As the two half-drunk and totally delighted agents leaned forward to pull out the case, Liam moved up next to them, grabbed their heads by the sides and banged them together; then, as the stunned DPS men reeled backwards Liam did his jiu-jitsu nerve pinch on their necks, dropping them where they stood. They started snoring loudly and Liam called out to Becky:
“OK, Mother, let’s tie up Mr. Stanton’s birthday presents!”
As Becky jumped out and ran to join him, Liam pulled one of the big coils of rope down off the caravan’s walls and cut it in half with his pocket knife. “Hands behind his back,” he instructed, pulling the agent’s hands behind him as if for handcuffs, “then do them up good, four or five turns of rope before you pull his heels up behind him and do the same thing with his ankles. You good with knots?”
“Mister McCool!” she exclaimed with an arch lift of the eyebrows.
“Why do I even ask?” he said with a laugh and the two of them went to work with a will. A couple of minutes later they were done, and Liam took out two more bottles and handed one to Becky. “Give him a good bath,” he said, “just in case whoever finds them might have missed the message.” Becky grinned and baptized her victim liberally while Liam did the same with his. Then they dragged the two snoring DPS men over to the deep shadows next to the coal chute and sat them against the wall to sleep it off with the empties on the ground next to them.
“They’ll be good for a couple of hours now,” Liam said, “and we’d better get a move on!” He trotted over to the door, tried the knob prayerfully and heaved a powerful sigh as it swung open. A moment later they had both disappeared inside, closing the door and locking it behind them.
This time Liam was used to all the twists and turns that would take them to the door of the Chubb-locked storeroom, so he set off at a trot with Becky keeping up easily at his side. Despite all the extra security outside, there didn’t seem to be anything different inside, and Liam was willing to bet that Stanton’s Prisoner in the Iron Mask was the last thing that had occurred to anybody when they were tightening the network of guards. One final turn, and a moment later they found themselves outside the storeroom.
Liam was slightly winded, but Becky didn’t seem to be the least bit bothered. “You’ve got a fair turn of speed for an old lady,” he said to Becky with just a touch of asperity.
She smiled and laid a soothing hand on his arm: “I’m sorry, Grandpa, but those few extra years of yours were bound to take their toll sooner or later.”
Liam rolled his eyes and got out the picks, hoping that this time he wouldn’t have to take so long at it. But he’d only been working at the first lock for a minute or so when he heard the unmistakable eerie thrum of the Lincoln automaton’s rubber vocal cords from the other side of the door:
“Mr. McCool? Liam?”
“Yes, sir!” said Liam excitedly. “Is there any chance you can open it from the inside?”
For answer, Liam and Becky heard first the one set of tumblers clicking and then the second, followed by the clank of Lincoln’s steel fingers on the doorknob and a moment later by the door swinging open to reveal the President himself.
“Thank God for your constancy!” Lincoln said, and turning his head towards Becky with the distinctive squeak of his neck joint: “And Miss Fox, well met! I’d recognize America’s most intrepid lady journalist anywhere, wig and spectacles or no!”
Impulsively she took the cold steel hand and grasped it between her two hands: “Mr. President, it breaks my heart to see you brought to this pass, and I swear to you that my friends and I will do every last thing in our power to set things right again.”
Liam had pulled out his watch and examined it with a grimace. “Mr. President, Miss Fox, we are running dangerously behind our schedule and we’re going to have to catch up however we can. Sir, can you get a tight grip on the arms of that chair?”
Lincoln nodded and grabbed hold of the wheelchair’s arms.
“Let’s go, then, folks!” Liam said, and grabbing the handles of the wheelchair he took off down the hall at a half-run, Becky keeping pace right at his side.
Outside, the two DPS men were still snoring sonorously away as the door opened a crack, and then all the way as Liam pushed Lincoln’s chair out the door and Becky followed.
