Horizons of Deceit, Book 1 Page 6

  “They nickname it ‘The Confessional’,” smirked Tally, as he closed them in the booth.

  Out of politeness more than curiosity, Nathaniel had accepted a pint of Guinness from Tally. It now sat before him, untouched, while Tally’s was nearly halfway gone.

  “You not gonna touch your Guinness, Professor?” asked Tally, genuinely interested.

  “I’m not much of a drinker, let alone of ale.”

  “Well, there’s yer first mistake, as this ain’t ale. G’wan. Give it a go. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  Nathaniel couldn’t really argue with his logic. He gripped the glass tightly. It felt slightly heavier than he remembered from carrying it across, and he brought the thick black liquid topped with thick, white foam to his lips, and sipped. A deep, chocolaty goodness passed into his mouth, followed by a rich taste of velvet molasses that coated his throat as he swallowed.

  “Dear Lord,” he muttered. “That really is rather pleasant.”

  “First taste of Ireland. Welcome to Dublin, Professor Stone.”

  Nathaniel smacked his mouth appreciatively and took another sip.

  “Careful now,” said Tally. “That stuff’ll leave you with a fair old head in the morning.”

  “Yes, quite,” agreed Nathaniel. “And I fear I’ll need my faculties over the coming days. I’m assuming it’s safe to talk?”

  “Safe as houses.”

  “Then I’m led to believe you have information pertaining to the identity of the Horseguard’s Bomber.”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” said Tally. “I do and I don’t.”

  “You do and you don’t?” blurted Nathaniel loudly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Whoa there, Professor,” cautioned Tally. “These things are private, but they ain’t soundproof.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “What I mean by I do and I don’t is that I do know something, but I don’t know yer man who lit the fuse.”

  “Well,” pressed Nathaniel, “what is it?”

  “It’s me nephew. He’s a zookeeper.”

  “A…zookeeper?”

  “Aye. Up in Dublin Zoological Gardens. You never heard of Dublin Zoo?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Aye, I guess not. Anyway, young Simon (for that’s his name), young Simon notices one day the Earth sorta shiftin’ underneet his feet, like a tremor, an earthquake or what-have-you. Pretty soon after that, see, parts of the zoo get closed off, no explanation, and young Simon says he could hear the sound of drilling, an’ explosions. All this over the past couple of months. Anyway, they’ve opened it up again now, but our Simon noticed some shady goings on in that exhibit, the new one, what with stuff from Mars. Visitors after closing time, that sort of thing. When young Simon told the gaffer about it he was told to shut his hole and feed the ferrets.”

  “But what’s that got to do with the bomb?”

  “Not a lot. But there’s been rumblings in certain…organizations. That an expert was in town, just doing his own thing, but he suddenly opened himself up to giving certain organizations lessons in new an’ deadly ways to make things go bang, if you get what I mean. Apparently, this expert was seen a lot in Phoenix Park, not far from the Zoo.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Ah, nobody’s all that sure. The lads who attended his little masterclass have apparently been sworn to silence. But he’s one of your lot, a Britisher. Doesn’t seem to care to hide it, neither. Tweed, leather gloves, an upturned nose and a stick up his arse. Only… Only there’s always this other feller with him, and he’s the type that tends to draw the eye.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “He’s built like a side of beef on both sides, is how so. They say he’s got brass hands, always wears these damn welding goggles. Never talks.”

  7.

  THEY HAD DISCOVERED their destination in the final briefing: Severnaya, Russia, miles from the middle of nowhere. It was here, they had been informed, that the Russians were studying and perfecting dangerous new technologies that had the potential to eclipse those of the British Empire. Grant had provided some information, either through rambling, enraged rants or spidery notes pushed out from under doors as the doctor wailed in the locked room beyond. The Secret Service Bureau was dug in well in Dublin, and though the intel was vague there was a definite Russian connection. Treading on enemy soil—it was by far the most dangerous of missions. Yet Folkard relished the prospect. Not for the adventure nor the protection of his homeland—it seemed that every passing moment brought him closer to the mission, and that also brought him closer to the Heart, and, ultimately his dear wife.

