Gossamer Wing 1

by Delphine Dryden

  Martin didn’t bother to sweep up the pieces. The landlady could take care of the mess. He’d never been particularly fond of her anyway.

  “Time to pay a final call on Monsieur Dubois,” Martin said to the flat, which was too small and mean to echo in reply. “Today I call his bluff, or I die. But either way it will be the same to him.”

  * * *

  CHARLOTTE HAD DECIDED to lend more credence to her cover and spend the morning shopping again while Dexter reviewed his plans for the work at Atlantis Station. Even with two agents assigned to cover her she was jumpy and uneasy, prone to glancing over her shoulder, then checking to make sure her guards were still in place.

  Tittering with salespersons and bargaining poorly in atrocious French took all her energy, and by noon she was more than ready to find Dexter and repair to some quiet bistro where they could pretend to be a honeymooning couple in love.

  When she walked into the suite, however, Dexter was packing his trunks.

  “The glass is ready. Arsenault just sent a wire. It’s being delivered to Le Havre, so I’ll need to start work there tomorrow. We can stay in the same hotel we used before, in Honfleur.”

  “We’ve barely settled into the suite here,” she sighed.

  “With the documents recovered, there’s no reason to linger in Paris.” Dexter placed a pair of shoes neatly into a drawer-like compartment within one trunk, securing it closed with a snap. “You could always remain here, you know. For a few more days at least, assuming Murcheson doesn’t have anything pressing for you to do in Le Havre. I’ll need a week or so for the installation, and God knows Honfleur won’t offer you nearly as much diversion as Paris during that time.”

  Charlotte tossed her reticule on the bed and started to remove her gloves, trying to account for the queasy fluttering in her stomach. “Are you asking me to stay here while you go on?”

  He abandoned the pretense of interest in packing and sat on the bed, picking up the yellow silk purse and toying with the strings. “I’m giving you the freedom to choose whichever option seems best to you.”

  She wanted to resent him for laying the decision on her shoulders. He was trying so hard to do the right thing, though, that she couldn’t bear him a grudge for it.

  “If I were a stronger person I would stay, for both our sakes.”

  “If I were a stronger person I would carry you to the embassy kicking and screaming and make them lock you in a room until it’s time to put you on the next ship to New York.” He sounded as though he had given the idea serious thought.

  She thought of his possessive anger in the submersible bay, the fierce way he’d taken charge on the train after she’d frustrated him by setting her terms. Not to mention that long-ago fork jabbed into his brother’s hand over a chop. Perhaps that was his usual response to being thwarted in matters of the mind or heart, to settle the matter through brute force and determination. That, to him, was strength. It had probably served him quite well over the years, and Charlotte was suspicious at his suddenly adopting a less direct approach.

  “You mean you’re not going to club me over the head and drag me off to your cave?”

  “Do you want me to?” He smiled wryly. “We both know I’m capable of it. And have essentially done so a few times already. Charlotte, you do know I’m not normally so—oh, never mind, of course you don’t know. That’s the trouble.”

  For some reason his humor angered her, where his anger hadn’t. “There’s so much trouble here, I don’t know where to begin. You’re right, I don’t know you. I hardly even know myself anymore, since we started this . . . this—”

  “Affair.”

  “Affair?” She threw her gloves on the bed and crossed her arms over her chest, feeling a need to shield herself. “I don’t have affairs.”

  An affair was something temporary, sordid, the business of unhappy wives and jaded widows. Rakehells and faithless husbands had affairs.

  What happened to “I love you”? Charlotte grimaced at her own hypocrisy.

  “What would you call it, then,” he challenged, “since you’re determined to end it when we get back to New York? It isn’t a marriage, Charlotte, no matter what people may think. You and I know better.”

  “I ought to end it here and now.”

  His jaw was tight again, his eyes an icy wasteland. “If you were a stronger person, perhaps you would.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’m feeling a sudden surge of strength. Consider our affair at an end, Lord Hardison.”

  “Mister Hardison, if you please.” For a moment they stared at each other in a silent contest of wills, then Dexter spoke again. “Charlotte, I don’t want to do this. Not this way.”

