by E. E. Knight
A third woman, who helped Valentine and Harper into the white lightning, stood over six feet tall and had the long, graceful limbs of a ballerina. “Give me the bags up,” she said perfunctorily, and Valentine realized he had heard a foreign accent for the first time in his life.
Once on board, the white lightning seemed smaller than it had looked from the dinghy. It was wide-waisted; the top of what was obviously the cabin area filled the middle third of the ship. It had a wheel to steer it—someone had spent a lot of hours carving and polishing the spokes—placed in front of the rear mast. All the woodwork, save the planks of the deck and the decorative wheel, was painted a uniform light gray.
The captain introduced her crew. “You’ve met my first mate, Mr. Silvertongue. My second mate, who works so hard I don’t need any more crew, is Eva Stepanicz. She crossed the Atlantic four round trips before ending up in the Lakes.”
“It will be more times, once I have goods enough for my own ship,” she said.
“You mean gold enough?” Harper asked.
“No, sir. Goods. In Riga is agent of tradings, who pays most for paintings brought back from America. I anf here collecting arts.”
The captain smiled. “It’s hard not to indulge someone so determined. And she’s a hard bargainer. I don’t know a Picasso from an espresso, but I think our Mr. Stepanicz has enough to start a gallery.”
“But I’m forgetting my manners,” Harper said, reaching into his haversack. “Captain, compliments of my last trip through Tennessee,” he said, handing over a pair of elabo-rately wrapped and sealed bottles of liquor. In the muted light, Valentine couldn’t read the black labels, but they looked authentic.
“Sergeant Harper, you just bought us a new coat of paint, and maybe some standing rigging. My thanks to you, sir.”
Harper pointed to the three bags of correspondence. “You’ll also find a box of cigars for each of you in those bags. If you don’t smoke them yourselves, a little good tobacco helps grease the Quisling wheels, I believe.”
“You southern gentlemen are too kind. I wish those Green Mountain Boys would show the same courtesy,” Silvertongue said, with a curtsey involving her overbaggy trousers.
“Enough playacting,” Captain Doss interrupted. “I’d like to be anchored off Adolph’s Bunker by midnight. You Wolves want to pay a call on Milwaukee? Get a little taste of life in the KZ?”
“We’re always interested in the Kurian Zone. But would that be wise, Captain?” Valentine asked.
“Well, Lieutenant, the pathfinder look would have to go. But we’ve got some extra whites in the slop chest. The Bunker’s a rough spot, but I’ve never heard of the Reapers going in there. The owner never makes trouble; in fact, I’ve heard he turns troublemakers over to them. I’d like a little extra muscle showing for the deal we need to do. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Valentine thought for a moment. “Is this deal anything the New Order would object to?”
“If they knew about it, Lieutenant,” Doss said, looking at the wind telltale. The tiny streamer fluttered east. “You might say we’re fucking with the Quislings.”
“Count us in, then.”
An hour later, the yawl tacked into Milwaukee’s harbor. A single decrepit police boat, piloted by a Quisling whose sole badge of rank was a grimy blue shirt, motored alongside and illuminated the white lightning with a small spotlight.
Captain Doss held up a hand and flashed a series of hand signals that would have done a third-base coach proud. The Quisling nodded, satisfied.
“Just arranging what you might call the port charges,” Doss explained to Valentine. The Wolves now wore white canvas shirts and trousers, as well. While more tattered than the mates’ uniforms, they still found it a pleasant change from sweat-stained buckskins. During the run south, Valentine had questioned the captain about the Lakes Flotilla and its habits, and had learned a little about how the sails were balanced. Valentine sponged information off anyone he met, his mind always ready to learn something new.
They pulled up to the main civic pier, a cracked concrete affair that sloped toward Lake Michigan at a twenty-degree angle. Valentine noticed that the captain pivoted as she brought the ship in so that its bow pointed out to the lake.
“The Kurians aren’t too big on infrastructure repairs,” Sil-vertongue commented as she tied the white lightning to the dock. A few boats, none of which matched Captain Doss’s in lines or upkeep, bobbed along the pier.
