India Black (33 page)

I rushed to the railing and stared down into the water. Ivanov was floating facedown, arms outstretched, his body bobbing on the waves.

“Well done, French,” I cried. “You’ve killed the bugger.” Now for the bad news. “Though I’m afraid Bowser’s memo is gone, scattered on the wind.”

“At the moment,” French said huskily, “I couldn’t care less. At least it’s out of Russian hands.”

The mention of Russian hands reminded me that Oksana was still on the loose. I expected to see her on deck, but when I turned, she had fled.

French pointed at the dock with an unsteady hand. “She hared off that way, right after I shot Ivanov. Go after her. And take my Boxer. It’ll do more damage when you shoot her.”

Well, I suppose even gentleman have their boundaries, and I suppose being shot like a dog by Ivanov had pushed French over his.

I grabbed the Boxer from the deck, where it lay after Moss Mouth’s ill-fated attempt to gain possession, clambered up onto the dock and sprinted after the fleeing Russian spy. In the growing light I could just see her ahead of me, running unsteadily in the direction of Calais, that glorious sable coat (for so it still was, though damp with seawater) and hat rippling in the pale light.

“Stop, Oksana,” I called. “You’ll never get away. I’m right behind you.” I sucked in a deep breath at the conclusion of this monologue and resolved to keep my shouted instructions to a minimum, at least while giving chase. It took all my energy just to stagger along.

Oksana was still clipping along, stealing a glance now and then over her shoulder at me. I wasn’t in the best of condition, what with the cold, sleet, snow, rain and seawater I’d endured, not to mention a minor gunshot wound to the shoulder (it was throbbing like the devil right now), and I could see that Oksana was soon going to outpace me. I gave it a final push, summoning what little reserves of strength I had left. Oksana had reached the end of the dock now and was making her way up a small incline, along a graveled road. I lurched to a stop, dropped to one knee to steady myself and wrapped both hands around the Boxer.

“Oksana,” I shouted. She paused to look back, as I had hoped she would. Idiot. I would have kept hoofing along, perhaps adding some evasive procedures for good measure. Anyone with any sense knows how difficult it is to hit a moving target with a revolver, especially at a distance. No wonder Ivanov wanted some fresh blood among the tsar’s agents.

I pulled the trigger, and the Boxer roared. I am accustomed to the powerful kick of my Bulldog, but the .577 caliber packs a punch like nothing I’ve ever experienced. My arms flew skyward and the concussion knocked me arse over teakettle. I lay on my back in the dirt and looked at the gun in my hand, stunned at the impact. I’d have to spend some time practicing if I wanted to shoot one of these cannons with any skill at all.

I climbed to my feet, joints creaking and my shoulder quivering with pain, and I scanned the road ahead of me. Bloody hell. Just before the crest of the incline, a crumpled form lay in the road. Aches and pains forgotten, I dashed up the hill, still clutching the Boxer in one hand and holding my skirts up with the other. (Note to self: purchase trousers for next spy adventure.)

I stopped a good distance away and approached Oksana’s body cautiously. She was a sly puss, and I wasn’t about to get within reach of her claws. She looked oddly flat lying there, as if the very substance of life had been drained from her, leaving only a husk beneath the rippling fur of her coat. She’d been a ruddy large girl, as lots of Russians are, and her death tableau seemed strangely unreal. When I drew near, I saw my error. I had not felled Oksana with one shot from the Boxer. I had, in fact, only bagged myself a very nice sable coat, made in Russia, and in perfect condition, if one did not count the neat round bullet hole in the hem.

I started up immediately, climbed to the crest of the hill and searched the road that stretched out before me. Far, far ahead of me, I saw a tiny figure, still racing along, due to arrive soon in Calais. While I’d been recovering from the hammer blow of the Boxer and creeping up on a dead fur coat, Oksana had been making tracks. I’d never catch her now. I wanted to weep. But I didn’t.

S
o we had failed. I had hoped that French’s men, led by Vincent, might encounter Oksana on their way out to the fishing village, but they had not. She had slipped into the warren of small shops, taverns and boarding houses that surrounded the port of Calais and disappeared from sight. French’s men kept watch over the telegraph office in the Place d’Armes for several days, but no one answering her description appeared. No doubt the Russians had their own agents in Calais, and they had spirited her away at the first opportunity.

