by James Philip
De L’Isle was lost now.
“Sorry, sir. If you’d bear with me,” Parkinson apologised. “You’d take an ordinary motor ship, install as many heavy guns, torpedo tubes, too, on it and then hide everything away behind hinged hull panels and so forth. The idea being that you would creep up on one of our unsuspecting merchantmen, or even a small warship, probably swapping friendly, jovial signals and mega-phone hails all the way and then when the two ships were next to each other unmask one’s guns…”
“Is that even legal?”
“Er, yes, sir. I’m afraid it is. We, er, vetoed resolutions at Paris a decade or so ago, which would have outlawed that kind of thing because we wanted to be able to legally employ so-called ‘decoy’ ships to sink submarines.”
“Submarines are banned,” the Governor of New England growled, eyes narrowing. “Are you telling me that the Spanish might have submarines too?”
The Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet sighed.
“We don’t know, sir. If one discounts the normal rumours about the Kaiserliche Marine exercising covertly built submersibles in the Baltic, there are credible reports that the Cubans might have attempted to construct several small ‘submersibles’ in big sheds at their Guantanamo Bay shipbuilding facility but honestly and truly, we just don’t know what they were up to there or anywhere else.”
Philip De L’Isle would have despaired but that would never have done.
So, instead, he thoughtfully sipped his tea.
ACT II – THE MADNESS OF PRINCES
Chapter 14
Sunday 19th March
Hotel Atlantique, Boulevard du Wellington, Paris
The news from Spain had fallen upon the city’s diplomatic community like a tsunami that nobody had seen coming. Not that most Parisians or the thousands of British, German, Scandinavian and Mediterranean visitors to the cultural capital of western civilisation would have known it as they strolled the grand boulevards, or emerged from their religious observances in chapels, churches and cathedrals into the blissful spring sunshine.
Notwithstanding, the background burbling of radios followed one wherever one went. Suddenly, the news was closer to home, at the very borders of the country with the most sensitive and bloodily fought over borderlands on the planet. There remained an angst written into the souls of the French nation, an acknowledgement that the ‘great peace’ was not a thing within its sovereign control and that an equilibrium maintained for so long must, one day, come to an end. The Grand Alliance had brought not peace, rather an absence of war to an utterly shattered, broken country in 1866. A peace not unlike that the Romans had brought to Gaul two millennia ago. Although Tacitus had not been writing of the downfall of Vercingetorix before Julius Caesar’s legions, all French school children learned of the ancient histories that were still achingly relevant to their modern situation.
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant… To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace…
That was what had happened to the French in the 1860s and what could happen once, could happen again…
Albert Stanton’s business with the movie moguls had been surreal.
One gang had offered him an obscene amount of money, then another had done the same and later in the day a third, somewhat apologetic group had, shamefaced, submitted a bid for slightly less than either of the other two production alliances.
He had initialled heads of agreement with this third combine: they seemed to be the ones with their heads screwed on the right way around and had made no attempt to bamboozle him with legal jargon, movie double-speak or to ply him with vast quantities of stupidly expensive Champagne.
The ‘clincher’ for Stanton had been that the third ‘gang’ wanted to film the movie ‘on location’ in New England and that he – as Abe and Kate’s representative – would have the final say on the script.
It was probably too good to be true but as soon as he got home, he had planned to cash the cheque for £100,000 – a down payment on the £375,000 to be paid when filming commenced and a further payment of £325,000 when the movie opened simultaneously in the United Kingdom, New England and probably, throughout the Empire - he had in his pocket and hand over all the paperwork to the lawyers. A part of him still did not believe Abe and Kate – people back home did not get it that they had quite deliberately been married under tribal law first and that therefore, they were equals in their union in ways few ‘white’ men and women could even begin to understand in the First Thirteen – had foresworn his earnest advice to seek their own representation and to all intents, given him carte blanche to cut whatever deal he saw fit.
For all they knew, or cared, he could be robbing them blind!
It helped that neither of his friends - Abe and Kate were friends first and business associates a very distant second - attached any importance to money. For them their ‘story’ was already history and only the here and the now and what fate had in store for them really mattered. They just lived their life, enjoyed it, and each other, and so far as they were concerned that was as complicated as it needed to be.
Albert Stanton dropped the telephone onto its rests.
He swore silently.
The rumour was true!
The Spanish Embassy in Paris was not issuing entry visas or authorising any travel documents today. Further, the French-Spanish border was closed and nobody knew when it would re-open.
It was maddening!
He was less than a day’s travel from what might be the biggest story of the century and everybody, and he meant everybody, was pretending that nothing was going on in Madrid and that even if there was something going on, the Spanish were not going to let anybody go down there and report it.
Well, he would see about that!
The border was mountainous and he was no kind of outdoors, countryman. There were no flights to the south of France, it was Sunday, but the trains were still running down to the south coast. How hard could it be to bribe a fisherman or yachtsman from say, Narbonne, Montpellier or Perpignan to sneak him onto some Spanish beach in the middle of the night?
