by Mick Farren
“I hate to be the one to tell you because I know you knew him, but Jack Kennedy is dead.”
Irrationally, Cordelia thought of Jesamine, and specifically how she had once categorized her crush on Kennedy as “terminal.”
ARGO
“How are they reacting in Albany?”
Gideon Windermere looked uncomfortable. “From the telegrams we’ve received, the whole kingdom is in shock.”
Argo was becoming angry. “This is going in every direction at once.”
Raphael nodded. “He’s right.”
Argo numerated points on his fingers. “We have four dead assassins who could have been pros or fanatics, and what would seem to be another shooter was using a rifle from a window or rooftop, and he or she has gotten clean away.”
Sir Harry Palmer looked coldly over his spectacles. “This fifth shooter is pure supposition.”
Jesamine’s counter-look was icy. “You saw the film the same as everyone else.”
“Are we sure what we saw? It was only for an instant.”
Jesamine was implacable. “I’m sure.”
Argo ignored Palmer and continued. “One of the assassins was a swarthy sonofabitch with a fresh scar under his arm like a Zhaithan tattoo had just been removed. Another was a Nordic blonde who could have been one of Hassan’s Teutons or possibly one of your home grown, polytheist Odin worshipers. The other two were nondescript fuckers who could have come from anywhere in Northern Europe. Their pockets were empty, their clothes were untraceable, and their weapons could have been bought in any underworld pub within a mile radius of where the assassination took place. Am I right so far?”
Palmer sighed and rolled his eyes. “Son, have you considered leaving all this to professionals?”
Argo came close to combative. He was very slightly drunk, and intended to be more so before the night ended. In the meantime, a poor boy from Virginia could take only so much. “Don’t call me ‘son.’”
Before Palmer could respond, Jesamine had jumped in. “If you’re so fucking professional, how is it that your professionalism didn’t extend to seeing any of this coming. Didn’t your intelligence people have an inkling that a plot was being hatched?”
“This isn’t a police state.”
“But you’re the police.”
While the coroners, diplomats, and regular detectives did their work, cables flew between Oslo, London, and Albany. They had left Great Scottland Yard and sought sanctuary in a public house called The Bow Street Runner for the restorative effects of beer, roast beef sandwiches, and scotch whiskey. Even in crisis, repairing to the pub when office discussions became either deadlocked or too heated for the participants’ good seemed to be an English tradition, and it had Argo’s full approval. On their way there, they had heard the shouting of leather-throated newsboys out on the street, as they sold the hot-from-the-press, special, late-afternoon editions of the three London evening newspapers, the Star, the News and the Standard.
“Read all about it! Horrible assassination! Jack Kennedy murdered!”
“Get yer special! Kennedy murdered! Read all about it!”
The Bow Street Runner was known as a coppers’ pub, frequented by off-duty policemen and a few civilians with nothing bad on their consciences. Sir Harry Palmer’s rank afforded him the use of a back room, a private telephone, and an aproned waiter to keep their refreshments coming. Also, their conversation would not be overheard, even by the rank and file of the Metropolitan Constabulary, some of whom were grouped around the piano in the saloon bar singing a mournful popular song that seemed to suit the prevailing mood of gloom.
Down in the valley
Down by the river
In the night I held you
And I felt you shiver
But now you left me
And gone to the town
And I have a notion
In the river to drown.
The gathering in the back room consisted of Argo, Raphael, Jesamine, Sir Harry Palmer, Gideon Windermere, Jane Tennyson, and the leader of the plainclothesmen who had brought Argo, Raphael, and Jesamine from Whitehall. His name had turned out to be Huntley and he held the rank of Superintendent. As an impasse had been reached between Palmer, Argo, and Jesamine, Windermere attempted to steer the discussion in a different direction. “There is also the matter of the autopsies.”
This, however, only increased the ire of Sir Harry Palmer, who glared blackly at Windermere. “I thought we’d agreed not to talk about that?”
“I don’t see how we can avoid it. We have a paranormal factor involved and these three are, if nothing else, paranormal combat veterans. They may also be targets. Let’s not forget that one of their number is already missing.”
Argo carefully put down his drink. “What paranormal factor? What else are we not being told?”