  Charlotte looked away, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we were friends before, and we can be friends still.” He rose and offered his hands. Charlotte reluctantly unfolded her arms and let him pull her into the circle of his embrace, slowly relaxing against him as he held her. “Whatever happens, and even if it was all a product of the excitement of the mission, we both know it meant more than just an affair. At least it did to me.”

  Charlotte slipped her arms around Dexter’s waist, burying her face in his warm, broad chest for a blissful moment before forcing herself to pull away. She patted his shoulder and nodded. “I know. We’re both just tired, I suspect. It will be so good to get home.”

  “Soon,” he said in agreement.

  “I’ll come to Honfleur,” she decided, “because you’re being gracious. I’m sure Murcheson can find something for me to do while you’re working on your . . . what did you call it again? Multi-seismical Phototonic—”

  “Multi-hyalchordate Phototransphorinating Seismograph.”

  “While you’re working on that. Besides, we can hardly make things more complicated at this point, anyway.” She moved to the wardrobe, sighing at the prospect of packing it all up yet again.

  * * *

  MARGUERITE, THE VASTLY skilled secretary, flashed Martin a stern look when he entered the vestibule outside Dubois’s office.

  “He is occupied, monsieur.”

  “He usually is. Yet I see you at your desk now, so I assume he must at least be fully clothed.” He bypassed the two uncomfortable chairs set out for guests, and sat instead on the corner of Marguerite’s desk.

  “Why do you do it?” the woman asked after a few minutes of painful silence.

  “Do what, ma petite?”

  She sneered at the endearment, as if Martin needed reminding that his gaunt face and ruined ear were off-putting. “Work for him. How did you come to do that, from what you were doing before?”

  “I sold my soul,” he said without hesitation. “It wasn’t worth it, regrettably.” For the first time he scrutinized the woman carefully, noting her delicate features and intelligent brown eyes. He hadn’t paid attention before, and he should have. The way she looked back at him gave her away; she was daring him to guess her secret, and far too confident that he never would. Spying was apparently no longer as subtle a game as it had been during the war.

  Marguerite could have used some lessons from Simone Vernier, Martin thought. Or even from the lovely Charlotte, Lady Hardison. She thought the skills she employed on her knees were enough, no doubt.

  “Is Gendreau in there with him?”

  The girl just raised her eyebrows at him. Sighing, Martin leaned a little closer to her, propping himself on one arm and speaking softly so as not to be overheard by anyone who happened to wander in. “Marguerite, I need you to take a message to your employers after I leave Dubois’s office later, can you do that for me?”

  “Monsieur? You’ll be with Dubois, would you not just tell him—”

  “Your real employers. Listen closely. They were right to suspect him all along. Their mistake has always been in assuming he had a higher motive than greed. Had I brought Dubois the information Simone Vernier gathered seven years ago, he would have happily used it to p
lunge the country into another decade or more of war, just to turn an easier profit. Simone was right to keep it from him, and I’m thankful I was thwarted in my attempt to undo her effort. What I do today, I do for Simone, to honor her sacrifice. You understand?”

  The girl’s eyes had widened, but she said nothing, which Martin thought to her credit.

  “Murcheson’s factory, and the steam car that exploded on the Rue de la Paix last night, both were also the work of Dubois. Not in the service of his country, or anything so lofty. Just filthy lucre, as was ever the case with him.” The voices from within the office grew louder, and the doorknob rattled. Just before the door opened, Martin bent even closer to Marguerite’s shocked face and whispered, “You will thank me after this day, mademoiselle. You’ll never have to suck Dubois’s cock again.”

  “In that case, go with God, m’sieur,” she said quickly, dropping her gaze as Dubois and Gendreau emerged.

  “If so,” Martin said, “it will be the first time in many years.”

  “Martin,” Dubois grunted once Gendreau had gone. He was clearly not pleased to see his dour henchman. “I was about to give some dictation.”

  “I won’t be long,” Martin promised, proceeding into the office. Dubois followed, slamming the door behind them.

