by Baen Books
And truth! Truth was the most important cause of all, he thought, as he pocketed his forged passport.
*****
Gabrielle took her place at a small table in the salon, chosen for its excellent view of the doors at either end of the long room. She ordered café au lait and thought through the mission.
A member of a covert anarchist organization called the Chevaliers Autonome de la Peuple (Independent Knights of the People) had stolen a complete set of engineering drawings of a new and quite advanced design of British aether battleship, to be christened the Prince of Wales. Unfortunately, the theft was discovered almost at once and all traffic across the Pas de Calais closed to prevent the agent’s escape to France. He had instead made his way by fishing boat to Norway and then had been helped to Munich by Volksritterbund, the German branch of his organization, generally known simply as der Bund. Once they made contact, she would exchange a sheaf of charcoal-sketched landscapes of the French countryside for the aether battleship plans, each rolled up in identical brown leather carrying tubes.
“I beg your pardon, Miss, but are you bound for Istanbul?”
Two middle-aged gentlemen—one lean and one portly--occupied the table to her left. The heavier man, who sat closest to her, had asked the question in English.
Although she understood him perfectly, she gave him a puzzled look. “Pardonez moi?”
“Ah. French,” he said to his lean companion, whose attention seemed more on his newspaper than the conversation. “Well damn me. Eighteen months ago in Belgium we and the Huns were shooting them down like swine, and now Frogs ride on the zepps as pretty as you please.” He turned back to Gabrielle and spoke slowly and loudly.
“YOU…” And he pointed forcefully at her several times, “GO…” Making a motion in the air back and forth with his left hand, perhaps representing the passage of the zeppelin although Gabrielle could not be sure . . . , “IS—TAN—BULL?” he finished and put his forefingers pointing up from the top of his head, like a bull’s horns. Gabrielle laughed.
“Ah, oui! Istanbul.”
“Jolly good,” he said and then turned back to his companion. “Nothing like a French tart to liven up the landscape.” His friend lowered the newspaper and looked at Gabrielle for a moment, nodded politely to her, and then went back to his reading.
“Best keep your mind on our business,” the slender man said.
“Well damn me, speak of our business and in it walks,” the first man said. His companion again lowered the newspaper and the two of them watched a new arrival carry his bags through the entryway and toward the bar. “Armbruster,” the portly man added, and his lip curled in a sneer as he said it.
“That chap behind the Prince of Wales mess?” his companion said, folding his newspaper and now clearly interested.
“That’s the one. A bounder for certain. We’d best keep an eye on him.”
The Prince of Wales! The name of the stolen aether battleship plans. Gabrielle felt a surge of excitement. Had she, by sheer chance, taken a seat by the very British agents she would have to guard against on this mission? And had they already identified the agent she was to contact? Trying not to show any particular interest she followed their gaze and saw a tall man shouldering his way through the crowd. He certainly dressed as an Englishman, in tweeds, and he carried a circular leather document tube over one shoulder! It was not exactly the same as hers—larger and a lighter shade of brown leather—which was inconvenient, but how was der Bund to know the exact dimensions and color of the case she would bring?
Without looking at the two British agents beside her she recalled their exact words—another of her particular talents— and combed through them for any additional clues. Most of the words she understood, but what was a bounder? The English always mispronounced foreign words, sometimes she thought as a matter of pride. Could he have meant a member of der Bund? And the lean British agent had described this new arrival as a chap. What was a chap? Some sort of code perhaps? What could it—Ah! Of course. Chevaliers Autonome de la Peuple. Ch-A-P!
The tall man stopped by the salon bar, lowered his valise and document case to the deck, and ordered a drink from a steward. Maintaining an appearance of outward calm, Gabrielle finished her café au lait and left a ten-pfennig coin beside the saucer. She rose and crossed the crowded salon toward the man who, whiskey glass in hand, now watched her approach. He raised an eyebrow in quiet inquiry and she answered in kind, bringing a knowing smile to his face.
Aware that the British agents would be watching, she did not look at him or address him directly when she reached his side, but instead stood with her hands on the railing beside the large glass windows which overlooked the landing ground and, stretching away behind it, the city of Munich. Her eyes on the crowd below, she said in a quiet voice meant only for his ears, “Bonjour, Monsieur. You are perhaps interested in a French lady traveling alone?”
Before answering he took a large swallow of whiskey.
“You must have read my mind,” he replied in a low voice.
“I hardly think that necessary. Your accent, it is quite good by the way.”
“Well, why wouldn’t it be?” he said.
That was true, she thought. An agent passing for British would have paid special attention to this detail. “Do you perhaps have some pictures to show me?” she asked.
“Pictures?” he repeated and then smiled. “Why yes, I have some very fine etchings in my stateroom I think you may find quite interesting.”
“Bon,” she answered. Below the window the ground crews made ready to unmoor the zeppelin. Their shadows stretched behind them, rendered long and grotesque by the angle of the setting sun. The ship would be aloft in a few minutes. Gabrielle made a quick calculation as to how long before they would be safely over Austrian air space.
