by James Philip
The woman had been in the right window.
She had been of the right stature and for a split second the sun had glinted off the glass, dazzled him and in the instant that he had taken the shot, unaccountably spotted his vision.
Her hair had seemed dark…
Yet in that moment he squinted through the high-precision German-made lens of the telescopic sight as the ‘hunting round’ – designed to disintegrate on impact – had whistled through space he had realised his target was fair-haired…
He had watched the head of the wrong woman…explode.
And now he had no idea who he had actually killed…
That was fate, the end of all things.
One last sign from the old gods of a world that no longer existed; his time was past. The old spirits had spoken; when this last hunt was over it was truly an end of all things.
Normally, he prepared his escape in meticulous detail, thinking through all the things which might go wrong or necessitate flight.
This time, none of that mattered.
This time, he would be in the hands of the ancient spirits.
Chapter 30
Sunday 30th July
Fort Crailo Prison, Albany
It was readily apparent that my sons had been talking together in the prison gardens for some time before I was escorted from my cell and allowed to walk, unescorted into the open air of that balmy late July morning.
I hardly recognised Abe; he seemed even taller, his hair was straggling, blacker than ever to his shoulders and he had that look about him that told me he had grown up a dozen years in the near eighteen months since the last time we had spoken, face to face. He was the one who saw me first and suddenly there was burning anger, near rage in his brown eyes and he took a step towards me. I think he would have hit me had not Alex put a hand on his arm.
“Get in line, little brother,” my oldest boy said.
Abe had a good four or five inches on him in terms of stature but Alex had invoked his ‘officer on parade’ voice which told his siblings: “I’m in charge here!”
You never quite knew if Alex was joking; that was the kind of happy go lucky guy he used to be but not, I reckoned, any more.
Bill just glared at me.
I started noticing other things; which was hardly surprising considering I had not seen any of ‘the boys’ for a long time.
Alex was still Alex; except inexplicably steadier, steelier.
Bill was brooding; but without any of the guilt.
Abe looked like he had just been in a brawl; I guessed he had learned how to handle himself in a fight lately.
“Two hundred lost fucking years!” Alex grunted sarcastically. “What about the year we’ve all just lost because of you?”
I thought that was a tad over the top.
I opened my mouth to defend myself.
“No, no, you don’t get to talk yourself out of this one,” Alex went on, growling like a very pissed off mountain lion.
Heck, I preferred the burned out, heavy drinking fly-boy to this guy!
“We live in a police state,” I shrugged. “None of us ought to be in this place…”
Worryingly, Abe was giving me one of his ‘cut the crap’ looks.
“The three of us oughtn’t to be here,” my youngest son agreed, nodding to his brothers. “But you? Being an incompetent traitor doesn’t mean you’re not a traitor, Isaac.”
That ‘Isaac’ stung me worse than one of the slaps Rachel used to give me when she thought I’d been cheating on her. Heck, that woman had a real middleweight’s right cross!
“Don’t disrespect me, boy…”
This time Alex had to step in front of his much taller – and probably much stronger and fitter – younger sibling to keep him out of punching range.
Unfortunately, in physically interposing himself between me and Abe, Alex had run out of restraining arms.
I was suddenly eyeball to eyeball with Bill.
“You knew I had troubles,” my middle son said accusatively. “You knew it and you still dropped me in the shit, anyhow.”
I was still trying to figure out what was eating Abe so badly he had called me ‘Isaac’.
I was…disorientated.
I blinked at Bill, riled that he was blaming me for his troubles.
It was not as if I had ever put a gun to his head and forced him to sit down at any of those ‘no limits’ tables down on Brighton Beach; I had always told my kids that betting on horses or dogs was a mug’s game. Chasing girls, drinking and fighting the Draft had not done me any harm when I was their age! Bill was a grown man. It was high time he took responsibility for his own little peccadillos!
I said as much; or at least I think I did because everything went a bit blurry for a while afterwards.