  There was no choice. They could not have gone by rail or commercial flyer. This clandestine mission required far much more finesse and resources, and so HMAS Sovereign had been commissioned for their flight.

  Folkard felt a strange sense of nostalgia being back on the ship, but not once did he ever feel the need to go to the bridge. He mostly stayed in his room. The rumblings of the engines through the walls—that exact pitch—was one he knew so well, like the close embrace of someone long lost. But with those rumblings came an energy, a direction, that was bringing him closer to the Heart. He could feel it.

  He had taken a stroll round, of course. The old girl was looking fit as a fox, he had to admit, and he noted that even some of the improvements he had suggested to the Admiralty following his decommission had been implemented. He felt proud to have made the ship what she was. But he was also aware that many of the men would know his face, catch his eye—he would cause unrest on board if he made his presence obvious. One or two trusted souls he’d like to speak to, of course… But for the most part, he wished his presence to be ghostlike.

  8.

  ARNAUD WAS RATHER surprised at how easy this was all turning out to be—despite this damnable, oppressive heat. He had felt the temperature rising steadily over the second day of his journey east; by the evening the observation deck of the airship had become sweltering due to the great glass windows, and all but the hardiest of passengers had retired to their rooms to snooze and escape the sun.

  That selfsame sun was now beating down on Arnaud like a hammer at a forge. He was wearing a safari suit made of cream-coloured cotton, but even this light fabric was sodden with sweat and clung to his body like a wet bathing costume. After the airship had docked, Arnaud had been one of the first passengers to disembark. The aerodrome (if you could call it that—a more accurate, though less flattering, description would be a raised mound of earth surrounded by a few sorry looking huts, with telegraph poles spidering away from them towards the horizon) was located some miles south of Calcutta, and yet with commendable alacrity Coyne had procured them a sort of rickshaw affair, piloted by a local peasant in a loincloth on a bicycle that had been bolted to the passenger’s bench in a worryingly ramshackle fashion. Neither the driver’s emaciated appearance or the shoddy design of the vehicle were built for speed, and any hopes for relief from the heat by a cooling breeze were remote. Arnaud found himself constantly fanning his face with his hat or wiping the sweat from his eyes with a damp handkerchief. Coyne, still in black, seemed unperturbed.

  The city of Calcutta crawled up to meet them. It was not like approaching London, he thought. Or even Paris. Calcutta snuck up on you slowly. First came an increase in locals by the roadway, often walking towards the city, mostly alone, often carrying or carting improbable loads—mangoes, scrap metal, bundles of newspaper tied with strips of leaves. Skeletal dogs trotted beside them or slumped, breathing heavily on their sides, by the edges of the road.

  Then the slums began. The first of the hovels had shocked Arnaud—it seemed incomprehensible to him that people could even survive—let alone make a living—in such appalling squalor. From a distance, he had thought the first was some kind of rest-stop dropped carelessly onto the barren landscape, little more than a few wooden boards propped together, topped with a waxed fabric roof. It was perhaps five feet square. As they approached A
rnaud saw an ancient looking Sikh sitting cross-legged on a mat beside the door, smoking a sort of upright wooden pipe. Through the doorway he could see figures sleeping, cramped together on woven mats, and on the other side of the hut a broad-hipped woman in a colourful sari was pegging out washing on a line. It was then Arnaud realised that this was not a rest-stop but a home, and he thought back guiltily to his two days of sloth and drunken indulgence.

  Thereafter, similar huts began to pepper the roadside, all equally cramped and ill-constructed. He began not to be shocked by them, and then not to notice them at all, and occupied his time drifting off into hazy, febrile daydreams. Occasionally, children would run alongside the rickshaw with their arms outstretched to beg, only to have the driver curse at them in a rapid, angry staccato and wave his arms at them to clip their ears.