The British agents in Calais proved extremely efficient at repatriating our friends Bob, Hawkins and Moss Mouth to an English gaol, after cursory medical attention and lengthy interrogations. As expected, the three knew nothing more than that they were to receive a tidy sum for ferrying the two Russians to France and had they known that French, Vincent and I were employed on Her Majesty’s business, would of course have accorded us every courtesy. Their interrogators, being English, met this bald-faced lie with a raised eyebrow and polite disbelief. It did not absolve the three smugglers from their misdeeds, and they are now enjoying the hospitality of Her Majesty’s government.

French and I were showered with attention, with the finest French doctors (smelling of garlic, but what can one do?) poking and prodding us, cleaning our wounds and bandaging us with enough linen to start a hotel supply company. Luckily, those Russians are damned poor shots. Oksana had grazed my shoulder at close range, and Ivanov had had a perfect opportunity to pump a bullet into French’s heart but missed by a wide margin. Vincent explained the former error by pointing out that Oksana was a woman and what did you expect? (Earning a kick from me, which you’ll no doubt agree he deserved.) And the latter by postulating that Ivanov had been in the cavalry and “’twas better with a sword.” Possibly, he was correct.

French was soon feeling well enough to castigate me for suggesting that Ivanov put him down like a dog suffering from canine distemper.

“It was such a shocking statement that it distracted Ivanov’s attention while you fished out that derringer.” I did not point out that when I’d made the suggestion to Ivanov, I’d had no idea that French had a derringer in his unmentionables.

I plunged on. “Speaking of that derringer, why didn’t you tell me you had it stuffed down your underwear? And how in the world do you manage to secrete such an armory on your person without clanking like a medieval knight in armor when you walk?”

“The derringer wasn’t stuffed in my underwear,” he said scornfully. It’s awfully easy to get a rise out of a secret agent: just disparage their tradecraft. “I have holsters specially made for the guns and a scabbard in my boot for the dirk.”

Even more disappointing than Oksana’s escape was our failure to recover Ivanov’s body. By the time French’s agents arrived with Vincent, the tide had turned and the Russian was no longer bobbing alongside the boat. French’s men took one look at his white face and bloody shirt and decided that his life was more important than hiring a flotilla to search for a dead Russian spy. Our men in France kept an ear to the ground, waiting for word of any unidentified bodies washing ashore, but none were found. The conventional wisdom was that Ivanov had satiated the appetite of some predatory fishes, but the smart money (including mine) was on Ivanov’s survival. He was a hard bastard to kill.

That left two Russian spies unaccounted for, and thus it came as no surprise that word of Britain’s troop strength (or lack thereof) eventually arrived in St. Petersburg. Whether it was Oksana or Ivanov (and my money’s on that slick bastard) who managed to convey the contents of Bowser’s memo to the tsar, we never learned. French was all for affecting the disappearance of my close friend, Count Yusopov, to prevent him sending on the word of the contents of Bowser’s memo, but after much hemming and hawing, Dizzy decided not to eliminate the tsar’s chief military agent in Britain, fearing, no doubt, a midnight visit at his country home by a Terek Cossack.

Rather unpredictably, however, the news of Britain’s military weakness seemed to have little effect on Russian military strategy. I held my breath for the next few months, expecting those Slavic bastards to mobilize their army immediately and quick march to Constantinople, taunting Dizzy along the way and daring him to stop them. I anticipated a plea for enlistment in the British forces to stop the Slavic bastards and was a tad disappointed when it never materialized; a military campaign would have brought scores of randy young bucks to London and increased trade at Lotus House.

It seemed that even with the knowledge that the British were ill prepared to fight, the Russians were loath to do so themselves. They muddled around a bit during the spring of 1877, trying to find a diplomatic solution to the dispute between their Serbian friends and the dreaded Turks. But by April of that year, it had become clear that the Serbs were incapable of taking on the Sublime Porte (no surprise to anyone who knew the state of the Serbian army, except, apparently, the Serbs), and so the Russians declared war on the Ottoman Empire.

