The Lost Plot

by Genevieve Cogman

  Irene fished in her handbag and found a leaflet from the Boston railway station. She stepped forward and offered it to Captain Venner. As he blinked at it suspiciously, she said in the Language, “You perceive that this is my authorization from the FBI and my identification as an employee of Scotland Yard. Congratulations on catching me, Captain, but I’m afraid this is a sting operation.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Let’s have a look at that,” Captain Venner said, his voice suddenly rough and uncertain. He snatched the leaflet from Irene’s hands, holding it up to squint at it. “Could be forged.”

  “But you know it isn’t,” Irene said. She shifted her stance, no longer folding her arms defensively, and stepped forward to lean on the captain’s desk. “Don’t you?”

  The Language had told him what to perceive, and at this precise moment he could be looking at dead leaves and he’d believe he was seeing valid documentation. The only problem was that the effect wouldn’t last very long. And when the captain realized he’d been conned . . .

  Irene snapped her fingers and reached out to take the leaflet back from him. “If you please, Captain.”

  “What the hell’s going on here?” he snarled. “I didn’t receive any notification of this.”

  “Of course not,” Irene agreed. “That’s because the system leaks. Unfortunate, but true. If Scotland Yard had notified your city hall about my mission, then half the gangs in New York would know about it too. That’s why my identity’s strictly on an eyes-only basis.”

  “Captain, what’s going on?” the cop at the door said. Irene could hear the unspoken Should I do something about this woman? tone in his voice, and the back of her neck itched nervously. But she didn’t turn round. It wouldn’t have been in character for an undercover Scotland Yard agent.

  “Looks like it’s some sort of op the feds are running.” Captain Venner’s tone made it quite clear how much he disliked the feds. “And Scotland Yard’s in bed with them too.”

  “It’s a long story,” Irene said. She tucked the leaflet back into her handbag. “But it works because people over here don’t know what Jeanette Smith looks like. Your FBI thought Scotland Yard could send someone over from England posing as her. Then if she liaised with your major gangs, they could trace how alcohol was coming into the States from overseas.” She hastily searched her memory for relevant facts from yesterday’s newspapers. “We want to track the booze from when it leaves England, to when it arrives here. Then your FBI—sorry, your feds—can roll up the whole network. I didn’t need to contact the police in Boston, so they won’t know the truth. Someone there must have thought I was the real thing. At least my cover’s not blown yet.”

  “You’d be dead if it was,” Captain Venner said bluntly. “And any witnesses would have a bad case of what the doctors call ‘Chicago amnesia’—meaning they wouldn’t remember a thing about you, least of all who gunned you down. You’ve got guts, lady—I’ll give you that.”

  Irene shrugged. “It’s my job.”

  “Why did they get a woman to do it?”

  “It had to be a known criminal making this trip,” Irene said. “A big enough name to talk with your gangs on equal terms. And the male English crime bosses are better known over here.” She just hoped he wouldn’t ask for any of their names . . .

  He nodded slowly. “And the guy with you, he’s in on this too?”

  “He’s one of Scotland Yard’s top men,” Irene said. “Could you have him brought in here too? I’ll need to brief him without your men hearing.” And it would lower the risk of Kai blowing their new cover.

  Captain Venner grunted and waved a hand at the cop by the door. “Dorrins, you go fetch Miss Smith’s friend. And get this straight: nobody outside this room hears anything about this for the moment. Tell Barnes I want to check his story with something she’s said. Tell him . . .” He hesitated. “Tell him I’m sweating her and I think she’s about to crack.”

  “Oh, it’d take more than ten minutes’ sweating to crack me,” Irene said helpfully.

  “Lady, I’ve cracked better men than you in half that time.” He pointed a pudgy finger at the door. “Go fetch him, Dorrins. And make it clear we’re taking this seriously.”

  Dorrins shut the door behind him with a click, and Captain Venner turned back to Irene. “All right, lady. How do you want to play this?”