“Stepanicz, you’ve got the first anchor watch. Don’t give me that look; after the deal, I’ll take over for you. If we’re not back in two hours, or if anything goes down, you raise sail. There’s a good wind for it tonight.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” she answered, drawing a sawed-off shotgun from the chart locker. She broke it open and inserted two loads of buckshot.
“And if our broad-shouldered young men would each grab one of the barrels lashed to the mast in the cabin—Silver, help Mr. Valentine with the knots, would you—we can be about the rest of this night’s business.“
Adolph’s Bunker looked like a transplant from the Maginot Line. Whatever its original purpose, its builders had wanted it to last. They constructed it from heavy concrete, with narrow windows imitative of a castle’s arrow slits. The bleached white of the concrete and the irregular rectangular slits gave it the countenance of a toothy skull. It lay on the lakeshore, set well away from the dead and empty buildings frowning behind.
“Why is it called Adolph’s Bunker?” Valentine asked as they approached the squat, brick-shaped building. The ten-gallon cask grew heavier with each step.
“The guy who runs it is a dictator, for starts,” Captain Doss said.
Silvertongue turned and looked at the men, each laboring with a cask on his shoulder. “There’s a feeling about the place. It’s a piece of sanity in an insane country. Or maybe a slightly different insanity within the insanity, take your pick. It’s popular with the Quislings. When we found out we had to meet you this week, we contacted a Chicago big shot, so we could kill two birds with one stone this trip.”
“As long as our bags get delivered,” Valentine said, trying not to breathe too hard under his awkward burden.
“This trade will make getting your bags through a lot easier,” Doss said.
The building seemed hollow and dead as a shucked oyster. Valentine surmised that the clientele liked to do their drinking in dark and quiet, when he realized that music, too loud to be the product of any instrument, was filtering up from somewhere beneath the building. He switched to hard ears and listened to the beat of ancient rock and roll and the gabble of voices echo up from a stairwell. Captain Doss turned to a set of narrow concrete steps that disappeared along the side of the building down into the earth. A knobless metal door opened out onto a small landing. Doss squatted down and said something into the hole. It swung open.
As he descended the stairs, Valentine plastered a drunken smile across his face, trying to live up to his role of eager sailor. The captain entered, nodding to someone. Valentine looked at Harper, and the two Wolves exchanged shrugs. Sil-vertongue turned to the men. “Don’t worry, they’re going to frisk you for weapons and smokes. Just put your hands on the wall and read the sign.”
A Grog roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle barred their way. Over its yard-wide shoulder Valentine watched the captain and then her mate being frisked and sniffed by a dog-man right out of an H. G. Wells nightmare. When it finished with Silvertongue, the smelly roadblock at the door stepped aside and Valentine passed into the noise of the Bunker.
He mimicked Silvertongue’s stance, placing his feet twice his shoulder width apart and putting his hands to either side of a sign, stenciled in paint onto another concrete wall just inside the door. To Valentine’s left, a sumo-size man sat inside a wire cage, idly scratching his stubble with a Saturday night submachine gun.
As the dog-man gave him the once over, Valentine read the stenciled letters: the rules adolph’s word is law no smok
ing anything we didn’t sell you no drinking, unless it’s ours you’re only as good as your barter you’re only as bad as we let you be VISIT OUR GIFT SHOP CONFUSED? SEE RULE 1
Valentine retrieved his keg and joined the women. He looked around the bar, trying to avoid staring like a corn-fed hick fresh off the back forty. Electric light and noise overwhelmed him. Prerecorded music played by machine was a rare treat to Valentine, and he gaped at the source. A box of neon and chrome against one cinderblock wall blared CD Selection & Sound, as the reflective lettering on the glass proclaimed. A bar almost filled the wall opposite the jukebox, and a mismatched assortment of tables, booths, and benches stood about the sawdust-covered floor. The base of a flush toilet peeped from beneath a curtain in the corner farthest from the bar. A sour-smelling urinal next to it trickled water down the wall and into the soggy shavings beneath. An alcove, separated from the rest of the room by a layer of wire netting similar to the guard-cage at the door, advertised itself as CURRENCY EXCHANGE—GIFT SHOP—MANAGEMENT.
