Ghosts of Columbia (26 page)

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Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia
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Half of them still looked blank. I wondered if that blank expression were a regional trait common to New Bruges or a generational expression common to all young of the species.
Somehow we struggled through, and I got back to the main office. Still no message from Llysette, and I wondered if she were out on a short tour with her group. But would she be traveling so near a production?
Or had I done something to offend her? Finally I picked up the handset and dialed.
“Hello.”
“Is this the distinguished soprano Llysette duBoise?”
“Johan, do not mock me.”
“I wasn’t. I was just remarking on the quality of your voice.”
A sigh followed. I waited.
“A long day it has been.”
“So has mine. Would you like dinner?”
“We are still rehearsing, and still I am beating the notes into their thick Dutch heads.”
“Chocolate before rehearsal? Now? At Delft’s?”
“I do not …” She sighed again. “That would be nice.”
“I’ll be at your door in a few moments.”
And I was. And another wonder of wonders, she actually was ready to leave, carefully knotting a scarf over her hair and ears as I rapped on the studio door.
“Johan …” I got a kiss. A brief one, but a kiss. “For the note. Sweet and thoughtful it was.”
“Sometimes I try. Other times, I’m afraid I’m trying.”
We walked down the hill to the center of town.
“How are you coming with rehearsals?” I shook my head. “From what I’ve seen, you’re really pushing them to do
Heinrich Verrückt.
Didn’t everyone think Beethoven was totally insane for writing an opera about Henry VIII? From what you’ve told me, it has the complexity of the Ninth Symphony and the impossibility of Mozart’s Queen of the Night in every role.”
“Johan,” Llysette said with a laugh, “difficult it is, but not
that
difficult. To baby them I am not here.”
Delft’s was almost empty, and we got the table by the woodstove again.
“Ah, much better this is than my cold studio.” She slipped off the scarf even before sitting.
Victor’s son Francois arrived and nodded at Llysette. “Chocolate? Tea? Coffee?”
“Chocolate.”
“I’ll have chocolate also, and please bring a plate of the butter cookies, Dansk style.”
As Francois bowed and departed, Llysette shifted her weight in the chair, as if soaking in the warmth from the stove.
“Johan?”
“Yes.”
“Well did you know Professor Branston-Hay?”
“I can’t say I knew him exceptionally well. We talked occasionally. We had troubles with the same students.”
“A tragedy that was.” Llysette pursed her lips. “Some, they say that it was not an accident.”
I shrugged. “I have my doubts. According to the papers, a lot of Babbage researchers are dying in one way or another.”
“Is that not strange? And Miranda, was she not a friend of Professor Branston-Hay?”
I nodded.
“Your country, I do not understand.” Llysette’s laugh was almost bitter.
“Sometimes I don’t, either. Exactly what part don’t you understand?”
“A woman is killed, and nothing happens. A man dies in an accident, and the
watch, they question many people, and people talk. No one says the accident could be murder. But they question. The woman, she is forgotten.”
Except I hadn’t forgotten Miranda, and I didn’t think vanBecton had, either.
Francois returned with two pots of chocolate and a heavily laden plate of Danish butter cookies. He filled both cups.
The chocolate tasted good, much better than the bland chicken noodle soup that had substituted for lunch. The cookies were even better, and I ate two in a row before taking another small swallow of the steaming chocolate.
“Did they question you?” I asked.
“But of course. They asked about you.”
“Me? How odd? I barely knew either one—I mean, not beyond being members of the same faculty.”
“I told the chief watch officer that very same.” Llysette shrugged. “Perhaps they think it was a ménage à trois.”
“Between a broken-down federal official, a spiritualistic piano teacher, and a difference engine researcher with a soul written in Babbage code? They must be under a lot of pressure.” I refilled my cup from my pot and hers from the one on her left.
She laughed for a moment, then added, “Governments make strange things happen. People must … make hard choices,
n’est-ce-pas
?”
“Mais oui, mademoiselle
. Like insisting on producing
Heinrich Verrückt
in New Bruges. Why didn’t you just use one of the Perkins adaptations of Vondel?”
“Vondel? Dutch is even more guttural than low German.”
“I think it’s interesting. Seventeenth-century Dutch plays turned into contemporary operas by a Mormon composer.”
Llysette made a face.
“The Dutch think that Vondel was every bit as good as Shakespeare.” I took a healthy swallow of chocolate. The second cup was cooler.
“Good plays do not make good operas. Good music and good plays make good opera.”
“You have a problem with Perkins?”
“Perkins? No. Good music he writes. The problem, it is with Vondel.” Llysette looked at her wrist. “Alas, I must go. A makeup lesson I must do, and then the rehearsals.”
I swallowed the last of my chocolate, then left some bills on the table for Francois.
Llysette replaced her scarf before stepping into the wind. A few damp brown leaves swirled by, late-hangers torn from the trees lining the square.
“Makeup lesson?”
“The little dunderheads, sometimes, they have good reasons for missing a lesson.”
“Few times, I would guess.”
Llysette did not answer, and we proceeded in silence to the door of the Music and Theatre Building. I held it open, and we walked to her empty studio.
“Take care.” I bent forward and kissed her cheek.
“You also, Johan.” Her lips were cold on my cheek. “The note—I did like it.”
I watched for a moment as she took off the scarf and coat, then blew her a kiss before turning away.
