorrow.”

“Busy boys early tomorrow,” Stanley added. “I’m going to ask the desk clerk to ring my room at four.”

His sigh was long, mournful, and heartfelt.

“Ask him to do the same for Felix and me, too.” Bushell blew a smoke ring up toward the ceiling. It soon thinned and vanished, reminding him all too much of most of the leads they’d had in the case. When the dreaded telephone call came, Bushell dragged himself out of bed and climbed into the denim trousers, plaid wool shirt, and hooded anorak he’d brought up from New Liverpool and set out before he went to sleep. Then he put on a pair of stout shoes a constable might have worn walking a beat. They weren’t as good as military boots, but they were the best he had.

To his dismay, he found the Haida Lounge closed when he went down to the lobby. Stanley joined him a couple of minutes later, similarly dressed and similarly distressed because he wouldn’t be able to get some tea or coffee to make his heart start beating. “Maybe the Marines will have a vacuum flask,” he said hopefully.

Felix Crooke was already wearing his rain cape when he came downstairs. Bushell wondered at that for a moment, but then realized it let the RAM carry his revolver on his belt unseen. At exactly half past four, a steamer pulled up in front of the Skidegate Lodge. The three RAMs stepped out into light drizzle and piled into it. “Have you back at the base in just a moment, sirs,” the sailor behind the wheel said, and took off with speed enough to push Bushell back against his seat. The steamer stopped behind two large lorries with khaki canvas tops. Waiting next to the lorries were Commander Nathan Hairston and his promised two squads of Royal Marines. “Good morning,” Hairston boomed blithely when the RAMs got out of the motorcar. He looked from Bushell to Stanley, back again. “Yes, for civilian gear what you have isn’t bad at all. Now, you’ll want rifles, you said.” When the RAMs nodded, a Marine lieutenant fetched a couple of Lee-Enfields and handed one to Bushell, the other to Stanley.

The weapons had their magazines attached. When Bushell checked, he found a cartridge in the breech.

“Good,” he said approvingly, flicking on the safety. “The best way not to have trouble is to be ready for it.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder. By the time the day was done, he feared he’d be walking with a list. He hadn’t carried a rifle since his army days.

“Speaking of readiness,” the lieutenant said, and handed Stanley and him four five-round boxes of ammunition apiece.

Bushell stowed them in the outer pockets of his anorak. The weight had already started to grow, and he wasn’t carrying anything like full kit, as the Royal Marines were. He said, “Thank you very much, Lieutenant, ah - “

“Colonel, let me introduce to you Lieutenant Morton Green and his NCOs, Sergeant Fuller and Corporals Johnston and Wainwright,” Hairston said. He did not present the Marine privates. “They know their task is to assist you and your companions in apprehending the four men of whom we spoke yesterday and any of their confederates who may be with them. For this mission, they will treat your RAM ranks as if those obtained in the Royal Marines.”

“That is a high honor,” Bushell said. Lieutenant Green saluted smartly. He was about thirty, of medium height but very fit, with features that seemed both tough and intelligent. His sergeant, Fuller, was a few years older, and had eyes that missed nothing. Although he was blond and ruddy, his air of unhurried competence put Bushell in mind of Samuel Stanley. Corporal Johnston was tall and Corporal Wainwright short - or perhaps it was the other way round.

As for the rest of the Marines, what struck Bushell like a blow was how young they were. Had the soldiers he’d commanded as a lieutenant been that young? Very likely, but he’d been young in those days, too. Now he felt almost grandfatherly. He saw the Marines studying him, too. Wondering if I can keep up on a hike through the woods, he thought. He wondered the same thing. One way or the other, he’d find out.

“No sense standing around here making chitchat,” Commander Hairston said. “You have your job to do, and I wish you only success with it.”

Lieutenant Green waved at the Marines, who swarmed aboard the lorries. Those were troop transporters identical to the ones the army used, with six inward-facing seats on each side of the bed. With the drivers and two more men on each front seat, there was room and to spare for the twenty Marines, their four leaders, and the three RAMs.

“Good luck,” Hairston called. As if that were a signal, the lorries rolled away. They seemed to have no dampers; whenever a tyre went over a stone or into a pothole, everybody aboard felt it. The kidney-shaking ride took Bushell back across half a lifetime. By the way Samuel Stanley smiled to himself, he was remembering long-ago lorry trips, too.