“We’re going to have a job getting President Lincoln into the back of the caravan,” Liam muttered. “Maybe we can use the rope …”
But before he could finish, Becky grabbed his arm and held up a finger to her lips. A moment later and he heard it too: a powerful and well-silenced steam engine was approaching the Smithsonian. Another moment or two and the vehicle had stopped at the front of the building, idling for a moment before it was turned off, the hum of its turbine purring away to nothing with the polite smoothness of very expensive machinery. A moment later there was the slam of a door, and then the rapid footsteps of two men, plainly audible in the dead stillness of the early morning. One of the men called out:
“Murphy? Beckermann?”
“Good lord,” whispered Becky, “it’s Willie!”
“Pilkington?” whispered Liam urgently.
Becky nodded, frowning. Liam pointed to the President and then made a sweeping half circle towards the van. Becky nodded emphatically, grabbed the handles of the wheelchair and took off rapidly around the van and out of sight, leaving Liam on his own to trot towards the sound of the approaching footsteps.
Pilkington was talking again as he approached the corner on the other side of which Liam stood hidden in the shadows:
“Are you absolutely certain that you’ve done everything in your own and the Pilkington Agency’s power to retrieve Maggie O’Shea’s diary?”
“I swear it, sir! I had to make a run for it the minute I heard the explosion that destroyed Mr. Henderson’s house, but before then I had searched every nook and cranny in her quarters!”
Liam felt as if the breath had been knocked out of him. Pilkington’s companion was McPherson!
Willie’s answer came back in a plaintive, accusing tone: “You knew how important finding that diary was to me! That bitch threatened to ruin me if I didn’t…”
As Pilkington spoke these last few words he was within a split second of turning the corner, seeing the caravan and discovering his trussed-up agents, not to mention Liam, Becky, and President Lincoln. But if Liam acted now, as he must the moment the two men came into view, he would never hear the end of Pilkington’s speech and most likely the final clue to the secret of Maggie’s murder.
Later he wondered if it had been a real decision or a reflex. At the moment, it seemed as if all thought flew away the moment he saw the men turn the corner and start past him. Leaping out of the shadows with the speed of a jungle predator, Liam smacked their heads together—perhaps with just a touch more enthusiasm than the move required—and then knocked them out with nerve pinches. As they crumpled to the ground, Liam called out to Becky in a low, urgent voice:
“Bring me some more rope and a couple of bottles of whiskey!”
Without waiting for her to arrive, he quickly set about stripping the two of them, leaving them in their long underwear.
“Liam McCool!” she said from behind him. “What on earth are you up to?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re on the road,” he said grimly, pulling the two men up into sitting positions and placing them back to back before he took the rope from Becky and ran it under their arms and around their middles a couple of good stout turns. “Would you mind finishing them up?” he asked with as much deference as he could muster. “I’m going to run around front and get their steamer.”
“The DPS wagon?” she asked incredulously.
“I promise,” Liam said earnestly, “I promise I’ll …”
“Yes, yes,” Becky said a little testily, “you’ll explain when we’re on the road.” As he nodded emphatically she shooed him away with a whisk of her fingers: “Go on, for pity’s sake, hurry up!”
As Liam sprinted awa
y, Becky set to tying Willie and McPherson up with all the rope in the coil, stifling a slightly hysterical urge to giggle as she went along. By the time she had tied the last set of knots, the two of them were encased in a good twenty-five feet of stout hemp, and there was nothing left to do but drag them over to join the two DPS agents against the wall. Becky returned for the whiskey and picked up their bowlers while she was at it, bathing each of them liberally in a stream of Chinese moonshine before jamming their hats down on top of their heads.
“A very artistic job,” Lincoln rumbled from behind her and she jumped so hard she almost dropped the empty bottles.
“Thank you, Mr. President,” she said, and then gave in completely to her giggles as Liam turned the corner in the DPS van.
A moment later, Liam had jumped out, gone around to the back and let down a ramp that rolled into position with the pleasing snick! of nicely machined metal. As he turned back he saw Becky standing there with her arms folded intransigently across her chest and Lincoln staring towards him with what he took to be equal expectancy.
