by Kage Baker
Pengrove dropped to the floor with a gasp, straight into clouds of ether fumes. He heard the deafening report of a pistol shot.
When next he knew anything, Pengrove was dangling head-down over Bell-Fairfax’s shoulder. Yellow leaves, pretty yellow leaves like golden sovereigns, and black-currant bushes with a few berries still, close enough to reach out and pick if only Bell-Fairfax would stop marching along, though actually Pengrove didn’t feel much like eating anything . . . in fact . . .
He retched, clapping his hands over his mouth.
“Pengrove’s all right,” he heard Ludbridge say. Pengrove watched the earth and stars shift places and found himself on his feet beside the wagon. He promptly fell against it.
“Now, let that one be a lesson,” said Ludbridge. “Never let what might seem to be an easy kill fool you into complacency. If I hadn’t shot the beggar, you might both have died.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax, catching Pengrove before he fell over again and hoisting him into the wagon.
They rode back over the miles to the city, Bell-Fairfax and Pengrove lulled half-asleep by the rocking of the wagon. Ludbridge checked his watch frequently by the light of a lucifer, scowling.
“Here’s another lesson,” he said. “Always assume any job will take longer than you thought. It’s half past four already. I do hope the fellow’s a late sleeper.”
“Dolgorukov?” Bell-Fairfax roused himself.
“Even he. This is the chap from Constantinople, remember? The one who puts weapons into the hands of others. He brought the Americans to Rus sia. He encouraged Arvanitis in the plot that made it necessary for us to take steps. He’s playing the same game with Kazbek now. You might call him a tempter; has an unerring eye for finding the one fellow in a crowd who’s gullible and angry enough to commit murder, and making certain he has funds and encouragement. An expert at obscuring his tracks, as well. There’s never any trail evident to lead from an Arvanitis or a Kazbek to the Third Section, none at all.
“Fortunately for you, Pengrove, I retrieved your ether bottle before the last dram or so left evaporated.” Ludbridge took it from his pocket and handed it off to Pengrove. “That’s for the common-law wife. There’s an old woman too, but she sleeps at the rear of the house and she’s half-deaf.”
“A housekeeper?” asked Bell-Fairfax.
“Yes, I believe so,” said Ludbridge.
The wagon stopped. They swung open the door and scrambled out, horrified at what seemed to be brilliant daylight; after a moment they realized that the sun had not in fact risen, with the world still sunk in predawn gloom, but night was indisputably fled. Ludbridge pulled out his watch and checked it.
“Half past five. Oh, well, one does one’s best. Let’s see . . .”
The wagon had pulled into an alley, the darkest place available. They walked out to the street and Bell-Fairfax stared around. “There,” he said, pointing. Ludbridge spotted the house: a two-story residence set back in its little garden, with a willow tree by the gate.
They approached and stood in the deeper gloom under the willow. “Oh, bugger,” said Ludbridge. The upper floor was dark, but directly before them was a terrace upon which a pair of French doors must open, when the weather was fine. They were presently closed, but through them Ludbridge could clearly see Dolgorukov, sitting at a table and sipping from a glass of tea as he studied something—a letter? A map?
“Well, so the chap is an early riser,” said Ludbridge. “We’ve been lucky after all. One well-placed shot ought to do it.”
“I can manage it, I think,” said Pengrove.
“Do you feel well enough?”
“Oh, quite.” Pengrove drew his revolver, checked the silencer. He took careful aim and fired.
Three things occurred nearly simultaneously: the pop of the silenced report, a fracture star appearing in the third pane of the left-hand door, and Dolgorukov flinging himself backward at the last possible second.
“Jesus,” said Ludbridge. They ran through the gate and across the garden, just in time to see Dolgorukov picking himself up and scrambling awkwardly into an inner room. Ludbridge kicked the door in, drawing his own revolver as they burst through all three. There was blood on the floor and a clear glimpse through into the next room, where Dolgorukov, clutching the side of his head, was shouting at two terrified women.
