Cabal: Johannes Cabal, the Detective Part 12

The captain's description of the fighter aircraft as an "honour guard" was therefore believed by no one, nor was his additional announcement that there would be a stopover of a full day at Parila to allow the pa.s.sengers to stretch their legs a little and take in the sights. In reality, all knew that Senzan officials would be going through the s.h.i.+p's every nook and cranny in search of possible military supplies intended for Katamenia. On this particular occasion, it would mean searching the tons of food supplies intended for disaster relief, which could only prolong the search process. There are only so many bags of potatoes that can be bayoneted in a working day.

The final approach to the mooring cradle was slow but sure, the tone of the manoeuvre being "no sudden moves" writ large. The fighter aircraft had stacked into a formation high and astern of the Hortense, all the better to stoop down and strafe her into wreckage if she did anything the squadron leader considered suspicious or threatening. Captain Schten intended to provide no such excuse, and was clearly signalling every turn and alteration in speed, right down into the cradle itself. It was not just the relief of completing the difficult landing that caused the pa.s.sengers and, it was reasonable to a.s.sume, the crew to sigh but also the lifting of the threat of machine-gun bullets and rocket explosions.

Cabal stood at one of the long salon windows. He had watched the approach with a lively interest, specifically the arrangement of the aeroport itself. Around the field stood a high-wire fence, and without that a ditch or possibly an overgrown ha-ha. Alongside the wire ran a long strip of carefully maintained tarmacadam, near the end of which were two hangars. One seemed to be for civilian aircraft, but the other was part.i.tioned off by another fence and gates, and was presumably the hangar from which the military ran its aerial patrols. Between the runway and the two aeros.h.i.+p cradles (the other standing empty) was a clear green swathe of short cut gra.s.s perhaps three hundred metres wide. The cradles stood much closer to the aeroport buildings than the hangars, and it was clear that entomopters were the lesser part of the facility's traffic, in status if not quant.i.ty. It all seemed very efficient. Rather too efficient for Cabal's liking. To be sure, he had a Plan A to get him out of the aeroport, away and clear before anybody was any the wiser about the truth of "Herr Meissner." He didn't like the plan much, though. It involved close dealings with the Senzan authorities, and if they failed to react the way that he'd predicted they need only reach out to arrest him. He had hoped for a less complex Plan B to present itself-something along the lines of sneaking through the aeroport's perimeter under cover of darkness-but the high fences and the military presence had snuffed out that hope. There was no choice, then; Plan A, with all its attendant opportunities for unwanted complication, was his only option. Filled with conflicting emotions, none of them pleasant, he retired to his cabin to prepare.

Even after the s.h.i.+p had settled onto the cradle, the etheric line guides had disengaged, the gyroscopic levitators had been allowed to wind down to a halt, and the pa.s.senger ramp had been lowered, n.o.body was allowed to disembark. Instead, there was a long and humiliating wait while Senzan customs made ready. The pa.s.sengers hung around in the salon, impatient but speaking little. Only Leonie Barrow was actually scheduled to leave the journey here, but everybody wanted to stretch their legs and see a little of Parila, a city noted for its history, art, and architecture throughout the civilised world. Even the most fervent Mirkarvian patriot would not like to be regarded as a barbarian-though most were-and so they were prepared to wander the streets, guidebook in hand, and pretend that they appreciated what they saw.

It was necessary for Herr Meissner to lead the crowd, however, and he couldn't do that via the salon. Instead, he took advantage of the crew hatch down through the dining room and found himself on the top of a steel spiral staircase leading down one of the support stanchions, the very cousin of the one by which he had first boarded the Princess Hortense at Emperor Boniface VIII Aeroport in Krenz. He was thankful that they all seemed to be built to a standard pattern; the alternative might have involved him dangling from the aeros.h.i.+p's underside by his fingertips, and he'd done quite enough of that for one voyage.

He descended quickly, carrying no luggage but for his case and his cane. Meissner's could stay aboard the Hortense and be divided amongst the crew by lots as far as he was concerned. He was almost done with the petty civil servant whose persona he had been forced to estimate and a.s.sume. He had met the real Meissner only briefly and had not had sufficient time on that occasion to properly foment a real dislike for the man. He had, however, by a combination of going through Meissner's luggage, personal effects, and work papers, got his measure and could not wait to shrug the lowly and loathly civil servant from him as a serpent might slough off a particularly irritating skin.

