On Her Majesty's Behalf

by Joseph Nassise

  Inside this vault were some of the most precious secrets of the British Empire. Artifacts, both ancient and modern, lined the shelves. From the ancient yellowed skull of the dragon that had once claimed all Britain as its own to the very table over which the facility itself had been named, the vault and its contents had been watched over and protected by the royal family for as long as Britain had existed as a kingdom.

  The object she was looking for stood on a pedestal near the center of the room. It was a smooth red stone about the size of an ostrich egg. It had gone by many names through the years—­the lodestone of Merlin, the eye of Solomon, the Prima Materia—­but Veronica simply knew it as the philosopher’s stone.

  The most commonly accepted story of the stone’s creation went back to the thirteenth century, to the scientist, philosopher, and mage Albertus Magnus, who is said to have discovered the stone and passed it to his pupil, Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas in turn would pass it on to his closest disciple and so on until it ended up in the hands of the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus, who in turn gifted it to a young prince who would later become King Edward VI. The stone had remained under control of the current British ruler from that point until now.

  The stone was rumored to do many things, not the least of which was turn common metals like lead and iron into gold. Veronica put no stock in the old legend, for she was one of the few ­people alive who understood that the stone did no such thing. If it did, the British Empire would be the wealthiest nation on the face of the planet, war or no war, and that was far from the case. No, the stone’s true purpose was far more valuable than the simple ability to convert lead into gold, for it provided its possessor with a certain sense of invulnerability that, under normal circumstances, would keep the bearer from ever being defeated.

  These, of course, were not normal circumstances, Veronica noted as she walked over to the pedestal on which the stone was stored. The kaiser had employed a group of powerful mystics to counter the protection provided by the stone and, if recent events were any indication, had found a way of neutralizing that invulnerability, even if only for the short term. Allowing the stone to fall into enemy hands might result in Britain’s complete downfall, rather than just the temporary setback it was experiencing, and so it was Veronica’s solemn duty to see to it that that did not happen.

  She removed the glass lid covering the stone and set it aside. She then gently lifted the stone from the velvet pillow on which it rested. The stone felt slightly warm to the touch, as if someone had been holding it in their hands and only just replaced it before Veronica had entered the room, but she knew that wasn’t the case. The last time the stone had been taken from the vault had been in the midst of the Napoleonic War; as Keeper of the Vault, she’d studied the records extensively. The heat was just one of the strange properties of the stone, observed time and time again over the generations that it had been in the care of the British royal family but no more understood than the day it had come into their possession.

  No matter, she thought. She wasn’t here to solve all the stone’s riddles, just to carry it away to safety where it could continue to provide the realm with its arcane protection for as long as possible.

  She wrapped the stone in the cloth, put the parcel into the satchel, and slipped the satchel’s strap over her head so that the bag hung at her side beneath her right arm. This would give her freedom of movement but also allow her to keep one hand on the bag whenever she felt the need to.

  Satisfied, she replaced the glass lid on the now-­empty exhibit and returned to the door. A touch of a button, the quick hiss of releasing steam, and the door slid open once more to allow her to leave the vault behind.

  Burke was leaning against a nearby wall, waiting for her, when she came through the door. She could tell by the way his eyes widened that he got at least a quick glimpse over her shoulder at some of the objects stored in the room behind her.

  He tried to make light of it to cover his reaction.

  “I bet you’ve got Excalibur and the Holy Grail stored in there somewhere, too, don’t you?” he asked.

  She had no intention of giving him anything.

  “No,” she quipped. “Those are stored in a different facility.”

  She kept a straight face until she’d walked past him and then, when he couldn’t see her expression anymore, let the smile she’d been holding back break across her face. Let him wonder, she thought. We might be allies but that doesn’t mean we have to share all our state secrets.

  After letting him stew in his own juices for a minute or two, she glanced back and caught his eye.

  “Come on, the wireless is this way.”

  Veronica was feeling pretty good; she had the stone in hand and, hopefully soon, would have a plan for getting out of London as well.

  She smiled as Burke hustled across the room toward her.

  After a rather horrible start, the day was certainly turning around.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  VERONICA LED BURKE to an alcove on the far side of the room where a wireless station had been set up. Wireless devices had been in use in the trenches for the last several years, and most officers underwent rudimentary training in their use, Burke among them. This particular model looked a bit more complicated than the basic set he was used to, but he was confident that he could manage it well enough.

  He sat down behind the table and spent a few minutes familiarizing himself with the switches and dials on the device in front of him. When he was satisfied he had it all down properly, he flipped the power switch, waited for the device to warm up, and then pulled on the headphones.

  He picked up the notepad that was lying on the bench nearby and jotted down the messages he intended to send. Having them in front of him would make it easier to transpose them into Morse when it was time to send them out over the wire.

  He dialed in the particular frequency that he knew was being used by the MID this week, pulled the operator’s lever closer to him, and, after a quick prayer for luck, typed out his first message.