As I walked back to my office, I had to frown. Was I getting so preoccupied that Llysette was finding me cold? She still seemed distracted … but she had kissed me and thanked me. Was I the distracted one—not that I didn’t have more than enough reasons to be distracted—or was something else going on?
I went back to my own office, where I reclaimed my folder before locking up. The main office was empty, although I could see the light shining from under David’s closed door. Whatever it was about me that he’d been discussing with the dean apparently was still under wraps. He was probably plotting something. God, I hated campus politics.
The wind continued to gust as I walked to the car park. A watch car was pulled over to the curb on the other side of the street outside the faculty car park. I started the Stanley, then belted in. As my headlamps crossed the dark gray steamer, glinting off the unlit green lenses of the strobes, I could make out Officer Warbeck, clearly watching me. When I got to the bottom of the hill, he had pulled out, following me at a distance. He followed me across the river, but not up Deacon’s Lane.
First Llysette, and then the watch.
At least Marie had left me a warm steak pie, and I had eaten most of it when the wireset rang. I swallowed what was in my mouth and picked up the handset.
“Hello?”
“Doktor Eschbach?”
“Yes.”
“This is Chief Waetjen. I just had one additional question.”
“Oh?”
“Do you recall whether Professor Miller was wearing a long blue scarf the night she was killed?”
I frowned. “I only felt her ghost. So I wouldn’t have any way of knowing what she wore. I hadn’t seen her since that Friday, I think, and I don’t remember what she was wearing then. You might ask one of the women.”
“I see. Well, thank you.”
Click
.
I looked out into the darkness onto the lawn, barely visible under the stars that had begun to shine in the rapidly clearing skies.
In belated foresight, the situation vanBecton was setting up was clear enough. Johan Eschbach had been under enormous stress, had even received a health-based pension for wounds from a would-be assassin. Now a murder, perhaps one he had committed in his unstable state, would be found to have turned him into a zombie—one of the more severe varieties. And his ghost would never be found. What a pity!
I walked upstairs and looked outside, seeing a few bright and cold stars between the clouds and wondering how long before I got a caller. Then I opened the false drawer in the armoire, taking out a few Austro-Hungarian items—and the two new shiny nuts I had put there just the day before. Of course, the whole thing was ridiculous, since no real agent would carry anything even faintly betraying, but the items were suggestive—a medallion reminiscent of the Emperor’s Cross, a fragment of a ticket in German, the sort of thing that could get stuck in a pocket, a pen manufactured only in Vienna, and a square metal gadget which contained a saw and a roll of piano wire, totally anonymous except for the tiny Austrian maker’s mark.
As evidence they might be too subtle, but I didn’t have much to lose. I put them in my pockets, not that they were any risk to me, since I’d either walk away or be in no shape to do so.
I studied the lawn, but no one was out there, not that I could see. So I walked back downstairs and washed the dishes. Then I went into the study, got the disassociator, and set it in the corner by the door. I got the quilt from the sofa and rolled it up and set it on the chair before the Babbage console, putting a jacket from the closet around it and an old beret on top. I’d never worn it, not since Anna had sent it to me from her trip to New France years earlier, but I doubted any agent knew what I did or didn’t wear in my study. In any case, the lights would silhouette the figure, and, from the veranda, it would be hard to distinguish the difference between me and the impromptu dummy from any distance because the Babbage screen assembly would block a head-on view until an intruder was almost at the windows.
I reached forward and turned on the difference engine. After that, I slipped the truncheon from the hidden holder on the table leg into my belt, then turned on the lights, picking up the disassociator.
I didn’t have to wait long before a tall figure in a watch uniform glided up the hill and across the veranda. I shook my head. He was relying a lot on his uniform, and I’ve never had that much respect for cloth and braid and bright buttons.
He fiddled with the door, opened it, and lifted the Colt-Luger.
Crack. crack.
The young Spazi—I was sure the imposter’s name wasn’t Warbeck, even if I had appreciated his sense of humor—actually fired two shots into the quiltdummy before he looked around. Metal glinted under his watch helmet. His large Colt-Luger swung toward me.
Crack
.
I jumped and pulled the trigger on the disassociator, then dropped it. The room went dark, but I hadn’t waited for that, as I had dropped forward and to Warbeck’s right. I could feel him ram into the heavy desk, and his hesitation was enough, even if it took me two quick swings with the truncheon. I had to aim for the temple because I didn’t know how effective the truncheon would be with Gerald’s mesh cap and Warbeck’s regular hat over it.
Still, even in the darkness, I could tell I’d hit him too hard, not that it frankly bothered me much. The Colt thudded to the carpet, but did not discharge again. My effort with the truncheon had been quick enough that there would be no ghost, although the disassociator would have taken care of that detail.
I pulled the flash from the desk drawer and played it across him. He was definitely dead.
After placing those few items I had prepared in Warbeck’s clothes, I used a handkerchief to replace the Colt in the military holster, then wrapped his cooling fingers around the weapon before dragging the body out the door and onto the veranda. I used the handkerchief to put his hat by him, then waited in the shadows. I’ve always been good at waiting. It’s what separates the real professionals from those who just think they are.
It must have been an hour before the two others slipped up the lawn through the trees. One carried a large body bag. I felt like nodding. Instead, I waited until they found the body.
“Shit. Somebody got him first …”
Both lifted their weapons, and that was enough for me. I held down the spring trigger on the disassociator. One collapsed, and the other shrieked. I waited and potted both ghosts with the disassociator, but the second one resisted. The power meter I hadn’t paid enough attention to earlier dropped into the red.

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