“Sorry,” Liam said as contritely as he could. “It’s just that we’ve been through all the checkpoints once with the General Store caravan, and we absolutely don’t have a moment to spare on the way back. If one checkpoint has a new set of soldiers standing guard they’ll put us through the whole thing again and that will be that—the half-Delta will have to keep to its schedule and we’ll be done for!”
“And they won’t stop the DPS van?” she asked crossly.
“Are you serious?” Liam said, spreading his hands entreatingly. “I’m willing to bet you our first silver dollar that every single human being between here and Alexandria will melt into the distance the second our DPS chariot rolls towards them.”
“Good thinking, young Liam,” rumbled the Lincoln automaton, “as far as most folks are concerned a DPS van might as well be a truckload of Black Plague.”
“I rest my case,” Liam said.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” Becky muttered. As Liam pushed Lincoln up the ramp she gathered up Willie’s and McPherson’s clothes, tossed them into the shadows and ran for the front of the van. A moment later, they were rolling briskly down B Street NW towards Alexandria and the next leg in their journeys.
Little Russia June 30—July 1, 1877
Chapter Twenty-Two
There it is!”
Capt. Ubaldo shouted over the noise of the steam turbines, pointing downwards through the port-side windows towards a vast cleared space in the middle of the forest, at one end of which a cross made of whitewashed boulders had been laid out as a marker.
It seemed to Liam that they had been flying forever, and that the arctic temperature inside the half-Delta had long ago frozen him nearly as solid as those woolly mammoths the Russians were always chopping out of the Siberian permafrost.
Like most people who’d never been inside one, Liam had reckoned a “half-Delta must have the same basic amenities found in a full-size Delta, the warship of the U.S. Aerial Navy. Shaped like a wedge in the form of an enormous isosceles triangle, lifted by revolutionary hydrogen “cells” held rigid by a graceful framework of aluminum struts, the standard Delta was big enough to mount multiple steam-driven Gatlings and carry a company of heavily armed aeronauts in reasonable comfort.
But as it turned out, the only thing the half-Delta shared with its namesake was its triangular shape. Designed purely for speed, it was nowhere near even half the size of the big Deltas, and anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary had been stripped out of it. As far as Liam could see that included everything connected with warmth, quiet, and basic creature comforts, and at high altitudes it seemed that his time was divided between trying to get a deep breath and uncontrollable shivering. Fortunately, Becky had flown on these things before and had dragged along a life-saving armload of fur coats and blankets.
The odd thing was that although they were already into the second week of summer, there seemed to be flakes of snow swirling around them as the big controlled-descent fans drove them closer and closer to the clearing below. Not only that, but the night skies had been clear on the St. Paul side of the Mississippi, while here the moonlight was broken by heavy, wind-driven clouds that had given Ubaldo some bad moments as he crossed into Little Russia and flew over the countryside north of New Petersburg.
“Not bad enough, though,” thought Liam with a flash of irritation. Ubaldo had been grating on his nerves ever since the flight from New York to Alexandria, with his showy nonchalant-aeronaut swagger and his dandyish blue flying-suit and sealskin boots. Not to mention the patent-leather hair and that damned little moustache, whose tips Ubaldo was perpetually twisting until Liam expected them to unwind all at once, possibly (if Lady Luck was any sort of pal at all) whipping off his ostentatiously patrician nose and whirling away with it.
Not that he could really blame Ubaldo for posturing, Liam thought, forcing himself against all his inclinations to be fair for a moment. Becky Fox was a ridiculously beautiful woman as well as being a world-famous reporter and as staunch a comrade as any of his pals among the Butcher Boys. But damn it all, anyway, why did she have to simper when Ubaldo oiled her up with extravagant flatteries, and what was all that folderol about his profile reminding her of Maurice Barrymore, whom she’d just seen in Under the Gaslight?
“Hang on tight!” shouted Ubaldo as the roar of the fans rose to a shriek. A moment later there was a thump as the bottom of the airship bounced against the ground, followed by a half-dozen rapid fwomp!-thud!s as steam guns fired anchoring stanchions into the dirt. A moment later Ubaldo cut the engines and stood.