For example, I could not remember how I got to be sitting on the grass feeling sick staring stupidly at the swirling melee of bodies directly in front of me.
Both Alex and Abe were pinning down Bill.
They were literally sitting on him and he was obviously not getting any less mad.
“I said it would get out of hand,” a bright feminine voice of the plummiest imaginable sort declared cheerfully.
“Yes, you did,” another woman concurred. Her tone was of the stoically resigned ilk. “You look after the old man, Hen,” she suggested, “while I sort out ‘the boys’.”
“Hen, that’s an odd name?” I muttered dazedly as my new angel of mercy knelt on the lawn in front of me and started trying to assess if I was concussed.
“Shut up, please,” the woman commanded. “How many fingers are you seeing?”
“Two…I think.”
“How old are you?”
“That’s for me to know and you to guess, my dear!”
“Okay. Marbles more or less intact,” she concluded patiently, “but still a wise guy!”
She grabbed my arm and helped me to my feet before guiding me to a bench where I slumped, gratefully and tried to collect my wits. My ‘guardian’ was in her twenties, plainly lovely – if that is not an oxymoron – with fading childhood freckles and intelligent, questing blue-green eyes that could be the downfall of any man. She had her auburn hair pinned up in one of those dreadful old-fashioned prissy buns as if she was attempting to hide her ‘light’ beneath some kind of existential veil…
“How is he?” Her companion asked, calling over her shoulder.
“A little bit shaken up still.”
I focused on the back of the other woman, a thirtysomething vaguely familiar flaming redhead in a flowery cotton calf-length dress who was, it seemed, quietly reading the riot act to my sons, emphasising her message with an aggressively wagging and schoolmistress-like forefinger. I got the impression that if any of them stepped out of line again she would be the one throwing the left hooks!
Involuntarily, I chortled.
“I really don’t know what you think is so funny about this situation, Mister Fielding,” my minder snapped at me.
Beyond her I saw the other woman issue one last cautionary remark to my sons, indicating that they were to stay exactly where they were, before she came over to the bench and looked down upon me with weary resignation.
“I am Detective Inspector Melody Danson,” she announced.
I opened my mouth to say something witty.
“And before you ask, my parents were, and actually, still are professional musicians and I’m not,” she said damningly.
I hate it when a woman sees through me so fast!
Undeterred, I tried another tack.
“I met somebody called Danson last year…”
“Yes. He was a ham actor – rather like you in that respect – employed by the Colonial Security Service. Like you were until not so long ago, Isaac!”
Oh, shit…
Something made me carry on the good fight even though I knew I was batting on a particularly sticky wicket and that this was probably not going to end well.
“I never
got around to asking what the initials M.R.D. stood for?”
“I don’t know what his initials stood for,” I was slapped down. “Mine stand for Melody Ransom Daingnton,” she relented momentarily, ‘the latter being my mother’s maiden name.”
“Oh…”
I had run out of breaking the ice chat-up lines in no time flat…
“Next week your sons will walk free with their characters declared ‘stain free’,” the detective continued in a voice designed to be heard all around the enclosed gardens. “Your trial will drag on interminably; after which, if there is any justice – I’m an optimist, so I think there probably is quite a lot of justice in the World – you will spend the rest of your life in prison. We live in enlightened times so I seriously doubt the Crown will want to make you into a martyr by seeking the death sentence.”
Henrietta had mentioned to Melody that the King, influenced by his wife, a kind and reflective lady who was every bit the benign power behind the throne that most seasoned observers suspected - had become progressively less ‘enthused’ by the use of the death penalty over the years. It seemed Queen Eleanor was wont to cite the ‘martyrdom’ of the men responsible for the murder of her husband’s father and brothers in 1962; a thing which had practically sparked a civil war in Ireland in 1963 and 1964. In recent years His Majesty had commuted three out of every four death sentences – refusing to show clemency only in cases of the most callous or sadistic murders of women or children - submitted to him to life imprisonment.
