Conflagration

by Mick Farren

  “The situation of the Falconetti Family and the other gangs in Paris is complicated. They are an outlaw enclave deep inside the Mosul Empire. The popular wisdom is that the Falconetti, and the rest of Il Syndicato, will do absolutely anything for anyone for a price. What the popular wisdom overlooks is that, at the same time, they, even though they do constant business with the Mosul through smuggling and the black market, are also in a continuous guerrilla war with them.”

  De Wynter intervened on Windermere’s behalf, appealing to their different memories of surviving under the Mosul. She sat deep in the room’s most commanding leather armchair, with a Russe lamp beside her. “You’ve all learned the hard way how all these multiple levels of corruption exist in the occupied territories.”

  Windermere took a deep breath and resumed. “Let me give you an example. Richthofen, the head of aviation research for Aschenbach, has a standing offer to any pilot who will fly an Odin Mk 5 biplane over to Mosul territory. If Richthofen’s technicians could back-engineer one of those babies, they could go into production, and have their own air power inside of six months. And the day the Mosul have air power will be the day when the NU finally goes to war. Falconetti could have organized the theft of an Odin by now. He more than has the resources. But he hasn’t done it. Why not? Because he knows if the Mosul have aircraft, they can bomb him out of Paris anytime they want. It really isn’t all about the money.”

  Jesamine frowned doubtfully. “There are those claiming that Il Syndicato put together Jack’s assassination, so it couldn’t be traced directly back to the Mosul and create an international incident.”

  Windermere sighed and nodded. “That’s one of the theories going round. Of course, it doesn’t account for the one whose brain melted; but, if they did, it wouldn’t be the first time that they took a contract for the Mosul that would give the bastards plausible deniability.”

  “And these are the people who have Cordelia?”

  Windermere was looking tired. “Personally I don’t believe that the Falconetti Family arranged Jack Kennedy’s death.”

  “No?”

  “That’s not to say that, if they knew the assassination was a done deal and unstoppable, they might not have come up with the weapons or the transport for a price. But to kill the Prime Minister of Albany in the heart of London? I don’t think so. First they wouldn’t go for it, and second they don’t have the organization to see it through.”

  De Wynter again helped out. “Or melt one of the assassin’s brains.”

  Jesamine was far from satisfied. “If Il Syndicato are happy to work for the Mosul, what’s to stop this Falconetti handing Cordelia over to the Zhaithan if the price was right?”

  Windermere shook his head. “I know for a fact he won’t do that.”

  Jesamine didn’t believe him. “What do you mean, you know? How can you know? I just made contact with Cordelia.”

  Raphael stared angrily at Windermere. “Are you telling us you knew up front that Falconetti was going to lift Cordelia?”

  “Before you all arrived in Bristol, a report came in from one of our agents that a price had been offered for one or more of you.”

  “What?”

  “We had a report that Falconetti had been approached by Zhaithan intelligence to kill or capture the four of you, but he turned it down.”

  “But they took her anyway.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “So if he’s not turning her over to the Zhaithan, who did he lift her for?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Jesamine was on her feet. “What do you mean you can’t tell us? We’re the ones potentially being fucked here.”

  Finally Windermere lost his temper. “I mean I can’t tell you because I give my agents the same respect I give you, and I’m out on a fucking limb for you four already.”

  Jesamine snarled at Windermere. “You’re the one that left her on her own the night she vanished.”

  Now Argo stood up, raising both hands. “Okay, everyone fucking hold it. This is getting us nowhere. What we need to do now is figure out how we rescue Cordelia. How we transport ourselves to Paris with enough intelligence and muscle to get her out of there.”

  CORDELIA

  Cordelia woke from a sleep that had not been totally dreamless, but in which the dreams had been pleasant and trivial, and not haunted by any wraiths either from her own subconscious, or sent from outside. This came as a considerable relief because it made it easier to handle the lurching instant of disorientation that came with waking in the dark, and having no idea where she was, or how she got there. Then she touched the fur of the bedcover, and it all came rushing back. How, exhausted and more than a little drunk, she had been helped by Sera Falconetti to the stone-walled bedchamber, and into the antique four-poster bed. What proved a little more difficult to grasp was the fact that someone seemed to be sliding into bed beside her, and that this might be what had woken her. The only response was to sit up, blinking, with a bleary demand. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Sssssh.”

  “What…”

  “It’s only me, Cordelia. Come to show you that there are no hard feelings.”

  A naked and definitely female body was moving close to her. “Harriet? Harriet Lime?”

  “Who did you think it was?”

  A hand was on her thigh and another stroked her shoulder and the back of her neck. Warm, perfumed breath was close to her face. It all felt very sexy and comforting, but Cordelia was too surprised and confused to respond, whether she wanted to or not. She blinked again, just about able to make out Harriet Lime’s face, near to her own in the darkness. “I thought you might feel like finishing what we started at Deerpark. Now I own you, and you can’t run away.”