  “This is nothing compared to the slums in the city proper,” said Coyne. Was Arnaud mistaken, or did he detect a sort of malicious glee in the way the fellow said it? Either way, the Frenchman was too wilted for conversation and grunted non-committally, returned instead to his daydreams and, eventually, thoughts of Garrecreux.

  Bizarrely, or perhaps because of this feverish heat, one of the only things that Arnaud could recall of his would-be mentor was his eyebrows. Great, big, black bushy things they were—vast to the point of ridicule. More than once an undergraduate night of drinking had ended with a cooled chunk of charcoal being pilfered from the grate to facilitate an impromptu impression, and Arnaud smiled at the memory of long-gone, carefree days. It struck him that they had mocked Garrecreux because they did not respect him—not in the same way they had respected Professor Fournier. Garrecreux had an insincerity about him that Fournier lacked, a shifty, squint-eyed suspicion that would wash across the lecture theatres like the beam from a lighthouse. Where his gaze was keen, his teaching was dull and dry. To him, rocks were no more than dead objects to be studied, minerals ground down to powder to make statistics out of scientific composition. What was there, was there; they had no more stories to tell after they were reduced into dust. Fournier’s approach—and consequently Arnaud’s, thanks to the former’s tutelage—was to find magic, life and mystery in the floor beneath humanity’s feet.

  As well as that, there was Garrecreux’s instance of one-to-one tuition and an alarming penchant to lean uncomfortably close when checking Arnaud’s notes. Arnaud had been little more than a boy then (though at the time, naturally enough, he believed himself to be far more), and even as a man the thought of those weasely eyebrows brushing against his cheek made him shudder. He steeled himself. This was not to be a pleasant reunion of old university acquaintances. His only hope, he reasoned, was to challenge the old man’s pride, and force him to prove that he could, in fact, help.

  Yet whatever happened, Arnaud was certain that he would be remembered.

  Chapter Six

  Intrigue in the World’s Four Corners

  1.

  THE TERRIBLE SCREECH of a train’s brakes roused George from his idle slumber and punted Annabelle from her seat into the opposing—and thankfully unoccupied—bench. She was relieved to see George instantly awake and tending to her current discomfort, offering his hand to help her rise and asking if, please God, she was unharmed. Troubled, perhaps, but unharmed—she wondered to herself if she might not have taken such a tumble had she possessed two fully functioning legs.

  Screams and consternations emanated from other booths along the carriage. George and Annabelle had scarcely got their breath back before Boon pulled open the door to look down upon them.

  “Are you all right?” he asked quickly.

  “We’re fine, Bert,” replied Annabelle, unfazed. “What’s happening?”

  “No idea, miss. Legged it here as soon as this bloody thing stopped shuddering.”

  “Well,” said George, dusting himself off pointlessly, “shall we go and find out what we’re dealing with, hmm?”

  “Right you are, Sir,” beamed Bert. “Right you are.”

  George turned to Annabelle.

  “Coming, Mrs Bedford?” he asked, offering the crook of his elbow.

  “I thought you’d never ask, Mister Bedford,” she said, and took his arm.

  They glanced out of the window but the mound of earth onto which the tracks were built was rather steep. The rails ran round along the left towards the horizon, and it was easily seen that the tracks ran into a plateau near the engine. Already, the driver and a couple of engineers had disembarked. Their bright blue overalls stood out starkly against the burnt orange of the Arizona soil as they approached an ominous black blob that sat, unnervingly still, some twenty metres on the track before the front of the train.

  The trio dashed up the length of the carriages until they reached the partition to the hopper filled with coal. When they reached the door, a surly and overweight railway worker had held up his hand to stop their progress before they were even ten feet away.

  “Summin’ on the line, folks,” he drawled, bored. “We clean it up, we mosey on. Get back ter ya carriage, drink yer tea. We’s got it all under control.”

  “Excuse me!” started Annabelle.

  “Now hush hush, little lady! You don’t wanna be getting’ your drawers in a disturbance, you just leave this to…”

  And the worker found his drawl curtailed by Annabelle’s knee, which had swiftly and viciously found itself embedded in his groin.