His progress was noted and acted upon by the Senzans, which was fine and predicted, and so he was unsurprised to be met, a few metres from the base of the steps, by a small cortege of serious and concerned customs officers. Their leader made as if to say something officious and obvious, but Cabal preempted him with an impatient wag of his finger. "Not here!" he snapped at the surprised officer. "Not now!" He moved through them with such a sense of purposeful intent that the customs men found themselves falling into twin columns as he headed for the main aeroport buildings, the cortege becoming an entourage.

Upon arrival at the customs shed, he glared significantly at the junior officers until they wilted. Taking the hint, their senior dismissed them with a wave, as if shooing off flies. Once again, the officer drew breath to demand of Cabal an explanation and, once again, Cabal preempted him. He drew a long white envelope from an inner pocket quickly enough to make a small krak, like a tiny whip. The customs man looked at it curiously, and raised his eyebrows when he saw the Mirkarvian state seal in red wax on the flap. Cabal ran his thumb under it and broke the wax before the officer had a chance to see that it was a low-priority variant of the seal, such as a docket clerk (first cla.s.s) might carry with him.

"I was given this when I embarked upon the Princess Hortense," Cabal told the officer in a conspiratorial tone. "You will understand that there are ... politics at play, even within my government? Factions and suchlike. One of these has taken to dabbling with certain ... procedures that are not acceptable to civilised persons, no matter what their nationality." He took the two folded sheets of paper from the envelope that he had placed there less than an hour before and pa.s.sed them over. If the customs officer had been startled by events so far, that was as nothing to his expression when he read the first paragraph of the letter.

He looked up from the letter and stared at Cabal with wide eyes. "A necromancer?" he said, nearly in a whisper.

"Indeed so," confirmed Cabal. "Read on, read on."

The officer did so, and his discomfort increased with every line. "This is dreadful," he said when he had finished, this time in a definite whisper.

Cabal hoped and trusted that he was referring to the doc.u.ment's content and not to the fact that it was a forgery. "Yes, it is. I am ashamed that I have to turn to you for help, instead of concluding this affair in Mirkarvia. The people who first employed this ... monster made that impossible. This is my last chance to prevent their plan reaching fruition."

The customs officer was out of his depth. He kept rereading the doc.u.ment, or, at least, one part of it. Cabal suspected it was the phrases "ma.s.s resurrection" and "army of the dead" that had fixed his attention so admirably, which was gratifying, as that was exactly the reason he had included them. The vision they provoked was of the victims of the Katamenian famine being so ill-bred as not only to be Katamenian and dead but brain-eating Katamenian zombies stumbling over the border into Senza to suck the cerebellums of the Senzan citizenry, all under the domination of a mercenary necromancer backed by Mirkarvian money. To an officer whose usual workaday routine consisted of saying "Anything to declare?" repeatedly, it was all a bit much to grasp.

Cabal allowed him another few seconds of grasping time, then said, "You have to inform your superiors immediately! This plot has to be exposed and stopped, for the sake of your people and for the very soul of mine! Do you understand how important this is?"

"But who?" asked the customs officer, almost pleading. "Who should I go to?"

This foxed Cabal for a second. He'd expected the Senzan customs to be rather more thorough in its preparedness for the ghastly plots of its neighbours. "You're going to be overseeing the search of the Princess Hortense, are you not?"

The customs man shook his head. "No, no. The military handles that. We always expect trouble from those Mirkarvian bast-From Mirkarvian vessels, so the military is used to discourage anything, y'know, a bit dodgy."

The military. Of course. "Then take this report to the officer of the watch at the military hangar immediately! Now! Time is wasting!" The customs man took a couple of uncertain steps towards the door and then stopped, dithering. Cabal allowed a little of his impatience to boil over. It was a realistic reaction under the circ.u.mstances and, besides, it made him feel better. "What in heaven's name is it?"

