The Company of the Dead

by David Kowalski

  Reaching the relative safety of her own kitchen, she made herself a coffee and opened the package, scanning the documents twice before replacing them, along with the memorandum.

  Camelot. Stronghold of Arthur Pendragon, where knights inspired by ideals of courage and honour held vigil. Avalon. Arthur’s final resting place. Webster’s perverse coda to Joseph’s schemes.

  I thought you were better than this, Joseph.

  She packed her bag and waited for the phone to ring.

  A GAME OF CHESS III

  Gambit

  I

  April 24, 2012

  Quebec City, Free Quebec

  Shine and Rose had reached Quebec airspace only to discover that their scout plane had become part of a fleet of aircraft that had been re-routed to Jean Lesage International airport in the wake of the Berlin incident. They’d circled the skies above the city for more than an hour before finally receiving permission to land.

  While mechanics scoured their plane, a black sedan swerved off the tarmac and headed directly towards them. The back of the hangar was dark, thrown into deep shadow by the oncoming headlights. Shine didn’t think twice.

  There was an emergency exit by one of the workbenches. They gained the terminal by a service entry, their flight jackets passing for crew uniform. There they found themselves caught in the squeeze of a shocked and hostile crowd. People swarmed the check-in counter or sat with their faces in their hands while security officials pressed their way back and forth.

  Shine nudged Rose and pointed to the flight board, saying, “No one’s going anywhere tonight.”

  Rose hailed a cab. By the time they arrived at the hotel, they resembled any other Confederate travellers. While Rose reached for the first of many beer bottles, Shine turned on the television. He watched Prussian tanks clank across a rubble-strewn Brooklyn Bridge. A woman pressed her charcoal-stained bundle into the camera’s lens. New York smouldered.

  Rose had apparently made some wordless pact that involved emptying the bar fridges in both their rooms. Each time he appeared he had a fresh glass of liquor in his hand, a divination at his moist lips.

  “World’s gone to hell,” he said. Watching a fly make its way sluggishly across the french windows, he added, “That’s us, boy. Nowhere to turn, and nowhere to run.”

  Shine couldn’t muster a single emotion beyond frustration.

  Tension manifested itself in the small things. He hungered between meals only to pick at his food, and found it harder and harder to tolerate Rose’s banter. He kept to himself, and lost hours trying to book a flight south. He checked the train stations and the bus depots. Nothing was running. The Canadian border was locked down.

  With nothing else at hand, he slept.

  One minute he was back in the scout plane, roaring out of the Shenandoah’s hangar. The next, he saw Kennedy and Lightholler walking the dust of an untravelled road while behind them the wreckage of a plane glowed. Hardas and Morgan were flying west over the Atlantic towards an ever-receding sanctuary.

  He awoke at dusk, stared at the television, and was stunned when Kennedy’s face filled the screen. It gave way to granular pictures of Morgan and Hardas in rapid succession. Then Morgan and Kennedy were on a street near the Lone Star, caught mid-stride, running. The shots were blurred. They were both wearing long grey coats.

  Are they back in New York?

  Shine upped the volume.

  “...wanted in connection with the murder of eight men. They may be associated with radical factions of a German splinter group, though the German embassy offered no comment as to...”

  Eight deaths? Shine could only account for five.

  “...are believed to have passed through Quebec City within hours of the attack. If you see these men, please notify local authorities immediately. Citizens are urged not to approach...”

  There was something about the images that didn’t gel. The angles seemed wrong. He’d taken Morgan and the major down to the Lone Star himself that day.

  The photos were fakes. They had to be.

  Webster.

  The door to Rose’s suite was unlocked. Shine cracked it open to find him sprawled on his bed, asleep. A bottle lurked near his open palm, yielding a dribble of red on the muslin. Shine placed a stack of thousand-dollar bills carefully on the bedside table.

