by Gwynn White
She pulled her cleaning rag through the barrel of the Myxilite. One of the funny things about the IRA was how little care they took of their weapons. Drench it in gun oil and hope, had evidently been Ferdy’s philosophy.
Leonie had disassembled the weapon, probably for the first time since it left the factory, and laid the parts out on the back seat. Now she was cleaning them with one of the fine cloths meant to go inside Fiona’s nappies. Annoyingly, her hands were shaking.
She had parked in a field twenty miles north of Oughterard, hopefully outside the radius of MI5’s patrols. Another lonely hillside with no houses in sight. No cover whatsoever. We can’t spend the night here.
Madelaine sat in the front seat, halfheartedly eating a bread-and-butter sandwich. Fiona lay beside her, sleeping the healing sleep, curled around the holy relic Madelaine had brought from the Tower of London, the plastinated head of her late mother, Queen Adolfina. Leonie had objected to that, since Fiona wasn’t actually hurt. You sometimes saw babies whose mothers, fortunately in possession of a useful family relic, used it to knock them out for hours on end so they could go to work or just mince around with their friends. The infants throve all right but they often ended up slow and stupid. Too many hours asleep. It would be a tragedy if the same thing happened to the last princess of the Wessexes. But Madelaine had overridden Leonie’s protests. And to be honest, silence did make a nice change.
Not that you couldn’t have too much of a good thing. It was too silent out here, only the wuthering of the wind and the plash of water from a stream running under a humpy stone bridge.
“Alyx O’Braonain,” Leonie murmured. Thinks she’s so bloody clever. Thinks nothing can ever be proved against her …
“To hell with Alyx O’Braonain,” Madelaine said. “I don’t give a damn about her.”
“Well, I do,” Leonie said.
“Get out of the car for a moment,” Madelaine said.
Puzzled, Leonie wiped her hands on her cleaning rag, then complied. They faced each other under the silent gaze of the mountains. Snow capped the peak of Ben Corr. How cold would it get tonight? Could they safely sleep in the car? They’d have to cuddle up, a prospect Leonie was fairly sure Madelaine would like about as much as she did.
Madelaine struck her in the face.
Oh, not this again.
“You overstepped yourself back there,” the princess snapped.
This had to be about Ferdy. “What, you’d have let him walk away?”
Another slap. “You tortured him! You dragged us—me—down to his level! Daddy told me—it was his greatest fear—if we let them corrupt us, they will have won!”
“First off, you held the gun on him yourself. You did really well, too. I couldn’t have done it without you.” And of course, that was exactly what Madelaine was fussed about. “Second of all, that was nothing—nothing!—to what goes on every day in His Majesty’s jails. You ever seen MI5 putting a suspect to the question? No, well, I was the soul of mercy compared to that.”
“But when they’re put to the question, they’re given the cure afterwards! That’s the law!”
“Unless they die during interrogation. It’s been known to happen.”
“That’s different from shooting a helpless man in the head. You’ve brought dishonor on me and my House!”
Madelaine pummeled Leonie with weakly balled fists. Leonie managed not to put up her arms to defend herself, which would have enraged the princess further. Instead she let herself be driven down to her knees. Blows rained on her head.
At last Madelaine’s rage wore itself out. She crumpled to her knees in front of Leonie. “It’s true, what I said. I can’t take any more. I can’t go on. I can’t, I can’t …”
Leonie’s cheeks throbbed. She could taste blood in her mouth, and her left eye felt like she had a shiner coming on. Maybe Madelaine would let her borrow her relic tonight, if Leonie argued that a black eye would draw unwanted attention.
“Shouldn’t take more’n another two days to get to Belfast,” she said thickly. She got to her feet and went back to the car. Blood came when she blotted her mouth on the rag she’d been using to clean the Myxilite.
“Fifi’s things are wet,” Madelaine sobbed, sprawled on the ground. “They’ll never dry out in this hateful weather.”
“She’s all right in her blanket for now. We can buy her something to wear in the next town.” Less obvious that way, too; Fiona’s princess kit was eye-catching..
“We don’t have any m-m-money left!”