“Nous sommes arrivés!” he announced with a grin.
“Why can’t he speak bloody English?” thought Liam crossly. He stood up and helped Becky to unfasten the safety belt that had kept her in her seat.
“Thank you, Mr. McCool,” she said as she got to her feet.
“Nichevo,” he said gruffly. “If we’re to be speaking in tongues, that’s Russian for think nothing of it …”
“I know what it means,” she said with a quizzical look.
More to hide his embarrassment than for any other reason, Liam gave her an elaborate bow and gestured towards the hatch which Ubaldo had just opened to the outside.
“After you, Miss Fox,” he said with stiff formality.
Becky gave him another inquisitive look, shook her head almost imperceptibly and then turned to go out the hatch and down the steps that Ubaldo had just set up. Liam closed his eyes and counted to ten before he followed her out the hatch.
Outside, it appeared that the snow had started falling in earnest. Ubaldo pulled out his watch and checked it, then tucked it away again and turned to Becky and Liam.
Eleven hours, twenty-three minutes. Not bad at all for a run from Shelter Island to Little Russia. I must applaud Mr. Clemens’ choice of a location for the Party’s clandestine headquarters, there’s no aerial traffic except for seagulls, yet it’s scarcely a hundred miles from Manhattan!”
Becky smiled reminiscently: “And I must say President Lincoln seemed thrilled to be at the seashore, even if he must negotiate the waterfront in a wheelchair.”
Ubaldo cleared his throat apologetically and looked at his watch again: “Miss Fox, Mr. McCool, I’m afraid I’ve got to turn around right away and head back to Shelter Island to start my next assignment. Are you two going to be all right out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Of course we are, Captain,” said Becky firmly. “We’ve got our furs and our blankets, and if our contacts here are as good about keeping to their schedule as you have been about yours, we shouldn’t be waiting more than a half hour.”
“I don’t like leaving you here in the middle of a snow storm,” Ubaldo said dubiously. “There’s something freakish about this weather that’s got me a bit spooked. Sure, I’ve heard of late snows in New Petersburg and St. Paul both, but I’ve never ever heard of snow falling on one side of the Mississipi while it’s a n
ice, clear summer evening on the other.”
“Really,” Becky said, taking Ubaldo’s hand. “You need to go as far as you can before sunrise, and we’re going to be equally busy with our missions here. I’m sure we shall all meet again in New York before long.”
Ubaldo smiled at her in a way that Liam found insufferably smarmy. “I’ll go peacefully if you promise to let me take you to dinner at Delmonico’s when you’ve come back.”
Becky gave him a warm smile in return. “That would be very nice indeed, Captain.”
“In that case,” he said, and bending over her hand he kissed it with a warmth that Liam was sure went beyond the bounds of propriety; in fact, if he kept it up much longer Liam was going to give him a good sharp rap on the bean with the brass knucks he carried for special …
“Au revoir, then, Miss Fox,” Ubaldo said, standing up again. “Mr. McCool,” he said with a courteous nod to Liam. A moment later he had pulled the steps back into the ship, slammed the hatch shut, cast off the lines to the anchoring stanchions and begun an eerily silent climb into the moonlit clouds.
Liam looked after the departing airship with an exasperated frown. “I just wish they’d given the OK for Ubaldo to come back for us instead of leaving us to fend for ourselves. Three days to take care of old Pilkington’s assignment and make our way back to Shelter Island seems a bit of a stretch.”
“I expect Mr. Clemens and the others have confidence in our resourcefulness,” Becky said tartly. “And as for Capt. Ubaldo, he’s already taken an uncommon lot of risks in order to help President Lincoln escape.”
Liam knew he should keep his mouth shut, but it was as if his infantile self had taken over the reins and was driving him hard towards a smashup:
“Well,” he said in a sniffish tone, “we certainly wouldn’t want to put your darling Capt. Ubaldo in harm’s way!”
Becky’s eyes flared and Liam could sense a thunderbolt coming: “Liam McCool,” she snapped, “I’ve a good mind to …!”
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