The few civilians up and about in Skidegate didn’t give the lorries a second glance. They were used to military vehicles passing through for one reason or another. From Skidegate, the road swung north along the eastern coast of Graham Island through the Haida town of Skidegate Village and then up toward Tlell.

Bushell, Crooke, and Stanley, having got on last, had seats near their lorry’s rear gate and could see, if not where they were going, at least where they’d been. Bushell had noticed the totem poles of Skidegate Village as the ferry came in to Skidegate itself. Now he got a better look at the houses those poles fronted.

Some were of various imperial styles, like those the British had built in Skidegate. Others, though, preserved the native Haida way of doing things: long houses built of red cedar and roofed with cedar bark. The beams of the roofs - there always seemed to be seven - projected out several feet from the walls at front and rear, perhaps to offer space where people could get dry before going inside. A couple of the long houses had smoke rising from a vent hole in the center of the roof, an arrangement the Haida Lounge must have borrowed along with its name.

Skidegate Village was no larger than its name implied. In moments it fell away behind the lorries. The road ran north just inland from the beach, against which the waters of the Hecate Strait slapped gently. The beach was strewn with driftwood. Along with the wood, Bushell spied a couple of large glass globes that puzzled him until he realized they were floats for fishing nets. He wondered how many miles and how many years they had drifted before finally washing ashore. Gulls and other shorebirds flew up in squawking clouds when the lorries went by.

“They don’t seem used to having people about,” Felix Crooke said. “I wonder how much traffic this road gets.”

“Not much, by the look of it,” Bushell answered. “Haven’t seen any steamers behind us since we got out of Skidegate Village, and I haven’t noticed any coming southbound past us, either.”

He looked inland. Every so often, a dirt trail would join the north-south road. Most of those trails were overgrown, and a lot of the buildings to which they led were weathered and abandoned, their broken-out windows staring like blind eyes. Making a go of it here on the edge of nowhere was anything but easy. Every so often, though, someone managed it. A couple of farms looked prosperous, with shaggy cattle grazing in the meadows. Bushell pointed to one of them. “There you go, Sam. That’s probably where last night’s venison came from.”

“Colonel, you have a low, nasty, suspicious mind, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bloody bit if you were right,” Stanley said.

“We’ve spare water bottles for you and your friends, Colonel,” Lieutenant Green said, “and St. Mary’s Spring is a good place to fill them. The water’s always good there, and you can’t say the same for the streams running into Masset Inlet. It’ll be coming up in a couple of minutes, if you’d like me to stop the lorry for you.”

“Yes, do that, please,” Bushell answered. No tea, he thought with a mental sigh. “Could we beg some rations from you, too? We left the hotel without breakfast.”

“I expect we can do something about that, sir,” Morton Green said. The Marines donated tins of stew, some hard crackers, and a jar of jam that smelled something like pineapple and something like methylated spirit. Felix Crooke sniffed at it and shook his head; like the jouncing ride of the lorry, it took Bushell back to his younger days.

St. Mary’s Spring ran cold and clear. Bushell filled his bottle, screwed on the top. Then he dug into a hasty breakfast. The stew would have been better hot (it wouldn’t have been good no matter what anyone did to it), but he could eat it cold, and he didn’t have time to waste. Along with Stanley and Crooke, he chucked the empty container into a rubbish bin by the spring and climbed back into the lorry. They got into Tlell about forty-five minutes after they’d left the Skidegate naval base. The little town lay between tree-covered dunes and the Tlell River. The lorries didn’t stop, but rolled over the Tlell River Bridge. The road swung inland after that, running northwest toward Port Clements. About halfway to the town on Masset Inlet lay Mayer Lake, not quite a mile north of the road. As the gulls on the coast had done, loons and other water birds flew up in alarm when the lorries went past. Port Clements was bigger than Tlell, though Bushell doubted it held as many as five hundred people. It boasted a doctor’s office, but not a post office. A sawmill was much the largest building in town. A couple of men - loggers, by the look of them - glanced curiously at the lorries as they headed for the wharf. “Except for the cutter crew, we don’t - the Navy doesn’t, I mean - come here all that often,” Lieutenant Green said.

