Black Chamber

by S. M. Stirling

  “I’ve been operating in Europe under deep cover. She’s been assisting me, and I have information that needs to go straight to the top. Get me a Red Line to the Director immediately.”

  “I—” There was a flash of resentment as she snapped the order.

  “I’m afraid the station chief is at home. He would have to authorize getting the Director out of bed. And Ciara Whelan is on the list!”

  This one is a natural bureaucrat, Luz thought. I suppose it’s inevitable we’d get some eventually; we can’t all be cowboys and adventurers and desperados.

  She closed her eyes for a second, gathering her forces, then spoke:

  “Operative Hoover, I am authorized to use a Red Line whenever I damned well please at my own discretion. I’m not asking you to do it, I’m telling you, and while I know you’ve only been with the Chamber a little while, you must have noticed that we do have a rank structure—and I outrank you by both position and seniority. Now do it. That’s an order.”

  His full-lipped mouth set. “I can’t do that, miss. We should get Whelan into a cell, and you’re obviously under strain; when the station chief comes in at nine you can—”

  “¡Ya basta!” Luz snapped. “Enough!”

  The navaja snapped into her hand and opened with that metallic crackling snap. Hoover didn’t have time for anything but a convulsive jerk as the point dug in slightly under his jaw; his eyes glared at her levelly. The other man froze with his hand halfway to his armpit.

  “Quiet, Frank!” Hoover said.

  “Those are the first sensible words to come out of your mouth tonight, muchacho. You are in danger of being the Chamber’s sacrificial goat right now; how close you get to being actually sacrificed is up to you. Get me that telephone. Before something slips. This thing is sharp. ¿Me hago entender?”

  Hoover was up on the balls of his feet and his neck stretched backward. A single bead of blood slowly ran down his neck, across the dense but closely shaved black stubble; he used a musk-scented shaving soap or cologne.

  “Just get the telephone, Frank, and then stand back,” Hoover said.

  He’s not in a panic, he’s realizing he made a very bad mistake and hoping he can get out of it, Luz thought. He’s got cojones, at least, and he’s not technically stupid.

  Frank approached; he was glaring at her with blue-eyed fury, but he put down the heavy black instrument at the end of its cord.

  “You’re insane, you bitch!” he said.

  “Sólo un poco, güey, but if you’re right then they’ll know at headquarters, ey? Now stand back.”

  “If you hurt Edgar, I’ll—”

  “Die a few seconds later. Back!”

  He backed up, keeping his hand away from his gun, and stood glaring.

  Luz pressed the red button with her left hand and brought the instrument to her ear; it was a very modern type, with combined speaker and hearing apparatus. Clicking and whirring sounds came to her ear, and distant voices; the red button signaled the Boston city headquarters of Bell that the call was to be routed to a particular Washington, D.C., number. Not having to talk to the local operator in an emergency was a particular privilege of the Chamber.

  Intercity calls still weren’t all that frequent, though New York had been connected to Chicago nearly twenty years ago and Luz had seen the first transcontinental call go through from New York to San Francisco at the Panama-Pacific Exposition last year. They’d even dug up Alexander Graham Bell and his original assistant to reenact their historic Mr. Watson come here for it, only this time over thirty-four hundred miles instead of a few yards.

  Wonders of the modern age, Luz thought, and twitched her right hand very slightly as Hoover stirred. I hope Ciara got to see it; she’d have been thrilled.

  “Hello, Service central,” a voice said in a rather tinny tone.

  “Hello, Miss Sanders,” Luz said, recognizing the operator in the carefully unmarked office building on Pennsylvania Avenue. “Luz O’Malley here. No, I don’t want the Director, though you’d better wake him. You’ve got a Red One Priority file there, with one-time codes. Take out the one with A-77-1B-422—”

  Which was her service number, the one on her standing file and pay slips.

  “And open it.”

  The sound of a seal being broken came over the line, and the crackle of stiff paper.

  “I have opened the file, Senior Field Operative O’Malley,” the operator said, with a hieratic intonation.