“Oh yes we do,” Leonie said, waving the money she had taken from the dead man’s pockets. A nice little roll of £150-odd, snaffled while Marigh Healy wasn’t looking.
Madelaine sniffled, grabbed the banknotes. She plopped back into the front seat and counted them. “I hate you,” she said wearily.
It’s mutual.
39
Guy
The Next Day. November 28th, 1979. Snowdon Forest, Wales
Another thin shriek, like some malignant species of bird calling through the dusk. Another molar-jarring thump.
“That one sounded awfully close,” Alan O'Scolaidhe said. “D’you think we’re safe here?”
Guy raised his binoculars. The forest floor was sunk in shadows. Below the spur where they stood, the battalion was scrambling to make camp before the long winter night drew in. Red rays lingered in the tops of the pine trees that clothed the opposite face of the valley. The smoke of the explosions cleared and he saw the targets—dilapidated, windowless cars in a field down by the river—standing untouched. “Not close enough,” he said. “What the hell is the matter with their forward observers?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“You are their commander, Alan.”
“Not for want of trying to get out of it,” Alan said. He took the binoculars. “That tree looks somewhat damaged.”
“Lightly damaged,” Guy said.
“I beg to differ. Look, it’s missing almost all its leaves.”
“It’s … Alan, it’s winter.”
“That’s better. That long face of yours was frightening the camp followers. He’s laughing; look, Hanna, he is laughing.”
“I believe he is,” Hanna O’Cinneide said, laughing herself.
But Guy couldn’t share their optimism. He was a titular colonel who’d scarcely ever participated in any regimental activities more challenging than dinners. And Alan, a lieutenant colonel, would rather have been playing the violin or hang-gliding. Will your men even follow you into action? His mother’s scorn rang in his ears.
Off somewhere in the camp were Guy’s titular company captains, the Cork twins and Fred Longford, who were murderous in the lists but barely knew one end of a gun from the other. Then there was Hanna, who would be leaving them soon on a separate mission. Oh—Guy smiled self-mockingly—and there was Dierdre, of course.
Another mortar shell shrieked overhead and slammed into the mucky pit of the valley. Clots of earth pattered through the branches on the spur.
“Saints!” Alan shouted, looking at a piece of shrapnel which had sliced a bright furrow in the bark of a tree.
“Yes, sir,” said Battalion Sergeant-Major Murphy, squat and porcine in khaki. “That will have been the 81mm, sir. Must have finally got it set up.”
Thank God for the non-coms. Guy fiddled with the night sight attachment on his binoculars and got it hinged into place in time for the next shell-burst. The livid green explosion birthed voluminous clouds of smoke, turning the whole target area hazy green. When it dispersed, one of the target vehicles lay on its side, licked by flame.
“One tends to forget,” Alan said shakily, “how much firepower we have available to us, and what we can accomplish with it.”
The sound of cheering crackled over the radio, which a signaler was monitoring behind them.
Murphy turned to the signaler and said, “Tell ’em to pack it in. They’ve had their fun. And tell ’em to keep off the open channel.”
&n
bsp; “I wouldn’t worry too much about that, sergeant-major,” Guy said bleakly. “We’re here to be noticed.”
As they picked their way down from the spur, Guy dropped back to walk with Hanna. “Do you think you can do it?”
“You’re still worried, aren’t you? Don’t be.”
“What about the Crown Army troops guarding the docks at Portsmouth?”
“Few in number, and not particularly inclined to lay down their lives,” she said. “Forty-eight hours from now, the Harold’s Joy will be ours. One aircraft carrier is the equivalent of a small army. Even if we can’t convince her pilots to join us, the Joy’s guns will be able to neutralize London’s defenses from twenty miles out at sea.”
“What if her sister ships turn their guns on you?”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Dear Guy, my father’s a Royal Navy food service contractor. We’ve got eyes and ears aboard every ship in the fleet.”
“I’m only trying to think of everything.”
“I know.”
Darkness masked the camp. The clean scent of pine needles gave way to the mingled odors of cooking, diesel fumes, and latrine chemicals. A sentry saluted them. Guy said to the man, “Don’t salute someone appearing from outside your perimeter; challenge him, challenge him!”