"Would you come with me?" asked the customs officer. "Please?" The customs and the military did not always see eye to eye, and it would help his case to have an actual Mirkarvian agent with him when he tried to explain to a hard-boiled wing commander that the Katamenians and an element of the Mirkarvian elite were planning a ma.s.s illegal immigration of undead cannibals into Senza.

"Come with-? Impossible! I have to get back to the aeros.h.i.+p before I'm missed." A happy bit of invention occurred to him, and he added, "They've already murdered two other agents during this trip. I don't want them to make it three. You understand me?"

The officer didn't, not really, but the mention of murder raised the tide of responsibility past his chin and up to his nose. He was desperate to pa.s.s it on to somebody senior to himself who might actually know what to do with the information. Ideally, somebody in the military. Then if they messed up, and Senza was overrun by voracious zombies, he would be in the delightful position of being able to mutter, "Typical b.l.o.o.d.y military. Can't get anything right," shortly before ingestion.

So, after the mysterious man from Mirkarvia had gone out of the exit and was presumably sneaking back aboard the Princess Hortense, the customs officer girded his loins and set off for the military compound. A minute after he left, the mysterious man from Mirkarvia stealthily reentered the customs shed and, discovering it to be as empty as he had hoped, became nonchalant and strolled out through the arrivals hall.

Finally, after the wait had exceeded calculated rudeness and was now simply boring, the Senzans deigned to board the Princess Hortense. Captain Schten was disturbed to note that instead of its being primarily a customs operation backed up by the military, only troops boarded and took up positions with their rifles unshouldered and at the ready.

A lieutenant marched up to Schten and saluted crisply. Schten returned the salute more slowly, frowning at the unexpectedly threatening presence. "Why do these men have their weapons ready, Lieutenant?" he asked quietly enough to avoid being overheard by the pa.s.sengers who were present.

The lieutenant drew a couple of sheets of paper from his peac.o.c.k-green jacket and held them up so that Schten could read the first. Schten saw the heading and demanded, "Where did you get this? This is an official Mirkarvian doc.u.ment!"

The lieutenant was unimpressed. "Read it, sir," he said with the carefully controlled inflection of a junior officer who has authority over a senior officer on a different chain of command; a sterile sort of respect. Holding his anger in with a grimace, Schten read on. A few lines in, his anger turned to astonishment.

"That's impossible! I don't believe it! I can't believe it! I refuse to believe it!"

The lieutenant was enjoying himself, albeit inwardly. He folded the sheets and replaced them. "Then you don't believe your own government, Captain. As you said, this is an official Mirkarvian doc.u.ment." He turned to a soldier who was reading a copy of the s.h.i.+p's manifest. "Sergeant, have you found the suspect yet?"

"Just about, sir." He looked around the salon, and asked the captain, "Are these all your pa.s.sengers, sir?"

"Yes," snapped Schten. "You can see yourself. Oh, actually, no. We're a couple short. I was meaning to speak to-"

"We know about the deaths, Captain," said the lieutenant. He took the manifest and the pa.s.senger list from his sergeant and looked around, matching names to likely faces, ignoring Schten's thunderstruck expression. He walked slowly through the pa.s.sengers, who were uncertain what was going on, but certain that something was going on, and moved slightly away from the lieutenant, as if he had a contagious disease or was about to rope them into a party game. He stopped. "You are Signor Cacon, no?"

It was not. It was Signor Harlmann, who was visibly relieved that he wasn't. He pointed out Cacon, who, in turn, shrivelled up a little beneath the lieutenant's cold stare. The lieutenant slowly walked towards him, but paused halfway there to check his list again. He turned to his right and looked at Lady Ninuka. "You are ... Signorina Barrow?"

Ninuka didn't get a chance to answer, as an outraged Miss Ambersleigh fluttered in front of her like a combative chicken. "She most certainly is not, young man!" her ladys.h.i.+p's attendant said in her severest tone. "This is the Lady Orfilia Ninuka, and I shall thank you to show her the proper respect! That"-she nodded at Leonie Barrow-"is Miss Barrow."

The lieutenant looked over at her with mild interest.