“That’s not so good,” Sam Stanley said quietly. “We’re liable to be blowing our cover.”

“I thought of that, too, but I’m not going to worry about it,” Bushell answered. “If Buckley Bay’s been abandoned for the past sixty years, our chums over there aren’t likely to have a telephone to let someone here ring them up and warn them we’re on the way. As long as the Navy keeps boats here tied up at the wharf for a couple of hours after we leave, we should be all right.”

“Good enough,” Stanley said, and leaned back in his hard, uncomfortable seat. Bushell, the other RAMs, and the Royal Marines scrambled out of the lorries as soon as they stopped moving. The cutter, the HMS Grampus - a miniature corvette about seventy feet long, with a two-pounder for a deck gun - already had her engine running; stinking fuel-oil fumes fouled the cool, damp air.

“Permission to come aboard?” Lieutenant Green called at the foot of the gangplank.

“Granted,” said the lieutenant commander who looked to command the cutter. “You’ve given the lads and me something out of the ordinary to do with our morning, I’ll say that much for you.”

“How far is it across the inlet, Captain?” Bushell asked the officer in charge of the cutter. He peered west himself, but mist and cloud obscured the far shore.

The naval officer beamed at having his functional title given rather than the rank he wore on his cuffs and shoulder boards. “It’s about ten miles to where Commander Hairston told me you want to be left off.”

He stuck out his hand. “I’m Edward Woodbridge, by the way.”

“Tom Bushell.” Bushell introduced Crooke and Stanley.

“Pleased to meet you, gentlemen,” Woodbridge said. “I’m told this has somewhat to do with The Two Georges’ going missing. Never would have expected any such thing here - the Queen Charlottes are mostly quiet as the tomb, not to put too fine a point on it - but we’ll do everything we can to help you get it back. Love that painting, I do.” He looked around. “Are you all aboard? Yes? We’ll cast off, then.”

The rumble of the engine grew louder and deeper. The cutter pulled away from the wharf and onto the still, smooth waters of Masset Inlet. One of the sailors came up to Bushell. “We have a small galley, sir. Would you fancy a cup of tea?”

“Would I, by God!” Bushell exclaimed. “I’ve been wanting some all morning.” The sailor brought it to him in a thick china mug. It was hot and strong and sweet, but had no milk in it. He wondered about that, and asked, “Haven’t you got an icebox in your little galley?”

“That we do, sir, but no milk in it, I’m afraid,” the man answered. “Sailors up here in the Queen Charlottes, we mostly drink our tea Russian-style, with sugar and nothing more.”

“Alaska’s close by,” Bushell observed.

“Yes, sir, that’s part of it, I suppose. The other side of the shilling is, it stays hotter longer without pouring milk into it. In the chill and the wet hereabouts, that’s not the worst thing in the world.”

Bushell walked to the bow of the cutter. Port Clements was already hazy behind him, the far shore of Masset Inlet not yet visible ahead. Two sailors at the bow stared intently down into the water of the inlet.

“What are you looking for?” Bushell asked.

“Deadheads, sir,” one of them answered without turning his head. “All sorts of logs drifting just below the surface. Sometimes, for no reason anybody can figure, they’ll bob up into the air - or into your hull, if you’re not watching out for em.”

“I see,” Bushell said. That watch no doubt also explained why the Grampus wasn’t making a better turn of speed: you didn’t want to be going too fast to stop or swerve if you spotted a deadhead. He checked the time. They’d been a little more than an hour on the road from the Skidegate naval base to Port Clements. It still wasn’t close to half past six. Not bad, he thought. The sun, already high in the northeastern sky, was trying to burn through the clouds that hung over the Queen Charlotte Islands. A bald eagle flew low across the inlet, chasing an osprey with a fish in its talons. The osprey dropped the fish and flapped off, screeching furiously; the eagle flew away with the prize. “Damned thief,” Bushell muttered. As far as he was concerned, that the Independence Party and the Sons of Liberty revered the bald eagle said more about them than it did about the bird.

Because of the watch for logs, the cutter took most of an hour to reach the western shore of Masset Inlet. She glided to a stop about a hundred yards from the muddy beach. “Lower the boats!” Lieutenant Commander Woodbridge said. The sailors went about it as if they’d done it a thousand times, which they probably had. Drill was bloody dull, but it paid off.

