Retalio

by Alison Morton

  ‘Haven’t you tried to withdraw money before now?’ Quirinia said.

  ‘No, I’ve been in hospital, then convalescing until recently.’ Miklós had taken care of everything financial. Damn, I should have contacted the Argentaria earlier. ‘Good thing we have Plan B.’

  My great-grandfather Soane had been English, from London, and following tradition had joined his family firm, a private finance house. He’d been ‘displeased’ when his eldest son Henry, my grandfather, had emigrated to Roma Nova and, unusually, married my grandmother. She’d been a diplomat posted to London; they’d met at a weekend house party where she’d outshot him.

  Peter John, my grandfather’s younger brother, had continued to run the business from London, expanding it through Europe and the Americas as Britain became an industrial powerhouse. Their Vienna branch had been established for over a hundred years. Peter John had based his generation’s success on steadily increasing a highly confidential list of clients, which included royalty, but one of whom had been my mother, his niece, and then me.

  When I’d exported part of my assets after that terrible Families meeting last summer, it was to Soane’s Bank in London that I’d sent half of them.

  The Vienna branch, located in a bland, stone-faced nineteenth-century block just off the Ringstraße, resembled a lawyer’s office from the outside, complete with a modest brass plate engraved with the single word ‘Soane’s’. I glanced up at the camera discreetly perched on the window recess above the glass-panelled front door. Inside were subtle, neutral colours, a thick carpet and a hushed atmosphere.

  I gave my name to the receptionist, who looked as if she’d escaped from a fashion magazine, and asked politely to see David Soane. He’d visited me when I’d been convalescing and had sponsored my application for political asylum so I was certain we’d be talking to him within minutes. But the receptionist looked us up and down and suggested we make an appointment with one of their advisors next week and to please bring our passports and proof of residence. I produced my Hungarian passport which carried Miklós’s name, with my own name on a different page, not obviously visible. Quirinia had nothing to show.

  ‘I’m afraid I cannot help you without correct proof of identity. Good day.’ And she bent her dark head down to her desk and ignored us.

  ‘I think you misunderstand the situation,’ I said. ‘I am Peter John’s great niece and my cousin David is the head of this branch. Now please announce us to him.’

  ‘That is not possible.’ Her voice was chillier than the air outside. ‘If you don’t leave the premises, I will be obliged to call security.’

  ‘Good, please do. We’ll wait here.’ I jerked my head at Quirinia towards a dark leather sofa. The receptionist mumbled into a telephone handset, casting eyes in our direction several times during her call.

  Five minutes later, a tall man in a suit and wearing an austere expression on his thin face appeared. The receptionist pointed in our direction.

  ‘I am Anton Drexler, Mr Edward’s assistant. I understand one of you ladies is claiming to be Countess Mitela of Roma Nova, but you are refusing to produce any identification to back this up.’

  ‘Edward?’ I said. ‘Is David letting the children run his bank?’ I was genuinely amazed. Edward couldn’t be thirty at most.

  Anton Drexler didn’t say anything. He stared at me for a minute, went over to the receptionist’s desk and used the handset. A few minutes later, a medium-height young man, light brown hair topping a serious face bespattered with freckles, walked out of the lift, his fingers giving a tweak to the knot in his tie as a schoolboy would.

  ‘Great Mars, it is you, Edward.’

  ‘Hello, Aunt Aurelia.’ He smiled like the child I remembered him to be. ‘I’m sorry for the mix-up. Dad’s had to go back to the UK. Grandfather isn’t very well. What can I do for you?’

  * * *

  Quirinia put the pen down an hour later after signing the last of the five forms. I countersigned the specimen signature cards as she passed them across to me and we were finished.

  ‘We’ll get a cheque book to you the day after tomorrow.’ Edward gestured to the taciturn Drexler, who set an envelope down on the polished table in front of me. ‘And we’ve prepared a letter of introduction which should guarantee you credit for anything you wish to order or buy in the meantime. Let me know the number once you have a telephone line installed.’

