Gossamer Wing

by Delphine Dryden

  Charlotte studied the sub closely for a moment, and said, “It’s . . . very small.” Dexter wondered about her willingness to enter the thing, but she seemed charmed despite herself by its delicate beauty and began asking questions of the technician. She showed no inclination to continue on the tour. A quarter of an hour later, the lieutenant finally left her in the technician’s care and continued along the passage to take Dexter to his own destination—a small interior room where two officers and three civilians sat arguing and puzzling over a workbench full of equipment and sketches.

  Three of the four walls were covered with blackboards, on which nearly every square inch of available space was taken up with equations and more hasty sketches. A bleary white underlayer of smeared chalk dust suggested that many, many erasures had taken place since the boards had last been cleaned. The men, even the officers, appeared bloodshot and slightly bedraggled, and all of them looked up like hunted animals when their workshop door opened to admit Dexter.

  “Gentlemen,” the polite young lieutenant began, “May I present Baron Hardison?”

  When he got no reaction but a room full of blank stares, Dexter cleared his throat. “You may know me as Mr. Dexter Hardison.”

  And they were off.

  * * *

  “ALL WE KNOW of Dubois,” Murcheson told Charlotte, gesturing to the thick portfolio he’d slid across the desk toward her. He’d come back to the submersible bay after seeing Dexter settled, and pulled Charlotte into his office for the briefing she’d been expecting since her arrival. “In addition to what you already have, of course. Three months ago, we intercepted some correspondence between Dubois and Maurice Gendreau, who’s been in voluntary expatriation on St. Helena since the end of the war. It’s almost laughably obvious that the letters are in code, though we haven’t worked it out yet. They’re far too bland and patently harmless to be real. Especially not given what we know of Gendreau’s politics, and what we’ve long suspected about Dubois’s.”

  Charlotte pulled a sheaf of letters from the file and flipped through them, taking a moment to establish the time frame and chronology of the missives. “Voluntary expatriation” was a nicer way to say “exile,” she supposed, but it amounted to the same thing, and Gendreau certainly seemed unhappy in his exile. Dubois asked after Gendreau’s health, Gendreau lamented his business prospects and intimated he was homesick for France—particularly the food and wine. They seemed to be hinting around the possibility of a partnership, though the terms were very sketchy. Something to do with a steam car engine improvement Gendreau wanted funding to develop, and Dubois seeking assurances of exclusivity. It was all boring stuff indeed. Suspiciously so, as Murcheson said.

  “The clincher is that the improvement he’s discussing is a technical nonstarter, according to a few experts we’ve consulted. It was one of the first indications we had that something was afoot. Clearly a code phrase. You know who Gendreau is, I trust?”

  Charlotte nodded. “I know who he was, at least. The old post-royalist French regime’s pet scientist cum makesmith. The man who was deemed most likely to develop a large-scale weapon against the British.”

  “If he’d succeeded,” Murcheson continued, “the war would have ended very differently. Or rather, it might well still be raging. If there were any people left on either side to wage it. And Gendreau’s recently built a workshop on St. Helena to rival the one he left behind in France. We haven’t been able to get inside yet, but it’s not hard to guess what he’s attempting to build there.”

  “But my notes indicate Dubois is now working with the current government intelligence agency in France. If he’s working for the Égalité government, why is he contemplating going into business with Gendreau? Why would he foster such a risky connection?”

  “We’d very much like to find out.”

  Noting the grim set of his mouth, Charlotte prodded a bit. “You have a theory, though?”

  Murcheson shrugged. “There’s always a theory, Lady Hardison. In this case, rumor has it that certain elements within the government are not as hostile to the old post-royalist viewpoint as they’ve made themselves out to be. Indeed, we’ve heard enough to be concerned that there’s a significant faction of leaders here who would still be happy to see the treaty with Britain broken. They miss the unregulated freedom they used to enjoy, and they’d be more than happy to go back to essentially owning their workers even if it meant losing more of them to battle.”