That was not to say that the King might not take Isaac Fielding’s mendacity ‘personally’. However, Melody was in the business of ‘messing with the traitor’s head’; so, it was well-worth ‘mucking him about’ any way she could while she had the opportunity.
“However, given the gravity of the offences you are facing, and the fact that you were once – for many years, in fact - an undercover agent of the Colonial Security Service, upon conviction it is likely that you will be transferred to a high security facility in the British Isles or Ireland. After today, you may not have another opportunity to make your peace with your sons.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong!” I protested without engaging my brain. The woman had rattled me without having to try. I glanced to her younger friend hoping to find support. All I got back was a lynch mob stare.
The redhead was viewing me like I was something unpleasant she had just scraped off the bottom of her favourite pair of shoes.
“You knowingly permitted persons you had every reason to believe were unfriendly to the best, rightful interests of your Colony and the Crown to frequent your property, and to use your car to store and transport explosives.”
I opened my mouth to speak but got no further.
Some women never let you get a word in edgewise…
“To wit, you knowingly facilitated the utilisation by enemies of the Crown of premises at the Long Island College, further, you no doubt assisted them in reconnoitring and familiarising themselves with likely targets for subsequent terrorist attacks and provided character references and recommendations material to their later access to the Admiralty Dockyards at Wallabout Bay. Additionally, you exploited your sons, their friends and their social networks, and their work and professional relationships to enable your ‘friends’, enemies of the Commonwealth of New England most likely in the pay and the service of the Empire of New Spain to develop their plans to murder the King, to attack the Fleet at anchor in the Upper Bay and to sabotage the launch of the lead ship of the Royal Navy’s most technologically advanced class of new cruisers. I concede, and one would reasonably expect the judge at your trial to observe in his summing up that you were almost but not completely ignorant, of the specifics of the various plots hatched by the now, I hope, exclusively deceased perpetrators of the Empire Day weekend attacks of last year. This will probably be sufficient to save you from the hangman, or to persuade the King to commute any capital sentence. Notwithstanding, you are as guilty as sin. So, if you want to go with the ‘I’ve done nothing wrong defence’ that’s up to you. Henrietta and I will happily step out of the garden and let you try to explain it to your sons,” Melody Danson quirked a half-smile that radiated undiluted scorn, “and Abe.”
I suppose I ought to have panicked at that moment.
I would have if I had honestly believed it would, in any meaningful way, work for me...
The redhead looked at me and I looked back.
We understood each other perfectly.
She gestured for me to move over and joined me on the bench. Her friend perched on the armrest on my other side as ‘the boys’ approached, staring daggers at the condemned man.
Surreally, it was the first time in my life I realised that I had absolutely no option other than to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
There was no point lying.
That woman had figured it all out.
Nonetheless, I planned to put her right on a few details; heck, I had almost managed to run the whole deal hands off, one cell not knowing what the next was doing and so on. The guys in the aeroplanes had not known what the people in the speedboats were doing on the day; and counter intuitively, the Wallabout Bay thing had gone too well although I felt a little bit bad about the women and kids who had got hurt. What had happened to my boys was…bad. The thing with Vicky’s husband was well, just one of those completely unintended consequences…history was full of them and besides, I had never liked the bloody man. The one thing I could not get my head around was somebody taking a pot shot at the King when the man was minding his own business trying to have a quiet early morning smoke on the quarterdeck of a battleship moored at least a mile-and-a-half from shore? That had come as news to me; nobody had mentioned that was on the cards. If the King had been killed and if it had ever been traced back to anybody with dusky skin or a swarthy appearance that would have been war! I wanted to ‘wake up’ New England, to make my fellow citizens rattle their chains and frankly, I had been mortified – sorry, wrong word – horrified when I discovered how many people had been killed and injured…
“What’s it to be, Isaac?” Melody Danson inquired tersely.
