Ghosts of War: A Tale of the Ghost

by George Mann

  He had been running through various scenarios in his mind, contemplating his next move. There was always the safe house in Brooklyn. He'd considered, after what had happened, jumping aboard one of the pneumatic trains and disappearing, becoming somebody else for a while. He could even scrape together enough money to purchase a booth aboard an airship under an assumed identity, although that, in itself, presented its own risks. He knew it wasn't really an option, though. What use would it be to save his own hide if it meant everything he held dear was put at risk? Even worse, if it resulted in the outbreak of war?

  But what else could he do? There was little chance he'd be able to deliver his message to London in time, now. A holotube call wouldn't be secure, unless it was from the embassy building, but it was beginning to look increasingly necessary. It would most likely mean the end for him. If the operator was screening calls for the police, they'd be on him in moments. It wasn't so much that he was afraid to sacrifice himself for the cause—he'd crossed that line many times before and always been lucky. No, it was more that he wanted his sacrifice to be worthwhile, and if he gave himself away now, he'd be no use to anyone.

  If only he could find his way into the embassy. He knew the staff there would be too scared to speak to him now, though, and in all likelihood they were being observed, too. Any clandestine meeting he might be able to arrange would only lead the American agents straight to him, and worse, could endanger his colleagues and countrymen. Either way, he'd be playing right into their hands, and the outcome could be only one thing: war.

  Even if he could get a message to London, there was very little they could realistically do to prevent the planned attack from taking place. If they went in with guns blazing they'd be giving the Americans exactly what they wanted—or at least that small group of dissident Americans who had engineered this whole situation with such meticulous precision. At least they'd be ready for it, however, able to mount some sort of defense. And at least they'd understand that the attack had not been sanctioned by the president, but plotted by a splinter group of sour-faced politicians anxious only to line their own pockets with the spoils of war.

  What Rutherford needed was an ally, someone who could make the call on his behalf, who wouldn't be suspected. That would then leave Rutherford free to act, to be the man on the ground, to attempt to prevent the attack from ever taking place.

  Then it struck him: Arthur Wolfe, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an Englishman living in exile in New York. One of the few. They'd met on occasion, at first by coincidence, but more recently by design.

  Wolfe knew Rutherford only as Jerry Robertson, the philanthropist from Boston, but perhaps now was the time for Rutherford to show his hand. Could he trust Wolfe to take his message to the embassy? He didn't know the man well enough to be sure, and it was a hell of a risk. Whatever he was, though, Wolfe wasn't a traitor. Rutherford had established that much during their brief interactions at the museum. Through careful questions disguised as idle chitchat—the skilled work of a spy—Rutherford had come to understand that Wolfe still loved his country. Perhaps now he could be coaxed into helping to save it.

  A plan resolved in Rutherford's mind. He would wait here, with the geisha girl, until the museum opened for the day. Then he would settle his account with the madam and be on his way. After that…well, he still hadn't quite decided. If he could get out of this alive, then at least he'd be free to act. He knew the players involved in this dangerous game—the people he had spent the last few months in the company of, winning their confidence, pretending to be someone and something he was not. He could start there. If, of course, Arthur Wolfe would be prepared to help.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art was a remarkable edifice, an imposing mausoleum filled with all the many wonders of the dead. It sat squat on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park, and while Rutherford had always admired the institution, he couldn't help thinking its classical columns and monumental facade looked somehow misplaced among the teeming streets and towering apartment blocks of the metropolis, more like something out of Regency London than New York City.

  Nevertheless, he'd found the place both a haven and an inspiration during his time in the city, and while its collection didn't quite, for him, live up to that of the other, similar institution that was so close to his heart—the British Museum—it was still quite remarkable.

  He found the ticket hall empty, and his footsteps echoed as he pushed his way through the heavy wooden door. It was still early, and the bustle of tourists had yet to emerge, bleary-eyed, from their hotel room beds. Rutherford crossed to the sales desk, where a young woman—pretty, he supposed, but somewhat marred by a sour-looking expression—greeted him with all the enthusiasm he had come to expect. She gazed vacantly up at him, as if warning him not to make her life any more difficult than it already was.

  “One-day pass?”

  “Please,” Rutherford responded politely, folding a few dollar bills out of his wallet and placing them on the counter before her.

  She slid the bills toward her and pulled the stub of a ticket from the machine, passing it over with a contrived smile. “Thank you. Have a good day.”

  Rutherford nodded and took the ticket, dropping it into his pocket. Then, folding his overcoat over his arm, he turned and crossed the lobby toward the Roman exhibit in search of Arthur.

  The Roman collection, he knew, had been somewhat diminished following the events of the prior month. Rutherford wasn't privy to all of the details—and Arthur had been cagey at best about what had really occurred—but he gathered there had been some sort of confrontation between the mob and the police, resulting in a firefight that had destroyed almost half of the exhibits. Consequently the Roman wing had been closed for two weeks while the mess was cleared up, and when it had reopened, many of the exhibits had been missing, damaged and being repaired, or destroyed.

