Oath Bound - Book V of The Order of the Air

by Melissa Scott

  “He certainly will,” Stasi said.

  “Who is it?” Jimmy asked, now looking very grown up.

  “A Swede. He’s talking about buying a bunch of planes for a Swedish airline. They’re going to be gone several days because he liked the plane so much that they have to show it to the executives.” She was especially proud of getting the word ‘executives’ in there. It made it sound so legitimate and official.

  “Oh,” Jimmy said. “But don’t we have to catch the boat home in a few days?”

  “They’ll be back before then,” Stasi said, crossing her fingers under the table. They’d better be.

  “I liked the Africa story better,” Douglas said disappointedly.

  Alexandria, Egypt

  January 1, 1936

  By the time Jerry returned to the flat, his parcel tucked under his arm for everyone to see, Willi had returned from the dig site and had settled himself in front of the open window with a cup of rapidly cooling tea. Iskinder had taken over the little table, papers spread out in front of him as he scribbled on a sheet of typing paper. They both looked up as the door opened, and Jerry saw Willi relax slightly.

  “I’m sorry to have missed your friends,” he said.

  “So were they,” Jerry answered, and set the package on the kitchen counter. “I thought we’d have dinner together tonight?”

  “That would be lovely.”

  Iskinder looked up with a wry smile. “You can’t know how much I envy you that dinner. Not that your cooking has been anything but edible, Jerry, but…”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jerry saw Willi grin, and said, placidly, “I was thinking we’d dine at the Imperial.”

  “Unkind.” Iskinder bent his head over his papers. Jerry moved closer, and saw a much folded booklet spread open among the papers, double columns marching along the thin pages.

  “Your telegram?”

  Iskinder nodded. “I am almost done, I think. Though where I should have them send the reply, I just don’t know.”

  “Have it held at the Telegraph Office,” Willi said. “We can send one of the men to collect it first thing in the morning.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Jerry seated himself in the armchair, which Willi had tactfully vacated, and stretched out his wooden leg. “I haven’t seen any sign that anyone has tracked you here, Iskinder, but it would be foolish to take chances.”

  “It would indeed,” Willi murmured. He shook himself. “Shall I make more coffee?”

  “Not for me, thank you,” Iskinder said, and Jerry shook his head.

  “Was everything all right at the dig?”

  “Yes.” Willi sighed. “It seems someone tried to cut the chain on the gate, but they weren’t able to get through before someone heard them. Hussein and I checked over the site just in case, but everything is fine.”

  “That’s good.”

  “We may want to consider a second watchman.”

  “We’ll look at the budget,” Jerry said. He was watching Iskinder, whose hand never stopped moving, adding a word here, crossing out two more there. It couldn’t be easy to compress everything he needed to say, everything he wanted to get through, into even a long telegram.

  As if he’d read the thought, Iskinder looked up. “I’m almost done, if you or Willi would be willing to take it to the Telegraph Office. I’d say wait for a reply, but they’ll need time to find out what’s possible. But they should have an answer by morning.”

  Jerry nodded. “And your contact with the guns? How do we get in touch with him?”

  “He is on the telephone,” Iskinder said. “And I see you were wise enough to sign up as well. And since this is a nice modern system, I see no reason not to use it.”

  Jerry blinked, then remembered the landlord bragging that Alexandria had gone to an automatic exchange the previous year. There were no more operators to listen in on every local call. New York had been the same. “I suppose not.”

  “And I will take a nice walk to the Telegraph Office,” Willi said.

  “We both will,” Jerry said. Willi tipped his head to one side in question, and Jerry shrugged. “What could be more uninteresting than a pair of middle-aged academics taking a walk together on a holiday?”

  “Very well.”

  Willi looked as though he wanted to ask about Jerry’s leg, but Jerry pretended not to notice. He was doing well enough, better than he’d done in Hawaii, and a little extra walking was unlikely to cause too much trouble. And if it did — well, they could always take a cab back to the flat.

