“Say, General,” laughed Liam, “if you can get Miss Fox to be meek, I’ll believe every word I ever read about you being a great leader.”
Becky gave Liam a prim look and folded her hands in her lap: “Goodness gracious, Brother McCool, surely it’s an awful sin for a man to be so pig-headedly certain he knows just what a lady’s thinking!”
Was there some kind of undertone there? Liam peered hard at Becky’s little Mona Lisa smile, trying to divine what was going on behind it. After a moment he gave up—it would probably be a lot easier figuring out how to find Lt. Col. Chuikov, no matter where he was.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Liam and Crazy Horse were strolling along the Mississipskii Prospekt, (what had been—“before Jackson”—Hennepin Avenue), Crazy Horse in the full regalia of a Captain in His Majesty’s Imperial Little Russian Hussars, Liam in what he considered a pretty spiffy turnout as a Lieutenant in His Imperial Majesty’s Own Preobrazhensky Guards. The snow had stopped and the sun was sparkling on the low rooftops of the 1850’s—vintage architecture and the gilded onion domes of Little Petersburg’s famed three hundred cathedrals.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Crazy Horse said in Russian (no English would be allowed till they got back to the privacy of his rooms). “St. Petersburg is even prettier—older and grander, anyway, and in some ways I’m glad I’ve seen both. But to be honest there are times when it feels like a curse to have seen either—that’s when I’m missing my young self and feeling homesick for the sight of a dozen tipis on a cold morning like this with the smoke rising from their fires and warriors feeding their horses.”
He smiled and shook his head. “At least the Russians haven’t managed to do much with their American lands. New Petersburg is the only real city in Little Russia and you can see what it amounts to. As for the other cities that had started to grow up on this side of the Mississippi, they’re still pretty much as they were when Jackson sold them forty years ago. To be honest, it’s the Americans I worry about—with their machines and their passion for changing everything they touch it wouldn’t take them long to destroy our world and make the People orphans.”
“I expect Stanton would like to do just that,” Liam agreed. “He talks a lot about America’s Manifest Destiny, which seems to mean that God wants us to push on all the way to the Pacific and kick out anybody that gets in our way.”
Crazy Horse nodded grimly. “I just hope Miss Fox’s articles will make Queen Victoria and the Tsar and the Kaiser rattle their swords loudly enough to force Stanton to back down this time. Even six more months of peace will give the People the chance we need to be ready.”
They walked on for a while in silence, Liam kicking chunks of ice and watching them skate down the sparsely populated street, Crazy Horse with his chin sunk on his chest, lost in thought. Finally Liam got tired of the silence:
“Well, Zhenya,” he said, “I have two personal questions to which my nosiness absolutely insists on answers.”
“Please,” invited Crazy Horse, shaking off his morose mood.
“Very well, then, how does a gentleman whose birth name was Cha-O-Ha end up with a nickname like Zhenya?”
Crazy Horse gave him a sly smile. “Probably the same way an Irishman whose father’s birth name was Francis Leonard McCool ended up with the nickname Lyovushka.”
Liam raised his hands in surrender: “Touché. My best friend back home is a Russian named Misha. He couldn’t get anywhere with ‘Liam’ in Russian and he got tired of calling me ‘Leonardo Frentsisovich.’ So he just took the ‘Leonardo’ and jumped up and down on it a little and came up with Lyovushka.”
“Ah. Well, my secret is much more embarrassing. In my student years in Petersburg I was a slavish imitator of Pushkin’s moody romantic hero Evgenii Onegin, even to the seductions and fighting a duel with my foster father.” He sighed and spread his hands: “Evgenii, ergo Zhenya.”
Liam grinned. “I won’t tell if you won’t. But that brings up my other question, and it’s a serious one—how is that you, with all your history as a Sioux warrior, are here right in the middle of New Petersburg walking around in a Russian uniform while your foster father isn’t more than half a mile from here, running the Little Russian section of the Tsar’s secret police? That’s crazy enough, and the Okhrana are frightening enough, to have me a little worried.”
