Retalio

by Alison Morton

  I laughed. ‘Her reply was a great deal more robust than that. I hesitate to tell you what she said direct to the obnoxious little man when he called at the legation to demand she hand over the keys.’

  ‘Quite.’

  I looked over at the window then back again. I leaned forward and touched the back of his hand. ‘Caius Tellus has caused so much misery, Harry. I saw that for myself in Roma Nova a few weeks ago. It can’t have improved since then. We are determined to take back our country from him, but we need your help. I’m very grateful for your agreeing to this little charade at the moment. We need to distract him, to show him that we’re giving up. If it looks as if I, his bitterest enemy, am considering making a new life for myself in London, then he may lower his guard. By acting in a shallow and rather selfish way, I may make him think I really am uncaring and “just a woman” incapable of providing realistic opposition. It’s a gamble, but wars are often won on deception.’

  ‘Indeed. Well, Charlie’s the man to help you with this, but what else are you looking for?’

  I glanced at both of them. Should I ask direct or keep to a political, blurred approach? Would they be shocked, or perhaps embarrassed if they had to say no? Would asking change the equal relationship into an obligation? Mercury help me. My stomach fluttering, I pulled up my courage.

  ‘We need weaponry – personal weapons, light machine guns, mortars, grenade launchers and ammunition for all.’

  Neither man moved. If I hadn’t been looking, I might not have seen that tiny razor-sharp look that flashed between them. Sir Henry shifted in his chair.

  ‘That’s very direct, Aurelia.’

  ‘I don’t have the time to fiddle around playing games, Harry. We’re moving into a critical phase now. Our strategy is decided, our plans are nearly completed. I would ask you both to keep that completely confidential.’

  ‘Of course, Countess,’ Gerald Hill said, rather too smoothly.

  Sir Henry looked away and rubbed the tip of his nose. I stopped there. What else could I say?

  ‘You must understand that any sign of direct military aid traceable to the United Kingdom is unacceptable,’ Gerald Hill said after a few moments and looked me direct in the face.

  ‘So you will not help?’

  ‘Nothing would give us greater pleasure than to see that bastard Tellus kicked out,’ Sir Henry said. ‘But you must understand our position. If a single British firearm was discovered being used by a Roma Novan invading force, there’d be hell to pay.’

  I swallowed hard at my failure. A flame of anger surged in me; our closest ally refused to help us. They wanted Caius gone but wouldn’t help us to do it. Curse them.

  ‘However,’ Gerald Hill’s voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘Let me see if we have any odd overseas-made bits and pieces in the storeroom.’

  * * *

  I asked Sir Henry if I could use one of his secure telephones to make an urgent call to Vienna.

  ‘Volusenia? Did you see the newscast last night? Was the Air Roma Nova that landed at Maria-Theresia on it? I saw the whole thing from my plane. We were waiting to taxi out to the runway and it landed in front of us. The pilot was taken off, presumably by police or military. Find her if you can, and her crewmates. And those passengers, there were a couple of hundred of them at least.’

  ‘What about the plane?’

  ‘Well, that would be a nice bonus, but the pilot is going to be much more valuable to us at present.’

  * * *

  I met our London nuncio, Gracilis, in the shelter of a clump of trees in Hyde Park. It was just before 07.30 in the morning and I had a headache. Although technically warmer up here in the north compared to frozen New Austria, the morning was damp; I was glad of my fleece tracksuit. I wriggled my toes in my trainers as the ground was cold. It was the third day of my social butterfly act and I was sick and tired of it with the emphasis on tired. If I had to have one more vapid conversation I would scream. But I was due to talk to Quirinia via one of Gerald Hill’s secure comms lines later that morning to find out if there had been any reaction to our efforts. If so, then it would have been worth it.

  Gracilis, accompanied by a man and woman, all three in jogging suits, appeared right on time. He paused, stretched, glanced at the trees, said something to the other two then dived into the trees where I waited for him.

