by Sean Wallace
“In the office, on the congressional budget, no. Down here, on the President’s privy budget, it’s a different tale entirely. Furthermore, no prying eyes and ears here except our own.” Istvan laid the gas pistol back down on the table. “Enough. I believe I’ve made my point.”
“The Texian Bureau of Antiquities is the equal of anything I’ve seen outside of England,” admitted Algernon, though it pained him to say it. And I am safe here, he thought.
Coward.
They left the equipment room.
In the briefing room where their walk ended, Algernon found his steamer trunk atop a conference table. The gaslights were wicked up to a brightness that rendered the brasswork on his luggage difficult to look at. The room was hot and close despite being enclosed in damp stone. A small, dark wog in a passable imitation of a Savile Row suit stood behind the trunk.
“Mr Black-Smith,” said Istvan, “allow me to present Señor Browning of the Imperial Mexican Security Directorate.”
“Call me Oswaldo,” said Señor Browning in a perfect Boston accent. He nodded his head slightly at Algernon. “Harvard, sir. Forgive me if I do not mention the year.”
Istvan had gone on to Harvard as well. The old-boy network would explain this unlikely cooperation between rivals. Almost as unlikely as Istvan’s cooperation with him.
“My trunk,” said Algernon. “How did it get here?”
“Señor Browning and I often cooperate on matters of mutual interest,” replied Istvan. “He received a tip about your property and had it diverted by his agents in the railway baggage service.”
Thus keeping Istvan’s hands clean, Algernon thought. Istvan really was keeping a low profile on this affair.
“Would you care to open it?” asked Oswaldo. “Slowly, please.”
Algernon found the keys inside his soaked valise. He inspected the trunk carefully. His hand-signs were missing – the small hairs he routinely trapped in the hinges missing, the aligning scratches on the brightwork where the locking tongue folded up. Algernon checked along the bottom edge for a small nick the trunk had acquired from shrapnel in Russian Aleskaya. The scars on his thigh twinged in sympathy at the thought, while the trunk’s brass binding was smooth.
“This is not my trunk, gentlemen,” he said. “An excellent copy, but not mine.”
Istvan folded his arms and leaned against the doorway. “Are you sure? It appears to have your tag on it, and the appropriate shipping labels.”
“Wouldn’t you know your own?” Algernon asked. “However, I will open it.” He inserted the key and turned it slowly. The lock clicked open, then the locking tongue popped out. Algernon flipped up the clasps. “Ready?”
Istvan and Oswaldo nodded.
He raised the lid. Inside was the small tray he used, with his shaving kit, shoe kit, and various personal possessions. Algernon inspected the tray with care. It appeared to be the tray from his original trunk. He lifted it out to reveal folded clothes.
After fully unpacking the trunk and laying the contents out on the conference table, Algernon did a quick inventory. “Curious. I am missing a pair of wool suit pants, two shirts and a pair of shoes.”
“The trunk,” said Oswaldo. “May I?”
Algernon looked at Istvan, who shrugged.
Oswaldo began to examine the trunk with painstaking care. He patted the lid, the sides, the bottom, then shifted the trunk in place so it rested on its back. “Do you routinely have a false bottom on your trunk, Mister Black-Smith?”
“No.”
“You do now. Perhaps that is why some of your clothing is missing.” Oswaldo produced a bowie knife, at which Istvan seemed startled. “¿Con su permiso?” he asked, then immediately began to cut at the lining.
A Crown Privy Report binder tumbled out of the bottom of Algernon’s trunk, the gold-tooled ‘E.R.’ plainly visible on the red leather cover.
Oswaldo smiled. “Someone is quite the humorist. Your Lord Quinnipiac, I assume.”
As Algernon stared horrified at this evidence of his apparent treason, Istvan picked up the binder and opened it.
“It’s blank,” the Texian agent said. He riffed through. “All the pages are blank.”