  Irene had noticed his slippage from the carefully polite ma’am to the more casual lady. She hoped it was a good sign. “Well, it’s a positive that the Boston Police Department warned you I was coming. It shows that police communications across America are functioning properly. It’s just inconvenient for me. It’s going to be difficult for me to do my job as Jeanette Smith, if everyone in this city knows where I am and that the cops are keeping a close eye on me. Nobody from the mobs is going to want to talk to me—”

  Captain Venner brought his hand down on the table. “Lady, hold it right there. You’ve got it wrong. You’re in more danger than you realize.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a hot property now,” he said. “Any gang that doesn’t make a deal with you is going to want you out of the way so that the opposition doesn’t profit. Hell, some of the boys may be thinking about taking you off the board right now, just to keep things simple. The moment you walk out the door, you’ll have them on your tail.”

  “Damn.” Irene hadn’t thought of that. This must be the other half of the trap: slow her down by tagging her as “Jeanette Smith,” and give most of the gangs in New York a reason to want her dead. She had to admire the plot’s efficiency, from an academic standpoint.

  “Yeah.” The captain sighed. “Tell you what, I could have a couple of the boys drive you back to the station and put you on the next train out of New York. You wouldn’t talk to your targets, but at least you and your friend would be alive.”

  “That’s certainly a possibility,” Irene agreed. She could see that it would suit Captain Venner. It would get her off his hands, and he wouldn’t have to take any blame for letting the reporters publicize her arrival. A win-win situation for him. Less useful for her. “But my superiors will still want me to get the job done.”

  “Do they want you to get shot?” the captain asked. “Because that’s what’s going to happen, if you walk out of here.”

  Irene shrugged. “One thing I suspect we’ve got in common, Captain, is that our superiors can be a bit unrealistic about what they think we can do.”

  “You got that one right.” He took off his glasses and polished them thoughtfully. “Still, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll find a good excuse and get the hell out of town. This isn’t Atlantic City and it’s not conference season.” He saw her blank look. “You know, when the big boys meet up to talk terms and make deals. But the boys aren’t playing nice with each other right now, and you’re going to be in the middle.”

  “I’m no happier about it than you are, Captain,” Irene said feelingly. “This wasn’t what I had in mind at all.”

  There was a knock at the door. “Come in!” the captain called.

  Dorrins entered and waved Kai in before firmly shutting the door. “Captain, some of the reporters downstairs are asking questions,” he said. “They’re wanting interviews.”

  “With me?” Irene said.

  Dorrins shrugged. “With anyone, ma’am. But it’s going to make it harder to get you out of here.”

  Irene nodded and turned to Kai. “It’s all right, Robert,” she said. “These gentlemen are in on the mission now.” She turned back to Captain Venner. “Please allow me to introduce Detective Inspector Murchison of Scotland Yard.”

  Captain Venner leaned across the desk and offered his hand for Kai to shake. “Good to meet you, Inspector. Your colleague here’s been giving me the real story. I hope the boys downstairs didn’t give you too rough a time.”

  Over the last year or two, Kai h
ad become adept at remaining impassive while being introduced under various unexpected aliases. This one didn’t even rate a blink. He returned the handshake easily. “Not a problem, Captain. They were just doing their jobs.”

  “What we need from Captain Venner, right now, is a way to get out of this police station and lose anyone following us,” Irene said.

  She was aware that time was slipping past. Every minute made it more likely that Captain Venner’s Language-induced misperception would wear off and he’d remember that she’d just flashed a random advertising leaflet at him.

  “You got any thoughts on the matter, Murchison?” the captain asked, turning to Kai.

  “The same as her, to be honest.” Kai gestured to Irene. “We need to get out of here, and we need to do it without being seen.”

  “The easiest way for you to lose your tails might be at a subway station,” the captain said thoughtfully. “All right. Here’s how we’ll play it. Dorrins, you’ll get a couple of the boys who know how to keep their mouths shut and tell them to bring a car round to the back of the station. Make it one of the ones with tinted windows. Then you’ll take our guests here down the backstairs. They’ll hop out and into the car before the reporters can catch up with them. Then the boys will run them down to, oh, say East Penn Station, and they’ll jump on a subway car. Change lines a few times, and you should be able to lose any tails. That work for you, Murchison, lady?”

