The Ultimate Secret

by David Thomas Moore

She didn’t respond. The heavy, halting footfalls of the strange figures behind her drew closer as she stared, appalled, at the men advancing on her.

  Got to time this right...

  The first man slowly put his pistol away and held his hands out towards her as he approached. “Do you understand me? We want your message, the one Smith sent you to get. We don’t want to hurt you.”

  Kim just stared at him, wide-eyed and silent, mouth open and panting. Inside, she was concentrating on slowing her heartbeat, the way her grandfather taught her, and emptying her mind. Another footfall behind her. Nearly...

  The Chinese agent swore and turned to his partner. “Do you speak Hindi?”

  The second man shrugged and said something brief in Mandarin. Another footfall from the figures behind her.

  Now.

  She abruptly ducked, paused for a fraction of a second – tick-tick-tick-tick-tick – then rolled backwards between the two manlike hulks behind her. As she did so, she got her first clear look at them. The reaching hands, as she passed beneath their fingers, were hinged steel; the faces, polished brass, sculpted into idealised Han Chinese forms, with fixed, determined expressions. Under the chins, coils, springs and gears at the top of the necks, rattling and spinning.

  Clearing the space between the machines, she twisted and came to her feet with her back to them and sprinted back to the fish market, to lose herself in the crowd again.

  “YES...” SAID SMITH, reading the decrypted message. He nodded to himself once and tucked the sheet away in a folder on his desk. “Just so.” He looked up again at Kim, who stood before the desk as before, hands held behind her. “You’ve done well, Kim.”

  “Thank you, Smith.” She was hot and sweaty, had only just caught her breath again, but she felt much more sure of herself than she had the first time she had stood here. “Smith?”

  He tilted his head slightly. “Yes, Kim?”

  “Who were they, Smith? The Chinese men following me?”

  Smith heaved himself ponderously out of his seat and moved over to a sideboard, where a tea set had been laid out. “Chinese, was it? It could have gone either way. Tea?”

  “No, thank you. What do you mean, either way?”

  “Them or the Russians,” he replied over his shoulder, fussing over cup, saucer, spoon. “Did you encounter one of their automatons? Did it cause you any trouble?”

  “Two of them.” Kim realised she was swaying slightly on her feet. She’d barely slept since the morning before, or eaten. “Not too much. I noticed that they had to stop whenever anything caught them by surprise. Like they had enough power to react to things, or to move, but not for both. Once I saw that, it was just a matter of timing.”

  Smith turned back, a saucer on his hand, a smile lifting his moustache. “Very clever. They’re clockwork. Very, very good clockwork – the best in the world, really – but still just clockwork. The best of the Chinese automatons are slower and less reliable than any Britannian automaton patrolling the streets of this city.”

  He made his way back to his seat and eased himself into it, setting the saucer on the faded green leather of his desk. “They were agents of the Imperial Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Their own signalmen no doubt saw an intercepted signal bound for Afghanistan, and thought it would benefit their cause if they got their hands on it.”

  “Would it?” Kim blinked; in the heat and stillness of Smith’s office, she was starting to feel sleepy. “Actually, may I have that tea?”

  Smith waved to the tea set. “Undoubtedly, if not in the way they imagined. The information these details will – I hope – lead me to will be extremely valuable to anyone involved in politics, but they are nothing to do with Afghanistan.”

  Kim made herself a tea – black, sweet, with a slice of lemon – and sat at the seat in front of Smith’s desk. “And China wants Afghanistan.”

  Smith leaned back in his seat, lacing his hands across his belly as he’d done before. “Everyone wants Afghanistan. It’s the high ground of the east; if you hold the Pamir Mountains, you’ve got India by the throat. Most of the rest of the continent, for that matter. At the moment, it’s Britannian, but if China takes it, or Russia, Britannia’s claim on India will waver.”

  Kim nodded, then sipped her tea, reflecting. “Smith?”

  “Yes, Kim?”

  “You work for the East India Company, don’t you? You do things they need to do without having to admit they’re doing them?”