The three of them sat for hours in the same briefing room, having long since exhausted small talk as their tea cooled. The trunk and all its contents had been removed for forensic analysis, while another Texian team worked on the Crown Privy Report binder itself. Istvan had refused to leave until they verified more details about the book. Oswaldo Browning remained as well, for the same reasons. The scent of the quarry lake intensified as Algernon’s legs chafed in his damp trousers. Answers, he thought, we are approaching some answers.
Gröning, the lead forensic analyst, finally came in with a set of onionskin charts rolled up beneath his arms. The analyst was a classic Junker Prussian – riding boots, tight uniform jacket, arrogant. His rumpled white lab coat did little to soften his demeanor.
“Here is what we have found,” Gröning said, a Mitteleuropan accent harsh on his voice. He set the charts on the table. “Nothing in the trunk, nothing on the trunk, nothing in or on the clothes. The book, however, his pages are odd.”
“How?” asked Algernon as all eyes in the room turned toward him.
“He consists of two hundred and fifty-six pages of high-rag paper. This is a very fine grade of handmade paper, as one might expect for use by the Queen. However, the grain of the pages varies. Some are cut and bound long grain, some cross grain, and a few at odd angles. This is very unusual, largely for esthetic reasons, but also printing and manufacturing inefficiencies. Further, each page has differing and somewhat random watermarks covering an unusually large area of the paper.”
“What does that mean?” asked Istvan.
“We have no idea.” Gröning patted the charts. “Here is a detail showing the grain orientation on each page. I have also included diagrams of the watermarks on the first ten pages.”
After Gröning left, the three of them pored over the analyst’s diagrams. “Could the differing grain be a cryptogram?” asked Algernon. He was a field man, this was boffin work, but his life had been placed at stake against this mystery.
Oswaldo shook his head. “No. There are only two hundred and fifty-six examples of perhaps six distinct paper types – long grain, short grain and several angled grain variations. It would be dramatically inefficient to have produced this entire book for such small a cryptogrammatic base. Not enough information could be embedded.”
The chart copies of the binder page watermarks were no more revealing. They were a collection of erratic squiggles that wandered across the pages. On any given page they had an apparent baseline, but the baselines varied their angle on each of the first ten pages.
“Look,” said Algernon. “Some of them have distinct boundaries. Page seven, for example. You could lay a straight edge across here and none of the squiggles would extend past it.”
The copies of the watermarks were on the same onionskin as the charts of the book layout. Oswaldo tore page seven off, about the size of a calling card, and held it up to the light. “Here,” he said handing it to Algernon, “see what you make of it.”
Algernon held it up to the light, turned it back and forth. The squiggles looked familiar. He picked up the chart with the other pages, and laid the squiggles over each page one by one, holding the combined papers up to the bright gaslights.
“Aha . . .” Algernon tore page one, a long grain page, out, and held it up to the light against page four, the next long grain page. He twisted them together. “If you take two succeeding pages with the same grain and align the watermarks along their respective baselines instead of the page’s baseline, you get . . . Greek. There is a message, written in the Greek alphabet, broken up in the watermarks.” He peered at the words. “I can’t make sense of it, but this is a hasty hand copy. If we did this same thing to the original pages, we’d get the Greek letters copied down correctly.”
“Thank you, Algern
on,” said Istvan. “I have a perfectly competent cryptogrammatics section. I’ll pull them onto this.”
Once the Greek letters were deciphered, they turned out to be in cryptogrammatic groups that corresponded to a standard Imperial British series. Algernon spent his time in the Texian caverns bothering the cryptogrammarians at their work and playing with what toys his keepers would allow him to touch in the equipment rooms, always shadowed by one of several large, sulking minders. Those minders were wogs of various sorts, a none-too-subtle message from Istvan that Algernon couldn’t quite bring himself to resent. He disliked the forced inaction, but consoled himself with the thought that they were making progress in the mystery of the binder, and therefore, the attempt on his life.
Istvan came back three days later, finding Algernon at lunch in the refectory. He dismissed Algernon’s current minder. Algernon knew something had happened with the binders – there was excitement in the caves that morning, whispered conversations that broke off at his approach – but he had no idea what it meant yet.
“They’ve cracked it,” said Istvan, sitting down across the table.