  “They always did see the peasantry as fungible.” The wealthy post-royalists were little better than the aristocracy they’d replaced, in that regard. In fact, most of them were just aristocrats with a thin veneer of republicanism; only the actual royal family had been formally deposed.

  “Precisely. On the surface, Dubois seemed to have turned into a good little member of the more moderate Égalité-era elite, content to profit less but more steadily, in a country free from the uncertainties of war. We know he must be working with the current crop of spymasters, because he’s in constant contact with several agents. We assumed he was still working as a contractor, making gadgetry and vehicles for them. That’s a longstanding relationship, since before the treaty as far as we can make out. His personal secretary is a known active French field agent, and he has other positively identified former agents working on his security staff, so the arrangement isn’t even particularly sub rosa.”

  “But if he’s meeting with Gendreau,” Charlotte surmised, “he’s either playing Gendreau for the Égalité government, or playing the current government for the old regime.”

  Murcheson nodded. “And we need to find out which, because the last thing we want is for the post-royalists to regain their influence in government here . . . or for them to develop anything like the weapon Gendreau was working on before the war ended.”

  Ten

  LE HAVRE AND HONFLEUR, FRANCE

  THE AIR OVER Le Havre was nothing like the air over Upstate New York. Charlotte fancied it was uniquely French, this air. She had risen from a blanket of fog over the channel offshore from Honfleur, and within minutes she was soaring, feeling at home again despite the foreign sky. Her body eased into the familiar harness, her senses expanded with the use of her equipment, and all was well.

  She was finally beginning it, the job she had trained for. Charlotte thought of Reginald, bent over a codex with his fine brow furrowed. She thought of him lying in their berth on the riverboat, gray and cold, so very obviously beyond the help of any doctor. She had distracted him, and he had died. Perhaps now she could begin putting that memory to rest, and her own guilty conscience at ease. But first, she had to jump through the hoops Murcheson had set her, and demonstrate her abilities with the stealth airship by gathering intelligence on Dubois here in Le Havre. Only once she’d done so would Murcheson approve her to embark on the main leg of her mission, over the rooftops of Paris.

  Countering automatically against a buffeting wind, she took the Gossamer Wing higher still as she followed the terrain toward Le Havre. The city was of little interest to her, just the zone nearest the harbor, in which Murcheson had pinpointed the offices of Companie Dubois.

  Only Murcheson’s insistence had overcome Whitehall’s reluctance to assign a female agent to an active field surveillance position, much less to the trickier job of retrieving the long-lost weapon plans. That had been Charlotte’s good fortune. The geography of Companie Dubois’s dockside buildings and some rather tight security measures had thus far thwarted all infiltration attempts from the ground. Charlotte, on the Gossamer Wing, wouldn’t have to infiltrate. She would simply float and watch and listen, all while taking deep, refreshing breaths of fine French coastal air. If her efforts were successful, she might gain some critical information for the Agency; more importantly, she might help usher in an entirely new era of remote information-gathering.

  The first day of her daring new assignment, however, was less exciting than disconcerting. On
ce aloft and in place over the appropriate building, she tuned her exquisitely precise equipment to the correct office, expecting to hear intrigue and see dastardly espionage in the making. Instead she overheard the infamous Roland Dubois planning to sneak his secretary away for the weekend. Then she turned away rather than watch him commit a lewd act with the secretary in question on his vast mahogany desk. If the young woman was indeed a French agent, Charlotte thought, she certainly seemed willing to give her all to foster an association between the French government and Companie Dubois.

  Hoping to learn something else of interest, Charlotte shifted her directional microphone’s focus to another room while she kept an occasional eye on the unseemly proceedings in Dubois’s office. With her attention divided thus, she waited out Dubois while listening in on two other French businessmen argue about the outcome of a cricket match.

