King of the Cracksmen

by Dennis O'Flaherty

  “Bozhe moi!” he said incredulously. “Are you trying to become some sort of monster of sang froid, sitting there napping while I run around taking care of things?”

  Liam stood up, shaking his head stupidly and opening and closing his mouth like a beached fish.

  “By God, you’d better explain all this to me,” he said finally.

  Crazy Horse just rolled his eyes, grabbed Liam by the arm and dragged him into the hall, where the aide-de-camp was lying on the floor with his hand clutching the side of his neck, his eyes staring into nothingness with an expression of stark terror.

  “Poor man seems to be suffering from a scorpion bite,” Crazy Horse said. “Come on, we’re going to have to leg it.”

  As the two of them ran out the front door Crazy Horse whistled sharply between his teeth and immediately a troika jingled towards them out of the snow. Liam and Crazy Horse jumped in.

  “Boris and Gleb Square!” Crazy Horse shouted to the driver. “A gold ruble if you make it in less than ten minutes!”

  The driver grinned at them out of his mound of furs and shubki: “For a gold ruble, Your Honor, I will put you there in less than five minutes!”

  With a crack of the whip and a din of sleigh bells, the troika whizzed away through the thickening snow.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I’m a skinwalker, that’s all,” Crazy Horse said. He was busily pulling open drawers and grabbing things out of the hall closet as he stuffed a large carpetbag with his and Custer’s belongings. Crazy Horse had shed the hated Russian uniform and changed into an anonymous dark suit under which he wore a Sioux warrior’s hair pipe breastplate and a red bandana.

  “No it’s not all,” Liam said warningly, “speak to me!”

  “Bozhe moi!” Crazy Horse said, waving his hand in exasperation. “The Navajo say they began it, but I say the Oglala Lakota were first and the Navajo got it from us. Whichever it may be, it just means that one who has studied the Way can learn to take the form of an animal. I chose the scorpion because it’s easy and it seemed useful right then.”

  “I guess,” said Liam wryly. “Anyway, thanks.” He scooped up Becky’s notebooks and writing supplies and Maggie’s pistol (which Becky had regretfully decided didn’t fit her Sister Isolde identity) and dumped them into the valise along with the spare ammunition.

  “Think nothing of it,” Crazy Horse said with a grin. “Sometime when we aren’t in a hurry maybe I’ll do a grizzly bear for you.”

  He snapped the carpetbag shut and then gestured to Liam: “Give me a hand with this, will you?”

  He had pulled a floorboard up part way, but there were still lots of nails and Liam lent his back to the effort; a moment later, with a protesting shriek of wood and nails, the board ripped loose, revealing a cache with a half-dozen small packages of grease paper-wrapped dynamite, a couple of lever-action Winchesters, and a sawed-off pump-action shotgun with a rawhide sling and a canvas bag full of shells.

  “Looks like enough for a first-rate goodbye party,” Liam said.

  “Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Crazy Horse with a tight grin. “Grab a handful and let’s go!”

  Liam took half the dynamite and the shotgun and shells, stuffed all but the gun (which he slung inside his overcoat) into Becky’s valise and was just in the process of wrapping a long strip of woolen blanket around his neck for a scarf when there was a distant but clearly gigantic explosion and all the windows facing Boris and Gleb Square imploded into the room.

  Crazy Horse instantly dropped into a crouch, ready for an attack; Liam just as instantly (conditioned forever by Gettysburg) flattened himself on the floor with his arms over his head. One second, two … then as both men realized that was all for the moment they jumped back up and ran to the windows, through which the snow was now whirling thickly.

  “That came from the direction of the Viceroy’s palace,” Crazy Horse said. In the distance, beyond the spires of the Boris and Gleb cathedral, they could see a thick cloud of white smoke rising through the snow, illuminated by rapidly spreading flames.

  “Do you think that might have been your friend Plekh-anov?” Liam asked.

  “Whoever it was, they used a lot more than a couple of pounds of dynamite and I think we’d better get going while we can still move freely.”