  He took a cab back into town. He returned to the airport. He purchased a brown pinstriped suit and a full-length coat of darker brown that he buttoned to the lapels. He watched the departure times flicker. A clock above the display ticked away the minutes but it might have only been measuring the regular movement of its own hands across its bland white face.

  He turned away. A television mounted on the wall flashed its images mutely. Glimpses of a vast cloud, pierced by sprouts of red flame and topped by the shells of burnt-out towers. The image was replaced by earlier footage of the Kamikaze floating above a Berlin reborn. A city where countless buildings held countless people. They still lived on the screen; breathed and went about their business. Was it possible that somewhere, even now, caught in time, they were still breathing?

  He wondered how many people might be staring at a television screen, thinking the same thought right now. Wishing for the magical words that might send the airship sailing away into some better future, or bring everything back as it was.

  He said, “Red Rock.”

  Nothing happened.

  Even though he’d paid off Rose, there was more than enough money in his wallet to pick any destination on the board. There were no flights to the Union, of course. And all Confederate flights had been cancelled or re-routed east via Bermuda. Fly west and all points beyond Vancouver led to Japanese territories. Fly west and keep flying, past Bermuda, and another world lay in wait. A world where Nevada was just a yellow smudge on the map.

  That wasn’t an option.

  He felt the eyes of a security guard wash over him. Shine was black, but he was well dressed. He might have been a thief or he might have been a diplomat. It looked like the guard favoured the latter. There wasn’t any trouble.

  He gave the board a final glance and walked towards the exit. There was a bench outside, along the road, sheltered by an awning that kept the worst of the wind at bay. It was just shy of ten o’clock. The last flight of the evening departed in ninety minutes.

  Bermuda, he decided. Bermuda and then back south.

  He heard a cough and someone behind him drawled, “Hey, boy, where you runnin’ to?”

  II

  April 24, 2012

  North Atlantic, 35”02’ N, 75”03’ W

  Diamond Shoals Lookout was less than fifteen nautical miles west, by Hardas’s reckoning; Cape Hatteras was another fifteen from there. Beyond the sandy islands of the Outer Banks and across the still Palimco Sound lay the breadth of North Carolina.

  It was early evening and the boat they sailed was a dim silhouette on darkening seas.

  Morgan, near-delirious with exhaustion and morphine, sat hunched by the Parzifal’s engines and listened. Hardas and Newcombe were talking, two shadows by the boat’s wheel in the burgeoning dusk. Their words were hammered into nothingness by the engine’s insistent clamour.

  Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Or so they say.

  Fingers of the sun’s last light smeared the horizon in daubs of burgundy-blue.

  The wine-dark sea.

  Morgan sat and listened. The ocean, churned and channelled through the ship’s propellers, spoke to him. If there were no sea there would be no message, just the dry scream of spinning metal. If there were no boat, there would just be the gentle slap of wave upon wave, as it had been since the Deluge.

  And I need to sleep.

  He couldn’t forget the frenzied escape from the Shenandoah, just two days earlier. The setting sun of New York behind them, lost like Atlantis beneath the waves. The dark skies above and the dark seas below, until the first glow of the German flotilla greeted them; a glittering crucifix that resolved into a carrier’
s flight deck.

  They’d arrived aboard the Prince Bismarck as refugees. A lengthy interview between the carrier’s chief officer and Hardas, coupled with the Luftwaffe’s success over Manhattan, elevated them to the status of tentative allies.

  The following morning they’d been given a tour of the ship, and watched as a flight of planes catapulted skywards to deliver fresh supplies to New York’s new masters. There was a fuzz of cloud on the horizon, and everywhere the security of metal and concrete and men going about their business in disciplined celebration. The battle seemed far behind them, and Berlin’s destruction was too terrible to grasp, so they had watched and joked and laughed for no reason Morgan could fathom, save perhaps that they’d spent an evening amongst the dead to wake with the living.

  Their scout had been secured in one of the hangars. They were given restricted access to most of the carrier but had no way off-ship. “SentCon Three”, Hardas had said. No civilian flights, in or out, until the Germans stood down.