  “Perhaps it was in code,” Dexter suggested later as he helped her from the harness. To maintain the appearance of a honeymooning couple they were staying together as much as possible, dividing their time between Charlotte’s test flights and Dexter’s sessions with the engineering team in the station. Dexter had been put to work piloting the little dinghy that bore Charlotte from a secluded dock under Murcheson’s guard to a point out in the harbor, a safe distance from shore, so she could launch the Gossamer Wing unseen. While he waited for her, he scribbled plans and fiddled with a pile of gadgets he’d appropriated from the team at Atlantis Station.

  “The cricket conversation?” she asked, puzzled.

  “No, I meant the sex.”

  Charlotte blushed. Dexter seemed less and less content with their platonic arrangement, and increasingly inclined to hint they might resume their shipboard relationship, but the risk of distraction was very real to Charlotte. She could not let emotion and physical urges cloud her judgment. It was a matter of life and death to her, and knowing Dexter didn’t feel the same made her anxious. He should be as cautious as she; he risked them both by thinking he was safe to spend a single thought on dalliance.

  “What are you doing with all this?” she changed the subject, waving in the direction of the equipment Dexter had brought along.

  He followed her gesture with his gaze, then shrugged. “Contemplating possible improvements.”

  The second day, Charlotte risked a flight later in the morning. Though the weather had returned to the cool, overcast and intermittently rainy standard for the area, the Gossamer Wing still faded well into the sky.

  “Minor success,” she reported gleefully after touching back down beside the furled sail of the dinghy. “More cricket talk too. Perhaps it is code, he was talking about a British bowler. But Dubois was busy dictating a letter about an appointment with someone. The name was very familiar.”

  Gathering balloon silk with practiced motions as the Gossamer Wing deflated, Dexter lifted an eyebrow at Charlotte. “The secretary was actually taking dictation? Sounds as though that young woman has many talents.”

  Charlotte coughed and avoided his eyes, unwilling to say more about what she had witnessed from her unseen vantage point in the sky. Voyeurism was all too easy with a large enough window and a strong enough lens. Though she hadn’t intended to linger once it was clear the dictation was over, she had found herself compelled to watch.

  She still felt aroused from what she’d seen, but she hardly wanted Dexter to know that. It was hard enough to watch him working in shirtsleeves on the tiny boat, his athletic body managing her dirigible and the dinghy’s sail with captivating ease, without the added reminder of everything else that body could do.

  “What, Charlotte?”

  His question made her look up; his expression made her heart stop. Dexter’s eyes had gone dark, heavy, a quality she had seen on the ship many times. How could he know what she’d been thinking? It was obvious he did, though. His expression screamed lascivious speculation.

  “Nothing,” Charlotte lied, returning to the task of stowing the little sugar-candy dirigible parts in their padded case. The tiny craft swayed on the water, making her task more difficult.

  “You saw something else. Tell me.”

  Unwise, she chided herself, even as she spoke. “I saw the secretary demonstrate another skill. At least I assume she was skilled at it, since Dubois seemed highly appreciative. It was . . . not an activity of which I had been aware, though in retrospect it seems like an obvious possibility. You did it to me, after all.” This last bit was sheer deviltry, a direct response to the glaze of lust over Dexter’s eyes.

  “Ah. So you would not be averse to trying this activity? Turnabout is fair play, and all that.”

  “You’re treading on dangerous ground, Mr. Hardison.”

  But it was Charlotte who felt wobbly, unsure of her footing, when Dexter ignored her warning and kept pressing. “Yet you led me here. You didn’t have to tell me, but you did. You’re curious to try it, aren’t you, Charlotte? I think you liked what you saw.”

  “I think it’s a wonder the French get any business done at all.” Jerking the case down onto the floor of the boat and sitting a bit too firmly on the broad plank bench, Charlotte pointedly changed the subject. “Tomorrow afternoon, Dubois is going to be meeting with Maurice Gendreau.”

  It took a moment for the name to register with Dexter. Then his eyes widened. “Gendreau? The mad makesmith? He’s supposed to be in exile on some island off the coast of Portugal.”

  “Then I hope he has access to a very fast boat, if he’s to make it to that meeting on time.”