Ludbridge fired at him. He dodged, once more at the last possible second, and the bullet hit the younger of the women. Ludbridge, closely followed by Bell-Fairfax and Pengrove, charged into the next room in time to see Dolgorukov bolting up a flight of stairs. The two women threw themselves in front of the staircase, blocking the way, screaming imprecations at Ludbridge. He fired, killing the already-wounded wife, killing the old woman he had known must be Dolgorukov’s mother, with her same broad patient face and small features.
There was a roar behind him and Bell-Fairfax raced past in a blur, leaping over the crumpled bodies of the women, bounding up the stairs after Dolgorukov. “You damned coward—”
Ludbridge and Pengrove heard a scream, heard smashing furniture and then—inhuman noises. Pengrove, shocked mute, was still staring at the dead women. The noises from upstairs went on for a surreally long moment, and then stopped abruptly. They heard a final thump, as of something hitting the floor.
“Bloody hell,” said Ludbridge, shoving aside the bodies to get up the stairs. Following him, Pengrove giggled shrilly.
“It is that,” he said.
Three rooms opened off the upstairs landing. Two were clearly bedrooms but the third contained a sewing machine and dressmaker’s dummy, with a few bolts of cloth on a shelf. The window was standing wide open, curtains blowing in the dawn breeze. Blood was everywhere: on the curtains, on the broken deal table and chair, on the white bosom of the dummy, on the bolts of cloth. Pieces of Dolgorukov were scattered everywhere as well. His head had rolled across the room and was resting on the treadles of the sewing machine.
Bell-Fairfax, clutching his knife, had fallen to his knees in the midst of the scene of carnage. He was panting with exertion. His pale eyes were blank, his face set.
Pengrove looked into the room past Ludbridge and, turning back on the landing, doubled over and vomited.
Bell-Fairfax blinked. He looked up, saw Ludbridge. He looked around himself at the blood, at the dismembered body, and he dropped the knife. “My God,” he said, in a thick voice. “Done it again.”
He fumbled at his holster. “Oh, Dr. Nennys,” he muttered. “How has it come to this? Never touch anyone unless your blood is as cold as the polar oceans. Worthless bastard.”
He drew the revolver and set it to his temple. Ludbridge stumbled into the room and wrested the revolver from his blood-slick hand. He knelt by Bell-Fairfax.
“No, son, no,” he said. “You don’t have that luxury. You’re not that weak. You’ll do your duty, because you must. I know you.”
“I don’t believe you do, sir.” Bell-Fairfax turned those pale eyes on him, but they were dull now, unfocused. Ludbridge thought wildly: This is the consequence of giving a golem a soul. He summoned all his courage and set down the gun, took Bell-Fairfax’s face in his hands. He spoke rapidly.
“Yes. I know you. You were made for this work, son. I’m good at my job but you’ll be better. And what’s the job, boy? We’re avenging angels, you and I. We wade through horrors that would kill other men, and why? To kill the real monsters. To stop them, because if they’re not stopped the great day will never come, will it? We commit the necessary evils. We take the blood on ourselves. And we will pay for it in the end, yes. The job carries its own justice.
“The day will come when we’ll have to sacrifice ourselves, when the job will require our lives, and we’ll give our lives bravely because that’ll be our duty. The score will be paid in our own blood, the balance sheet wiped clean. But not today. We haven’t finished the job. We’re soldiers, son. You’re a good dutiful soldier, aren’t you?”
�
�I hope so, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax automatically.
“I know you are.”
Bell-Fairfax drew a deep breath, closed his eyes. When he opened them again they were clear and sharp, the eyes of the man who had convinced Ludbridge to want a glass of Maraschino. Ludbridge felt an involuntary craving for it even now.
“My apologies, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax. “I quite lost control of myself.”
He picked up the gun, carefully holstered it. “We must go,” said Ludbridge. Bell-Fairfax nodded. He left the room without a backward glance, Ludbridge following. Pengrove was leaning against the wall on the landing, trembling.
“All right, Pengrove?”