  Outside, a small crowd had collected near where their troika stood waiting. They were babbling excitedly and pointing across the Square towards the flames and smoke.

  “There you are, Your Honors,” cried the driver. “They’re saying somebody’s blown up the Tsarevich!” Then, collecting himself a bit, he looked more closely at his passengers’ changed appearance. “Are you still planning to go back to the Fontanka?”

  Crazy Horse nodded and grinned: “Wouldn’t miss it for the world!” he said. “Lyovushka?”

  Liam gestured politely towards the sleigh “After you, Zhenyushka!”

  A moment later the troika tore away at full gallop, the sleigh’s runners keening with speed and throwing up a double fountain of snow behind them.

  By the time their sleigh entered the Fontanka, Liam could hear steady small-arms fire in the distance, interspersed with occasional muffled booms that sounded like dynamite. Crazy Horse stood up and slapped the driver on the back:

  “Hey!” he shouted, “slow down! Pull over as soon as you can!”

  As they hissed to a stop at the curb, the driver turned and looked at them inquisitively. Crazy Horse looked around, saw that there was nobody within hearing distance and leaned closer to the driver:

  “We’d like you to be our driver for the rest of the day—you can count on being well paid, but I want to warn you that we’re about to become fugitives.”

  The driver grinned widely, revealing a shiny gold tooth right in the middle of his smile.

  “Why, bless you, Your Honors, I haven’t done anything illegal since I got up this morning and a man has to keep in practice, doesn’t he?” He held out his hand and shook firmly with Crazy Horse and Liam. “Now then, where are we off to?”

  Liam leaned forward: “I saw the mouth of an alleyway right across the street from Fontanka 16—if you wait for us there could you cut straight through to next street when we return and get us out of here before they manage to gather their wits?”

  The driver laid a finger alongside his nose and winked.

  “Let’s go, then,” said Crazy Horse.

  This time the sleigh moved off at a sedate pace, bells jingling rhythmically, and less than a minute later they were turning the corner into the alleyway Liam had spotted earlier. About halfway down the alley, the driver pulled his rig over next to a warehouse and halted his horses as Liam and Crazy Horse climbed out, their overcoat pockets stuffed with dynamite. They walked up closer to the mouth of the alleyway and stared across the street at Okhrana HQ.

  “Did your foster father ever say anything that could help us find the interrogation chambers?”

  “Not in so many words,” Crazy horse said, “but I know they’re in the basement, and probably beyond where the back of the building is, to keep screams from bothering visitors upstairs.”

  Liam looked at him sharply, but Crazy Horse shrugged. “Sorry, Lyovushka, but we have to expect the worst.”

  Liam let out a pent-up breath and nodded. “What kind of fuse do you have on this stuff?”

  “Fast. It’s bundled for throwing.”

  “Good. I’m guessing that your foster father took most of his people with him when the Palace blew, so maybe our best bet would be to walk right up to the front door and say hello.”

  “For a white man,” Crazy Horse said, “you’re pretty smart.” He took a couple of his foster father’s cheroots out of his pocket, gave one to Liam and lit them both up with a Lucifer he scratched on the wall next to them. “Good for lighting fuses,” he said.

  “Stand by for a bit of noise,” he called to the driver, “I expect we’ll be back pretty quickly.”

  Crazy Horse and Liam strode across t
he street and took the steps two at a time. Liam cracked the massive front door slightly and peered inside. “Better than I expected,” he said, “not a soul in sight.” He took out one of his bundles of dynamite, lit the fuse from the cheeroot and then pulled the doors open and tossed the bundle in as far as he could lob it before pulling the door closed and plastering himself against the wall next to it.

  “Tally ho,” said Crazy Horse, stuffing his fingers in his ears. An instant later there was a huge explosion inside and the bronze front doors with their bas-relief Imperial eagles blew across the street as if they were made of cardboard.

  “Good stuff,” Liam said, “maybe we should keep some for later.”

  He pumped a shell into his shotgun’s chamber and charged forward into the smoke-and-dust-filled interior where a dazed-looking Okhrannik sat on the floor with his jaw gaping.

