Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “No,” I said. “You need me, not her. I’m not interested in dealing until I know she’s safe.” I hoped my words were cooler than I felt.

  His bearded jaw dropped open. “We have your wife.”

  “I’m sure you do. There are two possibilities: you’ve already murdered her, or she’s safe. If she’s dead, then there’s no point in my negotiating with you. If she’s safe, I will.”

  He looked confused, and that worried me, because it meant he was another courier or the group were amateurs, and amateurs could do anything.

  “But … we have your wife.”

  “Exactly. I happen to love her, and I’m perfectly willing to trade myself for her. But I’m the only leverage I have, and I’m a stubborn Dutchman. If you know me at all, or of your superiors do, you know I keep my word. You need my knowledge, but you won’t get it until Llysette is safe within the walls of the Columbian embassy.”

  There was silence.

  “I’m perfectly willing to take a steamer to some isolated place on my own, provided it has a portable wireset or a radio. Or some other similar arrangement. Once I talk to her and know she’s safe, then I’ll be willing to accompany you.”

  “You’re in no position to bargain.”

  “Neither are you. You don’t need Llysette. You need me.”

  I could see the frustration mounting in his eyes—another disturbing indication.

  He lunged, and I moved, my hands reacting with patterns acquired years earlier. His arm snapped, and he cradled it, eyes watering.

  I stepped closer. “If she is hurt … even scratched, what I did to your arm will look like a pleasure cruise in the Sandwich Islands compared to what I’ll do to everyone of your sorry group.”

  “You wouldn’t … You couldn’t… .”

  “You don’t think so.” I forced a hard smile. “You don’t think so? Ask your superiors what I’ve done.”

  “You’ll be sorry.”

  I already was, but that was beside the point. Already, people around us were drawing away, and silence was radiating from where I stood like ripples in a pond.

  Abruptly, brown-suit turned. I watched as he headed toward the building in which the Deseret Woolen Mills store was housed, but he merged into the people once he was more than fifty yards away.

  I was shaking by the time I started to walk back to the Lion Inn. Logically, I knew what I’d done was my only chance. I was the only option in town—literally—but I still shivered and sweated all the way back. What if they’d already killed Llysette? It didn’t feel like they had, but I’d been wrong before—and that had killed Elspeth and Waltar.

  I’d been wrong before and taken a bullet through the shoulder. I couldn’t afford to be wrong again, and yet I wondered if I already happened to be—and just didn’t know it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Hansen was waiting when I returned to the Lion Inn. He got on the elevator with me, and he looked as tired as I felt. His eyes were bloodshot, and he carried a heavy-looking satchel.

  “I don’t know,” I told him after the well-dressed couple with their three blond children got off on the fourth floor. “They wanted me to come with them.”

  “They?”

  “A bearded man in a very out-of-style brown-checked suit and a nasty temper. He tried to assault me when I told him I wasn’t about to go with him.”

  “You said that?” Hansen raised his eyebrows, then touched the beard shaded with white.

  “Look. Either Llysette’s dead already”—I swallowed, even though I hadn’t meant to—“or she’s not. If she’s not, and I go with them, then she will be dead before it’s all over.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  I just looked at him, and he looked down.

  We got off the elevator and walked to the suite. I opened the door and held it for him, then wandered through the place. The rooms were still empty, the piano silent, Llysette’s robe still draped over the stool in the bathroom she’d used.

  The faint aroma of Ivoire lingered. Llysette loved it, even if it was manufactured in New France these days and cost twice what it once had. The old price had been close to fifty Republic dollars an ounce, and that had been back before the impact of energy costs had run up everything.

  I went back to the sitting room, where Hansen had stacked four books on the table.

  “You realize what you’re saying, don’t you? That there’s a good chance you won’t make it through whatever you have in mind.”

  “I have a chance. If I don’t do it this way, Llysette has very little chance.” I picked up one of the volumes—Doctrine and Covenants a fairly new printing. Did the Saints revise their theology all the time?

  “You think she does?”

  “Someone knows my background, or I hope they do. If they do, they’d know how I’d approach it. I have to hope that they do. They know a great deal already.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because they clearly want me. Because they’re using Llysette as the lever.”

  Hansen frowned. I didn’t clarify that.

  “Can you tell me anything more about your contact?”

  “Young—early thirties, dark-haired, fair-skinned, bearded, no white or gray in the beard, pale gray eyes, thin lips, broad nose, nose once broken, I’d guess. Fine hair, thin eyebrows. Could probably be a dozen like him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He’s amateur. He found it hard to believe I wouldn’t accept their terms.”

  “So would I. You’re a hard man, Eschbach.”

  “No. Hopeful, hoping, wishing, but not hard. One of the things they pointed out years ago when I was a pilot …” I shook my head. “Old history doesn’t matter now.”

  “Go ahead. It might.” But he didn’t look at me as he spoke.

  “It always made sense. If you’re captured, once you do what the enemy wants, or say what he tells you to, your value is diminished. If they’re honorable, they won’t kill you whether you tell or not. If they’re not, then withholding knowledge until you can do something is all you have. It may not be enough, but it’s all you have.”