One boat held a dozen men, the other eight. The Royal Marines got down into them with the same practiced ease the sailors had shown. A couple of Navy men joined them in each boat. Scrambling down a rope with his feet against the side of a rolling ship was nothing Bushell had practiced, but the Marines grabbed him and helped him ease into the larger boat.

They also aided Samuel Stanley and Felix Crooke. “Thank you, gentlemen,” Crooke said. “For a moment there, I felt like the pendulum in a grandfather clock.” The Marines grinned, proud of the skill they’d shown.

From the deck of the Grampus, Ted Woodbridge called, “I’ve never seen bullocks and RAMs in the same boat till now.” The Royal Marines hooted at him. His grin got broader. “Good hunting, my friends. I’ll see you off Buckely Bay at noon.”

The Marines seized the oars in the bottom of the boats and made short work of the stretch of water between them and the shore. Mud and sand grated under the boats as they rowed them up onto the beach. The Marines leaped out. Rather more slowly, the three RAMs followed. “I’m already feeling old, and we haven’t even started hiking yet,” Bushell said. Sam Stanley nodded agreement. The sailors rowed the boats back to the cutter to pick up the Royal Marines who hadn’t been able to fit the first time. When everyone was ashore, Lieutenant Green turned to Bushell and said, “I expect you’ll want us to go inland a bit before we move on Buckley Bay, eh, sir? If we just come straight down the beach, the chaps we’re looking for will be able to spy us a long ways off.”

“Can’t have that,” Bushell said. “Until we get there, Lieutenant, I’m going to put myself in your hands. You know this country better than I do.” He waved at the trees - cedar and spruce, pine and fir - that came down close to the beach. The land rose up more steeply here than it had on the eastern side of the inlet; he’d seen that much from the cutter. What it would be like when he got into the forest, he couldn’t begin to guess. Most of his military experience had been on the border with Nueva España, hot, dry country as different from these woods as the mountains of the moon.

“Come on, then,” Green said, and led the men inland from the beach. Bushell felt as if he’d stepped into a cool green cathedral, with God the architect rather than man. The sun had come out, but was rarely able to penetrate the canopy of dark green branches overhead. The air was moist and full of the tangy, resinous scent of the trees all around. He wanted to gulp down great lungsful of it and take them with him when he went back to New Liverpool.

“We’ll form a skirmish line, man on the left close enough to the edge of the woods to see the inlet,” Green said. “If you get separated, steer southwest by the sun and you won’t go far wrong. If the sun goes behind the clouds again or you’re in amongst growth too thick to let you see it, remember that your compass needle will bear a bit northeast, not true north. We’re close enough to the North Magnetic Pole for the deflection to matter.”

“Now there’s something I never imagined I’d have to worry about,” Samuel Stanley said. He took a compass from a pocket of his anorak and gave it a thoughtful look. “Can’t tell that it’s lying to me.”

Shaking his head, he put it back. Bushell kicked at the red-brown needles underfoot; he hadn’t thought to bring a compass.

They set off toward Buckley Bay, each man only a couple of yards from the fellow to his side. Ferns pushed up through the dead needles: bright splashes of green against the dun ground and tree trunks. Here and there, moss found a hold on some of those trunks, and on boulders as well. Bushell suspected that if he stood still for a couple of hours in the cool moistness of the forest, moss would start growing on him, too.

Something screeched jeep! jeep! right above his ear. He had his rifle off his back and halfway to his shoulder before he heard a whir of flapping wings and got a glimpse of a dark blue bird streaking away.

“What the devil was that?” he asked. “It scared me out of a year’s growth.”

“Just a jay, sir,” the Marine on his left answered. “Noisy buggers, aren’t they? I’d sooner run across one of them than a bear, though.”

“Right.” Bushell kept his voice under tight rein. He wondered how many RAM investigations had been halted because a wild beast devoured the investigator. Most of the time, he worried only about dangerous men. Adding wild animals to the mix struck him as unfair.