  There were only five of those codes, and to Luz’s best knowledge they’d only been used once before.

  “The code is as follows: Sagamore Bear Growl Pull Nose. I repeat, Sagamore Bear Growl Pull Nose.”

  It actually commemorated a memorable occasion when her parents had been visiting the Roosevelts at Sagamore Hill when the century was young and she’d given the then vice presidential nose a hard yank in the middle of a roughhousing game with the Roosevelt children and their father—only Alice had been absent, having loftily decided she was too old for such things at sixteen.

  “I acknowledge the one-time code.” A sound as it was stamped used. They’d have to come up with a new one. “Connecting.”

  Hoover’s eyes had gone wide; no, he was no sort of fool, and he realized just who her call was being put through to at this ungodly hour in the morning. It was a wonder to her that her enemies in the Chamber accused her of being a teacher’s pet, and then were astonished when it turned out she could use that patronage at need . . . not least because she never did without good-of-the-service reasons. She’d never used her direct access to the president before at all, but she was fairly confident he’d approve.

  Luz smiled thinly and lowered the knife, wiping the point on Hoover’s starched shirt-collar and closing it. The young man stepped backward, pulling out a handkerchief and pressing it against the tiny wound. He held a hand out.

  “Frank, it’s no worse than a shaving cut, and just don’t say anything, all right? Nothing at all, not now.”

  There were more clicks and whirring. Then a sleepy voice:

  “Luz? You’re back? Bully!”

  “Yes, Mr. President, and I have full details on the attack I warned about in my dropoff message . . . you did get that? Bueno! Yes, it’s very big. Unfortunately I was improperly dressed in a German uniform and a bit bloody and smelly from the U-boat and the fight when I got into the Chamber station here in Boston and the assistant station chief is being uncooperative. If you could straighten him out, Mr. President? And then get someone fairly high-ranking over here from the Navy Yard; we’ve got a little time, but not much.”

  Luz’s smile grew as she handed the phone to the young man, and became even more unpleasant. She’d been called a hysterical female before, but rarely had she been able to pay the man in question back so thoroughly and so soon. He put it to his ear.

  And he’s going to feel a lot of pain, she thought happily. Of the sort that hurts longer than a kick in the crotch.

  She went on to the others as he stood wincing at the bellows coming out of the instrument:

  “You, Frank . . . get your station chief out of bed and get him here, and all your people.”

  Hoover made frantic do it motions without daring to speak or take the telephone from his ear.

  “That’s a good fellow. And notify your liaison in the Bureau and with the local police. The Navy will be taking care of the information I’ve just brought—”

  She extended a hand down the neck of her German tunic, wiggling a little as she brought the oiled-paper packet out of her brassiere.

  “—but we have a manhunt to arrange, and that’s just the beginning.”

  To the woman. “And you are . . .”

  “Miss Sarah Perlman, Senior Field Operative O’Malley,” she said in a carefully neutral voice, one that from the glance at Hoover out of the corner of her eye was very probabl
y hiding an intense satisfaction. “Clerical Support section.”

  “Get a doctor for Miss Whelan, one of the ones we keep on call. Then . . . you take shorthand, Miss Perlman?”

  “Gregg and Pitman, and we have a dictation machine, Field Operative.”

  “Good. I need to debrief. Urgently. And some of that coffee I smell would be very welcome because I’ll fall asleep otherwise.”

  The need to debrief felt like desperately needing to pee, in a rarefied informational way. Some knowledge was just too important to be limited to one, very mortal, skull. They went into the other office. Ciara was on a sofa and covered by a throw, her face still frowning slightly in sleep; Perlman had sponged away the blood and applied iodine tincture and a bandage—any Chamber office had a well-equipped medical kit. Luz smiled down at her and then sat in the chair beside the couch.

  Perlman already had a pad ready, and was inserting a cylinder in the dictation machine; she nodded with a finger on the switch, threw it, and took up a mechanical pencil and a steno pad.