Pengrove nodded and fell into step with them as they descended the stairs. They passed the dead women and exited through the French doors, picking up speed as they crossed the garden and running once they were through the gate. Bell-Fairfax held the wagon door until they were all in and pulled it shut behind them. They sat in darkness, exhausted, as the wagon moved on.
They spoke little amongst themselves on the ride back. Bell-Fairfax spoke only once, when he turned to Ludbridge and said: “I truly understand now, sir, about complications.”
“Eh?”
“He oughtn’t to have taken a wife. He oughtn’t to have lived with his mother.”
When they walked up the echoing tunnel to the Kabinet’s headquarters, Nikitin had not yet come in. Ludbridge sought out the arms master on duty, turned in their weapons, and asked him to let Nikitin know a report would be forthcoming later in the day. They tarried only long enough to wash their hands before going back through the tunnel that led to the house on Anglisky Avenue.
The house was dark when they stepped into the front parlor, with only a sliver of morning light coming in through the drapes.
“Hobson’s not up yet, eh?” Ludbridge gave a weary chuckle. “Lazy beggar.”
Bell-Fairfax lifted his head, inhaling sharply. He went to the foot of the stairs and looked up. Something in his expression made Pengrove run after him when he started up the staircase. Ludbridge followed, moved by the same impulse.
The door to Hobson’s room stood open. Hobson was slumped forward at the table, snoring.
“Drunk again,” said Ludbridge in disgust. He only spotted the bullet hole, with its thin trail of dried blood, when Bell-Fairfax lifted Hobson’s head. “Good God!”
“Johnny!” cried Pengrove.
“But he hadn’t done anything,” said Bell-Fairfax, looking deadly pale.
“Yes, he had.” Ludbridge sagged into a chair. “Came home by the front door once too often. Someone saw him. Oh, Jesus.” He looked around, leaped to his feet again. “Where’s the Aetheric Transmitter?”
“We will do everything we can for him,” said Nikitin, as Hobson was carried away on a stretcher. “It is just possible he will regain consciousness. He may be able to tell us who did it.”
“It can only have been the filibusters,” said Matthews. Ludbridge looked up from the bench where he sat between Bell-Fairfax and Pengrove, who were slumped forward in grief and fatigue.
“What d’you mean? I thought they’d been arrested.”
“The order was given,” said Nikitin, looking embarrassed. “Unfortunately it would appear someone at court rushed to give them a timely warning. Dolgorukov, more than likely. They escaped. The Third Section has been hunting them for hours now. I had been rather pleased to hear it; I thought they might be plausibly blamed for the six executions.”
“I reckon they decided they weren’t going to cut and run without something to take home to their people in the States,” said Matthews. He pulled up a chair and sat beside Ludbridge. “Sir, I am heartily sorry for thee and thy good friend, and for this calamity.”
“Oh, calamity’s the word, to be sure,” said Ludbridge heavily. “We’re leaving in fifteen hours, and we’ve got to recover the transmitter somehow.”
“Thou hast a bomb concealed in it, hast thou not?”
“There is one, yes.”
“Ours may be detonated from a distance. What about thine?” Ludbridge shook his head. He patted his watch chain. “If the bastards had gone after my gear, they’d have blown themselves to Kingdom Come, but there was no remote connection with the transmitter.”
Matthews rubbed his chin. “We build a device into ours that sends a constant signal into the aether, so we may track it.”
“So do we.”
“Well then!” Matthews stood up. “This much at least I can do for thee, brothers. I’ll find the thing, or I won’t go home. Go thou and get thy rest. Brother Cyril and I will do what we may, and I promise thee better news when thou wakest.”
When they woke, long hours later in the Kabinet’s guest quarters, Nikitin himself brought them tea on a tray. “And here is news to cheer you,” he said. “First, Johnny Albertovich survived his surgery and is stable. Our surgeon is guardedly optimistic.”
“Thank God for that, anyway,” said Pengrove. Ludbridge, methodically gulping down hot tea, merely nodded.
“Second, Brother Elias Elijavich has found your transmitter, though he has been unable to recover it for you.”
“Why?”