Every so often, he had to leap over or splash through a little stream; from everything he’d seen, the Queen Charlotte Islands had more water than they knew what to do with. Before long, his feet were soaked. He envied the Royal Marines their tall boots. “Hope you don’t pick up any leeches, sir,” the Marine beside him said helpfully. He gave the pup a dirty look and kept slogging along. To his right, Sam Stanley was also making good progress. Not bad for a couple of old men, Bushell thought. Felix Crooke was years younger than either of them but already starting to pant. “I’ve been behind a desk too long,” he said. “If I fall behind, just shoot me and carry on.”

Stanley made as if to unsling his rifle, then seemed to think better of it. “Can’t do that, sir, I’m afraid,” he said. “The sound would carry too far.”

“I’m so glad you have my welfare in mind,” Crooke said with a rasping chuckle. After two or three miles, they came to a river too wide to be easily forded.

“There’s a log bridge a couple of hundred yards upstream,” Morton Green said. The party gathered together to find it and crossed a few at a time.

Bushell looked down into the clear water to the stream’s gravel bed. Fish hung motionless above the pebbles and small rounded stones, or else dashed off to snap at insects on the surface. Some of the shining green creatures were as long as his arm. As his knowledge of fish before they were cooked was on the theoretical side, he asked Lieutenant Green, “Are those salmon?”

The Marine nodded. “Yes, sir, and trout, too. They all make fine eating when there’s time to fish.” He walked over the bridge with a sigh of regret. So did Bushell. The fresher fish was, the better, and how could it be fresher than just pulled from a river? He thought it a pity his water jar held only water and not a good white wine, a Meursault perhaps, or a Vouvray, or a Rhine wine from the Palatinate. Not long after they’d crossed over the river, they came out of forest into a stretch of saplings and weeds and brush running for several hundred yards: logged-over land that hadn’t yet regrown. Bushell said.

“This can’t date back to the days when Buckley Bay was a going concern.”

“It doesn’t,” Lieutenant Green answered. “From the height of those young trees, I’d say it was cut about ten years ago: the trunks would have been rafted across the inlet to Port Clements and dealt with there. By the time it’s sat idle sixty years, it’ll be ready for another round of cutting.”

Bushell was beginning to feel his years when one of the Royal Marines said, “Hold up - pass the word.”

Inside a few steps, everyone had stopped. A moment later, the reason for the halt came down the line:

“You can see the old settlement through the trees.”

“How are we going to proceed?” Lieutenant Green asked. “If it were a purely military operation, I’d send some men through the woods beyond Buckley Bay and approach from all sides at once to prevent any possible escapes. If, however, you’d sooner just tramp up and rap on the front door, we can do that. Consider me and my men at your disposal.”

“Normally, we would just rap at the front door,” Felix Crooke said.

“Normally, we wouldn’t be carrying these.” Bushell reached over his shoulder to touch the barrel of the rifle slung there. “For that matter, I don’t know which front door in the settlement belongs to the men we’re looking for. We’ll use the military approach here.”

Crooke still looked doubtful, but Samuel Stanley nodded emphatic agreement and said, “Villains with rifles aren’t the sort of people whose front doors I care to rap on.”

“Good enough.” Green gave swift orders to his men. Sergeant Fuller and Corporal Wainwright led one squad off on the flanking maneuver Green had described. Corporal Johnston and the rest of the Royal Marines stayed behind with Green and the RAMs. Green said, “Let’s spread out along the treeline, not showing ourselves, and see what we can see.”

What Bushell saw, from behind a cedar whose trunk was thicker than his body, was the ghostly ruin of what once had been a thriving little town. Overgrown streets made a grid centering on a small square. More than his lifetime of storms and rain and wind and sun had peeled every speck of paint from the buildings and bleached almost white the boards of which they were made. The windows were all blank and vacant, with not a shard of glass anywhere. Here and there, ferns grew on rooftops; beards of moss and lichen hung from eaves.

A couple of trees over, Sam Stanley let out a soft hiss. “Do you see it, sir?” he called to Bushell. “That place on the east side of the square with the big window in front, looks like it was a grocer’s shop once upon a time. There’s smoke coming up from the chimney.”

“I see it,” Bushell answered. It wasn’t a lot of smoke, just the wisps that came from a low fire, but it stood out like a flag (an Independence Party flag, Bushell thought) in a town otherwise slowly being reclaimed by wilderness.

Lieutenant Green saw it, too. “Is that where our suspects live, sir?” he asked Bushell.