  “An excellent plan,” Irene said warmly. “Thank you, Captain. I do realize that we’ve placed you in a very awkward position, and I appreciate your help.”

  Captain Venner looked mollified by her prompt agreement and Kai’s nod. “Set it up, Dorrins,” he directed. “You got any more questions, either of you?”

  Irene glanced at Kai. He shrugged. She was about to shrug as well when a thought struck her. Dragons were skilled at many things, but avoiding attention wasn’t generally one of them. “Have there been any unusual new arrivals in town over the last month?”

  The captain snorted. “This is New York. Everyone comes here. Even Scotland Yard agents.”

  “They’d probably have been claiming to be foreign nobility or royalty,” Irene persisted. “And they’d have had a lot of money to throw around.”

  He frowned, thinking it over. “Now that you mention it . . .” He counted on his fingers. “There’s a guy at the Plaza Hotel, says he’s Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, but he’s not. He’s running a scam, claiming that he just needs some money to go retrieve his art treasures. We’ll be pulling him in next week, or sooner. And there’s this guy staying at the St. Regis Hotel on Fifty-fifth Street. Been here in New York the last couple of weeks. It’s not so much him making claims about being royalty; it’s the fact that he has pet wolves and likes to take them for walks down Broadway and around town. It ain’t exactly illegal, but we had some concerned citizens making representations about it.”

  Irene saw Kai’s eyes narrow. “So, did he have to keep the wolves at home after that?” she asked casually.

  Captain Venner rubbed his thumb against his fingers, in the universal shorthand for cash. “Money talked, and a whole lot of people decided they could live with wolves on Broadway. Course, they’re the well-behaved sort of wolves. But when you ask about visiting nobs with more money than sense, that’s who comes to mind.”

  Irene nodded. “Thanks for the information. But I’m more concerned about anyone who might know the real Jeanette Smith.”

  “I still think you’d be safer out of town. But it’s your decision. At least once we get the two of you on the subway, you’ll be . . .”

  “Out of your hair?” Irene suggested. “Someone else’s problem?”

  “I’ve got enough problems without you giving me any more of them, lady.” He fished in a desk drawer. “Here, these are subway tokens. Make sure you’re both carrying a few of them. That way you can walk right through the turnstiles and onto the train.”

  The captain made desultory conversation with Kai while they waited for Dorrins to return, fishing for details about Scotland Yard and clearly happier to be dealing with a male cop than a female one. Kai did his best to respond, while Irene retreated into the background with relief. She leafed through a newspaper, trying to get a sense of current affairs. The news was highly coloured, even if the print was black and white—scandals, mob crimes, movie news, temperance marches, and other entertaining flashes of life in the big city.

  Suddenly, mid-anecdote, the captain snapped his fingers. “Hell, I forgot something. They’re still turning your suitcase over downstairs. If I tell them to bring it up here, someone’s going to smell a rat. Anything you needed in there?”

  Irene shook her head. “Nothing important.” The only vital things were the money in her handbag and Kai’s wallet, and Evariste’s name in the locket round her neck.

  “Not even a piece?” The captain remembered he was speaking to a non-American. “You know, a gun? Aren’t you travelling tooled up? And what about your clothing?” There was a tinge of uncertainty to his voice, as if he was struggling with something in the back of his mind that hadn’t quite surfaced yet, but was sending out early warning tremors.

  Irene swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. The Language’s effect was beginning to fade. “The whole point was to go unobserved,” she said calmly. “We weren’t planning on getting into any shoot-outs, even if the police did catch up with us. You perceive that this is reasonable and makes sense, and explains any inconsistencies.”

  The captain swayed in his chair. “Right,” he said vaguely. “Of course. That makes sense.”