  ‘Salve, consiliaria.’ He nodded, then leaned back against a tree trunk. ‘I’m getting too old for this morning jogging business.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Gracilis, you’re only a few years older than I am. Perhaps if you did it more often you wouldn’t feel the effect so much.’

  ‘I know it’s very fashionable, consiliaria, but I think I’ll stick to the indoor gym.’

  I laughed, but let him catch his breath.

  ‘Report, please,’ I said after he’d stopped wheezing.

  ‘First of all, I want to apologise for cutting you dead at the EUS ambassador’s reception last night. I know that was part of the act, but it seemed so unnatural.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you were perfect. Did you get any reaction?’

  ‘Interestingly, yes. The ambassador’s aide asked me privately what I thought about you. I merely commented that patricians had the choice and means to leave and go where they wanted. Other Roma Novans didn’t have the option.’

  Ouch!

  ‘The aide nodded and said we should “get together” soon. So it seems I’m to have a rapprochement with the EUS representatives.’

  ‘Excellent! I’ll start making estate agents’ lives here a misery and view some of their larger properties along with Charlie FitzGlynn. The newspapers seem to follow him everywhere. The British government is helping with that part of our operation at least.’

  ‘Oh? Aren’t they helping in other ways?’ Gracilis raised an eyebrow.

  ‘How well do you know Gerald Hill?’

  ‘We belong to the same club and occasionally have lunch together.’

  ‘So you are in his circle,’ I said. ‘What do you think of him?’

  ‘Clever beggar. One of those quiet, deadly types, but sound.’

  ‘Does he keep his promises?’

  Gracilis wrinkled his brows. ‘I’ve never known him go back on his word since I’ve been here. However, I’m not privy to all his little secrets.’

  * * *

  ‘Aurelia! Thank the gods you’ve called. Is your line totally secure?’

  Quirinia’s anxious face in the monitor and her agitated voice in my headphones made my heart sink.

  ‘Yes, of course. What’s happened?’

  ‘You have to get back here now. Volusenia is livid, Silvia’s crying and Numerus looks like thunder.’

  ‘Quirinia, calm yourself. What’s happened?’

  ‘Lentilius, you know, Silvia’s pet, that PGSF optio from Aquae Caesaris that she insisted should be on the council.’ She gulped a breath.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s disappeared.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Vanished. Nobody’s seen him since yesterday evening.’

  Gods! Lentilius was privy to all our plans and he’d worked with me on the first wave of our counter-information initiative in April. Moreover, he knew about Monticola’s part in sabotaging the silver production. Pluto in Tartarus.

  ‘What have you done to find him?’

  ‘Lieutenant Junia Sestina’s taken a search party out and Numerus has supplemented that by a sweep of all the local bars. We’ve searched his room and all the papers he was working on but can’t find anything – no letter, nothing out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Look in the shredder and bins.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked uncertain what to do next.

  ‘Let me speak to Colonel Volusenia,’ I prompted.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Volusenia’s stark features resembled a vulture more than usual.

  ‘Report,’ I ordered.

  ‘Lentilius is posted missing. The last time he was seen was short
ly after supper last night. Consiliaria Quirinia has advised you of our actions to find him. We’re including the railway stations and airport. We’re checking his personal relations, friends here, outside contacts, all the usual.’

  ‘Thank the gods he wasn’t part of the intelligence group,’ I said. ‘Do you think he might have been snatched?’ Poor bastard if the nats had him.

  ‘It was my first thought, but his rucksack and some clothing are missing along with his boots and notebook.’

  ‘Then we must assume the worst case, that he’s run. Report him to the gendarmerie as a missing person, possibly kidnapped, but tell them to check the hospitals and clinics. Lock down all the files he might have had access to and interrogate his fellow team members. I’ll be on the next plane back.’

  30

  I went out to dinner with Charlie in my usual socialite persona, but halfway through I complained about feeling queasy and having a headache. Escorted to the entrance by a very concerned maître d’, I almost fell into the taxi. Charlie flapped around, his manner all concern. Back in my suite at the hotel, I rushed into the bathroom and cleaned my face of every scrap of make-up.