Both women had folded their arms across their breasts and were looking at me with scolding impatience.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m not a complete idiot. I think I knew this would always end badly. If I was to do it again I’d try to keep you guys out of it,” I admitted, briefly braving my sons’ glares, “but hey, you know what I’m like better than anybody. I’m sorry about the last year. Not about anything else. For the record I still believe all that stuff in Two Hundred Lost Years. The First Thirteen have been under the English yoke for two centuries and we will never be what we could be while the people who rule us sit in London not New England.”
I could tell that my audience was in no mood for a polemic.
“Okay, okay… You have a right to know the truth,” I conceded resignedly. “So, for what it’s worth, this is it…”
Chapter 31
Monday 31st July
Government House, Philadelphia
The Governor, his Chief of Staff, Sir Henry Rawlinson, the Governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia – the co-chairmen of the Governor’s Council of New England, a rarely convened forum which only sat in times of dire emergency - the Solicitor General of the Commonwealth of New England, the Chief of Staff of the Colonial Armed Services and an undercast of about a dozen senior members of Lord De L’Isle’s Administration had sat in on Melody Danson’s briefing in the opulent surroundings of the mansion’s ground floor morning room. Armed Royal Marines decked out in camouflaged battledress rather than ceremonial red coats guarded the doors and the grounds beyond the tall windows as the detective spoke.
Two secretaries took short-hand notes.
Henrietta De L’Isle had sat by her father’s right hand, having resumed her role as his confidential private secretary on the two women’s return to Philadelphia overnight.
Melody marvelled at the way her younger companion – firm friend now – coped with the rigors of travelling. While it was exciting to be collected by a Royal Navy seaplane which had landed on the Hudson River at dusk and flown them down to the Upper Bay to meet a much larger, Maine-class flying boat for the journey down to Philadelphia and a midnight landing on the Delaware, she had been exhausted by the time they actually arrived at Government House, practically dead to the world almost as her head touched her pillow.
Henrietta had magicked a stylish blue dress for her from thin air and a maid – goodness, that was a thing! – had somehow got her hair in order although she had been far too nervous to eat a proper breakfast before being wheeled out in front of so many of New England’s movers and shakers.
Understandably, her audience – all men bar the secretaries – were by turns aghast, sceptical, resigned and angry to hear what she had to tell them and initially, unreceptive to the notion that in the circumstances the Colonial Security Service had performed ‘as well as could reasonably expected’ given the meddling of, and the barriers erected by ‘certain colonies’ up to and including the present time. The Elephant in the room was the gnawing suspicion that the whole Empire Day affair had been so badly handled that it was inevitable that ‘Westminster’ would feel obliged to be seen to be doing something about the ‘deplorable situation in New England’.
And sack several of the men in the room…
Melody had arranged for a large blackboard to be set up on an easel so that she could chalk up the relationships with, of and the links to Isaac Fielding and the other ‘players’ in the conspiracy.
“Nobody, not even Fielding himself had the ‘big picture’ in his head,” she emphasised. “He thought he was masterminding one plan, somebody else as yet unidentified, was pulling strings he did not know existed. I believe him when he claims to have had no prior knowledge of the attempt on the King’s life. The whole conspiracy was designed so that the key people at the sharp end were – to a man and a woman - committed to self-immolation in the execution of the ‘master plan’; in a very real sense I don’t think Isaac Fielding actually wanted to know about that. The man lives in his own little make-believe world; he’s a blind-folded cack-handed puppeteer who almost certainly completely lost the plot after his wife died. It was only during his wife’s final illness that he became estranged from the CSS, although he and Brigadier Harrison had had a falling out several years before. I honestly don’t know how much of the plan that was executed over the Empire Day weekend last year was actually, in any meaningful way, his; likewise, I do not know how much he was motivated by a desire to ‘get even’ with Brigadier Harrison over past real or imagined grievances in their shared past. For some reason, presumably because Matthew Harrison had been romantically involved with his wife, Rachel, before their marriage, he believed that Harrison was the father of his son, Abraham. When I explained to him why this could not be he refused to believe me…”