“Either them or the Ladies’ Aid Society,” Bushell answered. “How long will your other squad of Marines need to get around to the far side of Buckley Bay?”

“Let’s give them fifteen minutes, unless we spy them advancing out of the forest there sooner,” Green said. “I am correct in assuming you wish a stealthy approach to the target building?”

“That might be a good idea,” Bushell agreed dryly.

Felix Crooke said, “Surely they’ll surrender when they realize we represent the law and the military power, and that we have them outnumbered and surrounded.”

“Don’t think of them as ordinary villains, Felix,” Bushell said. “Think of them as soldiers. They’re playing for keeps.” Behind a spruce, Crooke nodded. Bushell did not like that nod. It looked more as if it came from dutiful obedience than from conviction.

Fifteen minutes passed, then a couple more. Just as Bushell was beginning to get itchy, several men in dark khaki that made them hard to spot burst out of the woods on the far side of Buckley Bay and sprinted toward the lesser cover of saplings, tall clumps of fir, and scattered boulders. As soon as they had flopped down in their new places of concealment, the other half of the squad Sergeant Fuller led ran past them into other hiding places closer to the abandoned town. It was as pretty an example of move-and-support as Bushell had ever seen.

“Now we can start,” Lieutenant Green said softly. “Corporal, you and the odd numbers forward, if you please.”

“Sir!” Corporal Johnston said. He and half the squad ran forward forty or fifty yards and went to ground in the cover they’d chosen for themselves.

“Even numbers and gentlemen of the RAMs,” Green said. Bushell realized he should long since have figured out where he was going to run when the time came. He hadn’t played this game in too long, too long. He spotted a fallen tree that for whatever reason hadn’t been dragged away after it went down. It had lain there a long time; sword ferns grew in profusion atop it. Crouching almost double, he ran for it and dove in behind it hard enough to knock half the wind out of him. Sam Stanley came down behind a moss-covered rock. He mimed wiping sweat from his forehead, but the way he panted was no joke. Southwest of Buckley Bay, Sergeant Fuller’s squad was moving up again. Behind Bushell, Corporal Johnston called, “Odd numbers move.” His half of the squad sprinted past the RAMs.

This time, Bushell had picked in advance the spot to which he would go. When Lieutenant Green ordered the even numbers ahead, he streaked for the corner of a building on the very edge of Buckley Bay. He crouched, gasping, behind it. Streaks of rust from old nails bled down the boards and gave them their only color.

Corporal Johnston’s demi-squad worked their way into town, too. “Now we move forward until we are noticed,” Green said quietly, “at which point, command returns to your hands, Colonel Bushell.”

“Right,” Bushell said. He slithered through the heather and ferns that choked what had been one of Buckley Bay’s main streets, making for the open square on which stood the building the men he sought were using. He could smell the smoke from their fire: not just wood but roasting meat. The odor made his belly rumble and spit rush into his mouth. Come on, boys, you be hungry, too, he thought. Watch the joint get done cooking or sit around eating it up, don’t pay a bit of attention to what’s going on outside, and we’ll scoop you up neat as you please.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a shout made him, his RAM comrades, and the Royal Marines freeze in place: “Who the devil’s sneaking around out there? Whoever you are, you’d better clear out, or you’ll be sorry.”

“Who are you?” Bushell called back. “Is this the residence of four gentlemen named Geoff and Patrick and Elgin and Benjamin?” The formalities had to be observed: there was the one-in-a-milliard chance he was wrong.

“Who wants to know?” that same voice yelled from inside the old shop. To Bushell’s horror, Felix Crooke broke cover and stood up, saying, “We are members of the Royal American Mounted Police and the Royal Marines. We have you outnumbered and trapped. Come out with your hands above your heads and you shall not be harmed.”

“Get down, you damned fool!” Bushell shouted, a split second behind Samuel Stanley. Crooke started to shake his head - afterwards, Bushell was almost sure of it. But an element of doubt always remained, for at that moment a rifle shot rang out. Crooke went down then, but not of his own will; he crashed to earth as if all his bones had suddenly turned to water.

Bushell stared in disbelief and horror. He’d warned Felix Crooke to think of the men they were after as soldiers, not ordinary criminals, but he hadn’t thought of them that way himself, not down deep where it counted. He’d never fired a weapon in the field in all his years as a RAM, and never dreamt of being fired on himself. That was something Russian Okhrana men worried about, or inquisitors of the Holy Alliance. The game was played by different rules in the British Empire. No. The game had been played by different rules.