  He handed me a second envelope, slightly bulging. ‘This should tide you over until we’ve made a transfer from London. Don’t hesitate to contact Anton if you have the least question.’

  Anton stood there motionless, a blank expression on his face. I wasn’t sure he would be at all happy to be contacted.

  * * *

  Quirinia and Volusenia went into overdrive spending my money on making our building habitable. Those troops not on security duty turned themselves into labourers, painters, decorators, furniture builders. Atrius, a farmer’s son, persuaded some of his comrades to form a working party to dig up a sizeable area of the garden for a vegetable plot. It was cold work in February. He looked exhausted one afternoon three days later when I went outside for a breath of fresh air. He bent over, leaning his body on one of the shiny new spades.

  ‘Don’t overdo it, Atrius,’ I said. ‘You’re still on the light duties list.’ He looked down from his considerable height and caught his breath.

  ‘I know, ma’am, but I feel happier doing something.’ He stood up and shoved the spade into the turned earth. ‘I’m sorry I lost faith in you. That bastard Tellus had me convinced. And as for that little prick Turturus, I’d be happy to dump his corpse in the Danube, if you want.’

  ‘You know we can’t do that. Where is he now?’

  Atrius jerked his head at a small figure at the far end of the garden, jabbing a spade at the hard earth under the supervision of Styrax’s comrade, Balia. ‘We keep him busy.’ He grunted as he reached down for his jacket. ‘Then we lock him up in the cellar at night.’ He gave me a long steady look.

  ‘Keep him healthy, Atrius. I want him to stand his trial when we get back.’

  He said nothing, but gave me a brief bow and walked back into the house.

  * * *

  Volusenia suggested I tutor Silvia; the council of eight appointed me her advisor. I agreed as long as Quirinia taught her finance and one of the PGSF guards gave her some grounding in self-defence and personal security. The thought of Caius mounting a snatch was in the front of our minds.

  Silvia had received a first-class education in arts and languages, history and basic sciences by a clever English governess, but she knew nothing about politics or the art of practical governing. Apart from letting Silvia to sit in the imperial council meetings as an observer during the last six months of her reign, Severina had allowed her daughter to reach emancipation at sixteen with minimal instruction about her future duties as imperatrix.

  Silvia applied herself conscientiously, but struggled with the archaic Latin of some of the early law tables. Luckily, the Vienna University library had been able to supply both original and translations into modern Latin for her. She was chewing her pencil one day writing some notes on constitutional functions and, distracted, glanced out of the window. I sat opposite her, coordinating information about contacts in Roma Nova who we thought would support a resistance movement.

  ‘Aunt Aurelia, there’s a crowd of strange-looking people outside, like beggars.’

  ‘The guards will deal with them. How far are you with your notes?’

  ‘But I think they’re coming here.’ She stood up and pulled the curtain back from the window.

  I rose out of my chair and went to the hallway, just in time to see Calavia burst through the street door, a satisfied look on her face. Following her, a group of around twenty bedraggled figures shuffled in, four smaller ones among them. Their clothes were dirty; dull eyes looked out of grey faces muffled with scarves. They looked round, worried and fearful, but they looked somehow familiar. The
n under a soft peaked cap, I recognised my estate manager from Castra Lucilla.

  ‘Gods! Gavinus.’ I gripped him by the shoulders. He closed his eyes, shook his head then looked up.

  ‘They said you were here now. Are we truly safe now, domina?’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Yes, yes. Come into the warm.’ I looked round. ‘Where are the rest of them?’

  His eyes tightened and he looked down at the wooden floor. ‘Dead.’

  As the new arrivals devoured hot soup and bread in the kitchen, the safe house’s original exiles stood around only half listening; some carried on with their own conversations.