  Arthur had been busy, trying to sort through the wreckage to ascertain what could be salvaged and what could not. He'd also—he'd told Rutherford in a rare moment of candor—been provided with a significant budget by the museum's curator to replace as many of the artifacts as possible, or to find suitable alternatives in the bustling auction houses of Europe. He was planning to make a trip home the following month, back to England, before going on to Paris and Rome, his pockets stuffed with the museum's dollars.

  Rutherford nodded to the impeccably dressed security guard as he passed from the lobby into the Roman wing, his footsteps ringing out in the cavernous space. The place was deserted, occupied only by the ghosts of yesteryear.

  Rutherford paced around, taking in the exhibits. The blank faces stared at him from across the millennia. The faces of the dead, the remnants of an empire long gone, reduced to dust by the weight of history. Rutherford feared that if he couldn't somehow stop the planned attack on London, the British Empire would end up the same way.

  He supposed that was inevitable, eventually. The empire wouldn't— couldn't—last forever. The people behind this scheme to ignite the tensions between the empire and the United States were aiming to accelerate that decline, however, to bring matters to a head, to engage the empire in all-out war. If they were successful, whatever the outcome of that war, it would set the British back decades, if not longer.

  Even if they proved victorious, it would only be a matter of time before the entropy set in. The expense of another full-blown conflict—in terms of men as well as arms and commodities—would stretch the empire beyond its breaking point. No longer able to police their borders, and most likely facing revolt as a consequence of the ensuing rise in crime, violence, and political unrest, the British would soon lose their hold on their colonies. After that…well, they'd be laying themselves open to an attack from any number of potential suitors, not least their former cuckolds, the Americans.

  Whatever the case, what the empire couldn't withstand was the fallout that would result from another war, and Rutherford was, he realized with a frisson of fear, the only man on th
e ground who could do anything about it. Well, him and Arthur Wolfe, if the haughty expatriate could be persuaded to help him.

  Rutherford knew it was a waiting game now. Arthur would be along shortly, as he always was, and he would stop to pass the time of day with his acquaintance, Jerry Robertson. It was then that Rutherford would have to show his hand, and hope to God that Arthur didn't lose his cool.

  In any event, it was only a matter of a few minutes before the gangly curator came bustling through the exhibit carrying a cardboard box. His glasses were balanced precariously on the end of his nose—a little jauntily—and he looked hassled, as if the day were already throwing up insurmountable problems. He stopped, however, his expression changing, when he saw Rutherford standing by a glass case filled with Roman coins.

  “Hello, Jerry. A little early in the day for you, isn't it?” Arthur said in his bright British accent.

  Rutherford smiled. When he spoke, it was with the thick New England accent he'd spent so long affecting during the last few months. “You know what they say about the early bird, Arthur,” he said, grinning. “I was hoping to have a word.”

  Arthur looked a little taken aback, but nodded. “Of course. Why don't you come with me while I find a home for this box? Another fragment, I'm afraid. Not much use to anyone anymore.”

  Rutherford smiled, then followed Arthur across the hall toward a small office hidden in the far corner. The door was inset with opaque glass. Arthur handed Rutherford the box while he unlocked the door, and Rutherford was surprised by how heavy it was. “My office is upstairs, tucked out of the way. This is just a storeroom. We're using it to store all of the fragments while I see what we can save.” He held the door open and Rutherford stepped inside, sliding the box onto a wooden workbench that ran the length of the left-hand wall. The room was small and overflowing with fragments of broken statues, pottery, and cardboard boxes. Disconcertingly, a woman's head, carved exquisitely from white marble, lay on the floor just by his feet.

  “So, what was it you wanted to talk to me about, Jerry?” Arthur ventured, still standing in the doorway, propping the door open with his foot.

  Rutherford cleared his throat. He fixed the other Englishman with a serious expression. “Step in and close the door, if you will, Arthur,” he said, dropping the accent and allowing Arthur to hear his real voice for the first time.

  Arthur's expression changed immediately from one of interest to one of suspicion. “What's going on, Jerry?” he said, remaining steadfastly where he was. He looked back over his shoulder, as if to see where the security guard was placed.

  “My name isn't Jerry,” Rutherford said, quietly. “It's Peter Rutherford. I'm an Englishman working for the British government, and I'm here to ask for your help.”

  Arthur stared at him, his eyes wide with incredulity. “So you've been lying to me all this time? Pretending to show an interest in my work, so you could…what? Recruit me?”

  “No, it's not like that, Arthur. Please believe me.” Rutherford wanted to grab the other man by the collar and shake him, tell him to shut up and listen, that he was the only one who could help. But instead, he kept his tone calm, measured. “Please, step inside. We need to talk.”

  Arthur glowered at him, but did as he said, and Rutherford breathed a short sigh of relief. So, he was willing to listen. “I'm sorry I deceived you, Arthur, but I'd ask you to believe me when I say I was trying only to maintain my cover. I've been working in New York for some months, infiltrating a small group of powerful men who are planning to try to start a war between the United States and the British Empire.” He paused for a moment, allowing his words to sink in. “There's an airship leaving for London in a few days, ostensibly disguised as a passenger liner, but in reality carrying some sort of superweapon that it will attempt to deploy when it arrives. The men behind this attack believe the British government will see this as a preemptive strike from a country with which they have been locked in a cold war for the last decade and will advise the queen to commit to a full retaliation. By that time, however, half of London will have been destroyed, and the war will already have been lost.”