He was relieved to see the rest of the occupants of the Bunker were human, albeit a poor genetic cross section. Two bartenders stood only a hair shorter and slimmer than the Grog at the door, stuffed like a pair of pointy-headed sausages into red T-shirts with black lettering reading the bunker. A desiccated weed of a man in a green visor sat behind a desk in the alcove-cage, smoking a cigarette from a long black holder. Gliding between the tables, laden tray miraculously balanced as she dodged and weaved, a nimble barhop waited on the customers. Clad only in a Bunker logoed baseball cap, bikini top, and a thong, she looked the happiest of anyone in the room. Valentine ran a quick estimate in his head and decided her hat contained more material, and covered a higher percentage of her body, than everything else she wore com-bined—high heels included. The patrons, dressed in ill-fitting black-and-tan fatigues or blue merchant marine overalls, drank, talked, and smoked in huddled groups.
The captain led her little party in single file to the Currency Exchange—Gift Shop—Management cage.
“Why, if it isn’t the white lightning herself come to pay me a visit,” the gnome croaked, cigarette clenched between yellowed teeth. “And Teri Silvertongue! Ahhh, missy, what I wouldn’t give to be young again! Any time you get sick of high seas and low wages, you just come see me.”
“Thanks for the offer, Ade,” Silvertongue said, exposing her rack of teeth in a forced smile. “But I catch cold kind of easy.”
Captain Doss stepped up to the slot midway up the cage and placed a small leather pouch on the owner’s desk. “Brought you some makings for your coffin nails, Ade. Do me a favor and die quick, would you?”
Til outlive you, Dossie. You got a couple new hands?“ The owner ran his eyes quickly up and down Harper and Valentine, perhaps assessing their creditworthiness or potential as troublemakers.
“Just a little extra muscle for this run. Speaking of which, has the Duke arrived yet?”
“Take my advice, Cap. Slow down and enjoy life a little. But yeah, his party is in the card room. You buyin‘ for your crew, or are you gonna pull another Captain Bligh like last time?”
Doss shook her head. “After the deal, Ade, after the deal.” She gestured to the other three, and they filed toward a door next to the long wooden bar. Valentine counted three casks and some thirty-odd bottles of assorted poison, all unlabeled. He watched one Quisling, crossed rifles of a captain on his epaulets, purchase a shot and a beer chaser by placing a pair of bullets on the bar. The Quisling tossed off the shot, face contorted as though he had poured an ounce of nitric acid down his throat.
Valentine tried not to think about the fact that he stood in a room with thirty people, each of whom could win a brass ring by turning him over alive to the Reapers.
Doss knocked on the door marked private. It opened a crack, and half of an ebony face looked at her through a narrowed eye. The door shut again, but just for a moment.
The guard opened the door, and the crew entered a spacious, well-ventilated room. Three men and a woman sat around a felt-covered table. Cards and chips lay before three of the players; the fourth, a man, only watched. Valentine’s eyes were drawn to him by his outlandish clothing if for no other reason.
The Duke of Rush wore a red uniform heavily trimmed with gold braid. Half high school marching band outfit and half toreador costume, it gaudily set off his pale skin and black hair. A brass ring, the first Valentine had ever seen, hung from a golden chain around his neck. Bored blue eyes stared up at the crew of the white lightning.
The Duke’s male henchmen wore the simple navy-blue battle dress of Chicago Quislings, and the card-playing woman an elegant blue cocktail dress glittering with real gemstones. No guns were evident, but the black man who opened the door toyed with a butterfly knife, opening and shutting it with quick flicks of the wrist.
“Captain, we expected you hours ago,” the Duke said in an educated accent. “You know how I hate it when my own parties start late. What were you up to, running guns to insurgents?”
Doss let a simper mask her face. “No, trying to find some-thing to wear. You always make such an entrance. I decided it would be better to let you enter first.”
“You don’t need to dress for this dive, Captain. The only reason I’m wearing my best is that the purported reason for this trip is social. I spent the day calling on the Kur here and arranging beer trucks for Chicago. But our business is going to be much more lucrative. May we see the merchandise?”