  I found myself pursing my lips together too tightly, wishing I hadn’t injured the idiot who’d jumped me, but trained reactions don’t always give you much choice, especially when you’re emotionally involved, and with Llysette’s life at stake I definitely was far too emotionally involved to be dispassionate, no matter what Hansen thought.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh … he also has a broken arm. I wish I hadn’t, but he jumped me, and I didn’t have time to think.”

  A moment of silence followed. “Just like that, he jumped you and you broke his arm?”

  “I reacted. I didn’t think, and then I had to act as though it were planned to show they’d better understand who they were dealing with.” I shrugged. “You can’t show weakness.”

  “The more I learn about you, Minister Eschbach …” Hansen glanced toward the window, then back at the books on the table. “There’s a lot more here than anyone’s saying.”

  “There always is, or things like this wouldn’t happen.” How much more I really didn’t want to explain.

  Brother Hansen actually sighed. “We will check the hospitals and doctors, but I doubt we’ll find anything.” Hansen half-stroked his beard again. “Do you think you’ll be contacted?”

  “There isn’t much doubt about that.” My only doubts were about Llysette’s health.

  “How soon?”

  “Several hours, I’d guess. Maybe longer. I’d want to make me sweat, but they also don’t want to give you—or any Deseret authority—too much time.”

  He nodded. “We’ll keep in touch.”

  I was sure he would. I was also sure every wireline to the room was monitored and every hall snooped.

  When Hansen left, I ordered a room service meal and really got to work, forcing myself through the Doctrine and Covenants, writing down passages or derivations of passages that I
thought would be useful if I had to use my knowledge. The first prophet had definitely been both a man of vision and a shrewd politician, so shrewd I had to wonder how he’d gotten himself murdered. By a shrewder politician? Bad luck? Either could happen to anyone. There’s always someone smarter and tougher, and luck doesn’t necessarily favor the skillful or the bold, and Smith had to have been bold, whatever else he had or hadn’t been.

  The words psychic proliferation came back—Jerome’s words. I felt they tied in, but I didn’t know why … yet. I tried not to think of bad luck as I read, and noted, and, later, ate through the same chicken pasta dish I’d had earlier from room service.

  Then came The Book of Mormon itself. Some of it I could skip, because it was historical. For my purposes, Lehi’s flight from Jerusalem wasn’t much use, nor was Lehi’s death or the wanderings of his son Nephi in the wilderness. It was interesting to see the parallels between Nephi and Laman and Cain and Abel, except in The Book of Mormon the younger son prevails—in his own lifetime, anyway. There were some interesting quotes in the second book of Nephi, which I jotted down, wishing I had a difference engine as I did. Writing was always laborious.

  Then came the section named “The Words of Mormon,” and that was followed by another 250 pages of Saint theological and temporal history as recounted by the personages of Mosiah, Alma, and Helaman. That brought me to another book of Nephi, except it was a different Nephi. From what I could figure, racing through the text, the second Nephi, who presumably wrote the third book of Nephi, presided over a religious rebirth of the Nephites—those were the good Saints, I figured—except that the rebirth and godliness didn’t last, and pretty soon there wasn’t much difference between the Nephites and the Lamanites. After that, almost all the Nephites eventually perished under the swords of the Lamanites, and The Book of Mormon ended with a cautionary and advisory chapter from Moroni, who appeared to have buried the golden plates on which his and all his predecessors’ words were inscribed and then expired in turn.

  Just like that—over five hundred pages chronicling a religious history, and all the good followers of the Lord are wiped out because, from what I could figure out, they forsook him and indulged in wickedness. That meant to me, in practical terms, that the whole Saint “bible” was cautionary. It also implied that the Revealed Twelve were claiming that the current Saint leadership was like the ancient Nephites, rejecting the “true” vision of the Lord.

  Of course, “truth” tends to be rather subjective, as I’d already had confirmed once again from reading the Doctrine book. An awful lot of what the first prophet had written could have been interpreted in more than one way, and that might have been why the Saint faith continued to rely on further “revelations”—to keep it on track.

  I rubbed my forehead as I sat there at the table.

  Then, the Revealed Twelve could certainly claim that later “revelations” had not come from God, but from Satan.

  For a moment, I wanted to rip up everything in sight. One or both sides were playing with words and theology to gain temporal power—but that was exactly what the entire Book of Mormon effectively warned against. Yet each side would doubtless claim that they were on the side of the Lord. And unless there was a major miracle … who would know?

  I also had this sinking feeling that the Revealed Twelve wanted me to create something along those lines—and that they’d gotten a little boost from Ferdinand along the way. The misplaced papers, the warmth of the difference engine—both took on a new significance, perhaps a terrible significance. Why did they want a ghost? That they wanted one seemed inescapable. That someone knew I could create one seemed equally inescapable. I just wasn’t sure who knew—or who had told them.

  I opened my case and looked at the folder with the difference engine codes and the code lines. How was I going to translate them into what I needed?

  At that point, the wireset chimed. I looked at it. It chimed again. I picked it up.

  “Eschbach here.”