“I will come to your cabin at eleven this evening. What is the number?”
He took another swallow of whiskey and then fetched a key from his pocket.
“One seven nine,” he said.
“One seven nine,” she repeated. “Eleven this evening.” Without looking at him she turned and left.
Waldo Armbruster watched her leave, watched her walk the length of the salon, and felt a glow in his lower body not entirely the result of the whiskey. How could he be so lucky with women and so damned unlucky at baccarat? That was a mystery which sometimes plagued him, but wouldn’t trouble him much tonight, he imagined
He picked up his valise and the cylindrical leather fly rod carrier and set off to find his stateroom.
A few minutes later Etienne Villon--aka Etienne Le Marchant—entered the salon and found a prominent place in the center of the room where he would be clearly visible to the French agent, and where he might pick her out as well. How many attractive French ladies would be traveling alone on the zeppelin? Not many, he hoped. He waited for an hour, waited as the crowd gradually thinned. He felt more and more exposed and alone, more and more as if he had walked into a trap. Soon he became certain of it.
Very well. If the English had trapped him then he would at least show them how a man of ideals, a man of principles, could die with dignity. Although his stomach churned with anxiety and he felt slightly nauseous, he squared his shoulders and looked around the room with an expression of haughty disdain.
Ten minutes later the steward’s staff asked him to leave so they could set the tables for supper. To his surprise, no one attempted to arrest him when he did so.
*****
Later that evening . . .
Waldo Armbruster rose from his chair in response to the knock at his stateroom door. He examined his pocket watch and his eyebrows went up.
“Almost an hour early,” he said to himself. “The young darling must have been particularly captivated by my charm.” He drained the brandy and soda—his third—and walked somewhat unsteadily to the door. Throwing it open he prepared to greet the delicious French lady but his smile vanished. “Oh. I can explain.”
**
***
At eleven o’clock precisely, Gabrielle turned the corner in the corridor which led to stateroom one-seven-nine and saw a small crowd of a dozen or so people in the passageway talking among themselves. As she grew near she realized the crowd milled before the open door to the very stateroom she wished to visit.
“You must clear the passageway,” a white-coated steward said in German, and made pushing motions with his hands. “All passengers will please return to their cabins at once, by order of the Hauptzahlmeister.”
Gabrielle wondered what would have brought the Hauptzahlmeister—the vessel’s chief purser—here. “What has happened?” she asked in German of a couple turning to leave.
“A murder!” the woman answered. “Quite ghastly, they say. A great deal of blood.”
Gabrielle pushed on through the thinning crowd of passengers and saw the two British agents leaving in the opposite direction. Were they behind this? What else was she to think? When she reached the doorway, the steward held out his hands as if to stop her.
“No, my dear lady, you must return to your cabin at once.”
“But I have important business with the man in this cabin. If there has been foul play, I may know the reason why.”
“Foul play?” she heard a deep voice from inside the stateroom repeat. A tall, stout, handsome man of middle age, dressed in white tie and tails, appeared beside the steward. He was clearly not a member of the crew and yet the steward immediately deferred to him.
“Baron Renfrew,” the steward said, “this lady says she had business with the deceased.”
“What sort of business?” the baron asked.
Gabrielle opened her handbag and retrieved one of the business cards her superiors had provided as a cover for her mission. It read:
Mme. Gabrielle Courbiere
Commisaire-priseur de Beaux-Arts
13 Rue Madeleine, Le Havre, France
“Appraiser of fine art?” the baron said. “I did not suspect Armbruster’s tastes ran to that.”
Gabrielle instantly noticed three things: the baron had no difficulty in reading French, he apparently knew the agent, and the agent’s assumed name was Armbruster.
“As to his tastes I have no opinion, having met him only once and briefly,” she said. “He corresponded with me and said he had a number of previously unknown charcoal sketches of the French countryside by Jean-François Millet.”
“Millet?” the baron asked.
“Oui. Millet was one of the founders of the school Barbizan. If the landscapes are authentic they are quite valuable. I paid Monsieur Armbruster a considerable sum in advance, with the balance to be delivered if I could determine their authenticity. I have a proprietary interest in them, you see? He carried them in a cylindrical leather case. Was such a case found?”
The baron’s expression flickered in surprise. “Cylindrical case? You’d better come in,” he said, and the steward immediately stood aside and bowed. “Wait out here and see that we are not disturbed,” the baron added to the steward.
*****
Etienne Villon closed the door of his stateroom behind him and leaned against it, his head reeling. His aimless wandering, looking for the French agent, had led him to the crowd at the murder scene and there he had seen the woman who must be his contact—the overheard discussion of the landscape charcoals, her French accent, and above all her dizzying beauty, left no doubt in his mind.
He had not dared to make contact with her in public, but now he seethed with anxiety. He saw her talking with Baron Renfrew, saw her enter the stateroom and the door close behind her. Was it possible she did not know she stood face-to-face with the very embodiment of everything they fought against? No! Surely a French agent would know this man on sight and understand the terrible menace he represented. But she had walked into unspeakable, terrifying danger without a trace of fear, or even of hesitation. This was bravery of an order he had never witnessed before.