  “And to think I was about to invoke Queen and Country,” muttered Boon.

  “We’re in my country now,” smiled Annabelle. “Let’s go.”

  2.

  ANNABELLE, GEORGE AND Bert clambered down the short ladder onto the dusty ground, and within moments were dashing towards where the driver and his cohorts were milling around the blockage on the track, scratching their heads and rubbing their stubble. As they approached, it became clear the problem on the line was animal in nature—not black, but dark brown, lying on its side with two great horns jutting out from the crown of its head. A buffalo! Annabelle recognised it instantly, sped her step towards the corpse of the fallen beast, and as she did so, the train driver extended her arms and waved for her pleadingly to stop.

  “Whoa, whoa, missy!” he began to plead, “this ain’t no sight for a lady!”

  “I’ve seen more of these gutted than you’ve had hot dinners,” she admonished, stopping the man in his tracks as she finished her jog towards him. “And what’s more, you’re all idiots.”

  “Well hold your tongue there, missy! This is Injun country, an’ caution ain’t gonna do us no harm.”

  George, breathless, caught up to them, Boon close on his heels.

  “I’d listen to her if I were you,” said George, resting his palms on his knees. “Your colleague nursing himself in the train will testify as much. What’s wrong, Annabelle?”

  Annabelle had approached the fallen buffalo. Three arrows jutted from the hump in the beast’s back, and with a twist of her wrist Annabelle yanked one out and studied the tip.

  “These aren’t Apache arrows. Can’t be. Look at them! The shaft, you couldn’t fire this straight if you tried. And what’s more, three arrows in a buffalo’s hump? It would barely stop the thing from goring you, let alone kill it.” She tossed the arrow aside and dusted off her hands. “Push this thing to the side,” she instructed the two engineers. “I’ll wager we’ll find a great shotgun wound there. And if there is…then where’s all the blood?”

  The two engineers, seemingly powerless to resist Annabelle’s barked instructions, hefted their shoulders against the weight of the animal and began to push.

  “Come on, boys,” said Annabelle, “Put your backs into it!” Yet her bravado was curtailed by George, who tapped her lightly on the shoulder.

  “Darling,” he protested gently, “this all well and good, but I think we may be faced with more pressing concerns.”

  Annabelle followed his gaze. On the horizon, a dust cloud loomed, the dark silhouettes of riders and the trembling thunder of hooves cl
oaked inexorably, terrifyingly, within.

  “Injuns!” yelped the driver.

  “Indians,” corrected Annabelle. “But which tribe? Are they friendly?”

  Under the hoof-beats, the sound of whoops and war-cries began rising steadily in volume. Once or twice came the crack of a carbine being fired into the air.

  “Well, I guess that answers that question…” She lifted her skirts and, along with George, Bert, and the ashen-faced railway workers, began to pelt back towards the train.

  3.

  NATHANIEL HAD AWOKEN at some point in the mid-morning, his head not unpleasantly heavy thanks to a couple of pints of stout. He smacked his mouth experimentally, just hoping that, should he once more desire a taste of Ireland’s most famous export, he would not have to head into the more salubrious of London’s inns in order to satisfy his newly-found craving.

  He was stretched out on an old, threadbare divan in Tally’s garret, his feet poking off the edge. He began to recall the previous night. After Nathaniel had quizzed the Irishman on everything he knew about the strange seismic disturbances under Phoenix Park (which turned out to be little more than he had already been told) the two had moved on to other, more diverting topics, including local politics, the state of the Empire and life in Dublin in general. They had ordered a large platter of Dublin Bay prawns from the barman—sweet, succulent, covered in butter and accompanied by heavy and toothsome soda bread. As promised, Nathaniel had picked up the bill and at some point in the early hours the two had stepped out into the warm night air. Nathaniel had enquired about a local hotel he might stay at—even The Bleeding Horse itself—but Tally had insisted on showing Nathaniel the extent of Celtic hospitality. This had turned out to be the aforementioned threadbare divan in a garret, somewhere in the backstreets of the suburb of Rathgar.