  “That’s right, Kim.”

  “But you said you and my father, and your teacher... you wanted a free India. Why work for them?”

  “Ah, yes.” Smith pushed his seat back, regarded Kim for a moment. “In answer to your question, a question. Which would you prefer rule India: Britannia, Russia or China?”

  Kim set her cup back down. “None of them, of course! I want a free India, like you.”

  Smith smiled broadly. “That wasn’t one of your options, Kim.” He sighed. “And that’s the problem. One day it will be, but until then, I much prefer Victoria to Hongxian or the Romanovs.”

  He reached for an envelope on his desk. “Here is your payment. You’ll want some time to recover, and to spend with your family.

  “Your next job will be abroad...”

  THE GRAVEYARD OF SECRETS

  None are so fond of secrets as those who do not plan to keep them.

  – Charles Caleb Colton (1780 – 1832)

  SINGAPORE, STRAITS SETTLEMENT, 1999

  SINGAPORE WAS A riot of people and noise even at the quietest of times. Their airship had docked at quarter past two in the morning, but even at that hour the streets had been thronging with people, all the way from the airfield to the smoky back room at Lazy Suzie’s in Newton, near the hawker centre. A million people out in the night air, talking, dealing and shouting in Chinese, Malay, Tamil and English; banners, bunting, flowers and ribbons in green, gold, blue, black and lucky red, bearing slogans and phrases in every language, scattered on the ground or hanging limply in the sultry air; a clash of drums and cymbals every hundred yards as street entertainers and dancers paraded through the streets, begging or simply playing for the crowds. Good Britannian steam cars shared the roads with an endless stream of bicycles and rickshaws and a great tide of humanity, blithely ignoring the boundary between the pedestrian footpaths and Her Majesty’s Highways. Anyone might think there was some sort of festival or holiday in progress, as the city played host to dozens of times throughout the year, but the grim-faced pair who limped their way into the former opium den that morning knew that this was as peaceful as the boisterous city ever got.

  Britannia had made her stamp here as well: telephone and telegraph lines hung everywhere, a great web in the sky; an Overground train system, echoing the network that spanned London, rattled between the towering blocks that held the city’s heaving millions. Robo-bobbies clanked and wheezed as they patrolled the streets, clattering on the cobbled roads near the town centre, pounding the dusty dirt streets in the poor districts, a constant presence, the dull red glow of their eyes sweeping the crowds with their impassive gazes. Many of them were draped in flowers or lucky charms, a gesture of gratitude from the people of the city to the protectors of the peace, although anyone who knew the strange, mixed, fiercely independent people of the city at all could sense the resentment simmering under the surface. Victoria would have a challenge to her hold over the city, and it would not be long.

  As the two entered Suzie’s, shouldering through the narrow curtained doorway, they paused to take stock. It wasn’t the sort of bar one entered lightly, or without caution. The doorman, a vast, shaven-headed Han whose name they had never managed to learn, had nodded them in without comment, but that didn’t mean there were no surprises waiting.

  The place seemed peaceful, with no obvious source of tension. Satisfied at the mood of the room, the woman – slight, her long brown hair tied up in two plaits, her dark, practical trousers and pullover attracting rather less attention here than
they had in the crowded streets – nodded to her partner and to an empty table, then made her way to the bar. The man – rangy, well over six feet tall, dressed in much the same way as his companion – returned the nod, wincing only slightly, and eased himself towards the table, favouring his right arm and shoulder, before gingerly lowering himself into a seat.

  Three or four other patrons glanced at him before returning to their conversations – it didn’t pay to be too curious, at Suzie’s – but he otherwise went unremarked. He calmly regarded the room. It was about half-full, mostly with Chinese, although there were a fair number of whites – Britannians, a few Australians, judging by the accents, and one overly loud American in the far corner – and a smattering of Indians and Thais. Two Cossacks sat near the back, sipping vodka and scowling at the room. In perhaps a third of the patrons, he could make out tell-tale signs of concealed weapons – a bulge under the shoulder or in the small of the back, a tailored jacket designed so as to prevent such a bulge, even as little as a stance that gives easy access to an appropriate pocket – but in truth, there would be no-one here, or no-one who belonged here, who would not be armed, or at least deadly in one way or another.

