Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  FEDERAL DISTRICT (RPI). “The recall of Ambassador Schikelgruber confirms Ferdinand’s effort to make Columbia an Austrian dependency,” stated Congresslady Alexander (L-MI)… .

  Alexander, known for her outspoken opposition to any form of accommodation or compromise with Austro-Hungary, also released the text of a purported communiqué from the Ministry of State in Vienna. The alleged communiqué orders the ambassador to “take all steps necessary to convince the Columbia government of the severity of the decision to implement a nuclear-powered armaments race.” Alexander’s revelation was dismissed by Ambassador Schikelgruber as “a political ploy designed to disrupt efforts at peaceful resolution of difficult issues.”

  I noticed that captivating, charming, and cultured Schikelgruber hadn’t actually denied the communiqué. It was an interesting situation, since Alexander and the president were of the same party and these clips had come from Jerome, who was a Reformed Tory to the heart.

  At least, there weren’t any clips from Deseret … this time.

  With a look at my watch, I began to gather my notes for my next two classes.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  By Saturday, we’d had both another freeze and another thaw, but the driveway was clear, and so was Deacon’s Lane when I headed down to McArdles’ and the post centre. That gave Llysette time to practice by herself. She continued to fret about the Perkins pieces, probably more than she would have otherwise, because Perkins would be playing for her in Great Salt Lake City.

  With the square crowded, I tried the post centre first, using one of the shorttime parking slots for the Stanley. Getting out, I slipped on a patch of ice and almost tripped over the raised stone curb.

  The postbox contained a few bills and advertising circulars, no more manila envelopes from the Federal District, and a flat package wrapped in brown paper—addressed only to “J. Eschbach, Vanderbraak Centre, New Bruges,” with no postbox or other identifier. The post cancellation was from the Federal District. The return address on the package stated: “International Import Supply, 1440 K Street, Federal District, Columbia,” and both address and return labels were plain white with standard-difference printer typefaces. Was this a new Spazi cover firm? The paper wrapping was similar.

  I put it in the rear trunk—uneasily, especially since it was heavier than it looked. After that, I had to circle the square twice before there was a space behind McArdles’ in the small car park lot.

  “Professor Eschbach,” said a young woman carrying a baby, someone I should have known but didn’t recall.

  “Good morning. How are you doing these days?”

  “I was going to come back for my master’s work.” She shrugged and looked down. “But one of us in school is about all we can afford right now. Terrence should finish his premed courses by spring.”

  “It’s hard with children.” The reference to Terrence jogged my memory. Terrence Maanstra had undergraduate degrees in music, engineering, and political science. Rachel had been a promising pianist—until she met the intelligent, charming, and totally unfocused Terrence. “But don’t wait too long. Professor duBoise thought you could have a good career as a coach-accompanist.”

  Rachel smiled, almost sadly, as she shifted her weight to catch the child, who had suddenly lurched awake. “We’ll see.”

  “You take care,” I told her as I headed into McArdles’.

  Her smile faded slightly as she turned away.

  Why did so many of them think marriage solved problems or that they could avoid facing themselves by getting married? In my life, at least, marriage had just made facing myself more imperative—and simultaneously harder. Much as I loved and had come to love Llysette more and more, facing up to myself, that part wasn’t getting that much easier.

  I’d decided to fix flan for dessert for Bruce—and for myself, I admitted, since I was trying to be less self-deceptive—but flan required more in the way of heavy cream and eggs than we had. Picking up a basket, I walked to the back corner of the store. As I lifted the quart of cream and two dozen eggs—not that I needed that many, but better too many than too few for a cook who liked things too rich—I couldn’t help overhearing fragments of conversation from two women an aisle over.

  “… that Professor Eschbach … the one who was a spy …”

  “… you think she was a spy, too … why she was imprisoned?”

  “… Delia heard her sing … must have been a spy … too good for here … say she was the mistress of the Japanese emperor once… .”

  “Patrice said she was doing a big international tour now that she’s a citizen …”

  “… maybe I’ll go the next time she sings.”

  I tried not to wince as I walked back to the checkout stands. The truth was bad enough without gossipy elaboration.

  After I parked the Stanley in the car barn, eased the suspicious package into the empty storage locker on the side of the car barn, and put the cream and eggs into the refrigerator, I pondered what to make for lunch to the strains from the Haaren’s keyboard and Llysette’s throat. I also wondered if I were being paranoid about the package. Still … better paranoid than injured or dead, and I wanted to let my subconscious chew on the problem.

  Llysette was still practicing as I puttered around the kitchen—the Perkins piece I thought. It wasn’t Latin. That meant it couldn’t be the Mozart, and it was an art song in English.

  Deciding on a mushroom quiche—dinner would be the lamb that had been marinating for two days—I tried not to clank as I got out a baking dish and the eggs and cheeses. The crust came first, and I was in such a hurry that it was probably going to be too thick and not flaky enough. Once it was in the baking dish, I blotted my forehead with the back of my arm.

