The Company of the Dead (35 page)

“Give me one of your cigarettes,” Newcombe said.

Hardas reached for his packet and gave it a shake, yielding three cigarettes. Newcombe leaned across, snaring one of the butts with the side of his mouth. Hardas looked at Morgan.

“Sure, what the hell.” Morgan took one and let it dangle between his lips.

“Light?” Hardas asked.

“Eventually. Let me look tough for a while. Coughing tends to detract from the otherwise debonair appearance this lends me.”

Hardas smiled.

“What do you think will happen to them?” Morgan asked after a while. “The Germans.”

“Even with Merkur at the helm, they’re in trouble,” Hardas replied. “The japs can pull in planes from any airfield in the Union. It’s going to be steady attrition. And they can’t afford to lose another carrier.”

Morgan nodded. He’d witnessed the fate of two of the massive vessels.

“I can’t look at you like that. Makes me think of quitting.” Hardas leaned over to light the cigarette.

Morgan pulled away. “I’ll have it next watch.” He placed the cigarette carefully in his breast pocket, nudging it down with his finger.

“See you in four hours,” Hardas said. “I’m going to do some more work on the aft deck. I’ll take a break around five. Accounting for drift and course corrections, we should make Cape Fear by sun-up. Another one-sixty’ll get us to Savannah.”

“After picking up more fuel,” Morgan added.

“After picking up more fuel.”

“And we’re just going to roll up to some mooring and buy us some gasoline in a German utility boat...” Morgan caught himself, then continued, “Hell, we could always tie a piece of wood to my leg and stick a parrot on my shoulder. We’ll say it’s a pirate raid. After all, my name
is
Morgan.”

The flash of a passing thought creased Hardas’s brow. He dropped his gaze to the injured leg, saying, “You need something more for the pain?”

“I’ll pass. Might help me sleep, but won’t be much good when I need to be awake.”

Morgan hobbled below decks and dropped heavily on one of the bunks. He stared up at the low ceiling, but sleep would not come. Just the rush of thoughts and a German melody he’d overheard aboard the carrier.

The lights bothered him now so he slipped the thin pillow over his forehead, just shielding his eyes, as he had done as a child. The cotton felt coarse against dry skin. It carried the antiseptic flavour endemic to hospital and military wash, and made him think about Red Rock and wish for home.

He slept, and dreamt he was back in the desert. The campfire’s crackle and the buzz from one beer too many and Major Kennedy’s voice. He was there with Kennedy, Hardas, Shine and Doc. There was no installation. Red Rock was just a makeshift depot, a tarp thrown over the carapace.

Kennedy had returned like Lazarus, back to tell them all, and he told them all.

And then Morgan realised what that scent was that wasn’t the coals or the bark or the leftovers or anything else but the taste of the time machine’s ozone afterglow. So it was that, angered and frightened, he asked Kennedy not where, but
when
he had gone to.

And Kennedy told him.

He dreamt he was pressed close to the
Parzifal
’s hull, riding low in the water like some pilot fish, but being guided by rather than guiding this shark of a vessel. It
was
a shark, its teeth twin-barrelled machine-guns concealed beneath a tarpaulin on the bow, and Hardas—no, Newcombe—was its dark brain, and it had to keep moving, moving. The future was a continent, shifting slowly on tectonic plates, waiting for just the right shove. Morgan rode an eternity of Atlantics, rising and falling with the
Parzifal
’s steady motion.

Beneath him, littering the oceans’ floors, lay an infinity of
Titanics
.

It was early evening and outside the window the street was slowly dying, shopfront by shopfront. Curfew. They’d seen it in all the towns they’d passed through, from Trenton to Louisville.

Lightholler glanced at his watch and then back out the window. “You think you can rely on this man?”

“He’s our best bet.” Kennedy shrugged. “But if he doesn’t show by nine-thirty, we go it alone.”

Five past nine on the clock mounted above the bar. Blackout would be in full swing by ten. If they weren’t out of town by then, it would be another day lost.

Kennedy was aware that his hold on Lightholler was slipping. The mission was taking on an illusory quality. Reality was outside. It was the sparks thrown by horses’ hooves on the cobblestone paths, the trucks full of soldiers that swore and spat their way down the main street of every town they negotiated. The half-cooked meals wolfed down, the boxcars they’d rode, the hay and chaff trapped in every fold of their clothes after a night spent cramped and cold in a stranger’s barn. The carapace was beyond Nevada now; it lay in the realm of dream, as far away as yesterday.