  “You come to me like this, after you made a deal to have me kidnapped?”

  “That was just politics, my darling. We had to get you out of London.”

  The hand stroking her thigh was very pleasant and comforting, and knew exactly what it was doing, but Cordelia was not quite ready to relax and enjoy it. “I really don’t understand.”

  “Everything will be explained to you when Slide and the others get here.”

  “Slide is coming here?”

  “Of course. And Argo and Raphael and Jesamine.”

  “I’m very confused.”

  Harriet Lime’s voice was soothing, almost hypnotic. “Of course you are, my pet, but you’re also tired and need to relax.”

  “Slide is coming here?”

  “I just told you he was.”

  “When?”

  “Very soon. In a day or so. No longer than that, and, until he does, we can make each other extremely happy.”

  In the previous thirty or so hours, Cordelia had been drunk, drugged, frightened, terrified, and then drunk again. Harriet Lime’s hand was moving higher up her thigh. Cordelia let out a long surrendering sigh. She felt giddy and breathless, but in need of this soothing touch. Far worse things could be happening to her.

  “Kiss me.”

  Their lips touched.

  “Now kiss me again and I’ll forgive you for the way you treated me before.”

  Cordelia kissed Harriet again, and her breathing quickened. “Oh, by the Goddess…”

  Harriet Lime was gently stroking her breast. “By the Goddess indeed.”

  “There’s something not right about this.” But Cordelia reached for her anyway. She could feel athletic muscles under warm porcelain skin.

  Harriet Lime positively purred. “Do you care?”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  “No.”

  RAPHAEL

  If Argo had not already managed to cool the brewing conflict between Jesamine and Windermere, the appearance of Garth would certainly have done it. Although Madame de Wynter’s chauffeur/manservant/bodyguard entered the sitting room quietly and with due deference, his sheer size and appearance were enough to slow the rancor. “Madame?
”

  “Yes, Garth?”

  “There is a reporter on the telephone.”

  “A reporter from where?”

  “He says he is calling from the News Chronicle.”

  “He wants to speak to me?”

  “He wants to speak to Major Jesamine. Seemingly the Chronicle wants to offer her money for what he kept referring to as her ‘story.’”

  Jesamine looked horrified and seemed about to choke, but de Wynter calmly gave Garth his instructions. “Tell the man from the Chronicle that the Major is not taking calls, and then take the telephone off its hook, please.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “If anyone really needs to get us they can use the unlisted line.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “And Garth…”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “Have the early editions of the morning papers arrived?”

  “They were delivered by cab a few minutes ago.”

  “When you’ve given the wretch from the News Chronicle his marching orders, bring them in, will you?”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “And you’d better bring the good scotch. We may need it.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  Garth was gone for perhaps two minutes before he returned to the sitting room with a large tray on which was a neatly folded pile of most of the city’s twelve morning papers, a cut glass whiskey decanter, and seven glasses. He set down the tray on a side table.

  “You brought a glass for yourself?”

  “Yes, madame.”

  Argo held up the cover of the News Chronicle. The headline blazed …

  KENNEDY GAL QUIZZED BY SPECIAL BRANCH

  Jesamine gasped, and de Wynter shook her head. “It’s worse than I imagined.”

  Argo glanced at Jesamine. “No wonder they wanted to buy your story.”

  Two pictures had been run side by side beneath the banner headline. One was a formal portrait of Jack Kennedy that made him look distinguished, but a black border that indicated he was unmistakably dead. The other was a candid and lasciviously unflattering shot of Jesamine, obviously snapped by one of the mob of photographers on the Bristol pier. She was stumbling on her high heels, her uniform skirt had hiked up, exposing her long legs, and she was being pulled into the car by Jane Tennyson. The layout was arranged so Kennedy appeared to be posthumously staring at her legs. Argo read aloud. “The woman, known only as ‘Major Jesamine,’ but alleged to be the mistress of the Albany PM, was being kept under wraps by government officials even before the shooting.”

  Windermere leaned forward in his chair. “You Albany folk may get your second front if the Morning Tribune has its way.” The headline on this paper was three huge letters and a question mark.…

  WAR?

  Windermere read an excerpt. “Although no official statement has been made linking the Empire of Hassan to the killing, Khurshid Nawaz, the Mosul chargé d’affaires in London, is being held under house arrest as the massive investigation into the assassination of Albany Prime Minister John Kennedy moves beyond the dead assassins, and focuses on possible darker forces behind the scenes. Sir Harry Palmer, the commander of the Metropolitan Constabulary Special Branch, was quoted as saying, “Excellency Nawaz is only being held for his own protection … blah, blah, blah…”

  Windermere stopped as Jesamine suddenly sobbed. She had found the Morning Examiner. That too had a one-word headline …

  CARNAGE!