“Your taxi is here, sir,” a bellhop reported.
Stanton unconsciously tipped the kid a shilling. He had no idea if that was being cheapskate in this town and besides, his mind was elsewhere.
He had dashed off a telegram to Maud Daventry-Jones.
Apologies. I will not be on the Titanic when she docks on 27th instant. Something has come up. Spain. I would be no kind of journalist if I sat on my hands while the story of the century is happening a few hundred miles away. I cannot wait to see you again. We have so much to discuss. With all my love. Albert.
‘I am an idiot,’ he told himself as he had handed over the message form. There’s a beautiful girl waiting for me back in New York and I am heading off in the opposite direction towards what has the makings of a full-blown civil war.
Sunday, no banks open.
There were more delays while he had written a letter of authority to accompany the movie men’s cheque so it could be paid into the nearby branch of the Westminster Private Bank for transfer to his account in the Broad Street Branch of that banking house in Manhattan, all of which would take five to seven days.
Another telegram had flown across the North Atlantic to his Editor at the Manhattan Globe.
He was off to the wars and would file copy as and when he could.
Grabbing an armful of the latest papers off the stand at the Gare-de-Lyon Railway Terminal he threw his travelling bag, a ridiculously bulky over-sized hold-all – he had no idea what a war reporter was supposed to carry with him so he had stuffed in everything from borrowed binoculars to plus fours and a pair of stout walking shoes – ahead of him and boarded the express service to Lyon. Some minutes later he found his reserved seat in the first-class compartment two coaches back from the thrumming diesel engine starting
to drag the train out of the station.
The devastation of the Great War had permitted the rebuilding of the French railways system very nearly from scratch. Express routes were long straight drags with hardly a bend or even much of a curve in the permanent way for tens, sometimes scores of miles enabling trains to rocket along in excess of one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour.
If only the East Coast railroads of the First Thirteen had been constructed with such wisdom!
Soon, the train was roaring out of the Paris suburbs.
“Mind if I join you, old man,” a broad shouldered, athletic-looking man of about Stanton’s own age inquired pleasantly.
“By all means,” the journalist waved.
“How far south are you planning to go?” His companion inquired, making conversation.
Or, so it seemed.
“All the way, if I can.”
The newcomer chuckled. His eyes were grey, agate hard, belying the smile twitching at his lips.
“That makes two of us, then!”
Something in the way he said it engaged Albert Stanton’s reporter’s threat antennae.
“Oh…”
“You’re off to find a war, Mr Stanton,” the other man remarked, smiling a predatory smile, “and funnily enough, I’m on my way to join in the fun too.”
“How do you know my name?”
“It’s on the label on your baggage.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Oh, well, it ought to be. That’s how luggage gets to be lost, old man.”
Now that Stanton had had an opportunity to study his companion, he had worked out that this was not, under any circumstances, a man he wanted to embroil in a rough house.
“Paul Nash,” the stranger said, extending his hand to the New Englander.
Stanton shook the proffered hand. Then retrieved it pleasantly surprised the stranger had not crushed every bone in it, a thing he could clearly have done had he so wished.
“I can’t place your accent, friend?”
“I tend not to stay in one place overlong.”
Nash had only placed a single small attaché case into the overhead racks.
“I travel light as a rule.” He shook his head, a little amused. “I’m with the British Embassy in Madrid. We’re all on our best behaviour ‘in country’, the Spanish are a bit po-faced about our libertarian ways in the Old Country and New England. So, we escape across the border to enjoy the fleshpots and the too numerous to be listed right now, attractions of la belle France. How did you find the ‘entertainments’ available in Paris?”
Stanton coloured.
“I’m over here on business. Besides, I…”
“Ah, you’ve got a girl back home! Good for you!”
Stanton was rarely speechless.
He opened his mouth to snap a retort, thought better of it.
“She must be quite something if you’ve voluntarily foregone the pleasures of the City of Peace?”
“Yes,” the New England muttered.
“Especially,” the other man chuckled, “when the movie people you’ve been hob-knobbing with would have been picking up the tab every inch of the way!”
Albert Stanton just stared at Paul Nash.
“They won’t let you cross the border,” his very well-informed companion went on, cheerfully. “Our people, I mean. The French gendarmerie won’t either. The Spanish might shoot you, just for the Hell of it. But you’ve probably worked all that out for yourself. Presumably, you can afford to bribe somebody to drop you upon Catalonia’s middlingly rocky shores?”
“What’s your game?” Albert Stanton demanded angrily.
“No game,” the man who called himself Paul Nash growled, suddenly dropping the forced bonhomie. “I’m going to Spain looking for two women whose lives are probably, at this moment, in the sort of mortal peril I seriously doubt that you, cynical old scribbler that you are, can even imagine.”
The New Englander opened his mouth; no sound emerged.
He had never been so flummoxed in his whole life. Well, other than when Maud Daventry-Jones had gone out of her way the other night to make damned sure he kissed her flush on the mouth…
Paul Nash was silent.