Though the Russians knew that Britain could do little with its small army to prevent an invasion of the Porte, they failed to realize that the Turks had a bloody large army that might object to an infringement of Ottoman territorial sovereignty. Over the next few months, the two armies clashed sporadically, marching and countermarching across rivers and over dry, dusty plains, climbing mountain passes, besieging each other in grim little outposts that no one had ever heard of and never would hear of again, and generally kicking up dust and keeping Europe on edge. I’m giving you the condensed version of events here, of course, for who is really interested in a few grubby fracases between the Turks and the Serbs and Russians? I suppose if I were a peasant with a half-dozen sheep that ended up feeding the Turks or a grove of olive trees that served as firewood for the Serbs, I might give a damn, but as it is, I’m just not interested. I’ve got my hands full with the bints here at Lotus House. But I digress.

After several months, neither Russia nor the Sublime Porte had achieved anything in the way of decisive victories. True, the Russians had advanced into the Ottoman Empire, causing a lot of hand-wringing and brow wiping in Constantinople (not to mention London), but the Ottoman armies always found a way to deal their Russian counterparts a stinging blow, as if to remind them that they were a long way from home, by God, and the party wasn’t over yet. Finally, the Turks offered terms, and the Russians accepted. The parties signed a treaty at San Stefano (a squalid village a hundred miles from Constantinople, where the Russians had halted their advance), and the heads of the European governments sighed collectively in relief.

Until they learned that by the provisions of the treaty, the tsar had acquired parts of Armenia and Georgia (they say you should never look a gift horse in the mouth, but I say good luck to the Russians; they’ll have their hands full with those blokes and be deuced lucky if they hold on to those territories). This extension of the Russian empire did not go down well with London, Paris and Berlin, especially when it became clear that the Russians had no intention of actually complying with the treaty and laying down arms. Instead, they headed for Constantinople, hoping, apparently, that no one would notice.

Dizzy was apoplectic. He promptly sent a British fleet to sail through the Dardanelles as a warning to the Russians not to advance any farther, and he reinforced the message by sending Indian troops to Cyprus, just a short sail away from the tsar’s army. Russia, having thought the matter over and concluded that Armenia and Georgia were pretty nice consolation prizes, finally turned its troops toward home.

There’s more of course, but I won’t bore you with all the details. Suffice it to say that like so many things in life, I (and Vincent and French, of course) had expended a great deal of energy (and nearly lost our lives, to boot) in what turned out to be a futile enterprise that accomplished nothing. It’s a funny old world; while we were chasing Ivanov and Oksana all over England and across the Channel, nothing seemed more important than getting our hands on Bowser’s case. But as soon as the Russians had won and Ivanov (I’m still betting it was that sly devil) had slipped away to tell the tsar how exposed Britain was, it didn’t seem to matter at all. Knowing Britain’s troop strength probably confirmed Russia’s decision to invade the Ottoman Empire, but I’m convinced they would have done so anyway, to protect their close cousins, the Serbs (a loyalty that’s bound to lead to more trouble, you wait and see). And Dizzy managed a respectable showing, anyway, with our fleet plying the waters of the Mediterranean and the dusky lads from the subcontinent filing off the ships and into encampment on Cyprus, weapons at the ready.

The world had a few more surprises in store. Gladstone became prime minister again, not once, but
three
times. I never did like the old prig, but the British public tended to rally round him from time to time. I hear Vicky wasn’t overly fond of the man, either. That’s the only thing I’ve ever liked about that woman.

Dizzy lived until 1881, a year after Gladstone became PM for the second time. I suspect it was that news that killed him. Despite his queer ways, I liked the old queen. He was just as much an outsider as I am, looked down upon by many for his Jewish lineage (irrelevant, as far as I’m concerned) and for his outlandish dress (well, even I have to admit he was a bit daft in that regard). Still, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for him.

Endicott continues to serve in various positions in government, which continues to prove unfortunate for those forced to work with him.

Charles Calthorp still prowls the streets of London, like his idol Gladstone, looking for souls to save (and if the souls belong to buxom young tarts, so much the better).