  Sentinel Condition Three. Level one was standard for all fleet ships at sea; two was employed in war games and police actions, as when the Germans had dealt with the Haitian revolt in 1997. Four was full-scale war; five was theoretical—the deployment of tactical atomic weapons, which, of course, officially did not exist.

  Later that day, heralded by the distant sound of thunder, the morning’s fuzz formed a canopy of grey. The last of the supply planes returned and they’d taken a mauling. A fresh squadron of Japanese Zeroes—rerouted from the West Coast—had caught them over Long Island. Despite the setback, however, it appeared as though the gods still smiled upon Germany. Aeolus had thrown up a curtain of cloud, low and thick, over the entire battle group, whilst Poseidon remained at rest, his murky waters surging gently, a mild chop against their hulls.

  Hardas suggested that it might be worth checking the scout’s cargo hold to see if any of their belongings had survived the flight. He led Morgan below deck, and when they were alone he assessed their situation.

  “Clouds won’t stop the radar,” he said. “But in this soup, no one’s going to fly close enough to do us any harm.”

  The rest of the German battle group was approximately one-hundred-and-fifty nautical miles due south, he said, and steaming towards them. It was commanded by Admiral Merkur, the officer who’d been present at Hardas’s Titanic salvage. Merkur had at his disposal three troop ships brimming with Confederate marines, along with two carriers of his own. Four carriers would make this fleet the most powerful to sail the Atlantic since the European War. Hardas explained that with eighty-five aircraft and about five thou crew apiece, the carriers were deployed worldwide in support of German interests and commitments from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea.

  He was telling Morgan things he already knew, but he listened anyway. In the absence of Major Kennedy, Hardas was opening up just a little, making a pleasant change from their usual interactions.

  “Despite stratolite deployment the carrier continues to be the centrepiece of the forces necessary for forwards presence.”

  Morgan nodded.

  “And you can bet your boots that, when this shit went down, Emperor Ryuichi was yelling, ‘Where the fuck are the German carriers?’”

  “Maybe not those exact words.”

  “Okay, maybe not those exact words.” Hardas had chuckled briefly and then his face had gone smooth. Grey smudges remained under the eyes but the lines of laughter faded. “That puts us in either the safest or most dangerous place on the planet right now. But soon as Merkur gets here we should be fine to leave. I have a little leverage with him.”

  “You think so?” Morgan said.

  “If he’s the same man I knew three years ago. Either way, he’ll take us where we want to be.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  Hardas smiled through his teeth. “Merkur’s assuming command when he arrives. The Brandenburgs hold Manhattan. They’ve got commando units that will disperse across the East Coast. There’s a lot of options there: troop movements, fuel dumps, unit headquarters and so on. Multiple targets. Ship’s talk is that Merkur’s going to make a run south once he’s united the battle groups, then link up with the confed fleet off Savannah and return in force.”

  And if four carriers aren’t force, Morgan wondered silently, what the hell is?

  “What’s happening on the mainland?” he asked.

  “There’s been a skirmish between the Canadians and japs on the northern border, but so far no American troops have been involved. Merkur’s stuck till something happens. He can’t deposit three divisions of Confederate troops anywhere till he knows whether they’re going to fight or shake hands with our northern cousins.”

  “They won’t fight,” Morgan said with little certainty as they entered the hangar.

  The scout had been refuelled. Additionally, someone had remounted a twenty-millimetre cannon on the gun rest by the co-pilot’s seat.

  Hardas examined the cargo hold. “No luck,” he said. “When we dumped the cargo on that Fuck You, we lost everything.”

  They were both still wearing the faded blue coveralls supplied by the German crash and salvage crew who’d welcomed them the previous night. It was all they’d have till they reached Savannah—if that was where they were headed.

  A lookout and the boatswain’s mate caught them as they emerged from the hangar bay.

  “Commander Hardas, the duty officer wishes to ask you again about the two vessels you saw engaging the Titanic.”