  Officially, Magna Britannia disapproved of mercenaries. In an age of automaton-soldiers, she had little need of them as infantry, and the kinds of warfare where they were most useful – assassination, sabotage, espionage – were publicly frowned upon. The British East India Company, however, was (unofficially and strictly off the record) by a long margin the world’s biggest employer of mercenaries, and so Singapore was one of the places where their presence was tolerated, even indulged. And Lazy Suzie’s was one of the places that mercenaries went to look for work. Sometimes just for a drink, or to catch up with their peers in a context where they weren’t trying to kill each other; but usually to look for work.

  His partner returned from the bar, with a gin and tonic for herself and a pint of beer for him. “He’s in. He’ll be with us in a moment.” She slid his drink across the table. “Although why you insist on drinking lager all the way out here, I’ll never know,” she said. “You always complain that it doesn’t taste right.”

  “It doesn’t keep well in the heat,” he grumbled, and a close observer might have detected the slightest hint of a Welsh accent to his voice. “But I’d rather drink tea out of a tramp’s gusset than gin.” He laughed, which turned into a groan, and he raised his left hand to his right shoulder.

  “You’ll want to be careful with that, as well,” the woman said. “We’ve only just got you patched up. I’d suggest we take a holiday so you can heal up properly, but we’re out of cash. But Jen says he’s got a cushy job for us, no fighting, in and out. It’s about the best we can do right now.”

  Hsiao Jen – Little Man, in Cantonese, although apparently the name was some sort of subtle joke about the Imperial Bureaucracy – was why mercenaries came to Lazy Suzie’s. Jen was Suzie’s common-law husband of the last ten years, and was a notorious fixer, doling out work from the East India Company, the Chinese government, even the Americans. He had a hard-won reputation for honesty and fair dealings.

  “As long as they haven’t got any dogs,” the man said, shifting painfully in his seat. “Give me guns, knives, even some kung fu killer trained in martial arts. But not another dog. That last one nearly had my bloody arm off. And you always feel a total shit, killing a dog.”

  “No dogs.” His partner grinned. “We’ll make that a rule.”

  “Hello, Jamie, Tinks.” Their contact joined them at the table, sliding into a seat next to the woman. Hsiao Jen was, in spite of the name, tall for his race, at nearly five feet ten. The back and sides of his head were shaven clean, and the hair at the top of his head was cropped short; rumour had it he had once worn a queue, but that it had been cut off as a punishment when he’d been ejected from the Imperial Bureaucracy, and that he wore his hair like this as a reminder. If true, it meant he had been extremely highly-ranked in China. He wore a plain white collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a simple black waistcoat left unbuttoned. He had a large envelope in his hand.

  “Jen!” cried Jamie, slapping his left hand on the table and extending it to the new arrival. “How the devil are you?”

  The fixer frowned, then smiled fleetingly and reached out with own left. “Of course. Tinks said you’d hurt your right arm.” Jen’s accent came and went, depending on who he was speaking to; with strangers, he generally affected a Chinese accent so thick as to be nearly incomprehensible, but with those he knew well – and the two Welsh mercenaries were old friends and customers – he spoke English easily, with a slight hint of an American accent.

  “Oh, this?” Jamie raised his right arm slightly, wincing a little. “It’s nothing. Bloody dog. Right as rain before you know it.”

  “Glad to hear it. I’m well, since you ask. Business is good. Tinks?” He turned to the woman, who smiled tightly.

  “Well enough. Between jobs; you know how it is.”

  “Of course, of course. As much as I enjoy both your company, you’re here for a reason.”

  “No rush,” said Jamie expansively. “We’ve time for a chat. It’s not like we’re going anywhere in a hurry; it’s three in the bloody morning.”