For her part, Miss Barrow was wondering what all this head counting was in aid of. She was wondering how the Senzans had learned of the deaths aboard, especially as it was evident that the captain clearly hadn't been the one to tell them. Perhaps Cabal had been right in his belief that there were agents aboard, just not Mirkarvian ones. And, speaking of Cabal, where was he? It struck her that she hadn't seen him since the approach to the aeroport.

"Signorina Barrow?" asked the lieutenant.

"Hmm?" she said, thinking hard. Perhaps this wasn't about the mysterious happenings aboard at all. Perhaps this was all about Cabal. "Yes. Yes, I'm Leonie Barrow."

"Splendido!" said the lieutenant, as he snapped his fingers and lazily pointed at her. At the sound, his soldiers snapped to attention. At the gesture, Miss Barrow found herself ringed by six rifles.

"What?" She fought an impulse to jump with surprise, as the rational part of her feared, with reasonable grounds, that the soldiers might regard that as an excuse to fire. This left her up on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, from which she slowly descended back on to her heels in an effort to appear unthreatening.

"I still don't believe it!" rumbled Captain Schten.

"What ... what is the meaning of this?" Miss Ambersleigh was even more aflutter now than she had been a few moments ago. "You can't point your horrid guns at her! She's ... she's Englis.h.!.+"

The lieutenant ignored her. He marched up to Miss Barrow and took a moment to curl his lip and sneer at her properly, so that she was in no doubt at all that she was being sneered at. "Signorina ... Leonie ... Barrow ..." He said the latter words as though they were patent and obvious lies. "Or should I say-" He let the seconds linger, taking pleasure in the tension, knowing his civilian onlookers-poor ignorant fools that they were-were craning forward, hanging on his words. He let them squirm for a moment longer, and then delivered the denouement. "Johanna Cabal ... Necromancer!"

There was a collective gasp, including one from the freshly unmasked necromancatrix.

"You have got this so wrong," she managed to say eventually.

He was aware that he could not push the sneer any further without its looking plain silly, so he waggled his head a little for emphasis instead. "Oh, have I indeed? We shall see. You are under arrest for crimes against humanity, nature, and G.o.d. Specifically, the proscribed practise of necromancy. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down in evidence and may be used at trial. You have the right to legal counsel during questioning, and during any subsequent trial. Do you understand these rights?"

Miss Barrow's throat was very dry. The initial disbelief had gone now, and been replaced with the certain knowledge that she was in deep trouble. Johanna Cabal? It seemed evident that they were after Johannes Cabal and somehow lines of communication had become tangled and they thought their man was actually a woman. But, why her? She wasn't the only woman aboard. And where was Cabal, anyway? She was having trouble thinking, and being badgered by some c.o.xcomb in army uniform wasn't helping. Did she understand these rights? he kept asking. Did she understand? She started to stumble through what might have been an agreement when suddenly Miss Ambersleigh was between them.

"She's ENGLIs.h.!.+" the tiny Miss Ambersleigh screamed in the lieutenant's face. "How dare you suggest such a foul calumny upon an English lady, you ... you ... foreigner!"

The lieutenant looked down at the incandescent woman and raised an unbearably superior eyebrow. "Ah, signora. Here, you are the foreigner."

There is possibly no insult so calculated to sting the English as the suggestion that they may at any time be considered foreign, as this flies in the face of the obvious truth that the whole of Creation actually belongs to the English, and they are just allowing everybody else to camp on bits of it from a national sense of n.o.blesse oblige.

If looks could kill, the lieutenant would surely have been turned to gritty dust in an instant, and his entire family tree, dating back seven generations, retrospectively stricken from history. Looks, however, do not kill. He remained alive and smug, despite Miss Ambersleigh's very best efforts.

"You vile man," she said slowly, managing to make even "You" sound like a dreadful slur. She pointedly turned her back to him and spoke urgently to Miss Barrow. "You mustn't worry about a thing, my dear," she said, taking Miss Barrow's hands in hers. "This ridiculous toy soldier has obviously made a stupid mistake. I shall go straight to the British Consulate and inform them of what has happened. You mustn't worry, please. Help is on its way. Chin up, Miss Barrow. You show 'em, eh?"