  Iskinder handed over the final draft of the cable. Jerry tucked it into the breast pocket of his jacket, and then he and Willi made their way down the stairs and out into the brilliant sunshine. They took the long way around, along the Corniche among the holiday crowds, the ocean glittering and the breeze cool enough to cut the sun’s heat. They were unremarkable, two more Europeans among dozens, outnumbered by native Egyptians, but hardly alien. There were Africans of all nations, and in every possible costume, from robes and tall headdresses to flawless English suits; there was a family of robed Arabs as well, their women black-veiled from head to toe, each riding sidesaddle on a tiny donkey. For a moment, Jerry’s vision wavered, the stones shifting, walls rising in new shapes to either side, but the crowd remained as cheerfully polyglot. Some of that inheritance, at least, had lasted. He took a tighter grip on his cane and moved on. If anyone was taking an undue interest in them, he couldn’t find them.

  The main telegraph office was open, though with a smaller staff than usual. Jerry copied Iskinder’s message onto a form and took his place in the short line, leaning on his cane. The lobby was less busy, too, just a handful of businessmen in suits who couldn’t wait for the next day, plus a tall African in blinding white robes and a rumpled European who looked like the caricature of a journalist. Jerry gave him a sharp look, but the man seemed to be paying no attention, and he made himself look away.

  He handed over the form and the fee to an efficient-looking clerk, who glanced at it and slid the bills back across the counter. “It’s double for code, sir.”

  “It’s standard commercial code,” Jerry said, and made himself sound martyred.

  “It is harder for our operators, and the risk of error is greater. You would be better sending this in clear.”

  “Nevertheless,” Jerry said. “I wish to send it as it is. How much extra?”

  “Double.”

  And that, Jerry thought, was a less than official rate if ever he’d heard one. He waited just long enough to be sure the clerk understood that he knew what was happening, then shrugged, and added to the pile of bills. “Very well. But it’s to be sent as is.”

  “All errors are at your own risk,” the clerk said, but took the money. “Where shall the reply be sent? You haven’t filled that out.”

  “To be collected later,” Jerry said, and refrained from pointing out that he’d checked that box.

  “Very well.” The clerk took money and form, and Jerry turned away.

  Willi held the door for him, and they went down the broad marble steps, Jerry holding tight to the rail for fear his leg would slip.

  “One down,” Willi said, and Jerry nodded.

  “That’s a good thought, sending one of the men to pick it up.”

  “I was thinking perhaps Rajid, he’s very protective of the dig.”

  They were speaking German, as they usually did between themselves: another red herring, Jerry thought, though it hadn’t begun that way. “I agree.”

  They started back toward the harbor, the sun hot on their backs. Jerry was glad of his broad-brimmed Panama and the light linen suit he’d bought in Hawaii three years before. So far, everything seemed to be going well; with a little luck, Alma could get the guns delivered and be safely back in Italy before anyone really noticed they were gone. As if he’d read the thought, Willi gave him a sidelong glance.

  “Aren’t you a little worried about your friends going into a war zone? I mean, I know
they’re good pilots, but this… And there’s Mrs. Segura to think about.”

  “She wouldn’t thank you for that,” Jerry said.

  “No. Would it be better if I said there were the children to think about?”

  Jerry grimaced. “That’s a low blow.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s simply true.” Willi gave him another look, this one accompanied by a wry smile. “I liked the children, you know. Jimmy settled down quite a bit there at the end.”

  “If any of them didn’t go, it would put the others at greater risk,” Jerry said. “And —” Iskinder was a member of their Lodge; they’d sworn to help each other at need, without reservation, and this was certainly a case of grave need. But Willi didn’t want to hear about the Lodge, even in the most innocuous terms. “Iskinder is an old friend.”

  Willi’s eyebrows twitched, as though he’d guessed what went unsaid. “A very good friend.”