  The white enamel sills of the kitchen didn’t seem quite so sparkling. I’d probably have to get around to repainting them once the spring semester was over. Like my mother, and all the Dutch, much as I muttered about the endless cleaning and painting, I still started squirming at chipped paint and hints of grime.

  Instead of worrying about spring cleaning, I threw together a small green salad for each of us, then quickly sliced and sautéed the mushrooms while the oven heated.

  Everything took longer, and it was well past one o’clock before I could announce, “Mademoiselle la chanteuse … your midday repast … c’est pret.”

  The piano stopped. “In a moment, Johan … but a moment.” Then her fingers went back to the Haaren’s keyboard.

  I wondered whether to turn the oven on low to hold her lunch. When she practiced, a moment might be a half hour, but that was one of the traits I respected and—sometimes—loved.

  Then she bustled into the kitchen.

  “The other Perkins… .” She shook her head as she sat. “Tous les annotations … he is less … conventional …”

  From what little I’d heard, the esteemed Doktor Perkins was less than the perfectly conventional Saint. He’d waited to get a doctorate before undertaking his mission, then been asked to leave Finlandia during that mission because he insisted on playing music rather than trying to convert locals. From Vyborg he’d gone to the Netherlands, where he’d dug Vondel’s plays out of the depths of the libraries and started turning them into operas, again ignoring the preaching business. After receiving an award and some solid cash from Hendrik—one of the last such grants before Ferdinand and his jackbooted troops arrived, the good Doktor Perkins had trundled home to Deseret, where he had married his childhood sweetheart—and only his childhood sweetheart. He’d been periodically quoted, from what I’d been able to dig out of the Vanderbraak State University library, as saying that music was his mission.

  “Did he write anything conventional?”

  “Mais oui … but no longer. The more recent … they are better, but tres difficile.”

  I cut her a healthy wedge of quiche, a second for me, and then opened a bottle—table-grade Sebastopol, but better than tea or chocolate with quiche. I set the glass before her and seated
myself.

  “A chef you should have been,” Llysette said after her first bite.

  “I don’t know about that. It’s hard for me to handle more than a few dishes at once, and chefs have to oversee dozens.”

  “Une petite brasserie… .”

  “Very petite. Such as the size of our kitchen here.”

  The quiche was good—even if I had cooked it.

  While I did the dishes and thought, she wandered back into the music room. I wondered what to do about the package. I was 90 percent sure it was trouble, but with the strange mailings I’d had … who knew? And if it happened to be trouble, was it an amateur effort or a professional one? Also, did the package contain anything of value if it weren’t trouble? There was no way of knowing without opening the package.

  Finally, I went out to the car barn and began to fiddle with tools until I had what I wanted.

  It took me a long time, but using a mirror and a razor knife fastened to a cross arm attached to a rake, I had a tool I could use around the corner of the stone-walled car barn.

  Then, trying to open the package carefully was tricky. I’m one of those people who has trouble directing actions in a mirror. It must have taken me a dozen attempts to make the first cut in the heavy package tape and almost as many for the second.

  I only started the third attempt.

  Crummtt!

  The explosion ripped my rake-tool out of my hands.

  There were only fragments of confettilike cardboard and shards of paper-thin metal—those and a depression next to the car-barn wall.

  “Johan!” Llysette came running from the house.

  “I’m fine. Just stand back.”

  She didn’t.

  “The ground explodes, and you are here, and I should stand back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Johan.” Her green eyes flashed.

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “You still are impossible.”

  “You’re right.” I had to smile sheepishly. I hadn’t been careless, but stupid, and I didn’t feel like admitting that totally openly. “I do need to clean up the mess.”

  “The … mess … will it explode?”

  “There’s nothing big enough left to explode.”

  She shook her head.

  She was right about that, too.

  After Llysette went back into the house, I searched the area but found little except for a larger assortment of shreds of the thin metal and what looked to be the remnants of some form of pressure sensor. Basically, the idea had been to shred me with the metal, had I been stupid enough to open it. Well, I had been stupid enough, just not in direct range, and I suspected I’d hear from someone, sooner or later.

  But I just collected the mess and tucked it into the rubbish bin. There wouldn’t be anything traceable, scientific forensic work or not.

  Then I went back to the house.

  “Johan.” Llysette put her arms around me almost before I closed the door. “I did not mean—”

  “I know. You were worried, but I was trying to keep the Watch out of this. What would Chief Waetjen say if I’d handed him a bomb?”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “If I’d opened it in the normal way … but if it were a professional job, the chances were less, assuming I took precautions.” I shrugged. “I did. If there’s a next one, we call in someone else.” I knew there wouldn’t be. There might be something else, but not another bomb. The bomb was almost an admission that Jerome’s people in the gray steamers were doing their job very effectively.

  “That you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  She kissed me, and the kiss was warm enough that one thing led to another and that Llysette didn’t get back to practicing.

  As a result, I was still struggling to catch up on dinner when Bruce’s ancient Olds convertible whistled through the darkness and up the drive to the side door. I had extracted a promise from Llysette not to mention the explosive nature of the afternoon, the explosive nature of either the early or later afternoon.