Leonie Barrow had not had much time for the twittering antics of Miss Ambersleigh on the journey, but there was something very affecting about the little woman's faith in her innocence, and her confidence that the truth would out, that made a lump grow in Miss Barrow's throat. No matter what, she could be sure of one ally in this ordeal.

"Thank you," she managed to say. "Thank you, Miss Ambersleigh. I shall."

"Tchah," muttered the lieutenant dismissively. The thrill of doing something out of the ordinary was wearing off. He'd been hoping for a gunfight, or a pitched battle against zombies. Two Englishwomen being unutterably English with each other was just boring. He gave an order to the sergeant, and Signorina Johanna Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy apparently, was escorted off the aeros.h.i.+p and into custody.

Herr Johannes Cabal, meanwhile, an actual necromancer of some little infamy (and even smaller scruples), was wandering the streets of Parila and considering his next move. His original plan had been to get out of the town with as much alacrity as he could muster. The reason for such haste was based on the least helpful chain of events that he could hypothesise; to wit, that Miss Barrow proclaimed, "I am innocent! That doc.u.ment is a forgery! You are actually looking for Johannes Cabal, who has been masquerading as Gerhard Meissner, a Mirkarvian civil servant!" and the Senzans replied, "So you are! So it is! After him!" In this dire scenario, the whole town would raise a hue and cry within minutes, and he would be arrested very shortly thereafter. This was an unpleasant hypothesis, and he didn't care to think about it for too long, not least because it was not very likely. The doc.u.ment was not a bad forgery, and would maintain a thread of doubt in the mind of the authorities no matter how convincingly Miss Barrow proclaimed her innocence. They might believe her, but it would be gross incompetence to release her without definite proof of her bona fides. It was, after all, far better to detain an innocent person for a day or so, and then apologise, than to let a necromancer go free. A day or so, then. That was all the leeway he had. Trying to leave town with undue haste would draw attention, so he would spend a little time making life difficult for the pursuers who would inevitably try to pick up his trail when the authorities wearied of the little joke he had played on them. Miss Barrow also.

He had an uncomfortable feeling in his chest that he believed was probably the p.r.i.c.kling of a guilty conscience. He was glad to have his soul back, but the whole "conscience" business that had come with it was very wearying. How dare this irksome inner voice torment him for doing what was necessary? Furthermore, it kept dredging up another unfamiliar sentiment-that he hoped she was all right. He couldn't begin to imagine why he should care. She had been mildly discommoded, that was all. Good grief, he had shot people for being less of a nuisance than she. She should be grateful. He felt the faint flickering of a resentful anger at her, and this alarmed him, too, with its base irrationality. Finally, he drove all such thoughts from his mind by forcefully reminding himself that he was on borrowed time, and that she would soon be free-if rather cross with him-and the hounds would be on his trail.

So, Cabal made his plans. The first thing to do was draw a line between himself and the discarded Meissner persona. The first part of that was to lose the Mirkarvian accent he had adopted-very successfully, it seemed, judging by the fact that not a single native Mirkarvian had commented on it. Instead, he would exaggerate what was left of his own Hessen p.r.o.nunciation and claim to be a tourist from the Germanies. A casual stroll into a bookshop and a perusal of its geography section gave him the details he needed to flesh out his story. He was staying at an inn in Escalti, a small town some fifteen kilometres away. He had found the place a little dull (a point intended to play to the locals, who maintained a friendly rivalry with Escalti), and cadged a lift to Parila, with the understanding that he make his own way back. Thus, could you direct me to the stazione ferroviaria Parila, bitte?

Of course, he had no intention of going to a provincial little dump like Escalti. Instead, he would lose himself in a city like Genin until he could find a way to get across the border. That shouldn't be too difficult, he thought; it was its eastern borders, with untrustworthy neighbours like Mirkarvia and Katamenia, that Senza guarded closely. The west was a different thing altogether.