  “He was Gil’s best man when he married Alma,” Jerry said. “He and Mitch. I thought — we all thought —”

  He broke off, not wanting to finish the sentence, staring blindly at the glittering sea held in the curve of the harbor. Gil had been dead for almost a decade, and still sometimes the loss caught him like a knife in the ribs. Willi lifted his hand as though to touch his shoulder, but caught himself before he could finish, adjusting his hat awkwardly instead.

  “You’ve never told me how they came to marry,” he said, after a moment. “Under the circumstances.”

  Meaning that Jerry had been Gil’s lover first, before he’d met Alma. Jerry sighed. “I met Gil during the war,” he said. “He told me from the first that he liked women, too, and I — I really didn’t care. Al was with the Ambulance Corps, that’s how they met, and they fit. As well as Gil and I, and completely differently. And — I liked Al. I like her still.” He shrugged, trying to find the words for what was still both precious and painful, and impossibly complex. “And any of us might be dead tomorrow, so why grudge either of them anything? And then we could see the war ending, and I wanted to go back into the field. I had teachers who would take me on, who’d be glad to have me running the details of their digs, and Gil wanted to get out of the Army and make himself a home. He and Alma could do that, and I could have him in the off-season, or for some of it, and we thought we could make it work.”

  They had slowed their pace to match his thoughts, and now he leaned against a stone bollard overlooking the water, its pale surface worn smooth by weather. Medieval, he thought, not Roman, part of the later harbor. “But then I was wounded, and Gil was caught in a gas attack, and we both ended up in the hospital in Venice. I wasn’t as badly hurt, and they sent me back to the States while Gil was still doing badly. We — Alma and I didn’t think he was going to make it, and I couldn’t figure out any way to stay. And then he rallied, just when they were winding up the ambulance corps, and Alma needed to stay. So they married — I still don’t know what Mitch said to the poor chaplain to make it seem like a good idea. Iskinder bought the ring in a pawnshop behind San Zaccaria.”

  “That doesn’t seem entirely fair,” Willi said. From his tone, he was suppressing stronger words, and Jerry couldn’t help smiling.

  “It didn’t change anything. They both wrote me long letters telling me so, and it didn’t.” What had changed things was his foot, the infected wound that ate at flesh and bone, until all the doctors could do was amputate. He’d been lucky to keep his knee, or so they’d told him.

  “Still.”

  “It was what I wanted,” Jerry said. “I moved in with them after I lost my leg, and we were happy. There was nothing they could have given me that I didn’t have.” Until Gil died, tuberculosis brought on by the gas, but that was a memory he would not relive today.

  Willi shook his head, his expression softening. “You are nothing if not complicated.”

  “I did warn you.”

  “Fortunately, I like complications.”

  And was that a declaration, in the middle of the day on an open street in Alexandria? Of all the times and places… Jerry shook his head. “You’re likely to find them if you hang around me.”

  And that was a little too close to other matters, Lodge matters, the magic that Willi feared and disbelieved. Jerry pushed himself upright before he could see Willi’s expression change, and started down the promenade. Willi fell into step beside him.

  “And this is why you’ll help Ras Iskinder,” he said after a moment.

  “That’s part of it.” Jerry glanced around, but no one was close enough to hear the name. “I told you, he was my roommate in college, too.”

  “You know the most interesting people!” Willi’s voice was light, but there was something in his expression that brought Jerry up short. “Don’t look round, but there is a man in a pale gray suit — an Egyptian, I think. I am pretty sure he was at the Telegraph Office.”

  “Damn.” A one-legged man could hardly stop to tie his shoelaces, but he could pause to catch his breath. Jerry leaned heavily on his cane, letting his gaze drift back along the curve of the harbor. Yes, there was the man, staring out to sea as though there was something more on the horizon than a fishing boat with its trail of gulls. “We can’t lead him back to the flat.”

  “If he’s following us,” Willi said, automatically. He shrugged one shoulder. “Let’s walk on, and see what happens.”

  “Right.” Jerry moved off, feeling a trail of sweat crawling down his spine. If the Italians had had an agent at the telegraph office, if they’d managed to overhear the telegram’s destination or if they’d bribed a clerk to be warned when someone wired addresses in Ethiopia… It didn’t really matter how they’d been spotted; what mattered now was to lose the man.