  “Does Murcheson know he’s back in France?” Dexter asked, lashing the rudder in place then picking up what looked like a cross between a mechanical spider and a small toy steam car.

  Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t imagine so. He would have mentioned it, surely. He knew they were corresponding. He thinks Dubois is conspiring with Gendreau to build the post-royalists a weapon that will change the course of Franco–English relations.”

  “A doomsday device. These things always end up being about doomsday devices.”

  The very notion of such a device made Charlotte chuckle uneasily. “You shouldn’t read sensationalist novels. They’ll rot your brain,” she scolded. “This is a serious business.”

  “And here I am playing with toys. At least they’re more entertaining than doomsday devices. Here, watch.” Dexter passed Charlotte one end of a slender, almost threadlike cable. “Hold that. Don’t let go.”

  He clamped the miniature vehicle’s crabbed “legs” closed around the cord. Then, holding the other end of the thread to form a gently descending arc between himself and Charlotte, he started the toy up and released it.

  She held on and watched, fascinated, as the little car descended the cable toward her then reversed its course to return to Dexter’s hand, seeming all the while to balance on the swaying cable like a tightrope artist. Dexter caught the mechanism, flicked a panel open, adjusted a knob and sent the car back toward Charlotte with scarcely a sound.

  “Magic!” She held the gadget up, examining its workings, and found she couldn’t lay it on its side even when she tried. It righted itself instantly every time.

  “Gyroscopic stabilization,” Dexter corrected her, “and some very nice clockwork Murcheson provided. It’s a toy he makes at his factory.”

  “A toy, but you’ve improved it?”

  Dexter grinned. “Not much point in having it go and come back, go and come back, up and down a vertical string. That grows dull quickly. Much more interesting if you can tell it exactly where you want it to stop and go, and make it follow a cable anywhere you can attach one, don’t you think?”

  “And carry a payload, perhaps? Silently?”

  “You’re quick. That room full of engineers back at Atlantis took ages to catch on to the possibilities. All they saw was a toy.”

  “Speaking of Atlantis, we need to get back. Murcheson will want
to hear about this meeting with Gendreau. Whether or not it involves anything as dramatic as a doomsday device.”

  Dexter nodded and glanced at the sail, unlashing the rudder and sitting back down to direct the boat’s rather lazy course. “We’re heading in that general direction. I just thought it might be nice to travel at honeymoon speed. Good for our cover story.”

  A light drizzle had started. Charlotte pulled a tarpaulin from the equipment locker beneath her seat and tucked it over the packing cases, ensuring the Gossamer Wing didn’t get too damp. It wasn’t cold. In her snug, white leather flight suit, she wasn’t bothered by the rain. Dexter, though not in waterproof gear, seemed unperturbed by the weather.

  “Lovely day for a sail,” she remarked, tipping her head back and letting the rain fall directly on her face.

  She heard Dexter chuckle, the sound barely registering over the creak of the boat, the snap of the wind in the sail and the splash of water against the bow as they tacked. “Lovely,” he agreed. “My sentiments exactly.”

  * * *

  “MURCHESON IS UP to something,” Dubois fretted.

  Martin, with his face turned safely to the window, rolled his eyes. “What makes you think so?” he asked his employer, biting his tongue before he could add “this time.”

  “He’s always up to something, of course. But now, just when we should have him in our sights, he disappears inside his factory for days on end with Hardison. He suspects something, Martin. You or your men, somebody must have been spotted tailing him.”

  After a moment of keen fear, Martin calmed himself. He knew none of his men had been spotted tailing Murcheson, for the simple reason that he had posted no men to watch Murcheson. Those who weren’t watching Hardison were detailed to follow the Baroness, though Martin hardly planned to tell Dubois that. “He’s simply courting Hardison,” the former spy reassured his employer. “Murcheson and the Dominion baron share many obsessions. More important is the fact that no French officials have been seen entering the factory. There have been no meetings between the government and Murcheson or Hardison. The steamrail contract is still up for bid.”