  Now that the moment had arrived, Martin found himself unsure how to proceed. His planning, conducted in an alcoholic daze, had left much to be desired.

  “What is it?” Dubois snapped. He crossed to his desk and sat in his large leather chair as though assuming a throne.

  “Gendreau should exercise more caution. He’s not even bothering with a disguise now.”

  “His exile has been formally lifted,” Dubois reported. “People have short memories, and Gendreau has a great deal of influence. He’s planning to find backers among his friends for our steamrail project, and he has a design for a more efficient engine that would be cheaper to produce.”

  “And will he actually succeed in raising money or improving the engines, do you think?”

  “What do you want, Martin?” Dubois was fingering the button in his pocket, and Martin smiled. “I don’t have time to make chitchat with you.”

  “Very well, monsieur, I shall put my cards on the table. And now, so shall you. I am calling your bluff.”

  “Bluff? I don’t recall making any bluffs.”

  “No? It occurred to me that I’ve been of great use to you these seven years, but I’ve also learned a great deal about you. One of the things I’ve learned is that you are far from subtle. Also you are a poor judge of character.”

  Dubois’s lip curled. “I judged yours well enough.”

  Martin nodded, conceding the point. “You saw that I was afraid to die. That I wanted to become something more than I was. A man willing to undergo such pain to improve himself is unlikely to give it up easily. I also had hope, of course, that one day I might regain the leverage I needed to free myself.”

  “Have you lost your hope, Martin? Is Coeur de Fer rusting away?” Dubois taunted.

  “I no longer have hope, it’s true. More importantly, though, I no longer have anything to lose. Perhaps I’m wrong, but if I am it doesn’t really matter to me anymore.”

  “Wrong about what?” Dubois sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, one hand clutching the trigger device.

  “Poison is a subtle man’s weapon, monsieur. And as I said, you are not a subtle man. You’re not a man who restrains his impulses. I believe if you had really possessed the means to kill me all these years I’d be long dead by now.”

  A horrible smile transformed Dubois’s plump, bland face into a mask of demonic delight. “Oh, Martin. How wrong you are. I watched the doctor install the vial of poison myself. Did you really think to challenge me? I have nothing to fear from you. This little display changes nothing, nothing between us except providing me entertainment.”

  “As I said,” Martin replied, an unearthly calm stealing over him as he slipped his coat off, draping it over one of the chairs in front of Dubois’s desk, “it doesn’t matter either way whether I’m right or wrong.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Dubois assured him. “You are right about one thing, I am impulsive at times. Several years ago in a fit of pique I destroyed the formula for the antidote that had been sitting in my safe for so long. It gave me no little satisfaction, I must say.”

  It was almost a numbness, the peace Martin felt. His only recourse lay before him, clear in his mind. He slid the switch in his forearm from one position to another, circled the desk matter-of-factly and placed his mechanical hand around Dubois’s neck before the man could even raise a protest.

  “Wha—” the man squeaked before the pressure on his throat stopped the air. His fingers fumbled frantically at his lap and he flipped the wire guard off the button on his controller and pressed it repeatedly, stabbing at it as Martin simply held his neck and watched.

  “I don’t feel anything,” Martin informed him. “No click. No burning or pain. Seven years is a long time, Dubois, do you think your mechanism is rusty?”

  Kicking and thrashing, his eyes starting to bulge, Dubois slapped the device flat onto Martin’s chest and pounded his meaty fist against it. He dropped the thing with a clatter when Martin raised his hand to flip the forearm switch yet again, triggering the springs that clamped his claw down to a tight, irregular cylinder of diameter much smaller than the throat of a portly man.

  I should have made it last longer, he thought as Dubois’s twitching slowed to a halt. Blood washed from the ruined neck over Martin’s hand, and he let it die down to a trickle before he released the clamps and stepped away.

  The deadly calm was fading, a faint twinge of nausea rising in its place. Martin used a handkerchief to wipe the worst of the blood from the smooth surfaces of his arm before putting his coat back on and stepping out into the vestibule.