  They were led towards the bridge. In the operations room, someone handed Hardas some photographs.

  “That’s them alright, battle cruisers, Yamamoto class.” Hardas handed the photographs back. “Where are they?”

  “Close enough.”

  Two hours later, back on the flight deck, Newcombe rejoined them. They stood by two naval officers who were passing a pair of binoculars back and forth between them.

  One said, “I’ll wager the one on the right is the Tokiwa.”

  Two ships had been sighted fifteen minutes earlier, escorting a small flotilla of surface ships.

  “Nonsense. It’s a destroyer or at best a cruiser,” the other replied.

  “No,” Hardas said quietly. “I’ve seen them before. They’re both battle cruisers.”

  Morgan had the binoculars. He could see two German dreadnoughts and a destroyer in the distance. The Japanese task force lay further back, receding into the distance.

  “They don’t like it much when someone’s expecting them,” Newcombe said. “This ain’t Pearl Harbor.”

  “They were expected at Pearl Harbor,” Hardas replied. “Astor just didn’t bother letting his troops know.”

  You’re both wrong, Morgan thought, saying nothing.

  Hardas took the binoculars. “They’re targeting the port-side ship. Here goes.”

  Morgan saw it before he heard it. Towering spouts of water erupted between the two battle cruisers. Then the muffled sound of cannon fire rolled over them.

  “Commander?” It was the boatswain’s mate again. “Please return with me to operations.”

  Morgan didn’t know whether to remain by the deck’s edge or wait outside the ops centre. Planes were lifting from the other carrier’s deck, and soon the decision was made for him in a jostling exchange of piecemeal English. He was led to the bridge, thinking he should have gone below.

  “We’re in trouble,” Hardas said, encountering him on the stairway that led up to ops. He was crammed between two sailors, both of whom were wearing side arms. Their uniforms were a darker shade of grey. Morgan knew a police officer when he saw one.

  He pointed out where he’d left Newcombe and the two of them were marched back across the deck.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” Hardas said. “We’re just confined to quarters for the moment, is all.”

  Yet police—military or otherwise—brought to mind Camelot and a trail of agents’ corpses. The Germans might have put a call through to Hous
ton. The CBI’s reach extended pretty far these days.

  To sea, Morgan could make out the German dreadnoughts, but the haze near the horizon’s edge obscured all sight of the Japanese. There was more smoke than he would have expected.

  A cluster of fighters, presumably from the other carrier, was winging away in tight formation; an arrow loosed into the void. Nearby, an elevator was just levelling with the deck, bearing two more fighters that were hastily wheeled towards one of the catapults.

  Newcombe seemed to have no trouble reading the situation. He ignored Hardas’s attempt to explain the change in circumstances and sang his plea to the Germans. The two naval officers began to distance themselves from what was obviously trouble, but the military police weren’t so easily satisfied. When one reached for his holster, Morgan almost wished he’d do something, anything, to their fair-weather friend.

  A klaxon wailed, interrupting the dispute, and men came running across the deck. Crash and salvage teams, mobilising.

  Morgan scanned the skies. A speck in the distance grew fast. One of the police spoke and Morgan translated. “It’s German, but not part of the carrier group.”

  Newcombe ceased resisting, possibly relieved to find a reason to obey the Germans, who were urging them away from the flight deck. The plane was coming in low and fast. Morgan stole quick glances, looking for signs of damage—flames or smoke—and saw nothing.

  They’d reached one of the anti-aircraft emplacements when the Germans, pistols drawn, urged them to get under cover.

  Morgan looked up. “Isn’t that fighter coming in too fast?”

  “He has to be at full throttle just before he strikes the arresting cables,” Newcombe explained. “In case he misses them and ends up in the drink.”

  Hardas said, “This guy’s been on after-burner since first sighting.”

  And he was coming in fast, through a haze of heated air. And behind that haze Morgan thought he saw something else.

  Hardas was a sudden blur. “Down!” he screamed in Morgan’s ear, bowling him over.