  They turned away from the Corniche and into a maze of streets that eventually led past the dig site. At the newly reinforced fence, they paused to look at the lock, and Willi said, “He’s still with us.”

  “So I see.” Jerry checked the chain a second time, and nodded to the watchman who emerged from the nearest doorway. “No more trouble?”

  “None, Professor. It was boys, and tomorrow most of them will be in school and we will have no more trouble, God willing.”

  “God willing,” Willi echoed.

  Jerry let them talk, his mind running ahead. They couldn’t go back to the flat, it would be too easy for their follower to see that they had a third man in the little apartment. With his leg, there was no chance he could outdistance the man, and darting in and out of doorways would only reveal that they were onto him without having much chance of losing him.

  “Jerry?”

  Jerry shook himself and straightened, a new idea blooming. “Yes. Let’s have lunch at Trianon.”

  Willi blinked, then tipped his head to one side. “Why not?”

  The cafe was open and not too crowded, and Jerry was relieved to see that the headwaiter was Nikodem, who could be relied on for both discretion and advice, as well as assistance to his fellow homosexuals. “An inside table, if you wouldn’t mind,” he said aloud, and the Greek bowed.

  “Of course, professors. This way, please.”

  Jerry held his breath as they were settled at a quiet table in the back. If the man followed them inside, this plan was spoiled — but, no, through the open door he could see the flash of the gray suit and then a waiter led him to another table on the sidewalk. That was, of course, the sensible thing to do: wait outside, and when his quarry left, follow them again. Nikodem brought menus, opening them with a flourish, and then bent close enough that the nearest tables could not hear.

  “Is everything all right, professor?”

  “Probably,” Jerry said, and Willi snorted.

  “You are an optimist. Niko, it is very possible we might want to leave by the back door, if that would be at all possible.”

  “Of course. Trouble?” Nikodem rubbed two fingers against his thumb, a familiar symbol for blackmail.

  “Not yet,” Willi said.

  “We’d l
ike to avoid any question of that,” Jerry said.

  “Allow me to arrange,” Nikodem said. “And in the meantime — perhaps instead of eating here, you would like to take your meal with you?”

  Willi gave him a questioning look, and Jerry considered. The man wouldn’t be expecting them to leave until they’d eaten; if they slipped out the back way early, through the garden and the alley beyond, there was every chance the man wouldn’t think to look for them until they were long gone. “Yes. That would be extremely helpful.”

  “Allow me,” Nikodem said again. “Coffee first, and a pastry while I arrange matters.”

  Another waiter brought the coffee and delicate, cinnamon-flavored sticks that shattered at the lightest touch. They were good enough that Willi dabbed up the last crumbs, licking his fingers, and then Nikodem appeared, bowing politely.

  “If you’d come this way, professors?”

  He led them down the short hall that passed the kitchen, collecting a wicker basket covered with a plain napkin on the way. At the end of the hall, a door opened onto the little garden, where the private parties were held, and Nikodem unlocked the back gate. “If you could return the basket —”

  “Of course,” Willi said.

  Jerry reached into his pocket, brought out his wallet and handed over enough cash to pay for the meal twice over.

  “It’s too much, professor,” Nikodem began, and Jerry shook his head.

  “Not at all. Your help is much appreciated.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Nikodem pocketed the money. “And if you will forgive my saying so, professors — perhaps it would be wiser to stay with each other?”

  Jerry suppressed a snicker. Of course that was what Nikodem would assume, that they’d been chasing boys in the less salubrious districts, and had gotten themselves into trouble.

  “Very good advice,” Willi said, his mouth quivering toward a smile, and they let themselves out into the alley.

  They made their way back to the flat as quickly as possible, both men keeping an eye out for any other followers. There was no sign of pursuit, and Jerry allowed himself a sigh of relief as they closed the front door behind them.