Algernon picked at some stewed beef tips that smelled much better than they looked. That the Texians could crack an Imperial code was not actually good news, but he was still glad to learn something. “What have the boffins found?”
“Engineering data, apparently.”
“Engineering data?”
Istvan had a lab report in his hand. He offered it to Algernon. “Here, what do you make of this?”
Algernon looked at the report, flipping through the pages. “It appears to be an abstract describing the theory and practice of finely wrought mechanology, smaller than the eye can see. Miniature steam engines, other machines using fluidic and mechanic principles, that might perform work in microscale. My God . . .” He put the report down. This was the sort of thing people were killed for, without a second thought. “How did this ever leave London?”
“And wind up in a colonial town like San Antonio de Bexar?” Istvan had his tight smile again. “We were hoping you might know.”
“I didn’t bring it!”
“One of our theories is that you and Lord Quinnipiac set us up to crack the secret of the book for you, along with the codes, so you could exploit the information to your own mutual ends. As traitors to the Crown, presumably. I don’t happen to believe that, but the President favors the idea.”
“The President?”
“We could go to war with the British Empire over your little red book, Algernon. This microscale mechanology is the greatest invention since the steam engine, perhaps since gunpowder. Why would Lord Quinnipiac have set you up with it?”
“He couldn’t have wanted me to break the cryptogram,” said Algernon. “Especially not with your help, begging your pardon. That doesn’t make sense. My guess is that he had previously misappropriated the Crown Privy Report binder and wanted it to come back in his hands legitimately.”
“If we had picked you up as asked and returned you, he could have ‘discovered’ it in your trunk,” Istvan pointed out.
Algernon’s chest felt cold and tight again. “What have you said to him about me?”
“That we’re holding you pending an internal investigation.”
“True enough.” Algernon shook his head. “Miniaturized mechanology. Think of the implications for our tradecraft.”
“Medicine,” replied Istvan promptly. “Ordinational science. Communications. All of it. The betterment of the human condition.”
“Whoever owns this will own the world,” whispered Algernon. Right now, that was Istvan.
“Who do you suppose it was that did the original research?”
Algernon considered that. “Last year there was a firebombing at a research consortium in Geneva. They were said to be building long-range rockets. It’s no great secret that the Confidential Office has committed attacks like that before – preventative scientific intelligence.”
“So some of your lads may have destroyed the lab where this miniature mechanology was being developed.”
Algernon nodded, drumming his fingers on the lab binder. “Otherwise, why wouldn’t they already be out with this? If it already exists, it couldn’t be hidden for long. These notes are only a summary of a well-researched mechanology. Enough to reproduce the basic work, but the supporting detail is certainly not all here. Good God, the patents alone would fill shelves.”
“So you believe Lord Quinnipiac wants this for his own?”
Algernon thought back to the small hydraulic pistol in the Consul-General’s hand, and the fascination with mechanology that hobby bespoke. “Yes. It has to be him. No one else could have arranged everything that has happened. He set up the steam ram accident in Galvezton – had it been successful, he could have ‘discovered’ the binder in my personal effects, and returned it with no one the wiser as to whether he had previously copied the research.
“Two accidents in succession would have been too obvious, so he sent me off to you on a wild goose chase. If I had somehow succeeded in recovering the book on my own, he would have gotten it back from me. If I failed, he would have gotten the book from you, simply from your efforts to avoid an international incident. My arrest as a traitor, or even my death, would have caused little comment in Boston or London. Then, set up his own boffin works and . . .” Algernon trailed off. What if Quinnipiac had already set up his works? “It must have seemed failure-proofed to him.”
What if I set up my own works?
“I will try to convince our President of your version of the story. In the meantime, think of a way you and I can deal with Lord Quinnipiac without creating a casus belli between our nations.”
San Luis Pass, Texian Republic, 17 May 1961
The zeppelin RTS Mirabeau Lamar cruised eastward from San Antonio de Bexar toward Galvezton. Algernon looked down at the scrubby South Texas landscape, an echo of his train trip the previous week.