He believed he was arriving at some twisted understanding of his quarry. Somewhere across time, Wells had written a journal, making of it an anchor. He’d fashioned a talisman that he’d only parted with at sea.

What evil had followed? Casting away his journal, had Wells cast away his former life and melted into a world of his own making? Had he roamed history’s backlot with a nudge here and a push there as planned? Kennedy felt him everywhere, only finding solace in the fact that, by now, the fucker must be long dead.

I will supplant you and remake the world as it should be. World without end, hallelujah. Amen.

“That your man?” Lightholler spoke as if with the mildest interest.

Kennedy looked up with little expectation. It was the crowd’s response that spurred him to wakefulness. Had it been one of those old westerns, the band would have stopped playing mid-note and the cowboys would have slid out of their chairs nice and slow, reaching for their holsters.

The man strode into the bar with as much purpose as the circumstances appeared to demand. He spotted them and smiled broadly; his teeth were gold-capped and filed to a point. His eyes were narrowed slits issuing an age-old challenge that was received with the better part of valour. The barflies and the soldiers and the deadbeats and maybe even the spies turned back to their glasses and their conversations.

“Watanabe,” Kennedy said, as the man bowed slightly before them.

“Boss.”

The acknowledgment was spoken softly. If there was a touch of sarcasm to the title Kennedy chose to ignore it. He rose and bowed with convincing sincerity, and Lightholler, after a moment’s hesitation, followed suit.

“Everything has been prepared for your crossing.”

Kennedy reached for the satchel, the talismans within, and tossed a couple of coins on the table. Lightholler stood, a bag containing all his worldly goods tucked under his arm.

“I should drink a toast to the both of you,” Watanabe said, inclining his head. “To better days.”

“Can’t see them getting worse,” Lightholler replied without conviction.

The Cadillac’s interior was plush. It would take more than a shower and fresh clothes for Kennedy to feel clean again. He planted his feet wide on the expanse before him and reclined, leaning against the door rest.

Watanabe sat opposite him and smiled generously. “I barely recognised you, boss.”

Kennedy had dyed his hair black and hadn’t shaved in days, but he was sure that Watanabe wasn’t talking about his appearance.

“Tell me,” Watanabe continued, “which one of you is supposed to be Tom Sawyer, and which one is Huck?”

Kennedy offered a smile. “How’s business?”

“I get by.” Watanabe’s eyes twinkled with contained mirth. “The cross-border express is a recent but lucrative development.”

The yakuza voiced little love for authority, East or West, and they made a show of their disdain. That was their history. Tradition. Behind the scenes they dined with princes and invested in big business. They loved the Kennedy legacy: politicians and bootleggers on one side; arms contracts and air fleets on the other. Watanabe’s master, Kobe, dealt with Kennedy by virtue of old debts, long outstanding.

The streets were silent save for Union soldiers and cars like the one in which they rode, exempt and abrogated by the contents stored under their hoods. The Japanese may have demilitarised, but their presence was entrenched within the yakuza’s hydra-like folds. Even in Kentucky.

Indian summer lay plastered over the town, formed in the smelters and foundries located along this stretch of countryside. Alluvial sands and windswept silts had once provided some of the best agricultural land this side of the Mason-Dixon Line, but there was coal here, it ran thick in the veins of the Appalachian Plateau, and it was pursued ruthlessly. Bluegrass to black soot in the space of fifty years.

“How
is
Kobe?” Kennedy asked after a while.

“He has concern for your well-being.”

“How deep does his concern run?”

“You are currently worth a hundred-thousand Confederate dollars. Another fifty for your friend.”

“Chump change for a traitor’s bounty,” Kennedy replied.

“These are hard times, with worse to come, boss. Bad for business, which of course reminds me.” Gold flashed between purple-flecked lips.

Kennedy patted his chest. “Fifly now, the rest when we reach Arkansas.”

“You get a discount for warning Kobe about New York.” Watanabe smiled. He turned his attention to Lightholler. “I am now thinking something completely different,” he said. “You know who I am, who I represent?”