  Most of the page, however, was taken up by a huge grainy photograph of Jack Kennedy’s corpse sprawled in the wreckage of the ruined carriage, legs twisted, arms outflung, just as Raphael remembered him, except the blood that covered his head and soaked his clothes was turned a horrible inky black by the monochrome print and cheap paper. Dawson’s dead hand was in the very bottom of the frame. Raphael remembered how the policemen had pulled Argo and Jesamine off the photographer. He should have moved in and smashed the camera. Sir Harry Palmer’s damned detectives had confiscated his and Argo’s guns, but hadn’t bothered to seize the exposed plate from the man’s camera. Now the hideous image would be part of history forever. He definitely should have smashed the camera.

  Jesamine was sitting stiffly, tears rolling down her face. De Wynter glanced at Garth. “Garth…”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “You’d better pour the scotch.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  Jesamine spoke very softly. “We have to get out of this fucking country. We have to go. We have to get Cordelia and…”

  “And?”

  Jesamine shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t really know. All I do know is that, if we stay here, the newspapers alone will make it impossible for us to go anywhere except into hiding, and that, I swear to the Goddess, is not why I fucking came here.”

  Raphael spoke for both himself and Argo. “It wasn’t why any of us fucking came here.”

  Garth handed him a scotch. Raphael drank a little and shook his head. He had been trying to duck the thought, but it refused to be avoided. “It’s happening again, isn’t it.”

  Argo looked at Raphael doubtfully. Windermere was watching intently. “What are you saying?”

  “A force is acting on us again.”

  “A force?”

  “We’re being moved to the Land of the Franks aren’t we? It’s all happening again.”

  Jesamine slowly turned her head in Raphael’s direction. She had stopped crying. “I know what you mean. Like when we came together in the first place. We didn’t have a choice, we were pulled like a fucking magnet.”

  “And it’s happening again, except everything is pulling us to the south, to the Frankish Territories.”

  Argo still wasn’t getting it. “How do you figure that? Okay, so Cordelia’s in Paris and we have to get her out of there, but that’s hardly any mystic pressure. Unless there’s something I haven’t heard about.”

  “There may be something none of us has heard about.”

  Windermere and de Wynter remained silent. Garth stood in the background. Raphael took a deep breath. “So much had been happening that I didn’t think of it until just now, until Jesamine found Cordelia in Paris.”

  “What?”

  “At the reception, at the Palace of Westminster, I met a Caribbean called Country Man.”

  Windermere nodded. “We know Country Man.”

  Raphael continued. “He said something was being built in the Frankish Territories. He talked about stonework and slave laborers. ‘Big magick’ he called it. ‘Real big magick.’ He thought it might be a power source, or some kind of weapon, and that the Ahrachs are behind it. I tried to get more out of him a little later, but he near as dammit blanked me.”

  “Country Man can be a tease. He’s his own manipulator.”

  Jesamine looked at Windermere. “Did you know about this thing being built?”

  Windermere met her gaze, but only after a brief hesitation. “We’ve had reports. There’s definitely something going on in the Frankish countryside near Amiens.”

  Argo caught the hesitation. “Is it connected with Cordelia’s kidnap, or the White Twins?”

  This time Windermere met him head on. “It could be. We honestly don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

  “I would imagine for the same reason Raphael didn’t tell you about Country Man’s story. There’s been one fuck of lot going on to keep us distracted.”

  Surprisingly, Jesamine accepted this without question. “That’s true enough.”

  Argo leaned back in his chair and held up his glass. Garth poured him a refill without a word. “Seems like the next line is ‘so what the fuck do we do about all this?’”

  Raphael nodded. “That also is the fucking truth.”

  Jesamine thought for a few moments and then began to offer a bitter summation. “As things stand, we make our way to the coast, we acquire a boat, we row or sail it across the English Channel, we infiltrate a heavily defended enemy coas
t, we hike however far it is to a ruined city, we find Cordelia, rescue her from well-organized gangsters, and then do the whole thing all over again in reverse. Which would put us back in the NU just in time for me to be questioned again by Sir Harry fucking Palmer as ‘the Kennedy Gal.’ Can anyone come up with something better than that?”

  Windermere smiled. His first in a long time. “I think I can.”

  Jesamine regarded him coolly. “Then I would really like to hear about it.”

  CORDELIA

  Sera Falconetti found them intertwined, naked under the fur cover. “You two make a pretty picture.”

  Cordelia had been dozing in the pleasant aftermath of a long sleep and was not at all happy for the world to intrude so soon. “Make it all go away.”

  Sera sat down on the bed, wide awake and businesslike. “Sadly it won’t.”

  Harriet Lime opened her eyes, took it all in, and immediately sat up. “Good morning.” Without waiting for a response, she sprang quickly from the bed, naked, cold, and in a hurry. “I have to go to the privy.”

  She vanished into a rough-cut hole in the stone. Too ragged and irregular to hang a door, it was covered by a blanket. The blanket closed behind Lime, and, moments later, Cordelia and Sera head the sound of running water, splashes and gasps, then Lime’s muffled voice. “This water is fucking freezing.”