“Come on, the lot of you, and you’ll get what he got!” The man inside the grocer’s shop sounded fiercely exultant, as if he had done something good and true and noble, not shot a man down in cold blood.

Shock at the unexpected gunplay held Bushell frozen, just for a moment. To the Royal Marines, though, gunfire was anything but unexpected. They opened up with a fusillade that sent bullets flying through the empty window frame from which the shot had come and made chips fly off the timbers of the building with the smoking chimney.

That great racket of riflery got Bushell moving. All at once, he wasn’t a RAM any more, but a subaltern with troops pinned down amid mesquite and chaparral not far from the Rio Grande. As he had then, he knew what wanted doing now: getting his wounded out of further harm’s way. He dashed out into the square to Felix Crooke. A bullet cracked past his head closer than he cared to think about: the Marines’ barrage hadn’t silenced the Sons of Liberty. He slung Crooke across his back and, staggering under the weight of the bigger man, carried him through an open doorway into a shop or home that perhaps had not known the tread of human feet since before he was born. He set Crooke down and groped for a pulse. He found none. Crooke’s eyes were wide and staring. Frantically, Bushell pulled off the khaki cape his fellow RAM was wearing and ripped open his tunic. The bullet - without a doubt, a three-line bullet, the clinical part of him reported: a bullet from a Nagant had struck just to the left of Crooke’s breastbone. He’d been dead, he must have been dead, before he hit the ground.

Cold and terrible anger filled Bushell. Later, when he had time, he would mourn. Now . . . Now he flicked the safety off his own rifle, heaved it to his shoulder, and fired at what he thought was movement back behind the abandoned shop Geoff and Patrick, Elgin and Benjamin had taken for their own. The kick from the Lee-Enfield was like the touch of an old friend: it had been away for a long time, but was immediately familiar. He worked the bolt. An empty brass shell casing flipped out of the breech and landed beside his feet with a small, metallic ting. A fresh round in the chamber, he peered out, waiting for a target.

After the first hail of lead, a lull came over the firing. A couple of Marines were down, one ominously still, the other twisting and writhing in pain. The rest had pulled back into the buildings across the overgrown square from the shop. Bushell couldn’t see Samuel Stanley. He couldn’t worry now, any more than he could mourn. Finishing this dreadful business came first.

“Give yourselves up!” he called across the square. “You’ll have a fair trial.”

“Not bloody likely,” came the reply - a different voice from the one that had spoken first. He fervently hoped the owner of that voice was dead. “We’d swing, and you bloody well know it. You want us, you stinking redcoat, you come get us and pay the price.” As if to punctuate his words, he fired at the spot from which he thought Bushell’s voice was coming. The bullet slammed into the back wall ten feet or so from where the RAM stood.

Several Marines blazed away at the muzzle flash. A mocking laugh told them they’d missed their target.

“Covering fire, sir, if you’d be so kind,” an unruffled voice said: after a moment, Bushell recognized it as Sergeant Fuller’s.

“Covering fire!” Lieutenant Green shouted. The Royal Marines banged away at their foes. Bushell emptied the box of ammunition in his rifle. He pulled another magazine from his pocket, clicked it into place, and shot again. The Sons of Liberty seemed to have plenty of cartridges. He was painfully aware he didn’t.

Sergeant Fuller and half his squad raced across the street where the square ended, to try to flank out the villains. Someone inside the building where the Sons of Liberty sheltered was screaming now, a high, shrill sound of torment that made the hairs on the back of Bushell’s neck try to rise. But firing kept coming from the building, and from a couple of others nearby. The Sons were not making it easy for anyone.

Charging straight across the square at them was nothing but a grandiose way of committing suicide. Flanking them out, as Fuller had realized, gave better odds. Bushell crawled to the rear of the building where he’d brought Felix Crooke, groped in gloom for a back door. His hand closed on something cold and wet and slimy that writhed as he squeezed it: a slug as big and thick as his forefinger. He made a choking sound of disgust, wiped his palm on the thigh of his denims, and at last found the latch he’d been seeking.