  “We accept your terms. Details will be given to you on the public wireset outside the north door to the Salt Palace. Be there at eight tonight.”

  Click.

  That left me with less than three hours to finish preparing what I needed, and all I had was several sheets full of scattered quotes, and even more scattered ideas.

  Should I start on the applications side, assuming that was what my soon-to-becaptors would have in mind? I reached for the sheets of code that I had brought.

  Thrap! The knock echoed through the sitting room. I closed my case, sealing away the Babbage code lines I’d hoped to be able to forget. Why was it I never had a chance to put anything behind me?

  I peered through the peephole. Hansen stood there.

  Even before he got inside, he spoke. “You got a call.”

  “Why don’t you come in and sit down for a moment?” The last thing I needed was an angry bishop of security, and I needed Hansen on my side or, at least, not against me. “Can I offer you anything?”

  “Water would be fine.” He sank into one of the chairs. His eyes were still bloodshot, his suit rumpled, and his shoes dusty. What I looked like was probably worse.

  He drained the entire glass, and I refilled it before sitting down.

  “I suppose you’ve digested all of this?” He gestured toward the table and the books and the stacks of paper.

  “No. I’ve got enough—or I will.”

  “Eschbach, you puzzle me. Why haven’t you contacted your embassy?”

  “What point would there have been if the kidnappers didn’t agree? The embassy types would just get upset. You don’t contact them until you know what you want them to do. And why.”

  “Experience speaking again?”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you mind if we tap the wireset by the Salt Palace?”

  “Did you find out where this call was made?”

  “No. It was from somewhere in Great Salt Lake, but it was too short. The equipment can trace a call in about four seconds, but it takes a few moments to get it on the right line. The operator fumbled, and—”

  “They were off.”

  “Right. If they have to give more detailed directions, it will take longer.”

  “I’m sure that they’ll wire from a public set.”

  “They will, but what else do we have?”

  “If you can tap the line without getting near it, I don’t have any problem, but I’m not too keen if it means people swarming all over the area.”

  “We can do that. What are you going to do now?” Hansen finished his second glass of water and blotted his forehead.

  “Contact the embassy. Finish my notes.”

  “Would you mind telling me what the notes are for?”

  “Background for what I think the kidnappers want me to provide.”

  “Couldn’t you just provide written material?” The bishop for security had a glint in his eye as he set his glass on the table.

  I picked up the nearly empty and cold cup of chocolate from my dinner, then set it back down without drinking. “Actually … no. The material has to be applied … shall we say.” I offered a hard smile. “It’s better that I don’t get too specific.”

  “How can we help you when you won’t even tell us what the kidnappers want?”

  It was a fair question and deserved the best answer I could give without endangering a lot of people. “First, I don’t know what they want. They haven’t said. I’m guessing, just like Counselor Cannon and you are. Second, it’s dangerous enough that the fewer people that know, the safer everyone will be. Third, I’m fairly convinced that the Austrians have a hand in this, as well as a few others, but I can’t prove it. Finally, to the best of my knowledge, I’m probably the only person not under government lock and key with the expertise to handle this.” I paused. “That doesn’t exactly answer your question, but it’s why the Counselor ordered you to help. I’m probably skirting the bounds of things to say that if you knew more of the story, you
might not be so willing. If you knew the entire story, you wouldn’t hesitate, but I wouldn’t give much for your life expectancy.”

  “You’re protecting me?”

  “I’d like to think so.” I looked at the books on the table.

  So did Hansen. Then he got up. “I think you’re being more honest than many, but I cannot say I’m pleased. I intend to stay nearby. My number will get me in a few minutes or less if you need me.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can.” I stood and walked to the door with him. “I really am.”

  Once the door was closed, and locked, I wired the embassy but could only get the duty clerk. I impressed on him the need for the First or Second Secretary to contact me as soon as possible. He promised to try to find them.

  I had my doubts and suspected I’d have to storm the embassy in the morning. I tried the telephone book, but as I did not know their names, it wasn’t much help.

  Again … I should have been more assiduous in gathering that sort of information, but you don’t expect to have to run down people on Sundays. You should figure it could happen, but I was out of practice and, once more, it showed. Espionage was like athletics: you have to stay in shape, and paranoia helps.

  I’d have to wire the embassy again later.

  I glanced at the closed case. Babbage codes or quotes? I decided on codes, at least until I had a better formulation on the structure I had in mind. My last ghost from scratch hadn’t been all that successful.

  In two hours plus, I had something on paper. What it would do was another question, and that assumed that the Revealed Twelve had the necessary hardware. What scared me was that I thought they did.

  At seven-forty, I closed the case and left it on the table. The codes by themselves meant nothing, and I couldn’t carry everything everywhere. I washed my hands and face quickly, trying to ignore the remaining scent of Ivoire, and hurried out to the elevator.

  I was walking south on 100 West Street at quarter to eight. Ahead, the Salt Palace performing complex loomed like a dark abandoned ruin. Slightly behind and to the east, the Temple shone in a cocoon of shimmering white light. Personally, I’d have preferred the reverse, but that might have been my skepticism about the overall benefit of religions based on true believers.