  Arthur shook his head in apparent disbelief. “This is madness. You're telling me the US government is about to lay siege to London?”

  Rutherford shook his head. “No, not quite. It's a splinter group, nine men with enough money and motivation behind them to engineer the attack. But if they succeed, it'll be enough to ignite the conflict and bring everything to a head. The British will have no choice but to respond, and then the US government will order in their troops. It'll be a bloodbath.”

  “And why come to me with this? I work in a museum, for God's sake! What can I do?”

  “I need you to take a message to the British embassy. That's all. Just walk in there and hand them a note. That way they'll know what's going on and they can get a warning to London. They have a secure line, directly to the Minister for Foreign Affairs.” Rutherford rubbed a hand across his face. This was it. This was crunch time.

  “If it's such a simple task, why can't you perform it yourself?” Arthur asked, clearly wishing he were somewhere else. “Why involve me?”

  “Because the embassy is being watched, and they know who I am. I'd never even get through the door. You, on the other hand—no one will suspect a museum curator of being involved, especially as you're planning a trip home.”

  Arthur shook his head. He made to reach for the door handle. “Look, I'll have no part in your ridiculous war games, Rutherford—or whatever your real name is. I think you need to leave.”

  “Arthur, you're missing the point! I'm trying to prevent a war! Can't you see? If this attack is allowed to go ahead, the British won't hesitate to authorize a full-blown retaliation. Queen Alberta is spoiling for a fight. Things will escalate, and before we know it there'll be another conflict, this time on a scale none of us can even imagine. Millions of people will die. It's in your power to help me put a stop to it.” He paused, searching the other man's face. “Please, will you do it?”

  Arthur was wearing a pained expression. “I won't be a pawn, Rutherford. I won't be misled into getting involved in something above my head. Something dangerous.”

  Rutherford sighed. “I won't lie to you, Arthur, not anymore. It might be dangerous. But if you don't help me, it's likely I'll die trying to make that call.” He met the other man's gaze. “I might well die anyway, but at least that way I'll die trying to make a difference. Trying to stop that airship from ever leaving New York. If you can take this message to the embassy”—he reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheaf of paper, holding it out to the other man—”then even if I fail, at least they can be ready. At least they can try to defend themselves.” He searched Arthur's face. “If I'm wrong, what's the worst that can happen? You make a fool of yourself taking a scrap of paper to the embassy and telling them a spy came to see you at the museum and handed you this note.”

  Arthur eyed the folded piece of paper in his hand. He seemed about to reach out for it, and then hesitated. “How do I know I can trust you?” he asked.

  Rutherford shrugged. “What have I possibly got to gain? I've been through one war, Arthur, and it damn near ruined me. I've seen what it can do to a man. I've seen better men than me perish in their thousands. I won't allow that to happen again. This isn't what the American people want, and it isn't want the British want, either, despite what Queen Alberta might say.”

  Arthur nodded, and then reached forward and plucked the note from Rutherford's hand. “All right, I'll do it. I'll do it because I can't risk not taking you at your word. Because if I didn't do it and all those people died, I couldn't live with that. I'll do it to prevent a war.”

  Rutherford nodded. “Then you have my undying thanks, Arthur. Act quickly, as soon as you possibly can. The earlier we get the message to London, the better. It's all in the note.”

  “What will you do now?” Arthur said, a concerned expression on his face.

  “Whatev
er it takes, Arthur,” Rutherford replied levelly. He'd been mulling it over as he'd been talking, and a plan had slowly begun to resolve in his mind. He knew who was responsible for this mess, the man who had originally conceived the plan to attack London, the man who the others in that small cabal of statesmen and politicians all looked to for their lead: Senator Isambard Banks. That was his best lead. He was the man on the ground, and he had to act. Arthur would get the warning to the embassy, and from there they would transmit it to London. Now it was up to Rutherford to see if he could prevent the attack from happening at all. “I'm going to try to stop a war,” he said determinedly.

  He reached out and took the curator's hand in his own, shaking it briskly. “Thank you, Arthur. And good luck.”

  Arthur gave him a wry smile. “Don't go and get yourself killed, Jerry—Peter,” he said, tucking the scrap of paper into his shirt pocket.

  Rutherford grinned. Getting himself killed was absolutely the last thing on his mind.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The hangar was immense.

  It squatted like some vast, metallic growth by the docks, all steel cladding and heavy iron girders—a huge, shining limpet in the heart of a gray industrial landscape. It had been erected six months earlier along with its twin, which sat squarely beside it, identical in almost every way. The buildings had been commissioned by the state of New York and, as such, had actually been funded by taxpayers, although if asked, most tax-paying New Yorkers wouldn't have known anything about them. If anyone had cared to look, they would have been able to trace the paperwork all the way back to the state senator himself, Isambard Banks.