He would also have to undergo a physical transformation, and this he was not looking forward to in the slightest. He would change clothes when he reached the city, but in the meantime he would locate the necessary chemicals to make himself a quant.i.ty of impromptu hair dye. He certainly didn't want to just buy the stuff ready-made; a single police enquiry in the right place and the fact that he was disguising his hair colour and the shade used would be known. Far better to make his own. The necessary knowledge to synthesise hair dye from common chemicals was something he had developed some years earlier when it became apparent that it might very well come in handy. To Cabal's mind, it had been worth a few days then, and a few hours a year subsequently, to brush up on his notes and avoid the possibility of ending up on a gallows simply because he looked so very much like himself. His most obvious physical feature, after all, was that he was very blond indeed. Once he changed that, descriptions would lose a lot of their usefulness. He had thus developed a simple dye, synthesised from common chemicals, that rendered his hair a convincing brown. Furthermore, the stuff came out again after four or five was.h.i.+ngs, using warm water, a strong shampoo, and a lot of white pickling vinegar. It left him smelling like a gherkin, with hair the consistency of straw, but that pa.s.sed quickly after a further wash in more sympathetic substances. Beer and raw egg worked well.

After a visit to the bank to change some of the British notes he had concealed in the lining of his case for Senzan liras ("I'm touring," he told the cas.h.i.+er, almost truthfully), he found a dispensing chemist's and a very well-stocked hardware shop that between them provided everything he needed for his hair dye. He had no intention of actually making it while in Parila; the plan was to mix it in the train's lavatory en route to Genin, so that he would step down to the platform a different man. For the moment, he stored his purchases away in his bag and wondered if it would be advisable to buy a change of clothes, too, before travelling. No, the chance of police enquiries revealing the purchases, and so updating his description, was too great. On the other hand, he could always buy something gaudy and memorable and then dump it at the first opportunity. Should the police discover the purchase, they would certainly regard it as an attempt to radically alter his appearance and therefore report it in their police bulletins, rendering them even more inaccurate. This seemed to Cabal a desirable state of affairs. He was just wandering the streets, looking for somewhere that might sell orange ruffled s.h.i.+rts, when he paused to look in a shop window. In the reflection, he saw a familiar figure across the avenue behind him, but only a flash and then it disappeared up an alleyway. Cabal's heart sank.

All that paranoia aboard s.h.i.+p had just been mellowing into an acceptance that there weren't armies of agents and ma.s.ses of interlocking conspiracies at all, and he had been enjoying being able to forget all that in order to concentrate on simply avoiding the police. As a necromancer, this was very much part of the job requirements, and he flattered himself that he was quite practised and professional at it. Now, however, all those fears that something terribly complex that killed people in pa.s.sing was going on, and he had no idea what it was, came back to him with sobering intensity. The man he had seen reflected in the gla.s.s was Alexei Aloysius Cacon, and he was positive that Cacon had been watching him.

Cabal turned, but caught just a glimpse of Cacon's coat as he scurried up the alley and out of sight. This complicated things; Cabal needed at least another half hour to complete his arrangements before catching the train. If Cacon ran off to find a police officer, flight would become dramatically more difficult. The railway station would immediately become off limits, and he could be sure that the main thoroughfares out of Parila would be watched. There was nothing for it. Cabal would have to take what mealier-mouthed governmental types might call "executive action." His term was much shorter, and involved sticking his switchblade between Cacon's ribs. Sighing heavily, for he disliked violence generally and murder in particular, Cabal set off to commit violent murder.

Cabal's earlier walk around this district of Parila had already formed a reliable map in his well-ordered memory, and he knew that Cacon's alley would bring him out onto the Viale Ogrilla, a leafy avenue bounded by clothes shops and cafes. He set off at a fast trot down the road he was on-a long, narrow street with an uncommonly high frequency of bookshops upon it called the Via Vortis-to intercept Cacon as he emerged from the end of the dog-legged alleyway.

At the corner, however, he had reason to come to an abrupt slowing and a grand show of mannered nonchalance. Directly opposite the end of the alleyway, an officer of the Polizia di Quartiere was chatting up a waitress at a roadside cafe. Cabal could only observe and inwardly plan a rapid retreat as he watched Cacon emerge from the alley and head directly for the policeman. After he crossed the road and was a mere couple of metres from the cafe, however, he turned to his left and started walking away from Cabal and, indeed, the policeman. Cabal immediately dropped his plans for flight and watched, perplexed, as Cacon wandered off. No, that wasn't accurate. Cacon was emphatically not wandering. Rather, he was walking with definite intent up the Viale Ogrilla, in the direction of its junction with the Via Pace. This was all very mysterious.