  Eagle One to Nest. Eagle One to Nest. Stop.

  Graves was still speaking with the automaton, but Drummond decided to join Burke and the Queen and so the three of them spent a few anxious moments waiting to receive a response. When Burke heard the dots and dashes of the reply begin coming in over his headphones, he snatched up the pencil and began copying down the message.

  Nest to Eagle One. The first is the sunshine . . .

  Burke answered the pass code query with the next line of the song, the same Dixon and Woods number they’d used during their last communication.

  . . . the second is the rain.

  Music had never been his thing; he hoped he was remembering the lyrics correctly. There was a short pause and then the answer came through.

  Roger. Stand by for Condor. Stop.

  “Condor?” Veronica asked, reading over Burke’s shoulder.

  Burke nodded. “Colonel Nichols, Your Majesty. Head of U.S. Military Intelligence. Otherwise known as my ranking superior.”

  Whatever response the Queen was going to make was lost when the telegraph started up again.

  Condor to Eagle One. How did Goldilocks like the porridge? Stop.

  Burke nearly laughed; Veronica was a poor Goldilocks, and he could just picture a German intelligence agent somewhere trying to make sense of this one.

  Porridge just right. Stop. Bed rather uncomfortable, however. Stop.

  The response was almost immediate.

  Understood. Better accommodations await. Stop.

  Yeah, Burke thought, if only it were that easy.

  He quickly tapped out his reply.

  Would love to visit. Rowboat sunk. Need alternate transportation.

  He could imagine the colonel standing there beside the wireless operator wondering just how the hell he had managed to sink a British submarine. Burke
was tempted to follow his request with a note that it wasn’t his fault, but resisted the urge, knowing it would only confuse things. It would all end up in his report and there wasn’t anything they could do about it while he was stuck in England anyway.

  The answer, when it came, wasn’t surprising.

  Wait one.

  The one ended up being closer to ten, but eventually Nichols came back with an answer.

  Send Goldilocks via airmail from KG station, dawn tomorrow.

  Burke frowned. The airmail reference clearly meant that they were going to try and get Veronica out of London by airplane, but KG station? That he didn’t recognize.

  He turned to Veronica. “Do the initials KG mean anything to you?”

  “Do they reference a person or a place?” she asked.

  “A place, I guess.”

  She answered without hesitation. “Kensington Gardens would be my guess.”

  Burke had no idea what that was. “Gardens? As in the vegetable kind?”

  “No, as in a park. Kensington Gardens is like your Central Park, only smaller.”

  “Ah. Can you land a plane there somewhere?”

  Veronica shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess that would depend upon how much room you need. There’s a long grassy mall that leads from Long Water to the palace that might be suitable, but I don’t know enough about flying to say for certain.”

  Burke didn’t know how much room an aircraft needed to land, either; flying was his brother’s specialty, not his. Presumably Colonel Nichols had checked with somebody before issuing his instructions, as the man was a stickler for details, and Burke had learned to follow his direction when given.

  He turned back to the wireless and sent a final message.

  Instructions received. Package will be ready. Out.

  Just knowing they had a plan to get the Queen out of the city made Burke feel better. If worse came to worst, he knew he and his men could attempt to drive themselves to the coast, maybe get picked up by a fishing trawler or patrol boat from there, but he hadn’t wanted to take the chance in doing so with the Queen still in his care. There were just too many things that could go wrong with such an attempt, including running into a roaming horde of shredders like that which Calhoun had encountered.

  Better to get the Queen on her way and then figure out how we’re getting home.

  “Are we all set?” Veronica asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, then just one more thing to do before leaving.” She stepped around Burke and opened a panel in the side of the wireless console. She fiddled around inside the case for a moment and then instructed Burke to pull the front section toward him.

  When he did so, the entire apparatus, dials, switches, and all, came free in his hands.

  For a second Burke thought he’d exerted too much strength with his artificial hand, but when Veronica didn’t appear at all concerned that he was holding the guts of the wireless device in his hands, he relaxed a bit.

  The Queen took the device from him, made a few deft movements with it in her hands, and before he could say, “God save the Queen,” she had turned it into its own self-­contained box about the size of a loaf of bread.

  “Turn around,” she told him and when he did, she strapped the box to the outside of his rucksack.

  “There, that should do it.” She gave the straps one last pull to be certain they would hold and then spun him around to face her. “The battery won’t last longer than seventy-­two hours, so you’ll need to find a power source for it if you pass that point. Understood?”

  Burke fought the urge to salute.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said instead, with a smile.

  She dazzled him with one of her own in turn, and then the moment passed as she became all business once more.

  “All right, enough playing around,” she said loudly, taking in the others in the room at the same time. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s get a move on, ­people!”

  Burke watched Graves say good-­bye to his colleague, only realizing at that moment that the Queen intended to leave the automaton behind.