  I sat at the table bench with Gavinus. He told me how they had piled into the lorries at Castra Lucilla and headed for the border. As there were too many road checks and they had none of the authorisations issued by the new regime’s authorities, they’d abandoned the vehicles as planned, piled on their warmest clothes and set out on foot. They had water and food, and the guards had weapons, so Fortuna was on their side. They’d made good time and were in the woods within five hundred metres of the New Austrian border when they were overwhelmed.

  ‘There must have been fifty of them, domina. Not regular troops, nor nationalists, but a mob of wild people, men as well as women. They ripped everything off us, all our food, torches, gloves, boots, even emptying the children’s backpacks, taking the few toys they had with them. Sentia, Albia and their troops tried to hold them off, but there were too many. They died there. Those animals beat us and left us in the snow to freeze.’ He reached for a glass of water and gulped it down. ‘But we knew we had to go on. Somehow we crossed the border – I didn’t know for sure we had until we found an old barn on a farm with the name in Germanic. The children were past crying. I know it was wrong, but we broke into their food store and dairy and stole milk for the children.

  ‘We slept well past dawn, and when the farmer found us mid-morning he held a gun on us and threatened to call the police. I pleaded with him and while he was thinking about it, two others jumped him. I apologised, but he swore at me. We tied him up and left him in the barn. We walked from there, hiding wherever we could. Sometimes we had to steal food and clothes.’ He smacked his hand on the table. ‘Damn Caius Tellus to the depths of Tartarus!’ Gavinus bowed his head and brought his hands up to support it. He gave a deep sob, then his shoulders shook. The other refugees stopped eating and stared. The early exiles had gathered closer, now completely silent.

  Numerus moved forward but stopped a couple of paces from Gavinus when the farm manager jerked his head up and glared at him with a ferocity I’d never seen the mild-tempered Gavinus display before.

  ‘We thought we’d find refuge in Vienna, here.’ His voice couldn’t be more bitter. He looked round. ‘They wouldn’t let us in, domina. They said you were proscribed. We slept in the park that night. Juno, that was cold.’

  I covered his hand with mine.

  ‘A charity canteen gave us a hot meal next day and let us sleep in their storeroom. We’ve been there ever since, helping out, cleaning and doing maintenance jobs for them.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Somebody welcomed us at least.’

  9

  ‘This will not happen again.’ Silvia’s cheeks were red with anger. ‘No Roma Novan will be shut out, whatever the reason.’ The council of eight was silent while she shouted herself out. When she stopped for breath, I took her hand and pulled her gently back onto her chair. For a second, she looked daggers at me.

  ‘I think Gavinus and the others appreciated you talking to them yesterday, Silvia, and comforting the children. This is such a fraught time and many don’t know how to act in the circumstances.’

  Quirinia glanced at me, then blushed and looked away.

  ‘Now we’re growing in numbers, I suggest we draw up a set of guidelines,’ I said. ‘We need an operating procedure to cover most eventualities. It should be simple, clear and establish a chain of responsibilities. Some people will have to work the day-to-day aspects of our collective life, others will need to have decision-making power. Obviously, we’ll change it as circumstances change.’ I looked round at the other seven. ‘Thoughts?’

  ‘Do you think many more will join us, Aurelia?’ Quirinia asked.

  ‘If Caius carries on as he has so far, I think we should be prepared for a considerable number.’

  * * *

  Telephone engineers installed lines and even one of the new data hubs; essential according to Volusenia’s acting signals officer, a former telex supervisor who’d been thrown out of her job. But she didn’t have any deep technical knowledge, as I explained to William and Marina when calling them the same evening.

  ‘I’ll order you some individual personal computers. Your people will need to collect them from the New Austrian distributor’s warehouse,’ William said. ‘A special delivery will arrive from Brown Industries in a few days, Aurelia,’ he continued. ‘I’ll send two technicians along as well. It’s the least we can do.’ He paused. ‘We’ll talk further after their visit.’