Cabal checked his watch to see how long he had before he had to be at the railway station, but his interest in running was being chipped away by pure curiosity. What on earth did Cacon think he was up to? Cabal checked his watch again, but this time it was just to give him a moment to think. He had time to follow Cacon for perhaps five minutes before completing his purchases and getting to the station became overriding. It probably wouldn't be very difficult to follow him undetected; the sun was almost down, and the pale stone of the buildings was already glowing a darkening blue. Very well, then, he decided. Five minutes, and no more. Walking like a man enjoying a stroll on the way home from work, Cabal set off after Cacon.

Chapter 12.

IN WHICH THE GLOVES COME OFF.

Cacon was evidently not in the mood for window-shopping. He walked up the Viale Ogrilla like a man with a mission, moving from the right-hand side of the avenue back over to the left as he reached the junction with the Via Pace. Cabal had no trouble shadowing him; he had no interest at all in watching his own back, his attention being focussed entirely on his forward quarter. Cabal watched him vanish around the corner, then dog-trotted in pursuit, in a semicasual "If I'm late home for dinner again, my wife will kill me" sort of way. He still took the corner cautiously himself. He had half an idea that Cacon really was a Mirkarvian agent, after all, and might be waiting in ambush, but this proved fallacious. Cacon was already fifty metres away, on the kerbside of the pavement, walking at a fast pace and sometimes craning his head to the right as if looking for something or somebody who was just obscured by the line of buildings. Curioser and curioser.

Opposite the Church of San Giovanni Decollato was the western end of the Via Vortis, where Cabal had first espied Cacon, and it was onto this road that Cacon turned. Cabal followed to the corner and looked around it more than a little suspiciously. The only reason he could imagine anybody walking so fixatedly around the same buildings was to see if he was being pursued. That would depend on Cacon's actually checking his back, but he never did. An alternative occurred to Cabal: perhaps Cacon was shadowing somebody else. But, in that case, whoever this third member of the chain was, why was he circling the buildings, too? Perhaps Cabal was doing the wrong thing; perhaps instead of following Cacon widders.h.i.+ns around the triangle of buildings until boredom set in or shoe leather gave out, he should reverse his path and discover of whom it was that Cacon was in such single-minded pursuit.

No, he realised after a brief second, that was a bad idea, as it would mean walking straight into the unknown prey, if prey he was and not hunted predator. Instead, he would wait in ambush. Cacon had already pa.s.sed the end of the alleyway he had originally used between the Via Vortis and the Viale Ogrilla, apparently intending to go at least as far as the junction where the two met on the edge of the Piazza Bior. That was good enough for Cabal; he would wait in the alleyway, working on the hypothesis that the third man would circle the route at least once more. Dusk was gathering rapidly, for which he was grateful, as it allowed him to lurk with an excellent chance of going unseen.

He found a dark corner between a drainpipe and a barrel half full of food wrappers, and was just turning to see how good a view of the Via Vortis it afforded when he received a resounding slap across the face that snapped his head to one side and sent his dark spectacles flying. In the moment between impact and turning his head back to glare at his attacker, he realised two things. First, the dusk wasn't quite as gloomy as it had seemed from behind smoked gla.s.s, and second, Leonie Barrow had got out of custody with remarkable alacrity.

"Guten Abend, Fraulein Barrow," he said, watching her guardedly as he recovered his spectacles. It was obviously becoming too dark to wear them, so he slid them into his breast pocket instead. "How pleasant to see you."

Miss Leonie Barrow, for her part, called him something utterly frightful that she had never ever called anybody in her life before, and that even her father-career policeman that he had been-had only ever heard a handful of times, and then kicked Cabal hard on the s.h.i.+n.

Cabal was a great fan of dignity in general and of his own in particular, and managed to keep the hopping down to two low springs before overcoming the sharp and penetrating pain.