Now it was Palmer’s turn to ignore Argo. “We can protect them.”
At this, Jesamine snarled. “Like you protected Jack? Like you protected Cordelia? So far we’ve been really fucking secure. The leader of our delegation is dead and one of us is missing.”
Argo looked coldly at Sir Harry. “It’s time to cut the crap and start leveling with us, Sir Palmer.”
Tennyson, who was, of course, Navy, and therefore not under Sir Harry Palmer’s command, spoke up in support of Argo. “I don’t see how we can guarantee their safety if we don’t know what to expect.”
Windermere looked tense. “That’s the real problem. We don’t have a clue what to expect.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Windermere glanced at Palmer. “They have a right to know.”
Raphael’s voice was quietly dangerous. “We have a right to know what?”
Palmer threw up his hands. “So tell them, Windermere, but it’s on your head.”
“I’m very well aware of that.”
“So what’s the big revelation?”
“Aside from all four of the assassins being loaded to the gills on benodex, the coroner also reports that the brain of one of the assassins had already exploded before our lads shot him.”
“That makes no sense.”
“The benodex might indicate that the assassins on the street were a crazed and hallucinating diversion, providing a cover for the real killer, our possible sniper, if what we saw on the celluloid was what we surmise.”
Argo was mystified. “And the exploding brain?”
Windermere shook his head. “I have no idea.”
Raphael asked the obvious question. “Can too much benodex make your brain explode?”
Windermere shook his head. “It can make you feel like it is. But no, in actuality it isn’t possible. I was hoping that you might have encountered something like it, and could tell me.”
Both Argo and Raphael shook their heads, but Jesamine hesitated. Everyone at the table stared at her. “What?”
“It was something Cordelia said. After the battle, after Newbury Vale, she helped Slide interrogate a prisoner and, just as he started to spill his guts, his brain blew up.”
“Blew up?”
“As in physically. As in the bastard’s brain liquefied and flowed out of his eye sockets.”
“No shit.”
“Couldn’t Slide have done it to him?”
Jesamine shook her head. “According to Cordelia, Slide said it was smart posthypnotics with an advanced destruct conjuration. Whatever that means.”
“What the hell was Cordelia doing interrogating prisoners?”
“Slide apparently thought she might have a talent for it.”
Raphael nodded. “I can buy that.”
Jesamine ran her finger round the rim of her glass. “But I think she found she enjoyed it too much and it kind of spooked her. She was still kinda spooked when she told me about it one night on the Ragnar.”
Argo spoke without thinking. Booze was starting to loosen his tongue. “One of the few nights the two of you were alone on the Ragnar?”
Jesamine shot Argo a
murderous look. “Just shut the fuck up, Argo Weaver.”
Argo felt bad. She and Kennedy had first become involved on the Ragnar, but it was too late to take back the quip. Sir Harry was shaking his head. “Do you people always go on like this?”
Raphael turned aggressively. “As a matter of fact we do. You have a problem with that, Sir Palmer?”
Windermere moved in quickly as Palmer began to redden. “Did Cordelia say anything else?”
Again Jesamine hesitated, looking to Raphael and Argo for some kind of support or council. “I’m not sure if I should say.”
Argo shrugged. “We’ve just been lecturing these Norse folk about holding back information. I don’t see how we can keep anything to ourselves now.”
“The Zhaithan’s brain blew out when he started to talk about the White Twins.”
Argo groaned. “Damn it to hell.”
“Why?”
“Because it moves Jeakqual-Ahrach way up on the list of suspects, even before we have a list of suspects.”
Windermere looked surprised. “Wasn’t she always?”
“Yeah, but, up to now it all seemed a bit terrestrial for her.”
Sir Harry Palmer was looking mystified. “Would someone mind telling me who or what the White Twins are?”
Windermere signaled for a fresh round of drinks. “You have copies of a number of reports in your files. I believe you marked them “paranormal irrelevancy.”
All eyes turned to Sir Harry until the waiter arrived as a much-needed distraction. Argo reached for his fresh beer. “We need Slide. What the hell is he doing in Oslo?”
Windermere looked uncomfortable. “He’s no longer in Oslo. His last message said he was leaving for Muscovy. He did, however, send you all a telegram.”