  Luz began: “Senior Field Operative Luz O’Malley A-77-1B-422: as per previous report of 1st September of 1916, on the afternoon of that date I boarded the ANA airship San Juan Hill in New York under the cover identity of—”

  After a while the secretary’s pencil stopped scritching on the pad. Luz opened her eyes—she’d just gotten past the point where she’d burgled Colonel Nicolai’s office and felt a little chilled in retrospect—and looked over.

  “Is there a problem?” she said.

  Perlman’s professional veneer had cracked a little; she was staring at Luz wide-eyed.

  “This is all true?” she blurted.

  “Absolutamente, Señora Perlman,” Luz said cheerfully, then blinked as she realized she’d spoken in Spanish.

  I’m more exhausted than I thought . . . And when you look back on it . . . there was some drama, yes. I won! ¡Viva la magnificencia suprema de mí!

  “Then it’s a pity you can’t publish it, Senior Operative,” Perlman replied, with a smile. “You’d be famous!”

  Luz took up the narrative again. It was going to make a stir when it hit certain desks in Washington, the more so when the Navy found the U-boats exactly where her photographs of the German maps said they were.

  I don’t particularly want to be famous . . . not with the general public . . . but there are other rewards . . . and Uncle Teddy always pays his debts, for good or bad.

  She looked at Ciara and smiled again. And I’ll see that you get what you deserve too, querida.

  * * *

  • • •

  The observation platform of the Custom House Tower gave an unexcelled view of Boston and its harbor, even on an overcast day. The weather was warm for October, about sixty degrees or a bit more, and Luz was comfortable in a light jacket. This high up the air was intensely fresh, and a peregrine falcon was standing on the head of one of the great sculpted eagles at the corners, casting her an occasional resentful golden glance as it scanned for pigeons.

  And I’m developing a tendency to grin at random intervals, she thought. Despite still being exhausted.

  “I’ve never dreamed of seeing Boston like this, and me born and raised here!” Ciara said cheerfully.

  Luz had to admit that it gave the sort of view an aeroplane or airship did, only with solid decking under their feet. She still felt a glassy detachment—there had only been a nap as far as sleep went, really—but a bath and clean clothes and a hearty if stodgy lunch and some coffee made it possible to go on. Ciara was feeling passable herself, if still a bit wobbly from Horst’s blow to her head, though she’d had a good deal more of the sleep and a dose of painkiller. There was a wheeled chair behind her, but the doctor said a little careful standing was permissible and that the blurred memories of the time around the injury were normal.

  The Navy had helpfully brought them a tripod-mounted telescope, and Luz had it trained on the site where the U-150 rested on the bottom, its launch controller ticking away with blind mechanical malevolence. There was confusion down in the streets; the military were taking no chances, and they’d evacuated the areas nearest the U-boats with help from the police. And a hasty turnout of Boy and Girl Scouts, who were probably having the time of their lives living out Baden-Powell’s dream and getting to—very courteously and politely—tell adults what to do.

  Barges and ancillary ships were anchored over both of the U-boats now, and divers in hard-hat suits were peeling an entrance with cutting torches. The same was happening in the better-equipped of the other target ports; some of the rest were simply going to blow the submarines up, which was more risky but would probably work . . . though those locations were evacuating more people, and farther.

  “There!” Luz said, and yielded the telescope.

  “A green flag!” Ciara said, and clapped her hands without taking her eye from the viewing end. “They’ve disabled it!”

  “As per your instructions, querida,” Luz said.

  She sank down into the chair, with Luz’s hand under her arm. A nurse in white uniform and headdress was standing at a discreet distance, and so were several Bureau men in their unimaginative almost-uniform of conservative dark suits and snap-brim gray homburgs, with bulges under their left armpits and Thompson guns in their arms.

  “What now, Luz?” Ciara said, her smile fading.

  She’s still . . . subdued, poor thing.

  “I heard . . . didn’t that awful little man say I was on an arrest list?”