Extraordinary bravery and celestial beauty combined in one woman, and all of it dedicated to their common cause. A woman truly worth dying for!
He must find a way to rescue her.
*****
“It seems to me the man simply fell and hit his head on the corner of this small table,” the slender ship’s doctor said as he polished the lenses of his pince nez glasses. Beside him the chief purser nodded rapidly but with a look of clear distress on his ruddy, black-whiskered face. Gabrielle could imagine numerous reasons why he would prefer an accident to a murder.
She took a step closer and examined the body. Armbruster lay on his stomach with the small wooden table beside him. A corner of the table top was jaggedly broken off and the left side of the man’s skull was cracked open, brains exposed.
That was quite interesting. She had never before seen a man’s brains.
There was also, as the lady in the corridor had suggested, a considerable amount of blood which had begun to coagulate but was by no means dry. Much of it had puddled on the hardwood deck around the dead man’s head but she also saw evidence of a fine spray of blood, probably from the impact with the table. She noticed that no one had stepped in the blood, so that aspect of the scene was certainly undisturbed.
“Perhaps he fell,” she said. “Or perhaps it was staged to look this way, n’est ce pas? If this was an accident, the drawings will still be here.”
The doctor forcefully put his pince nez glasses back on and scowled, clearly annoyed to have his opinion contradicted. The chief purser shook his head in alarm.
“No, you must leave this to us, Madame Courbiere,” the purser said, but the baron cleared his throat and the two other men immediately turned to him.
“Considering the strained international situation,” the baron said slowly, his voice serious, “and the delicate relations between Germany and France, the zeppelin line may prefer you to exercise a special consideration for this lady’s business interests.” Although to Gabrielle’s ear the baron offered this as if solicitous advice, not a command, the chief purser straightened to attention.
“Of course, Herr Baron. Danke schön! Now let us find this case.”
For the next ten minutes the four of them—Gabrielle, the baron, the doctor, and the chief purser—searched the small cabin for the leather document tube but found nothing but a half-empty bottle of brandy, a small book of salacious photographs, slightly more than twenty pounds sterling in British currency, and Armbruster’s clothing and toiletries.
“He had the leather case with him when he boarded this afternoon,” Gabrielle insisted.
“The lady is unfortunately correct,” the doctor told the chief purser. “I saw it myself.”
The chief purser stared in appeal at the doctor for a moment but then his shoulders sagged and he shook his head.
“Ach! A murder. Never before has there been a murder on Der Hochflieger Ost. When we land in Vienna later today the authorities will want to know everything. Our passengers will be detained. It will be a great embarrassment to the firm. You, Baron, of course, will not be inconvenienced.”
The baron nodded his acknowledgement of what was apparently obvious to everyone but Gabrielle.
“You are perhaps the owner of the line?” she asked.
He gave her a quizzical smile in return. “I have no formal association with the zeppelin firm. The chief purser allowed me to be present as a courtesy. Armbruster was a fellow countryman, and… an acquaintance.”
He did not say friend, Gabrielle noticed. “A countryman--you are English? Your German is quite good.”
“Not exactly English. Welsh, I suppose.” He paused and smiled again as if at a private joke. “My family is originally from Germany. I still have relatives there.”
“Ah, très bien. Now, as to the murder: the chief purser is concerned with the delay and scandal, oui? But if we discover the criminal ourselves before we reach Vienna, all will be well. The man who has the missing case is surely our murderer.”
The man . . . or men, she thought.<
br />
“But how shall we proceed?” the chief purser asked, and looked at the others in desperation. The doctor answered in a voice clearly accustomed to giving commands.
“I see no alternative to a polite but insistent search of the passenger cabins for the missing tube.” The chief purser began to object, but the doctor waved him to silence and pressed on. “Surely the Viennese police will do the same, and with less consideration for our passengers and less discretion.”
The baron frowned in thought for a moment and looked up when he realized the other men were waiting for his opinion. “Yes, I do not suppose there is a good alternative.”
Gabrielle took one last look around the floor of the stateroom to see if anything was amiss, a button perhaps fortuitously lost from the murderer’s coat, or something dropped from a pocket, but she saw nothing out of place. She did notice that the baron’s shoes were polished almost to a mirror brightness, but that there were three very small dull dots on them, three spots where they did not reflect the light.
Dried blood? Surrounded as she was by the baron’s allies, she chose not to reveal what she had just noticed.
*****
Etienne watched through the narrow crack of his partly open stateroom door as the young French lady, the baron, a ship’s officer and an older gentleman passed in the corridor. Once they were gone he entered the hallway and, walking in the opposite direction, soon came to the door guarded by one of the stewards. Etienne walked up to him as casually as he could manage.
“Quite some excitement, eh?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” the young steward answered.
“And that woman . . .” He touched his fingertips to his lips.
“A real beauty,” the steward agreed with a smile. “And she is French, like you, sir.”