They were using the Presidential zeppelin, a top-of-the-line luxury cruiser from Zeppelin Werk GmbH in Greater Germany, and it was appointed accordingly. Texian cedar paneled the walls, giving the cabins inside the gondola a frontier look, along with a gentle odor dissonant with the high-mechanology transport. Puma and wolf-skin rugs dominated the lounge, at the feet of huge chairs made from cattle and deer horns. The galley seemed capable of producing only inedible fried foods or a terrifying chili. The entire airship stank of refried beans, a food for which Algernon had never cared. He longed for a good boiled English dinner.
Istvan was dressed as a papist cleric, allegedly on the staff of the Papal Nuncio to the Texian Republic. Lord Quinnipiac expected to meet them at San Luis Pass, the channel on the south-western end of Galvezton Island. A lighthouse sat on the lonely windswept point, marking this distant south-western entrance to Galvezton Bay. Istvan had sent pneus explaining the Nuncio’s alleged offer to broker the handoff of the English traitor.
Algernon smiled. He would have vengeance on Quinnipiac for his assaults, and put paid to the problem of the stolen Privy Report at the same time.
As the open water of Galvezton Bay slid past below the belly of the zeppelin, Istvan patted Algernon on the shoulder. “We are almost here.”
“And you believe that Lord Quinnipiac will allow himself to be separated from his Royal Marines?”
“We must try,” said Istvan. “His greed will work for us.”
Algernon watched the red-brick lighthouse come into view. San Luis Pass was a narrow neck of water between two sand spits. The lighthouse stood on the Galvezton Island side of the pass, presiding over little more than chopping waves and wheeling gulls. Algernon spotted a roseate spoonbill following the surf line, pink plumage visible against the greenish white roil of the Gulf of Mexico.
At the base of the lighthouse a sand-wheeled steam ram was parked, puffing desultory smoke from its stacks. It had two sand-wheeled cars hitched behind it, and a squad of Royal Marines deployed around it in their green battled
ress. Lord Quinnipiac has come expecting a fight, thought Algernon. We shall give it to him, but not what he planned for.
The zeppelin came about to beat against the sea breeze toward the lighthouse. Algernon heard the great engines straining. Shouted commands accompanied the release of the field mooring line from its nose cowling. The marines on the ground below scrambled to retrieve the cable, then worked to secure it to the bulk of the steam ram. The zeppelin’s captain kept the engines running at open throttle to fight the wind and keep strain off the mooring line.
“There’s Quinnipiac,” said Istvan, pointing to a figure in black tails who climbed out of the second car. “I’ll go wave him up.”
The captain drove the zeppelin, shuddering in the wind, down toward the lighthouse until their altitude was perhaps a hundred feet. Algernon could hear Istvan at the hatch, shouting. He could no longer see the Royal Marines or Lord Quinnipiac directly below him. The zeppelin bobbed in the wind. The chuffing click of a winch below decks was surely the crew winding Lord Quinnipiac up in a bosun’s chair.
“So . . .” Lord Quinnipiac paced the deck, heedless of the animal skins beneath his feet. “Mr Black-Smith, you are being returned to us.”
Istvan kept his head down, hands folded. Algernon noticed his old friend worked his rosary. Keeping his own hands behind his back as if bound, Algernon said nothing.
Lord Quinnipiac addressed Istvan. “I understand Her Imperial Majesty’s, ah, item, is being returned with the traitor?”
Istvan nodded, opening the door behind him and stepping backward. Algernon shifted his hands behind his back, making sure his finger was on the trigger.
Istvan walked back in the room with the Crown Privy Report binder. Handing it to Lord Quinnipiac, Istvan slipped and dropped the binder on the floor between them.
“Gods, man, have a care,” said Quinnipiac as he knelt to pick up the red leather book. Istvan bent from the waist to reach down and grabbed the book at the same time. Algernon brought the miniature daguerreograph up from behind his back and pressed a daguerreotype of Lord Quinnipiac, kneeling in front of a Papist official in full regalia, transferring control of a Crown Privy Report binder.