  ‘I’ll give out that you’re ill and have gone to my family’s place in the country to recuperate for a few days,’ he called out from the bedroom. ‘I’ll get your stuff packed up and sent there.’

  I pulled on jeans and a casual jacket and bundled my hair up in a ponytail.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a taxi to the airport?’ he added.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said as I emerged from the bathroom. ‘I’ll go on public transport. I’ll be well hidden in a crowd.’

  ‘Fair enough. One of my people will shadow you until you get to the gate, though. We don’t want the opposition snatching you.’

  A knock at the door. I stared at it, then exchanged glances with Charlie.

  ‘Should be Jim with your ticket,’ he whispered. ‘But let’s be careful.’ He gestured me back behind the door, reached into his jacket and pulled out a service pistol. He held it to the side and a few centimetres behind. He grabbed the handle with his free hand and yanked the door open. His hand with the pistol was obscured by the door.

  ‘Yes? Can I help you?’ Charlie said in a crisp voice.

  Not Jim.

  Merda.

  Charlie stretched the pistol out towards me and I leaned forward and grabbed it.

  ‘Room service.’

  ‘Sorry, we didn’t order anything. Wrong room.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ the voice said and pushed Charlie back into the room. A big man, dressed as a waiter but toting a light machine pistol pointing at Charlie’s chest. Nobody else followed him so I kicked the door shut and rammed into him, felling both men. Charlie scrambled up and I dropped hard onto the big man and thumped him on the nose with the pistol butt. The crunch of bone. He shrieked and struggled to push up. Charlie stamped on one of the man’s wrists and grabbed the other. He pulled out a cable tie from his pocket and tied the man’s wrists together. The big man looked at me with venom in his eyes. I could almost hear him thinking about how to attack. I jammed the pistol barrel onto the top of his eye socket, but not right into his eye.

  ‘If I dip the barrel and pull the trigger, the round will travel direct into your brain,’ I said. ‘You’ll die instantly. Understand?’

  Charlie chucked me a cushion.

  ‘And this will muffle the shot nicely.’

  The man slumped where he lay. My heart stopped pounding at frantic level.

  ‘Right,' I said to Charlie and jerked my head towards the phone. ‘Can you get a clean-up detail here, stat?’

  * * *

  With his brown hair stuffed under a woollen hat and wearing a denim jacket, Charlie drove me to the airport in a specially converted white builder’s van, a departmental wolf in sheep’s clothing. It had started to sleet which made the light from the orange street lamps disperse in a hundred droplets on the windscreen. We’d hurried down the plain concrete service stairs of the hotel into the garage after Charlie had briefed the clean-up detail. I’d abandoned most of my luggage but I could reassure Quirinia it was being packed up by an efficient looking woman in beige slacks and a sensible jumper.

  Charlie’s radio buzzed. His eyes glazed while he listened through the flesh-coloured earpiece, but he navigated the roundabout leading to the dual carriageway to the airport without losing a moment’s concentration. After a couple of minutes he blinked but kept his gaze forward.

  ‘That was the office. That fake waiter was a Balkanite – no note of entry to the UK. Apparently, our Prussian colleagues know him. Second-league hitman, mercenary. They can’t confirm who hired him yet, but they will.’ He glanced at me. ‘But I don’t think we need more than one guess, do we?’

  I said nothing, just gave a deep sigh.

  ‘I would have thought Tellus would be content that you were looking to settle away from Roma Nova, that you were giving him a clear run.’

  ‘No, with Caius it’s always personal. Still, we diverted his attention, so not a complete waste of time.’

  At the airport, Charlie drove into the cargo area. He had a miracle pass that the security personnel seemed to respect; they even tipped their hat to him. He stopped on a double yellow line outside a plain door with a keypad to the side. A feeble bulkhead light shone above the doorframe. Charlie pulled the handbrake on, then fished in his jacket pocket and brought out a white envelope.