Watchful, waiting, waiting…
“Two women,” Stanton said eventually in a low, confidential murmur.
“Yes.”
Now Albert Stanton waited. The train was rattling and rocking along, picking up speed almost like a runaway. The first time New Englanders travelled on a French Express they always thought they were on board a runaway…
“You are well-acquainted with one of the women, and know of the other,” Nash declared. “The file I was given indicated you might have met her in passing. But that’s by the way.”
The Manhattan Globe’s star investigative reporter had regained his composure. He was thinking straight again. The impatience playing in his green-grey eyes prompted a nod from the other man.
“For reasons beyond my ken,” Paul Nash groaned, a scowl twisting at the corners of his mouth above a square jaw that jutted momentarily, “the powers that be elected to allow the two ladies to be put at risk. To wit, they ought to have been called home a month ago, but the idiots in London vetoed my recommendation. In fact, I had only just got back to Paris from Whitehall – where I’d received something of a telling off for carping on about the danger of what seems to have just happened in Spain, happening – when the news arrived that the balloon had gone up in Madrid.”
Albert Stanton could only think of two women of his acquaintance, the one he had spoken to on a couple of occasions, the other, not really at all who so far as he knew might be in Spain at the moment.
“Are you talking about Melody Danson?” He inquired tentatively. “And perhaps, Lady Henrietta de L’Isle.”
“I knew you’d get there in the end, old man! Obviously, the Official Secrets Act stops me naming names but as you’ve already mentioned them there’s no reason we can’t get down to business!”
“Business?”
“Yes, I need you to tell me absolutely everything you know about the two ladies. Absolutely everything. About them, their careers, education, antecedents, the colour of their eyes, their mannerisms, anything they are afraid of, everything.”
“I hardly know them…”
“You’re the Manhattan Globe’s man on the case! Nobody’s closer than you to several of the leading actors in the Empire Day affair. If you’re anywhere near as good at your job as people say you are, you’ll have had your ear so close to the ground for the last couple of years you know the dramatis personae better than their own mothers do!”
Stanton raised an eyebrow.
“What if I don’t want to tell you a damned thing?”
“Well, I suppose I could threaten to throw you out of the carriage somewhere between here and Lyon. But,” he held up a hand, “that’s normally the sort of thing I reserve for people who try to do me physical harm and I’ve not got you down as a homicidal maniac. So, if you were, hypothetically, to try to give me the hear no evil see no evil, think no evil blind monkey number, I’d probably just mark your card with the local gendarmerie in Lyon. Nothing malicious, you understand but I can guarantee that you’ll spend the next couple of months in a cell with a latrine bucket for company. The choice is yours but if you want to fly to Portugal with me to see what we can do to rescue our two damsels in distress, I’d suggest you start spilling the beans like your life depends upon it!”
Albert Stanton swallowed hard: “Presumably, because one day soon my life might depend on it?”
“Man-to-man,” Nash murmured, leaning closer, “yes, that’s about the size of it, my friend.”
Chapter 15
Sunday 19th March
Royal Navy Norfolk, Virginia
The thing that had really struck Kate Lincoln the first time she had stepped aboard HMS Achilles to, not without immense trepidation, attend a ‘family open day’ a month or so ago shortly after Abe had jo
ined the cruiser, was that the great ship had seemed ‘alive’. Abe had explained away the illusion by saying that there was always machinery running, and at least one of the ship’s six boilers ‘lit’ which was why there was the constant low background rushing of the ‘blowers’ ventilating the bowels of the leviathan. It had never occurred to Kate that the Achilles was actually quite a small ship until she had seen two huge walls of steel, floating castles bigger than any man-made structure she had ever seen or imagined slowly cruise into Hampton Roads while she was aboard Achilles that magical afternoon in February.
‘The white man’s magic is powerful strong,’ Abe had whispered in her ear as the couple had stood on the rear end – the ‘quarterdeck’ – of his ship watching the battleship HMS Princess Royal and the brand-new fleet aircraft carrier HMS Ulysses stately progress to their moorings out in the roads. A group of husbands and wives, friends and family members including any number of scampering, noisy children had surrounded the couple witnessing the leviathans anchor.
‘Captain Jackson likes to throw these parties every month,’ Abe had confided to his wife. ‘Achilles is a family ship. Besides, keeping everybody in touch with their families is good for morale and discipline, it keeps everybody’s feet firmly on the ground.’
Kate did not know about that!
For a month or so after her husband had donned his Navy blues she had very nearly swooned every time she laid eyes on him. He was so handsome…
The Captain had particularly asked to be introduced to Kate that afternoon last month. In fact, she had learned that he particularly asked to be ‘properly introduced’ to each and every one of his men’s wives upon their initial introduction to the ship’s ‘family’.
‘I am honoured to present my wife, Tekonwenaharake, daughter of Tsiokwaris, sir.’
Captain the Honourable Francis Jackson had smiled indulgently, very much in the fashion of a proudly indulgent uncle, a question in his grey eyes.