“Let me set your mind at rest, then. After Bol’shoi Rog I began to re-think the problem of the Little Russians. In European terms they’re incredibly backwards—I don’t think the entire Empire from St. Petersburg to New Petersburg has more than half a dozen modern factories, and you can see by looking around you that Little Russia won’t actually get as far as 1877 until the rest of the world is making daily trips to the moon. On the other hand, Russians fight like devils, and the Empire is rich enough to buy them all the armaments they need, which will be very bad for the People if it goes on much longer. So I realized our first need was to study their weak points close up, and my assistance on that question came from one of the white man’s greatest weaknesses.”
“Greed?”
Crazy Horse laughed. “The only thing the People have that the white man wants is our homeland, and we can’t let him have that. No, what I was thinking of is vanity. The white man can’t believe that a poor benighted Indian would throw away the chance to be like a white man if only he could, so even though my foster father had sworn to kill me if he ever saw me again, when I sent him a message saying that I had repented my ways, that I missed Russian life and culture unbearably and wanted more than anything for him to forgive me and let me come back, he welcomed me with open arms.” He smiled wryly and spread his hands. “Grand Duke Oleg Rodionovich Sheremetev is one of the wickedest men on the face of this planet, but in some ways he’s so naive I can’t help feeling sorry for him.”
“Do you think he can help us find Chuikov?”
“Of course! Russian industry may not have gotten beyond the Middle Ages, but their secret police are the finest in the world. So before we drop in on Oleg Rodionovich you’ll have to let me tell you about the years you and I spent as boon companions at the Imperial University in St. Petersburg—that way you’ll have convincing answers for his inevitable questions …”
At that same moment, the two kingpins of America’s secret police were enjoying the mellow spring breezes wafting through the open windows of Stanton’s office as they lunched at a small table set for them by Stanton’s freedman valet Pompey. Willie Pilkington was resting his pudgy nose on the rim of a crystal goblet half full of Château Mouton Rothschild ’65 and smiling beatifically as he inhaled the aroma.
“I must say, sir,” he said with a depth of feeling he reserved solely for food and drink, “this claret is absolutely the most exquisite wine I’ve ever tasted. I must compliment you on your choice.”
Stanton gave Willie a tolerant smile, making it clear by his nonchalance that while he appreciated fine things, at heart he was above mere sensuality.
“Willie, my boy,” Stanton said, “I have to say I’m a bit disappointed in you.”
Jolted, Pilkington almost poured the last gulp of wine down his starched shirtfront. Instantly, his eyes took on that hunted, flicking-from-side-to-side look that told Stanton his subordinate would gladly jump out the window if ordered to.
Excellent. Stanton wanted to be sure that what he said was engraved on the very top of Willie Pilkington’s memory.
“Sir?” Pilkington asked with just the hint of a quaver.
“You know perfectly well what I mean, Willie.” Stanton said. He gestured out the window towards the Mall. “It’s been a good forty-eight hours since that treacherous, villainous sneak attack behind the Smithsonian Building. Do you have the culprits in hand? Indeed, are you so much as an inch closer to discovering who they might have been? Here we are, beyond doubt the two most powerful men in the United States of America, and it was only because those two idiots I had sent there earlier to guard Lincoln woke up first and managed to f
ree us that we were spared being made laughing-stocks! I want you to understand, Willie, that as soon as I declare a National State of Emergency I mean to restore public hangings …”
“Really, sir?” Willie asked tremulously. “I mean, every other country in the civilized world has ended public hangings and if we …”
“I was just speaking with Frank Gowen on the voicewire,” interrupted Stanton. “He made a great point of letting me know that the hanging of the ten Molly Magees in Pottsville has had a most salutary effect on unrest in the coalfields, and that was with the hangings viewed only by the elite of local society. Believe me, if we hang villains like those who attacked us and make a public spectacle of it, right out in the middle of the Mall for all the word to see, it will send a message that no seditionist can possibly misunderstand.” He paused portentously and laid his hand on Willie’s arm: “So for Heaven’s sake, boy, find them for me and stop wasting time!”