He reached in his pocket and produced a folded sheet of coarse buff paper which he handed to Argo. Argo smoothed it flat and read silently.
YS to 4 ++ Jack Kennedy has been assassinated in a thousand interlocking dimensions ++ Stop ++ He never escapes ++ Stop ++ If there is a goddess, she created these variable dimensions to drive us crazy ++ Don’t grieve ++ Stop ++ Act ++ Stop ++ Courage ++ Stop ++ Slide
For an instant, Argo remembered a conversation with Slide, by a campfire, in what seemed like a different time, when they had first been on the run with the Rangers. As Slide had smoked and talked, Argo had assembled a vision of Slide as this dogged and relentless nonhuman desperado, fated to wander from dimension to dimension, and from reality to reality, waging a dark and personal war on the various incarnations of Hassan IX. Argo realized that he had always trusted Slide to turn up when he was needed. He still did. But the moment was both crucial and desperate, and this led Argo to the unpleasant conclusion that Slide was elsewhere because The Four were supposed to fly this one solo. But did Slide know that Cordelia was missing? That there might not be a Four? As time passed, and no word came from Cordelia, the assumption grew stronger that something had happened to her. It was some hours now since the assassination, and Cordelia must have heard what had happened, but she had not made contact. Slide was, usually and magickally, well aware of everything they did, and he had still not chosen to appear. Argo passed the note to Raphael, who read it and then gave it to Jesamine. She read the message in disbelief, and choked back a sob. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Argo took a deep breath. “It means the crucial word is “act.” It means, before we do anything else, we have to find Cordelia.”
CORDELIA
She had sat in the corner of the big black automobile, and burst into multipurpose tears. If Sera Falconetti was to be believed, Jack Kennedy was dead, and she was looking at a highly dubious future. All through her sobs Falconetti had made no move and said nothing. She simply allowed Cordelia to cry out her shock, and only spoke after Cordelia had been sitting upright for a while, staring silently at the night world passing by outside the car. “Are you okay now?”
Cordelia nodded. “Yes. I’m okay.”
On Cordelia’s side of the car, the edge of the road was lined with evenly spaced tree stumps, perhaps poplars, like the pictures she had seen in schoolbooks when she was a child, but now hacked down almost level to the ground. They were motoring fast across flat country, headlamps cutting through the blackness, and with almost no traffic to impede them, except an occasional wagon being dragged by a bony mule, or some beat-up rattletrap of a steamer. She noticed that, here and there, small knots of ragged men and women, and even a scattering of children, walked slowly and resignedly along the side of the road, as though there was a permanently drifting strata of homeless among the Franks. She glanced at Falconetti who could only shrug. “Migrant workers looking for the next job. The Empire has no economy.”
“And what are those?”
By far the bulk of the traffic on the long and very straight road was made up of heavy and slow-moving tanker trucks, lumbering in both directions under wheezing steam-power, with the code IPP FK90 painted in large letters on their sides, and, once she was over her emotional venting, Cordelia pointed out the next one to pass. Falconetti smiled wryly. “Slop tankers.”
“What are slop tankers?”
“You really haven’t been in the Empire before, have you?”
“Only occupied Virginia, when it was still occupied.”
“The tankers are going to and from the big Boulogne slop plant, officially known as Imperial Processing Plant FK90.”
“And what’s slop?”
“An idea thought up by the Mosul’s Teuton allies to both feed the masses and humiliate the Franks. You must have noticed the stench of fish when you came into Boulogne.”
“It was hard to miss.”
“Well, the fish, along with all kinds of other stuff—offal, waste protein, roots, spoiled grain, and, according to rumor, dead dogs and the odd human corpse—are fed into this huge grinder, boiled, and pounded until you have an unpleasant goo that is then dried or cooked into the various colors, flavors, and grades of meat substitute that is issued to the general population as part of their subsistence ration.”
“It sounds disgusting.”
“Imagine how the Franks feel with their long history of cuisine.” Falconetti broke off and stared ahead. “Best have your wits about you, we’re coming up to a checkpoint.”
Cordelia was suddenly alarmed. “A checkpoint? You mean Zhaithan?”
“Just Mosul regular army, and maybe a Ministry of Virtue agent. In this car, we should have no trouble.”