"How b.l.o.o.d.y dare you? How could you? I gave you a chance, and this is how you repay me?" she shouted at him. "I could have handed you over right there! Right on the first night, as soon as I saw your pasty, smug face in the salon! I must have been demented not to! I need my b.l.o.o.d.y head examined!"

Cabal wasn't giving her his full consideration. He was mindful that the mysterious third man might be walking past on the Via Vortis in front of him, and that at the end of the alley behind him, on the Viale Ogrilla, there was a police constable who, if he could tear his attention away from the waitress at the cafe, might wonder what all the commotion down the alley was about. Cabal had an ugly intimation that Miss Barrow would tell him, too. She needed to be quiet ... he needed her to be quiet, and to be so quickly. To his small credit, he considered stabbing her and dumping her body in the barrel for no more than a very few seconds, although he did get as far as targeting her solar plexus for the fatal incision (followed by angling the blade upwards to penetrate the diaphragm and the aorta), and gripping the knife in his pocket before dissuading himself.

Instead, he put his left hand over her mouth and forced her against the wall. The suddenness of the move shocked her into compliance, her only reaction being an alarmed widening of her eyes. He locked his gaze to hers, raised his right index finger to his lips, and whispered with harsh impressiveness, "Shush ..."

Miss Barrow bit his palm. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her mouth with a m.u.f.fled curse that hadn't been sounded since the destruction of a prehuman species, much given to foul utterances that surpa.s.sed even man's apt.i.tude for filthy imagery. Even to this long-vanished race, however, what Cabal said would have been considered a bit naughty.

He almost backhanded her, but with a tremendous effort of will, reining in a burning desire to create pain, he prevented himself. Instead, he stood glaring at her, hand raised. She flinched a little, but only a little. Finally, shaking with suppressed violence, he lowered his gloved hand and examined the palm.

"You've left teeth marks on the leather," he said, for lack of anything more civil to say. She started to say something, but he raised a finger to her lips. "Before you utter another syllable, ask yourself two questions. First, what would you have done in my place? And second, what am I doing hiding up an alleyway, anyway? And, no, it wasn't to get away from you, as should be evident both by my surprise at your liberty and by the fact that you found me so easily."

"I wish I'd told the captain about you."

"If wishes counted for anything, neither of us would be in our current situations, Miss Barrow. You concede that I had no choice, however?"

"No."

"Close enough. Which brings us to my second question. If you would care to join me behind this barrel, I will explain."

"Behind that barrel?" Now she was no longer looking at him as if he were the very epitome of evil but just rather mad.

"Yes. With some urgency, please. Time is short."

"You're not going to stab me, are you?" she asked, mindful of the knife he'd used to defend himself when he was attacked aboard the Princess Hortense.

"I was, but it would have been impolite. Believe me, if I was going to kill you, you would already have breathed your last, instead of using said breath to yack tediously at me. Behind the barrel, please. Now!"

Shaken by Cabal's admission that murdering her had crossed his mind but had been dispensed with for logical rather than moral or compa.s.sionate reasons, she allowed herself to be steered into hiding. From a cautious crouch, they surveyed the Via Vortis in the darkening twilight.

After a minute of boiling resentment slowly reducing to a simmer, Miss Barrow asked, "What are we waiting for?"

"Not what," answered Cabal in a whisper. "Who."

Miss Barrow a.n.a.lysed this reply in silence for a moment, found it lacking, and asked, "Very well, then. For whom are we waiting?"

"I don't know. Let's wait and find out, shall we?" If he was aware of the filthy look that Miss Barrow gave him, he did nothing to indicate it.

"So," she said with indignant sarcasm, "we are hiding behind a barrel in a town that I believe neither of us has ever visited before, waiting for somebody that you don't know. From behind a barrel. I think the barrel aspect of this situation bears repeating."

Cabal considered saying that if she would prefer to be dead as a doornail, and head down in the barrel, it still wasn't too late for him to organise that for her, but he did not. Instead, he kept his attention on their view of the road and waited for somebody indefinably suspicious to walk by. Unfortunately, to Cabal's finely honed sense of paranoia everybody looked suspicious.