  Marguerite glanced at his hand, then quickly away. “I’m going out to have a smoke in the park with one of the other secretaries. I’ll be gone about fifteen minutes.”

  Martin nodded, and the girl rushed away, leaving him to exit the building unobserved.

  His mind whirled, flooding with possibilities for his next step. He had done it, he was free, but what now? It occurred to Martin that part of him never believed Dubois was bluffing. Some shred of doubt always remained, keeping him from planning too far ahead lest he suffer more disappointment.

  The weather seemed to have changed while he was inside, Martin noted as he stepped out into the open air. In the morning it had been quite cool and mild, but now he felt overheated. A sweat had broken out on his face. He strolled away from the building, hands hidden deep in his coat pockets, trying to ignore the sensation of dread that had taken root in his chest.

  A surgeon-engineer, he thought. Just in case, I should find one. A surgeon-engineer, or else a very good makesmith.

  Nineteen

  HONFLEUR, FRANCE, AND ATLANTIS STATION, BENEATH THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

  CHARLOTTE WANDERED THE cobbled lanes of Honfleur, charmed by the picturesque town’s transformation. She and Dexter had returned just in time for a festival, it seemed.

  “Is it really almost Whit Sunday?” Dexter had asked as they stared, bemused, at the colorful gauze and flower garlands festooning an ancient archway near a prominent church. “It doesn’t seem like Easter was that long ago.”

  “A lot has happened since then,” Charlotte pointed out.

  She had far too much time over the next several days to consider all that had happened. After another half-hearted attempt at conquering her fear of the claustrophobic submersible, she admitted defeat and returned to championing various uses of the Gossamer Wing to anyone who would listen. Two days later, Murcheson kindly suggested she might benefit from some fresh air and relaxation, and Charlotte reluctantly left the station and returned to Honfleur.

  More than anything else that had happened, the increasing awareness that her whole mission had been precipitated by a seri
es of lies and misunderstandings depressed Charlotte. None of it had been true, all the way back to the British bluff about having a working doomsday device. True, it had won them the war. But the treaty, the peace, all she had done in France, even Reginald’s death, all of it was premised on falsehoods. Real people, people who thought they were doing the right thing, had died over this information but it had all been a game of grown-up make-believe.

  Around and around her thoughts raced, and when they weren’t chasing after Dubois and the bomb that never was and all that implied, they were circling her relationship with Dexter. She reviewed each encounter, all her words, until she was so tired of thinking about it all she felt like screaming.

  Dexter crept into the suite for a few hours each night, trying not wake her as he collapsed on the sitting room sofa, exhausted. By breakfast he would be gone, back at the station, his mind fully occupied with his . . . photophoroseismochorinator.

  “Multi-hyalchordate Phototransphorinating Seismograph,” Dexter repeated patiently when she asked him about his progress on one of the rare occasions she encountered him long enough to converse. “Hardison’s Multi-hyalchordate Phototransphorinating Seismograph. And it’s going quite well, thank you. We’ve finished laying the glass cables and calibrating the mercury triggers to respond to any minute seismic activity. Now it’s just a matter of making sure the central sensors light up when they’re supposed to.”

  She felt redundant. Murcheson refused to let her take the Gossamer Wing up anymore, and in any case it was ruined for daytime flight by the dye. COULD MYSTERY BALLOON BE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST MANNED DIRIGIBLE? asked the newspapers.

  There had been no further hint of threat from Coeur de Fer or Dubois. Murcheson had sequestered himself in the station. He had been unable to pin the steam-car attack on Dubois as yet, but firmly believed Dubois was responsible. He considered the attempt proof that Dubois knew of his role with the Agency, and wanted him out of the way to facilitate whatever nefarious political move he and Gendreau had planned. Charlotte simply didn’t believe Dubois had ever taken any action on behalf of a greater ideal than his own profit margin, but she had no hard evidence to support her feeling in the matter. She thought Dubois had tried to kill Murcheson, and nearly killed her and Dexter instead, over business, and resented it because that was a circumstance she had never signed on for.