  ‘The door code is one-zero-two-nine. On the other side, turn left, follow the corridor and you’ll be in the security area. The office has phoned through and you’re checked in on the BA Vienna flight which leaves in forty-five minutes. The security desk will give you a boarding card.’ He held out a British passport. ‘Use this going out and coming back. It’s in the name of Amy Smith. Let me have it back when you return.’

  My own Hungarian one was stuffed in an inner zipped pocket of my jacket near to my heart. I clasped Charlie’s hand.

  ‘Thank you so much. You’ve been marvellous. And please convey my thanks to Sir Henry. We’re all very grateful for such staunch friends.’

  He leant over and kissed my cheek and whispered ‘Bon voyage’ in a husky voice.

  Feeling a little warmer than I should in the sleet and the dark night, I clambered out, reached back for my rucksack and ran for the door. I turned to wave, but the van was already pulling away. Charlie’s instructions were perfect and once I’d collected my boarding pass I was escorted to the gate by a woman who looked like another passenger, but most definitely was not. I was boarded first. The other passengers must have wondered who this nondescript woman in jeans and a parka coat was. Probably some undesirable being deported…

  * * *

  Wien-Maria-Theresia Airport at two in the morning was a dull place. Wan-faced passengers waiting at the only baggage carousel operating, a single queue for passports, bored officials, students sprawled on seating, cleaning carts gliding over the hard floor and a single hopeful looking driver holding a name card. Unlike the daytime with shops, background music, cafés enticing you with the smell of arabica, everywhere was shuttered, closed and silent.

  A dour-faced Styrax in casuals waited for me at the rope in the arrivals lounge. She nodded, took my rucksack and we marched over to the exit. At the Jagdschloss I fell into my bed but was woken at seven by Quirinia who had a worried look and a few more white hairs amongst the black.

  ‘He’s not back,’ she said.

  A shower and change of clothes and I was a few steps back from catatonic. I sipped coffee and chewed on a roll while searching the glum faces of those clustered at one end of the long kitchen table.

  ‘Despite what’s happened I don’t think Lentilius has run away,’ Silvia said. She looked round, her head held up and eyes sparkling. ‘It would be against everything I know about him.’

  ‘He has a staunch champion in you, domina, but the facts point in a different direction.’ Volusenia was unusually diplomatic.

&nb
sp; ‘Has there been any update or progress since Consiliaria Quirinia spoke to me in London?’ I said.

  ‘None. Junia Sestina and her team have been out all night again searching,’ Volusenia replied. ‘I’ve told them to grab some sleep for a few hours. Numerus’s lot went out to scour the early morning markets and newsagents. Not a whisper.’

  ‘The gendarmerie?’

  ‘They weren’t interested at first.’ Quirinia. ‘They said we had to wait at least twenty-four hours. Then I remembered your cousin. I hope you don’t mind, Aurelia, but at the sound of Oberstleutnant Huber’s name they started taking me seriously. But we haven’t heard anything from them.’

  ‘Which is all rather strange,’ I said. ‘Lentilius can’t have vanished into the ether. I see two possibilities: either he’s run, and let’s assume the worst that he’s hopped over the border to Roma Nova, or he’s been snatched. Oh, a third one – he went on a bender and is sleeping it off somewhere in somebody’s arms.’

  ‘No, I’m sure he can’t be.’ Silvia’s voice was shrill with protest, but I exchanged a glance with Volusenia who shook her head.

  ‘Well, he’s a PGSF optio and has become a valued member of the council of exiles,’ I said. ‘Betrayal is very much against Roma Novan values and unthinkable by a Praetorian. Potentially, he has everything to gain if he stays here and plays his part in the take-back. If he goes back to Roma Nova now he faces execution or at best being sent to a work camp once they’ve bled him dry of information. He knows that from Atrius’s story.’

  ‘You think somebody’s got him, don’t you?’ Quirinia said.

  ‘Yes, I do. Being brutally honest, he’s not important enough to eliminate or even ransom. He’s much more valuable as a source of information.’

  Silvia covered her face with her hands.