Pilkington’s face darkened angrily as he remembered the agony of waking up in his whisky-soaked Long Johns with his Derby crammed down over his eyes.
“I tell you, sir,” he growled furiously, “it was that filthy Mick jailbird McCool who was behind it, I have no proof but I’m just as sure as God made little green apples—I believe that low scum is behind more villainy than any man alive in the U.S. today!
Stanton pounded on the table, rattling their silverware: “Well damn it all, then, Willie, what are you going to do about it?”
Willie set his jaw firmly and looked as resolute as a pudgy, cowardly, boyish-looking man could manage: “If you will let me use your personal terminal, sir, I will send an official telegram to my friend at the New Petersburg office of the Okhrana, Grand Duke Sheremetev, and request his fullest possible assistance. And I’ll make sure to include a complete description of McCool, so that there can be no mistake about who he is. Then, if I have your further approval, I will send copies of the circulars we printed the other night to every major city in the United States and especially to all the Mississippi River crossings, to make sure that they are aware of the possible presence of this criminal—in fact, we will offer a reward for his capture, dead or alive. A thousand dollars in gold?” Stanton nodded approvingly and Willie concluded with a catch of emotion that Moody and Sankey would have applauded: “I swear to you, sir, we will capture him and make him pay the full price for his villainy.”
Stanton stood up and as Willie followed his lead, he put his arm around the younger man’s shoulders and steered him over to the window, thinking that Pygmalion had probably felt very much like this when he had created the perfect helpmeet and brought her to life.
“Willie, my boy,” he said, gesturing out the window towards the Mall and its buildings and monuments, “that’s our America out there, ours to re-build and perfect, to raise to moral and material standards above anything dreamt of by the Founding Fathers. I won’t last forever, much as I might like to, and I want to be sure when I go that I am turning over the reins to someone I can trust as fully as I would myself. You’re still young and unseasoned, but already you’re a magnificent adjutant.”
He laid his right hand on Willie’s shoulder and fixed him hypnotically with what he liked to think of as his “all-seeing eye.”
“That’s why I gave you the post in New York,” Stanton continued, “a job which is second only to my own in national importance. That’s why I’ve poured every dollar I could milk out of my Department’s budget and every scientific and architectural resource I could muster into re-working that building on Union Square into a fitting home for America’s first true political police—the Department of Public Safety that I expect you to lead to heights beyond anything dreamt of in the halls of the Okhrana or the Deuxième Bureau. Behind that drab, familiar, old-New York exterior my workmen have turned your headquarters into an armored fortress, with every refinement of modern electrical and mechanical science that Secretary Tesla has been able to devise, some of them totally exclusive to the Department of Public Safety HQ on Union Square.”
Stanton beamed at Willie with the indulgent smile of a proud papa springing his best birthday treat:
“And finally, I’m told that the Spanish Inquisitors you requested from Madrid arrived in New York this morning and will be ready for service at your headquarters no later than the Fourth of July. Taken together, these are truly superlative tools for any forward-looking public safety officer to have at his disposal, and I trust and believe that you will use them to make our country a happier and more secure place.”
He clapped Willie on the back and beamed at him: “My personal telegraph terminal is at your disposal, my boy, go use it in good health … and say hello to Grand Duke Sheremetev for me!”
Willie grabbed Stanton’s hand and squeezed it fervently. “Thank you, sir,” he said with a hint of tears in his eyes. “I promise I shall justify your faith in me!”
He hastened away to the telegraph room, almost at a run, as Stanton poured himself the rest of the Château Mouton Rothschild and sipped it with undisguised appreciation. A good day, he thought with a satisfied smile, a very good day indeed!
Chapter Twenty-Five
No thank you, Miss, I’m Orthodox.”