The door didn’t want to open. He got to his feet, hoping no one could see him from across the square, and slammed a shoulder against it. It gave all at once. He stumbled out into the overgrown alley behind the building.

Motion there made the barrel of his rifle automatically jerk toward it. He checked himself and exclaimed in glad relief: “Sam!”

“Chief!” Stanley had been swinging his rifle toward Bushell. “How’s Felix?” he demanded. Bushell gave a thumbs-down. Stanley grimaced. “Damn the bastards!” he said. “I figured our best chance at winkling them out was sliding round to one side.”

“Same thing I was thinking,” Bushell said. Together they trotted north past the edge of the square. Getting close a street at a time was different from running across the open space straight at the enemy’s guns.

“Had enough of coming under fire in my army days,” Stanley said. “Never thought it would happen to me as a RAM.”

“Neither did I,” Bushell answered. “Just because we’re up near Russia doesn’t mean we’re in it.”

They wrestled another back door open. The brass latch had turned green over the years, but was still strong. Brushing aside cobwebs, they went out to the front of the building and peered through a window. Bushell paused a moment to catch his breath. He could still smell the cheerful odor of the cookfire and faintly, beneath it, the reek from the rubbish the Sons of Liberty had discarded over their years here. He looked at Stanley, who nodded. They yanked open the front door and dashed for the buildings on the eastern side of the street.

A bullet kicked up dirt a couple of feet away from Bushell. He dove straight through a window as bare of glass as a skull’s eye socket was of flesh. “Oof!” he said as he landed on a hard floor, but he bounced to his feet. Sam Stanley sailed through the window next to the one he’d chosen, and came to earth no more gracefully than he had. He too, though, quickly got up again.

The back door to this building opened without a squeal or a groan, for which Bushell was grateful. Lee-Enfield at the ready, he stepped out into the alley. Samuel Stanley came right behind him. “Watch yourself, Chief,” Stanley said, his eyes flicking every which way. “The buggers have been moving about “

“Don’t I know it.” Bushell too was scanning every building, every window, every doorway. The inside of his mouth felt dry and rough. His heart pounded. Breath whistled in and out of his nostrils. He’d forgotten what combat did to a man.

The firing picked up again off to the north, this time from the flank. “That Fuller, he knows what he wants to do and how to do it,” Stanley said, now sounding intensely satisfied. Bushell nodded, unsurprised at the way his adjutant responded to an NCO’s professional competence.

From the south, a young man came dashing round the corner. He wore a bushy beard, but the hair atop his head was cropped Roundhead close. He carried a rifle in his right hand.

“Hold it right there!” Bushell shouted, at the same instant as Samuel Stanley screamed, “Drop that gun or you’re dead!”

Instead of dropping it, the man started to raise it to his shoulder. Bushell and Stanley fired together. The rifle flew from the young man’s hands. He let out a grunt, a sound more of startlement than of pain. One finger started to move toward a hole in his wool plaid shirt, as if wondering how it had got there. Before the motion was more than well begun, he crumpled amidst the ferns.

Bushell ran to him. The fellow had fallen facedown, which let Bushell see the exit wounds in his back. He was still breathing, but more feebly with every moment that passed. “He’s not going to make it, Sam,” Bushell said.

“Not with one in the chest and one in the belly, he won’t,” Stanley agreed. He knelt beside the Son of Liberty. “We have to try, though. Cover me while I work on him - wish I had a proper wound dressing here; this’ll cost me my vest.” He shrugged out of his anorak, unbuttoned his shirt, and peeled off the white cotton vest beneath it.

Bushell trotted up toward the corner, sprawled behind a long-abandoned barrel. From there, he could pick off anyone who tried to come by. The firing by the old grocer’s shop had died down again. He heard running feet. His finger tensed on the trigger.

No one came into sight. From around the corner came Sergeant Fuller’s no-nonsense tones: “If that’s you, you RAMs, give me your names.”

“Bushell and Stanley,” Bushell answered. “We have one of the villains down here, Sergeant.”

“He’s gone, Chief,” Stanley said. He rubbed his hands on the ground, then reached for his shirt and anorak.

“We have two dead, one wounded further south,” Sergeant Fuller said, showing himself now. “That should be the lot.” His face went grim, or rather, grimmer. “Good riddance, I say.”