  “You!” Liam shouted at the man. “Quick! Show us the interrogation rooms!”

  Liam could see awareness and stubborn resistance both flooding back into the man’s eyes.

  “You’ll be in big trouble …” the guard said in a threatening tone.

  “And you’ll be dead if you don’t get going!” Liam bellowed, raising the shotgun and firing a load of buckshot at the crystal chandelier that swayed above the rotunda. With an appalling crash the chandelier tore loose from the ceiling and smashed to the floor a few feet away. Liam jammed the barrel of the gun into the man’s cheek and this time he leapt up like a gazelle.

  “Yes, sir, Your Honor,” he shrieked. “Follow me!”

  He scurried down the ruined hallway towards a big oak door with iron straps as Liam followed and Crazy Horse covered him, moving backwards and holding one of the Winchesters at the ready.

  “Down here, Your Worship,” the man babbled, throwing the door open.

  “Stay on the door, pick off anybody coming this way,” Liam said to Crazy Horse, pushing the man ahead of him down the stairs. At the bottom they found themselves at the beginning of a long hallway crossed by another about midway to its end. From this second hallway two more okhranniki jumped out shouting for them to halt, but they were still raising their weapons when Liam’s shotgun simply blew them down the hall like dry leaves.

  “Where are the German preachers?” he shouted at his guide. The man was blubbering now, expecting that he’d be next.

  “Oh, Your Radiance,” he quavered, “please spare my life for the sake of my old mother and my little ones …”

  “I swear to you,” Liam gritted between his teeth, “I will tear you into little strips and make your old mother eat them if you don’t show me the Germans at once!”

  The man gave a demented little scream and took off down the hall at a trot with Liam close behind, finally stopping outside the last door on the left.

  “They’re in there, Holiness,” the man stuttered, “please spare me!”

  “OPEN THE DOOR!” Liam yelled and the man leapt to obey, almost dropping the keys in his terror. As soon as the door swung open, Liam pinched the man’s neck and put him to sleep, dreading what he would see inside as he stepped across the threshhold into the darkness.

  “Becky?” he said hesitantly, uncertain just where she might be. A moment later a pair of strong arms suddenly encircled him and pulled him close while an unmistakable feminine form pressed urgently against him:

  “What on earth took you so long?” she asked, and for once Liam just forgot about words and put everything he had into what he thought of ever after as The Kiss of the Ages …

  After what seemed like nowhere near enough time, a Lucifer flared in the darkness next to Liam and he saw Custer’s grinning face, sporting a split lip and a black eye.

  “I hate like the Dickens to interrupt you, Hoss,” Custer said, “but I’m guessing we’d better hit the trail.”

  “Right!” Liam managed to get out, and—taking Becky’s hand firmly with one hand and and his shotgun with the other—he led them back towards the stairs at a run.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was a relief to leave the town behind them, especially as the continuing obligato of gunfire and explosions made it seem likely their reception would be too warm for comfort if they were seen again. Fortunately, the driver and his horses had made this drive so often that the snow and the darkness made absolutely no difference to their progress—the sleighbells jingled merrily, the runners sang against the snow, and all four of the passengers finally managed to draw a peaceful breath.

  “We’ve had so much fun I hate to see you go,” said Custer with a laugh.

  “At least you’ll have the shiner to remember us by,” Liam said, “where are you two bound for from here?”

  “Like you we’ve really found out all we could from being in New Petersburg,” Crazy Horse said, deciding to stick to Russian since the others understood it better than his English. “Now we’re going back to join the rest of the Oglala. We need to begin our Ghost Dance, and Georgie and I need to plan a grand strategy for driving the Russians out once and for all.”

  “What about the other whites?” Becky asked, genuinely curious. “Is there any chance of peace between you and the U.S.?”

  “I expect you know the answer as well as I do,” Crazy Horse answered. “If they deal with us honestly and respect our sovereignty we will welcome peace with them.”

  Everybody fell silent, thinking about that. Then Custer spoke up:

  “How about you two? Where are you bound for from here?”