Cordelia peered up the road ahead, and saw two military vehicles, light armored cars, pulled across the road, their presence dramatically marked by guttering flares and red oil lamps. All traffic was forced to halt and subject itself to inspection by the group of armed and uniformed soldiers who stood beside the machines. Cordelia might have viewed this roadblock as a cause for panic, but Falconetti seemed perfectly calm, so she waited to see what would happen next. The car’s driver glanced back, and Falconetti nodded. He slowed the car as they approached the improvised barrier. A Teuton underofficer and two privates walked up to the car. Their carbines were slung over their shoulders and they showed no sign that they anticipated any sort of trouble.
“I don’t have time to explain, but look abject. Like a totally intimidated prisoner.”
Cordelia did as she was told and sank into her corner of the car, hunching her shoulders in a suitably cowed posture. The driver rolled down his window and talked to the soldier in a voice that was too low for Cordelia to hear. After a short conversation, the driver reached into a dashboard compartment, and handed the underofficer a file of papers. The underofficer inspected them, and his attitude noticeably changed. His heels came together and his spine straightened, until he was at de facto attention. The driver took back the papers, had another brief conversation with the underofficer and then rolled up the window, winking quickly at Falconetti. The car was waved through, and the soldiers manning the roadblock turned their attention to the next vehicle in line, an IPP FK90
slop tanker. When they were under way again, Cordelia straightened in her seat and looked at Sera Falconetti with a combination of admiration and curiosity. “How did you manage that? What was in those papers?”
“Jacques told the underofficer that we were on a special mission for Her Grand Eminence, and that the papers were letters of transit, personally signed by her, guaranteeing us the right to travel unhindered anywhere in the Empire.”
Signed by Jeakqual-Ahrach? You told me you were not an agent of Her Grand Eminence or the Zhaithan. Those were your exact words.”
Falconetti laughed. “And I’m not.”
“But the papers…”
“Don’t get paranoid, girl. The papers are forgeries, but coupled with the size and magnificence of the car, they are enough to impress any mere underofficer well beyond any thought of questioning them. Do you really think some noncom manning a roadblock in the middle of nowhere, who’s never so much as seen a letter of transit signed by Jeakqual-Ahrach, is going to risk delaying us while he attempts to check via Mosul communications that refuse to work half the time?”
“It’s starting to seem as though everything here runs on bluff or corruption, or it simply doesn’t run at all.”
“Bluff and corruption are two of our most effective weapons. Although don’t be under any illusion. Jacques and Luc were ready and able to shoot our way through the roadblock if the need arose. Never underestimate the value of lethal force when all else fails.” Falconetti produced a flask from a compartment of the car’s seat arm. She took a sip and offered it to Cordelia. “Cognac?”
“Please.”
“In reality the forgery was a damned good one, hand lettered on the right kind of parchment by a real artist. He even put a pinch of the paranormal on it; magicked the signature so it wavers and undulates when it’s looked at closely. I couldn’t imagine any bastard below the rank of colonel, in any of the Frankish Occupied Territories, having the balls to question it.”
Cordelia was not only encouraged by Falconetti’s confidence, but by the way she accepted the paranormal as part of life. It was refreshing after all those she had met who were so reluctant to face that it even existed. The big black car was once again racing through the night, almost alone on the open highway, and had it not been for the awful condition of the road surface that even bounced the Benz’s luxurious suspension, Cordelia might have slept behind a haze of exhaustion and brandy. She was hardly able to think any longer and certainly did not want to talk. For a while her head whirled. Jack Kennedy, who had always been there, was suddenly gone. She would never see him again. Back in London, Jesamine must have been beside herself with grief. And her own state was no better, roaring through the night with plainly powerful strangers who she neither understood, nor trusted. Fortunately Falconetti was not turning out to be the kind who insisted on making conversation, and, for long periods, was quite as content as Cordelia to stare silently into the night as it wafted past the car. Thus Cordelia had time to wrestle down her fears until her mind was a melancholy blank, and she had been quite prepared to stay that way, except that the blue-white glow had showed on the horizon, like a strangely compacted false dawn, and Cordelia spoke for the first time in what seemed to have been hours. “Is that a city? Is that Paris?”