  “Don’t you think we should bring him with us?” Burke asked quietly, not wanting JD or Graves to overhear. “Given the information he’s carrying around in that tin noggin of his?”

  “I’d be happy to,” the Queen replied, “but unfortunately it’s not possible.”

  “Not possible? Why’s that? He seems to move pretty well. If need be, we could have a ­couple of the guys carry him for short distances . . .”

  Veronica was shaking her head. “It’s not his mobility that’s the issue, it’s his power supply. He doesn’t have one. Or rather, he doesn’t have an independent one; his body is powered by the same energy source that runs the museum. Remove him from the museum and he’ll last an hour, maybe two, but no more than that.”

  “What if one of my guys could rig something up?”

  Burke knew Williams was a technical wizard. If he, Graves, and JD put their heads together, he was sure they could come up with something.

  The Queen, however, wasn’t seeing it the same way.

  “Your tenacity is admirable, Major Burke, but I’m afraid that even if you were to solve the power issue, and I have little doubt that you could, the simple truth of the matter is that this is JD’s home. He will not abandon it, no matter the risk in staying. Believe me, I’ve tried; this isn’t the first time the issue has been raised.”

  Burke glanced back across the room, looking for some support from the man (machine?) himself, but JD had already gone back to his experiments, the presence of the others either forgotten or filed away as being no longer relevant. How do you rescue a man who doesn’t want to be rescued? Burke asked himself.

  The answer was obvious.

  You don’t.

  Just because it was obvious did not mean Burke was happy about it, however. He made a mental note to pass on the information about Highmoore to whoever showed up to collect the Queen on Colonel Nichols’s behalf; at least that way someone higher up the command chain would know the automaton was there. Let them decide what to do about him.

  The climb back up the steps seemed twice as long as the journey down, but eventually they reached the top and stepped back through the concealed door into the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.

  They were halfway across the gallery, headed for the door at the other end when it was thrown open suddenly, admitting several of their companions, and one look was all it took for Burke to know something had gone seriously wrong.

  Doc was in the lead, helping support a limping Williams, and immediately behind them were Jones and Cohen. The sharpshooter looked disheveled but didn’t seem injured. One side of Cohen’s face was covered in a cascade of blood that was dripping down from an injury somewhere above his hairline, and he kept reaching up to wipe it away so that he could see. The foursome came rushing down the length of the gallery as fast as they could, unmindful of the display cases and priceless artifacts that they were bumping into, and, in some cases, accidentally destroying, in their haste.

  When they reached the others, Jones did his best to gasp out a report while trying to catch his breath.

  “German commandos . . . backed by shredders. Morrison ordered us to retreat . . . they’ve breached the front doors and have . . . taken the Great Court.”

  Commandos? Here? Burke’s thoughts whirled. What did they want? Were they here for the Queen or for the items in the vault downstairs? How long could Morrison hold out?

  The sound of gunfire drawing closer reached their ears and Burke had his answer.

  Not long.

  Burke turned to the Queen. “Is there another way out of the lab?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  Burke didn’t wait to hear the rest. He spun to face Drummond. “Get back to the lab and use that exit to get the Queen to
safety. Take Doc, Williams, and Cohen with you. Jones and I will provide cover to help the others pull back. We’ll meet you at the rendezvous in the Gardens tomorrow.”

  “Roger that,” Drummond said, but Burke barely heard him, for he was already headed for the door Jones and company had come through moments before, intent on reaching Morrison in time to try and break the German assault.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  BURKE HAD BARELY set foot into the next gallery when the door on the far end opened just wide enough to let Captain Morrison and Private Montagna slip through. Both men were bleeding from a half-­dozen minor wounds, and the captain’s right arm was hanging limply at his side, the bone broken cleanly in two by the bullet that had passed through it.

  No sooner were the two men inside than they turned and threw their weight against the door, trying to force it closed against the hands coming through the opening from the other side. Shredder hands. For a moment Burke thought they would not succeed, that the pressure from the undead on the opposite side would prove too great, but the two men rallied and the door slammed shut.

  Intent on helping them keep it closed, Burke rushed forward, Jones at his side, but at the sound of their footfalls, Morrison looked up and waved frantically for them to stop.

  “Go back!” he cried. “There are too many! We’ll never be able to . . .”

  Burke never heard the rest, for it was lost in a thundering explosion that filled that end of the room with smoke and flame and threw him to the ground with concussive force.

  For a moment he couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything, and had no real idea where he was or what was happening. He raised his head off the ground and saw a billowing cloud of smoke and dust where the door should have been and, on the floor beneath that cloud, a man’s severed leg clad in a U.S. Army uniform. The rest of the body lay a few feet to the right, but was angled in such a way that he couldn’t see the man’s face.

  Burke struggled to lever himself up onto his hands and knees, knowing from what he was seeing that he was in danger but still not lucid enough to make sense of why or how. Something whipped past his ear with a high-­pitched whine and he shook his head, thinking he was hearing things.