The young man—a plump, rosy-cheeked Flügel-Lieutenant in Little Russia’s Aerial Navy—tipped his sky-blue and gold-braided uniform cap to Becky and dropped a silver ten-kopek piece into her collection box. She shook the box ruefully, listening to the thin rattle of a dozen or so small coins as the Russian officer strolled away.
“You were right about one thing, General …”
“Pastor Karl, please,” Custer said with a smile. They were both speaking German, a language Becky had perfected as Harper’s correspondent during the Franco-Prussian War and Custer had learned from his family.
“Sorry. In any event, Karl, you were right about them not bothering us as Plain Folk, but I’m afraid it’s put a bit of a cramp in my femme fatale style as well.”
Custer himself was dressed completely in sober black, including a flat-brimmed black hat and a long black overcoat that reached to the tops of his boots, while Becky was dressed almost identically except for the addition of a black poke bonnet which covered her auburn hair and threw a shadow over a face that could have launched a thousand airships if only the Russian aeronauts had been able to see it.
“I’m sure that has more than a little to do with our lackluster audience,” he said with a worried frown, “but I have a feeling there’s something else going on as well. I’ve been here a dozen times collecting intelligence as ‘Pastor Karl,’ and all the lads know me and stop for a chat in broken German or English or Russian. Today, though, they’re all suddenly Orthodox, and they look distracted, like something troubling is on their minds.”
“Look at their airfield,” he continued, gesturing at the vast, snowy plain on the other side of the tall wroughtiron fence that extended for a mile in either direction from the sentry gate outside which Custer had built their small keeping-warm fire, a brazier-full of charcoal. “These Russians have no more notion of military security than a suckling pig, you can see everything they’ve got from here, and it consists entirely of a half-dozen barrage balloons in those sheds there, plus those two huge rigid airships over there on the west side of the field, which have been on loan from Imperial Russia since we got here and whose engines have been undergoing a refit for long enough now that American aeronauts could have built an entire squadron of new airships from the ground up. These fellows like wearing their pretty blue uniforms and drinking vodka while a gypsy orchestra keeps them amused and frankly I don’t think they’re in any shape to attack anything more threatening than a half-dozen stampeding buffalo. So why all the long faces? Why all the ‘Orthodoxy’ and bad nerves?”
As if they were bringing them an answer, a small detachment of soldiers led by an Ensign barely old enough to shave marched around the Guard House and towards the gate.
“I’m not sure I like the look of that,” Becky murmure
d.
“Nor I,” answered Custer. “But we’d better just stand our ground and offer them our blessings.”
A moment later the little detachment marched through the gate and up to Becky and Custer, where the Ensign abruptly sang out:
“Squad, halt!”
The soldiers came to a halt with much stamping of their feet and smacking their rifles. Then the young Ensign stepped forward apologetically and addressed them in good German:
“Good morning, Pastor Karl, Miss. I’m sorry to have to trouble you, but I’m afraid I must ask you to accompany me to the Guard House for an interview with the adjutant.”
“What, really?” asked Custer with mild indignation. “You fellows know me, you’ve stopped and chatted with me time and time again!”
“Once more, sir,” the Ensign said, reddening with embarrassment, “I really do apologize, but I must ask you to come with me. And Miss, if I may, I’d like to ask you to bring your leaflets, the Adjustant asked to see them most particularly.”
Becky and Custer exchanged a quick glance, then Custer picked up the stack of tracts and held out his arm for Becky to take hold of. A moment later, surrounded by Russian aeronauts, they were marching anxiously towards the Guard House.
Crazy Horse stopped to light a long, dark brown Russian cigarette, and gestured towards the colonnaded building ahead of them:
“You see the number 16 chiseled into the stone there?”
“With all that gold leaf you couldn’t really miss it,” Liam said, a little puzzled.
“Well, believe it or not, my foster father actually had this whole stretch of the Boulevard renamed ‘Fontanka’ so that the address of this building could be ‘Fontanka 16.’”
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