  “Not anymore, querida,” Luz said. “That’s been taken care of. In fact, you’re very much the government’s blue-eyed . . . well, green-eyed girl, right now.”

  “Taken care of meaning you put a word in?” Ciara asked.

  “Well, yes, but that only worked because you actually have helped to save the country! And as for what next, you’ve heard of the Federal Express?”

  “Ah, that’s the train the senators and swells take when they go down to . . . Washington?” she said, her eyes going round.

  Luz chuckled. “You look so charming when you make that expression, you know. Yes, Washington. The president has a . . . very important speech on Thursday with the special joint session, but he’s made a little time for us. We’ll have a nice dinner on the train, sleep ten hours in good Pullman berths, and then have some time to rest and get ready.”

  Ciara squeaked. Then she said: “Will we have time for the Smithsonian?”

  “I think we might, but you’re staying in this chair for it. I’ll push.”

  Ciara’s smile returned. “And Luz . . . it’s over! It’s over!”

  “Tienes razón,” Luz said in agreement, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  And I don’t have the heart to say: It’s over . . . for this time.

  EIGHTEEN

  Oval Office

  White House

  Washington, D.C.

  SEPTEMBER 27TH 1916(B)

  What the dickens happened in Savannah?” President Theodore Roosevelt asked, seating himself behind the desk.

  The mood in the Oval Office was serious, but with an undertow of profound relief. Europe had experienced the full horror, but America had escaped—and because of that, the world still might be saved.

  He himself still felt primed for combat, after the speech he’d just given to the Joint Session. All but one of the senators and representatives had voted for the declaration of war—and that one was a Quaker lady from a district in Pennsylvania. And after his revelations on the Horror Plot, as it was coming to be called, the response that followed his demand for war hadn’t simply been applause.

  They had roared.

  And there had been a baying for blood beneath it; he didn’t think Kaiser Wilhelm would have been happy if he’d heard it, or Ludendorff or von Hindenburg. No president had ever had such unity behind him.

  General Wood ans
wered: “As far as the Navy can tell, that collision with the munitions carrier last week left wreckage exactly where the U-144 was due to put itself down. They just couldn’t find the secondary position it used in time to stop the launch. Casualties were about a thousand, more than half of those military; that . . . thing is even more deadly than we imagined. That’s a small fraction of what they’d been if we hadn’t had warning and evacuated the civilians, of course, but the port is useless and will be for months.”

  He turned to Director Wilkie, officially of the Secret Service and more importantly of the Black Chamber.

  “Your agent saved us. Saved the country, and I’m not exaggerating.”

  Everyone nodded, Wood and Wilkie and the two military aides, Omar and George. If the Director hadn’t been a man of restraint Roosevelt knew he’d have purred . . . and he had a right to look just a little as if he were licking cream off his whiskers. There had been a lot of luck involved—the report he’d stayed up late to pore over read like a list of risks barely survived—but it had been Wilkie’s organization who’d sniffed out the first hint of the hideous plot and his agent who’d exposed it.

  “That’s why I’m taking this time,” Roosevelt said; the thought of what would have happened if the risks hadn’t been survived chilled the blood. “Certain things need to be done. What can you give someone who saved America, and therefore the world? Little enough, but we will do what we can. God knows the rest of the day’s going to be grim enough.”

  Wilkie nodded. “I’m expecting more detailed information soon, but my own people in London and Paris were . . . well, there’s not much hope for them. The zeppelins got in, ten to a dozen for each of the three attacks, even if not many of them got home again after they came down to bombing level. Even the ones shot down shed their poison.”

  “It’s the last hurrah for zeppelins as bombers, in my opinion,” Wood said dispassionately. “Those were all they had, we think, but they’re going out with a bang. They killed more people in a single day than we lost in the whole of the Civil War; three-quarters of a million at least, possibly more. Probably more, say at least a quarter million each in Paris and London and a hundred thousand in Bordeaux, potentially many times that. Eventually aeroplanes will carry similar loads, though, and it doesn’t take all that much.”