  Becky and Liam exchanged a surprised look, realizing that the question had caught them in a suspended moment, the two of them levitating on a cloud of buoyant emotions between one moment of severely practical decisions and the next. Becky smiled pensively.

  “Well, I know what I am obliged to do, which is report to Mr. Clemens and the other leaders of the Freedom Party and take counsel about how we should proceed with the information we discovered here. And I’m eager to discover what they have arrived at with President Lincoln—surely his situation has been kept in the darkness for far too long, but the question will be just how to put it before the American public.” She looked towards Liam with an unspoken question in her eyes.

  Glad of the darkness, Liam smiled back at her and took her hand between both of his. “I can tell you fellows this much—I’ve barely known Miss Fox a couple of weeks, but they’ve been pretty busy ones and I’ve learned a thing or two. One of them for sure is that we’d all better put our thinking caps on and figure out how to put an end to the mess we’re in before it puts an end to us.”

  “By the Lord Harry I’ll drink to that!” said Custer.

  For a few minutes they were all busy with their own thoughts, though Liam didn’t let go of Becky’s hand. Then at last the driver’s voice broke into their reveries:

  “You asked me to let you know when we were five minutes away, Your Honors,” he said. He gestured towards the horizon with his whip: “You see that line of light along there? That’ll be the aerodrome, on the other side of that stand of woods. There’s a road through the woods and we can get pretty close that way. But then you’re going to have to decide what you want to do.”

  Liam turned to Becky and Custer. “Do you think maybe we can steal one of those barrage balloons?”

  Custer nodded. “If we stage a diversion on this side of the field it’s bound to draw all the aeronauts and security troops. Then you can make your move.”

  “The real question,” Becky said dubiously, “is whether or not we’ll be better off once we go up in the thing.”

  Custer smiled wryly. “Supposedly these are a big improvement on the ones we used in the War. Those pretty much just tugged at the end of their guide ropes, but these have tail fins of a sort, and some rudimentary steering for flying untethered. Anyway,” he added, spreading his hands, “once you’re up there you won’t be on Russian soil any longer.”

  They all fell silent again as the sleigh headed down the narrow road among the trees. It suddenly seemed terribly dark and
lonely after the intermittent flashes of moonlight that broke through the clouds; here, they were enclosed in a dense tunnel and Liam involuntarily found himself thinking of that huge wolf again. He looked towards Becky and saw the flash of her teeth as she smiled:

  “Mmm hm. Me too. Only this time we’ve got Laughing Wolf with us!”

  The driver gave a low whistle and held his whip up to signal his passengers as the sleigh glided to a stop.

  “Here we are, Your Honors. I’ll stay with you until you decide you don’t need me any more, but it wouldn’t be wise to take the sleigh out into the open beyond these trees.”

  They all got out and crept up to the edge of the tree-line, Custer taking a pocket spyglass out of his overcoat and scanning the aerodrome.

  “Well, I’ll be switched!” he muttered.

  “What is it?” Becky asked.

  Custer pointed towards the airfield. “That wasn’t there this morning when they took us away. And they weren’t either.”

  He handed her the glass to forestall more questions and as she looked the others heard her draw her breath sharply. Liam could barely stand the suspense:

  “Hey, Miss, no hogging the glass!”

  She reluctantly handed him the little telescope and the minute he looked into it he saw what the others had been reacting to: just beyond the edge of the pool of illumination cast by one of the scattered calcium arc lights there hunched an enormous, baleful triangular wedge, painted a flat black that seemed to eat the light:

  “Holy Hannah!” Liam muttered. “That’s the biggest Black Delta I ever saw in my life.”

  Becky looked apprehensive. “There was a rumor Stanton had commissioned a battleship Delta,” she said, “but we all thought it was the usual Department of Public Safety propaganda. And take a closer look at the men at the gate, Liam.”

  Liam swung the scope across the field towards the gate and gasped as he saw what she had meant: there, unconcernedly chatting about something or other, was “Boyo” Boylan—on a crutch, thanks to Liam’s work in the gas company tunnel—and a couple of his lads.