“Because he is a Quaker,” said Nikitin. “And so he cannot do what will be necessary.”
He explained that, shortly after the member of the Franklins had defected to the filibusters, there had been a theft of a transmitter out of one of the listening posts in Philadelphia. The Franklins had faced the moral dilemma of detonating it and killing whoever might be near it, or leaving it in enemy hands. They found a third alternative. One resourceful brother had devised a way to locate the signal for the missing transmitter: three other transmitters had been loaded into covered wagons and driven in slow circles around the city.
“By triangulating the signal, they had located the transmitter in a boarding house on the bank of the—Delaware—River.” Nikitin enunciated the name carefully. “They recovered the transmitter, by some extraordinary means which involved no violence, or so I am given to understand, and only a mildly criminal act. Elias Elijavich suggested we do the same.
“The boys from the listening post were entirely ready to drive wagons around St. Petersburg for a week, if necessary. They were very fond of Johnny Albertovich, you know. Fortunately they located his transmitter’s signal within three hours. We went to work with a map and a set of compasses, Elias Elijavich and I. Come and see what we have found.”
They followed Nikitin to one of the conference rooms. Maps were spread out on the tables, with a sheet of tracing-paper laid over the largest. Matthews stood peering down at it, as Mikhail Ilych drew on the sheet with red ink.
“. . . this empty house on Chlebnaya Street. We have already done reconnaissance. The weeds in the garden have been trampled down; the lock on the cellar door has been broken. They must have fled there last night, after capturing the transmitter. Foolish; it is very near a police station and they are likely to be seen if they stir out, unless they are very careful. On the other hand, the police being so near will hinder anything we do. But there they remain! We think they intend to wait until nightfall, and get out of the city overland.”
“Won’t they try to leave by the Neva?” Matthews looked up as they entered with Nikitin. “Ah. Good evening to ye, one and all.”
They returned his greeting somberly. Mikhail Illych came forward, tears in his eyes, and embraced each of them in turn.
“Johnny Albertovich was our brother,” he said. “Is our brother, whatever happens. We will avenge this for him.”
“Blood begets more blood,” said Matthews quietly.
“So it does,” said Ludbridge, shaking Mikhail Ilych’s hand. “You let us avenge him, son. We have more experience, I suspect.”
Mikhail Ilych nodded sadly. “He cannot be moved, for now; you will have to leave him with us, but I promise you, we will care for him as one of our own.”
“Damned decent of you.” Ludbridge coughed, looked down. “Well. As
Brother Matthews said, won’t the bastards try to steal a boat or something, and get away on the Neva?”
Nikitin shook his head. “They cannot, any more than you can. The river is being closely watched by the Third Section. They may think they can cross the country unseen, if they travel by night.”
“And night will fall . . .” Ludbridge took his watch out, checked it. “Entirely too soon. You’ve got men posted, watching the place?”
“We have,” said Mikhail Ilych.
“Good. Can you provide us with that wagon again, old chap?”
“And a good deal more.” Nikitin bowed from the waist. “But for this moment, come and have supper. You will want a good meal in you, for this night’s work.”
A great deal of preparation was necessary. There was, however, time to pay a visit to Hobson’s bedside in the Kabinet’s infirmary, before they departed. Unrecognizable for tubes and bandages, Hobson lay still and gray as one of the dead men in the martyrs’ shrine. Ludbridge shook his head. Pengrove turned away, tearful. Bell-Fairfax looked on, white and silent; as they walked away he said only, “He was an innocent.”
Chlebnaya Street lay no great distance from Anglisky Avenue, in a thinly populated district of warehouses.
“They must have run to the first empty house they could find, after shooting Hobson,” said Bell-Fairfax. In the darkness of the jolting wagon he was a grim shadow, with pale eyes in a pale face.
“So much the easier for us,” said Ludbridge. “Though I’m not happy about the police being so nearby if things should get—how shall one put it? Theatrical.”
“It’s as though last night never ended,” said Pengrove, with a hollow laugh. “Here we are again! The murder-fairies have magically cleaned our garments and our weapons.”