“Yes, sir!”
They walked around the lorry park and between rows of tents smelling of mildew. Kerosene light glimmered on guylines. Junior officers and non-coms popped in and out of the tents designated the signals room and situation room.
“Don’t worry, Guy,” Hanna repeated. “We’re going to get this done.”
He just had to accept her assurances. And believe that he could do his own part.
After mess, he spent several hours in the signals room, reading and responding to messages. Rhys Llywelyn vowed he would not impede the mobile column’s passage to Gloucester. That indicated the success of their feint: Guy had lied to Rhys. He wasn’t planning to take his men through Gloucester at all.
Kim Lancashire had sent him a message, too.
WT ABT YR CHPPRS?
Guy signaled back: ARMRD CVLRY WL SPRT CLMN, AS DSCD. WT?
Some time later a reply came: RCK HS CHPPRS 2. IF CNT DNY AIR, DNGR OF FISH.
“Fish?” Guy said to Sergeant-Major Murphy.
“FISH,” Murphy said. “Fighting In Someone’s House, sir. What we don’t want to happen.”
Guy sent a reply emphasizing that the Overwhelm expected to neutralize the Royal Air Force base at Heathrow before entering London.
But back in his tent, he found himself thinking about it again. FISH. What we don’t want to happen. What had happened in Belfast, Armagh, and Dublin in 1956.
“Knock, knock,” said a voice outside his tent, playfully. “May I come in?”
“Dierdre.” Guy was not sorry to be distracted from his thoughts. And what a distraction. She wore a pale khaki skirt suit with shoulder tabs and brass buttons running all the way down her blouse … and all the way up one side of her skirt. “Shaken off your minders at last?”
“I believe they’re being plied with beer as we speak.” Cyril Argent had tried to persuade Dierdre not to go with the regiment, and when that proved impossible, he had sent a brace of bodyguards with her. “I’m surprised you haven’t set minders on me.”
“Where would you go? There’s nothing out there but forest.”
“True.” She went over to Guy’s camp chest and picked up the photograph set on top of it. “Ah.”
The photograph was of Ran, not an official one but a snapshot taken by Piers last summer on Bermuda, the Sauvages’ private island north of the Carribeans. It showed Ran and his dragon on the beach, the shadows of palm leaves blurred across their bodies. Ran was grinning happily. The dragon was yawning so it looked like she was grinning, too.
“I don’t think I ever saw him smile like that,” Dierdre said.
“You ought to have seen him with his dragon. He loved that beast. Even took her to the beach.” Guy was aware of speaking of Ran in the past tense, and also aware of the way Dierdre’s thighs bulged over her booted ankles as she squatted, and aware of himself ogling her: a spiral of self-awareness that led nowhere good. “She’s been roaming, crying, refusing to eat. It’s thought she saw his kidnappers. If only she could speak.”
“You think he’s dead, don’t you?” Dierdre said.
“If I thought he was dead, would I be here?” Guy said angrily, sweeping out a hand to indicate the weapons stacked in the corner of the tent, and implicitly the entire camp. They had crossed the Irish Sea to Aberystwyth on commercial ships owned by the Sauvage Corporation. Few of the men had ever been to Wales before. The twig-crack noise of distant rifle shots came through the canvas walls. “My men are keen. They don’t know where we’re going, yet, but they’re ready to go. This is what they’ve been trained for. This is what we were all born for. Not the imitation of war, but the real thing.”
“You got that out of the Chronicles of the Worldcracker.”
“It’s going to be dangerous. How far do you want to come?”
“I don’t think I have much choice, do I?”
“Hanna O’Cinneide is leaving tonight. You might go with her.”
“Really?” Dierdre swayed towards him on the high heels that put her face on a level with his own, eyes widening in mock-surprise. “Might I? Might the silly female have permission to depart so that the boys can play with their bang-bangs?”
“Are you trying to remind me you’re an older woman? Sorry to disillusion you, but I hadn’t forgotten.”