  William Brown’s crate arrived a week later on the same flight as two technicians. They went into a huddle with Volusenia’s signals officer and two optiones in the room where the New Austrian telephone engineers had fixed the incoming line. The five of them went out in two hire vans and came back with them jam-packed with cardboard boxes – the promised computer equipment. I looked in the following morning; data terminals lay on the floor in a horseshoe shape around the room. Gavinus, his skin now a healthier shade of pink, was working with my former estate carpenter making benches from the pile of timber that had been delivered that morning from the local sawmill. They emerged the following afternoon and one of the BI technicians handed me a shiny handset and a full-teeth American smile.

  ‘For you, ma’am.’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Aurelia, it’s William. Now I’m satisfied you have a totally secure line, I can talk openly. Anything, whether voice or data, carried on your line will now be encrypted. Hank has run through the protocols with your signals people, but I wanted to outline what you can do with this. Once they’ve fitted the antennae and parabolic dishes, the system will give you two main functions – communications and monitoring.’

  ‘We’re blind and deaf at the moment, William. We have no idea what’s going on in Roma Nova apart from the public broadcasts and they’re only four times a day.’

  ‘I expect you’ll want to monitor military and police traffic as well as propaganda broadcasts. The new equipment will enable you to intercept signals, so you can gather good quality intelligence. It’s using the information that’s the tricky part.’

  I blinked. That was exactly what Plico, my now dead intelligence chief, used to say.

  ‘If you like, Hank can stay over for a few weeks to take your people through the basics of traffic analysis with this new equipment.’

  ‘Yes, that would be very helpful.’ We needed every grain of help we were offered.

  ‘Your military exiles will know what equipment the Roma Novan forces were using a few months ago, the probable frequency range and where the main transmission stations are. Obviously, the crypto settings will have changed, but Hank will show your technical people some techniques to get the most out of the decrypt equipment. It’s not a hundred per cent, but you should get some useful material.’

  ‘Won’t the New Austrians spot our activity?’ I said.

  ‘I recommend remote monitoring as near the Roma Nova border as possible, then you can use a standard telephone cable to get the yield back to Vienna. If you can set them up, I recommend two outstations to the south, one east and one west to provide triangulation.’

  They would have to be completely covert. Not a whisper of our capacity should reach Caius or he’d take immediate countermeasures. We’d have to start cultivating a despairing exile image for public consumption.

  ‘William, why are you giving us so much?’

  When he answered, I could tell from the tone of voice that h
e was smiling.

  ‘Marina said you’d never give up. And aren’t family members supposed to help each other?’

  * * *

  Four weeks after I’d arrived, I was running through other European government institutions with Silvia so she would have some comparisons with the Roma Novan ones when there was a knock at the door. I didn’t have time to answer before Atrius entered the room.

  ‘Apologies for interrupting you, consiliaria, but the colonel asks you come to the hall, stat. We have, er, visitors.’

  He glanced at Silvia, then back at me, a world of warning in his eyes. I ordered him to stay with Silvia and hurried to the front hall.

  Volusenia stood ramrod still with a thunderous look on her face. Two PGSF guards hovered between the street door and the visitors. Two grey-uniformed members of the Austrian gendarmerie, one an officer with a red-edged peaked cap, stood a shade behind a neatly-dressed man with an assured air and who carried a brown leather briefcase. He was trying to hand Volusenia a large envelope, but she stood, arms crossed, refusing to take it. Attempting to defuse the tense atmosphere, I stepped forward but didn’t hold my hand out.

  ‘Grüß Gott,’ I said. ‘Wie kann ich Ihnen behilflich sein?’

  Volusenia stared at me. She was used to me speaking Germanic, but perhaps she didn’t like my conciliatory tone. Well, always best to start diplomatically in the face of foreign officials.

  ‘I speak Latin,’ he replied, in a clipped, huffy tone as if I’d questioned his intelligence. ‘My name is Riegler, from the federal foreign ministry. I have come to serve notice on you.’