  The fixer smiled, a little more surely. “Sadly, I do not. To business, and then I have a meeting to return to. Perhaps next time you’re in town. Suzie may be around.”

  “We’d like that,” said Tinks.

  “Excellent.” Jen smiled again and held out the envelope to her. “The job’s all in here. Buenos Aires; there are airship tickets in there. Simple second-story stuff. You’re to pick up a box of files or something, and rendezvous with the client’s representative in Stanley.”

  “Do we get to know who the principal is this time?” asked Tinks, tipping out the envelope and leafing through the document. “Or does he want to remain anonymous?”

  Jen shook his head. “As it happens, he doesn’t mind. The request has come through formal channels, from the East India Company. Mumbai office. It’s not my usual man, but the authorisation’s legitimate. I know people who’ve handled work for this guy, and he’s up front. Always pays on time.”

  Tinks fixed a steady eye on him. “An honest spy?”

  “All the best ones are.”

  “In, out, no fighting?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, 1999

  “BUGGER! GET THAT, would you, pet?”

  The wrench clanged, impossibly loudly, as it fell to the roof of the lift. Jamie hung from a clamp on the lift cable as he worked at the door mechanism; Tinks stood on the roof and watched through the hatch at her feet, carbine cocked and ready, for anyone coming in beneath her.

  She grimaced, hissed up at him. “Could you keep it down?”

  “Sorry, love. Bit tricky getting a purchase on the door release from this position, and my arm’s still a bit stiff. Sling it up, would you?”

  She crouched, keeping the carbine trained through the manhole one-handed as she fumbled for the wrench with her left, then straightened and tossed it up to him. The big mercenary caught the tool and applied himself back to his work.

  THE FLIGHT HAD taken a week. Britannia Airways airships were more comfortable than they were used to, even in second class; Jamie and Tinks had taken the opportunity to relax, gambling in the casino and playing quoits in the long gallery. They’d hung at the railing along with everyone else to see the stegosaurus ranches pass underneath, the great, slow beasts gathered in vast herds, leather-clad llaneros circling them on horseback and driving them to slaughter.

  Disembarking at Ministro Pistarini had been trouble-free, thanks to Jen’s false passports and visas; they’d even passed through customs with barely a nod, as their forged papers gave Ecuador as their point of origin. Since the formation of the South American Union in ’55, all travel in-continent was more or less unrestricted.

  It wasn’t the first time the two had come to the Qu
een of El Plata. Confronted with Britannian imperialism on the one hand and American socialism on the other, President Perón had plumped for pure capitalism, opening his country up for diplomatic and trade relations with all comers and forging an economic bloc – initially with Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru – that now spanned the whole South American continent, and was considered by many to be the only significant threat to Britannian dominance going into the twenty-first century. With the discovery of cavorium in the Ecuadorean Andes in ’92 and cavorite production now in full flow, Union President Chavez was even planning a settlement on Mars.

  Perón’s steadfast political neutrality had encountered its first real threat after only a year, when a known political assassin had fled French justice to Buenos Aires and the Argentine government had refused to extradite him. Perón himself had flown to Paris to a summit with the French and Britannian leaders, and had spelled his nation’s policy out in no uncertain terms: Argentina would not extradite, would not expose, would offer no concession to any other sovereign power, and would ask none in turn. The SAU were open to business with all, and no sanction or threat of force would sway them to break any trust they had entered into with any other power.

  For a few months, the fledgling trade bloc seemed at risk of a full-blown Britannian retaliation; but then old Blighty, it seemed, decided she had as much to gain from the situation as anyone else, and business eventually resumed as normal. The Ultimate Reich, already heavily invested in Argentina after the Second Great European War, flooded Buenos Aires; and China, the USSA, the League of Socialist Republics and even Britannia followed suit. Forty years on on, every nation of the world was represented in the capital. It was widely held that the secret records of every black operation, every shameful act, every denied, hidden policy in the world was tucked away in one diplomatic office or another across the city, safely protected by Argentine neutrality. Hence its other nickname: the Graveyard of Secrets.