The black man put aside his butterfly knife long enough to push a chair forward for Doss. She sat. “Put the bills on the table, and you’ll see it,” she said.
The Duke gestured to a lieutenant, who opened a leather satchel and drew out a sheaf of papers. Captain Doss pulled out a magnifying glass and went through the pages one at a time, examining the wax seals covering printed red-and-blue tape.
“Eight firearm permits, good,” she counted to herself. “Five labor vouchers… twelve supply vouchers, sixteen… eighteen… twenty passports. Three dockyard releases… Hey, wait a second. The dockyard releases aren’t signed and sealed, my friend!”
The Duke smiled. “Sorry, Captain. An oversight on my part. I’ll make it up to you next time, okay?”
“Afraid not. We’re keeping a bag. You want it, get these filled out properly, and you can have it,” she said firmly.
“Oh, very well. Have it your way, Captain. We’ll take one bag less now, and I’ll see if I can get the sign-offs for your next run. Though it breaks my heart that you don’t trust me. Now bring out the snuff, and we’ll see if your color is worth all this.”
Valentine and Harper, on cue, placed their barrels in front of Silvertongue, who popped the lids with a knife of her own. It was full of clumps of brown sugar. She upended the barrels one at a time and dumped the sugar on the floor. Glass test tubes filled with white powder soon emerged from the sugar. She gathered up two dozen tubes and placed them among the cards and chips on the table.
Captain Doss took two of the tubes and pocketed them.
The Duke wiped his mouth eagerly. “Test it, my dear.” -The woman in the cocktail dress pulled a vial of clear liquid from her small handbag. She uncorked one of the tubes, licked a toothpick and coated it with the powder, then stirred it in the vial, which turned an azure blue.
“They don’t call me the Duke of Rush for nothing,” the Duke quipped. Valentine forced a laugh, but the captain and her mate ignored him.
“Can I take the bills now?” the captain asked.
“Of course, Captain. But I think this calls for a celebration. The drinks are on the Duke tonight, and your crew is invited, of course.”
Doss rose from her chair. “Sorry, Duke. You know how I get when I’m away from my ship.”
“I should be going, too. Maybe next time,” Silvertongue said, bringing crestfallen expressions to the Quislings.
Harper patted Valentine on the shoulder. “Duty calls.”
“It’s not calling that loudly,” Valen
tine demurred. “Captain, may I stay for a while?”
Captain Doss shot him a questioning glance. “Just be back by dawn. And I mean dawn, Tiny, because we sail with first light with or without you.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll be there.”
“Finally one of your little flock shows some sense, Doss.” The Duke laughed as the other sailors exited. “Ask anyone in Chicago, no one parties like the Duke. What’s your name, son?”
“Dave, Mr. Duke. Dave Tiny.”
The Duke clapped him on the back. “Glad to meet you, Tiny. I’m always making friends with traveling people, never know when they’ll show up with something worth trading.“
A knock sounded at the door.
“Duke, it’s your other appointment,” Butterfly Knife said.
“Oh, yeah. Tiny, you keep quiet; you might find this interesting. You’ll see something you won’t see sailing with Doss, that’s for sure. I need to get a little dispute resolved.”
The man with the butterfly knife opened the door, and two neatly dressed men and a woman entered.
“Thanks for the invite to the party, Duke,” the tallest of the three said. Valentine noted he wore a wide brass ring similar to the Duke’s, on his finger rather than on a chain.
“Good you could make it, Hoppy,” the Duke said with a smile-snarl. “You seemed kind of preoccupied during my business call. Thought you might be tired of my company.”
Valentine felt a shiver, but it had nothing to do with the nasty glint in the Duke’s eye. There were Reapers outside. He thought of making up an excuse to leave, but decided to obey the Duke’s order to remain silent.
“Glad you brought your assistant, but you didn’t have to bring the muscle, Hoppy. This is just a friendly social gathering.
“Gail Allenby takes care of my professional life,” Hoppy said. “Andersen here is responsible for the physical one. He uses a knife just as well in the kitchen as in an alley, by the way. I’ll have you over for dinner tomorrow and prove it.”