  Irene felt a pang of guilt through the haze of an incipient headache. She hadn’t previously tried using the Language multiple times on the same person like this. She hoped she hadn’t somehow damaged the captain. He’d only been doing his job.

  Fortunately Dorrins knocked on the door. “Captain?” he called. “It’s all ready to go.”

  “Thanks for all your help,” Kai said. He gave Captain Venner’s hand a quick shake. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Just stay out of trouble,” Captain Venner said, pulling himself together. Irene suspected he’d have liked to add And stay out of my city, but he shut his mouth on that and simply waved them towards the door.

  Dorrins led them at a fast trot down the backstairs. “Once we’re at the bottom,” he puffed, “we go straight out the door and you get into the car that’s waiting there.”

  “Right,” Irene agreed. The sooner they were out of this police station and off the radar, the better.

  • • •

  A few minutes later they were in the back of a police car again, but this time as passengers rather than as prisoners. The city outside the car’s tinted glass windows was in full swing, bright and cheerful, humming with activity. Even though only about thirty years’ development (and a lack of airships) separated this city from Vale’s London, it was deeply, profoundly different—the clothing, the attitudes, the mix of people outside the window, even the way they moved. New York had its own pace: the brisk thrusting stride of the pedestrians, the jarring snarls of the traffic, and the busy throb of the place.

  Tyres ground against the pavement, horns squealed, and people shouted. While the car might theoretically be heading for the subway station as fast as possible, in practice it was having to contend with the traffic. A lot of traffic. This gave Irene a chance to catch up with Kai on the current situation.

  The two cops in the front had clearly been ordered not to ask inconvenient questions, meaning that Kai and Irene could talk undisturbed in the back. In order to avoid eavesdropping, they were talking in Chinese. Of course this in itself would be reported back to Captain Venner as suspicious behaviour, but by the point it did get reported back to him, they’d be out of reach. Hopefully.

  “So, what was it about the wolves?” Irene asked.

  “It slipped my mind earlier,” Kai adm
itted. “But Qing Song is reputed to keep them as pets.”

  Irene sighed. “I take it these are more likely to be slavering man-eaters than the well-trained type who might fawn on him in public.”

  “A dragon lord who keeps wolves does so because he wants wolves, not lap-dogs,” Kai pointed out. “If he’d been known for keeping chihuahuas, then that would be entirely different.”

  Irene allowed herself to entertain fantasies where the worst-case scenario would be having her ankles nibbled on. She dragged herself back to reality. They were apparently at ground zero with one of the two participants in this contest. This meant that she and Kai might be getting closer to finding out what was going on, which was fantastic—especially as time was running out like sand through her fingers—but it also raised the prospective danger level. “But if it is Qing Song, why is he prowling the streets with his pack of wolves?”

  “You’re being a little dramatic there,” Kai said. “That sounds like the sort of thing a Fae would do.”

  “Wolves.” Irene held up a finger. “Public streets.” She held up another. “The two don’t go well together. If all he’s doing is taking them for a walk so they can get some exercise, fair enough, but that seems implausible. And even if that is the case, what’s he doing in New York at the same time as Evariste? That does not look good at all.”

  “It doesn’t,” Kai agreed uncomfortably. “But it could be . . .”

  “It could be what?”

  “It could be a friendship. Like you and me.” His hand touched hers. “I know the Library can’t afford the appearance of a full alliance, but surely what’s done between friends is a different matter? And if that is the case, perhaps we could even sympathize?”

  Irene wanted so much to simply agree with him.

  But she couldn’t. “If it is simply friendship,” she said, “and notice that I’m saying if here, then he has messed up big-time. I can and will feel sympathetic, but that won’t change what I need to do. We’ve been through this. The stakes are too high. If he’s acted improperly, even out of friendship, then he should have known better.” She knew her words were harsh, and she saw the anger in Kai’s eyes, but she felt no need to retract them. “Kai, Evariste and I are Librarians. We buy our privileges at the cost of responsibility. He should understand that.”