“Oh, heartless! But then, I believe that’s what attracts me to you. With just a very little effort you could be really cruel.” Her eyes stayed wide, her lips parted. She placed the plum-varnished tips of her fingers in the hollow of her throat, mimicking fear. “I know why you allowed me to come, Guy. You believe you’re holding me hostage, don’t you? Just in case my husband gets any ideas in his head about taking advantage of the general confusion.”
“Damn,” Guy drawled. “Rumbled again.”
“I’m proud of you! It really was a clever idea, or rather it would have been but for one thing. Cyril doesn’t give a damn about me. He’d as soon be rid of me so that he could install someone younger and blonder. Oh, I know I told you he was still wildly in love with me. That was so that you could have the pleasure of cuckolding him, and believe he cared.”
Guy stared her in the face for a moment, then lowered his gaze to the mounds under her faux-military blouse. Her nipples pressed against the fabric. She was not wearing a brassiere. “I never slept with you to score off Cousin Cyril,” he said, honestly. “I slept with you because I was bored with Daintie O’Docharthaigh, and I wanted to.”
“Do you still want to?”
He went to turn down the kerosene lamp. By accident it went out altogether. The dark leapt up around them, and there came a long volley of rifle fire from the direction of the drilling area. Reddish flashes lit the weave of the roof.
“Let’s go out and watch!” Dierdre yelled over the noise. “I didn’t get to see them shooting off the mortars. My bodyguards wouldn’t let me. This is why I came, Guy! I want to see what the Overwhelm can do when it puts its mind to it. All that skill and firepower. All that stinking masculinity and vaunting bravado. I want to see what happens when they shoot at men!”
“You bloodthirsty bitch.” Eyes adjusting to the dark, he walked over to the shadow of her and roughly cupped a palm around the side of her throat. “Hasn’t Cyril ever tried to tame you?”
“I wouldn’t have married him if I’d thought he could tame me.” Her voice vibrated against his hand.
“Perhaps he just didn’t try hard enough.” Guy slid his hand down to the collar of her blouse, wrapped the material around his fist and jerked. Buttons popped loose. He stripped the garment off her upper body. “Yes?”
“I made a terrible mistake in marrying him,” she said without a h
int of humor, her voice low and grave.
“Oh, shut up about him.” Guy pulled her closer.
“Yes. Oh God. Yes, Guy! Yes.”
The next morning Guy flew ahead of the column. He’d brought Blooming Monday, a powerful young male dragon trained for the hunt. He set Dierdre behind him, not caring what anyone might think. Alan was on his own Thyme’s Running Out, and Tibs Cork joined them on a drab, tourney-scarred beast called Cad. The dragons easily outdistanced the column, which could move no faster than a jogging pace on the steep road that wound higher into the hills.
The day dawned sunny. They flew into the frigid wind, hugging the contours of the steeply raked slopes, catching updraughts below cliffs, soaring over gorges threaded with white water. “The hunting here is superb,” Guy shouted over his shoulder. “Boar, wolves, even elk. I’ve shot a twelve-point stag from the air.” Blooming Monday’s body flexed between his thighs, reminding him of the way Dierdre had flexed under him last night.
Thunder boomed on the heights. But it was not thunder. It did not roll across the hills. It was the advance party.
Dense forest covered most of Wales. The Llewelyns had never been very keen on industry. But persuaded by loans from House Sauvage, they’d begun to build a motorway through the vast Snowdon Forest, with the intention of connecting the port of Aberystwyth with Gloucester. The motorway remained incomplete. One of the biggest remaining obstacles was Mynydd Craig Goch, the 2000-foot peak overlooking the Elan Valley. A tunnel had been dug through it from this side—and abandoned, with typical Llewelyn fecklessness, thirty feet short of the other side.
Lord Lancashire, via Kim, had suggested they could get the lorries through by blasting ahead. Guy’s sappers agreed it was possible, and they were now hard at work.
Guy gave the hand signal to turn. They flew back the way they had come, and presently spotted the notional future motorway, an orange-railed ledge hugging the underside of a cliff.
Something whizzed out of the cliff’s shadow: a motorcycle with a sidecar. It stopped. The tiny figure of the sidecar passenger jumped out and waved at them.