  Bruce stepped up to the door at six-fifty-eight, with two bottles of wine in a basket. The wind had picked up and was swirling snowflakes across the drive, the light kind of flurries that wouldn’t stick.

  “Greetings, Johan.” He handed me the basket. “And Llysette.” He turned his head and smiled.

  Standing by the foot of the stairs, she returned the smile. “Good it is to see you.”

  “Greetings and thank you.” I glanced at the wine. “Yountville. You’re definitely spoiling us.”

  “I am not spoiling you, Johan,” he said with a grin as I took his coat.

  “I wondered about that.”

  “New Bruges has too few cultural adornments to risk losing one.” He inclined his head to Llysette. “This is part of my small effort to persuade her to remain.”

  The shy smile that crossed her face was part Llysette, part Carolynne, and an expression I treasured.

  “Business?” he asked briskly.

  “Strictly social.” I shook my head. There was no way I was going to tell Bruce about the bomb—no sense in ruining his evening. “Except I’m running a little behind.”

  They followed me into the kitchen while I checked the pepper-roasted potatoes and the steamed mixed squash and tasted the mint-apple-plum sauce for the lamb.

  Somehow, I got it all together, and we sat down at the table by seven-thirty.

  Bruce took one bite of the marinated rack of lamb, then a second. “Very good, Johan. Very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  After a sip of the Yountville, he tried the potatoes and nodded. “Tasty.”

  “They are good also,” Llysette offered. “In France, Johan, he could have been a chef.”

  “I don’t question his cooking, dear lady.” Bruce paused. “Then again, the best chefs have also been known to be handy with knives and other weapons. Perhaps he would have been a well-known chef.”

  “You are so complimentary,” I told him, passing the hot croissant rolls to Llysette.

  “With whom else can I be so honest?”

  He had a point there.

  “Have there been any new … developments?” he asked.

  “Outside of a few clippings to ensure we are fully informed of the tense international situation? No.”

  Bruce took a roll and set the basket in the middle of the table. His arm fanned the air, and the three candles in the silver candelabra flickered, then recovered. “Technology interests?”

  “More energy and water, from what I can tell. Energy is the big thing.”

  “With imports up to forty percent of fossil fuel consumption, I would think so. I wonder why it took so long to get the Speaker’s attention?” asked Bruce.

  “Oh, it might have to do with the Red Sea embargo … or the accidents in Venezuela. Or even the Japanese refusal to divert some Oceanic oil to Columbia. Then, it might be that energy is just the issue of the month.”

  “You also believe that Ferdinand is Kris Kringle and that mechanical brass difference engines represented the peak of computing technology,” suggested Bruce.

  “Compared to deGaulle, or that fellow in Quebec—Chirac, is it?—he might be.”

  “Frightening thought.”

  “The good Saint Nicholas, more coal he should bring to the stockings of Dutch children,” added Llysette.

  “I agree.” Enough of international politics, which none of us could ever control. I refilled her glass, then lifted mine. “To friends and forgetting international disasters.”

  Bruce nodded, but he drank. After a moment of silence, he asked, “What are you singing in Great Salt Lake City?”

  “The pieces … they are from many sources.” Llysette shrugged. “Mozart, Debussy, Perkins, Barber, Exten—”

  “It has to be difficult getting an accompanist,” ventured Bruce, his hand touching a dark beard that had rapidly grayed in the past several years. I wondered how much I had contributed to th
e gray … and why he was asking about accompanists. Bruce seldom ventured idle questions. “You said it was a problem the last time I was here.”

  “Johanna … she is … good.”

  “But not outstanding?”

  “On some pieces.” Llysette shook her head. “The students … they … they are the difficulty … not Johanna.”

  Bruce frowned, his brows creasing slightly.

  “It’s hard for Llysette to play for them and teach them, and a lot of the piano students think accompanying is beneath them.” I snorted. “There’s more demand for accompanists than for virtuoso pianists, but they don’t seem to understand that.” I paused, then turned to Llysette. “I forgot to tell you. I ran into Rachel … the one who married Terrence Maanstra. They have a child.”

  “A waste. A great accompanist she could have been. Now … she will have children and wonder.”

  That was one of the few things I had learned young. You seldom regretted the opportunities you took that didn’t work out, but you always regretted those you turned from.

  “Is having children so bad?” murmured Bruce, then added with a smile, “It wasn’t so bad for us that our parents did.”

  Llysette raised both eyebrows momentarily. “An artiste who children has before … before …” She paused. “To turn from the art, that is a choice. Mais, point de chanter …”

  “You’re saying that a singer can turn from singing after she knows what singing is all about, but to abandon it before she really starts is wrong?” pressed Bruce.

  “It creates a different kind of ghost,” I said dryly.

  “I respect your opinion on ghosts very deeply,” Bruce replied deadpan.

  “It’s one area where I have a range of experience.”

  “Assez des revenants … ,” suggested Llysette, and she was probably right. “The students, they do not understand the need for the accompanist, and too many notes must I play. Wine, lager, they can afford, even steamers, but not the music, not the accompanist.”