Lightholler, nonplussed, replied, “You’re yakuza. You’re a very scary gangster. You’re going to get us to safety.”

“Yes, it’s true, I am
kobun
, a man to be feared. But I wonder, with all respect to Mr Kennedy, if you both are not, by strict definition, yakuza yourselves.”

“How’s that?” Lightholler asked, ignoring or missing Watanabe’s thrust.

“It’s Watanabe’s oldest and only joke, I suspect,” Kennedy said. “We’ve just been insulted.”

“You will land on your feet, boss. You always do.” Watanabe gave his bullion grin. “For this round, however, you have been dealt a losing hand to the tune of a hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand dollars.”

“Ya-ku-za,” Kennedy enunciated for Lightholler’s benefit. “The name comes from a losing hand in a card game you don’t want to play, unless you feel like losing a thumb.” He cracked his knuckles, then splayed his fingers, saying, “Five and five, Watanabe. How’s about you?”

The gangster held up both hands. A tattoo of livid red and green scales ran down one arm, to the amputated stub of an extended finger. The mark of his crime family blending with the mark of a recent defeat. “Swings and roundabouts as they say, boss. Swings and roundabouts.”

A clear night and the ocean. Stars in such numbers reminded Hardas that at times imagination was no substitute for reality.

Before they had left the German fleet, Merkur had taken him aside. Perhaps the admiral had felt a need to justify why he was letting them go. He mentioned a sizable bounty on their heads and told him that they had been accused by the Confederacy of some undisclosed and terrible crime. This was the last assistance they could expect. All debts were now paid.

The Germans had been reduced to two carriers and two squadrons of fighters, and were still waiting on a fuel convoy.

Merkur said, “I am going to issue a communication to Danzig and Houston. My report will state that my men were overpowered and three Confederate renegades stole the captain’s boat. Do you understand?” He paused, and when he received no answer, said, “You are now an enemy of the North, the South, and the German Empire. May God have mercy on your soul.”

Boarding the
Parzifal
—aptly named—Hardas had felt as if he was walking out of a Wagner opera mid-act—which was sometimes the wisest choice. They might have been lowering him from the
Flying Dutchman
rather than the
Prince Bismarck
. Merkur wore his doom like a laurel wreath. A dismal chorus of German navvies waved them off in silence.

Hardas was alone on deck now. He’d found a pea jacket in one of the lockers, and wore the collar up and the cuffs low over his wrists so the cold only snapped at his fingers and seared his cheeks. He’d sent Newcombe below but asked him to let Morgan rest a while longer. It looked like Morgan might have a fever. His wound was haloed with a scarlet rim of inflammation. They’d need antibiotics. They’d need fuel sooner.

He returned to the business at hand. Betrayal and treachery. One way or another, Newcombe had to go. He would have sold them to the Germans already, given half a chance. It was a matter of striking first.

I could go below deck now and make it look like self-defence.

Morgan would never buy it. Did that matter?

He lit a cigarette and observed the finer stream of smoke twirl within the release of each fogged breath. He wasn’t Shine. There would be other ways to deal with Newcombe before they reached Savannah. Something Morgan said last night had stirred the seed of an idea. A way to get fuel and take care of Newcombe to boot.

Red Rock and beyond. Each destination more distant, more nebulous, and everything else spiralling out of control. He thought about Kennedy, Lightholler and Shine; somewhere under these stars, and making for the carapace.

Lightholler retraced his steps as if trying to evoke a lost path. Hansel in the forest; Theseus in the labyrinth; Dante on the road to Hell. There was no trail of breadcrumbs for him though; no trace of Ariadne or her ball of string; and certainly no Virgil to act as his guide.

Kennedy sat by his side, immersed in his own thoughts or maybe just dozing. Watanabe sat with an arm dangling out the window and his eyes propped at half-mast, watching everything.

Lightholler retraced his steps. The stretch of highway leading into Long Branch, where they’d left their pilot, Tucker, a good deal richer than when they’d met him. On to Trenton and a boxcar through the delights of Fairless Hills, Willow Grove, Norris Town, Modena and Gap. A night under the stars before Lancaster and York. A nameless river crossed in a stolen boat to Harrisburg. Talk of heading west to Colorado, but instead they’d kept to the numbered roads through Bedford and Wheeling. Avoiding a chain gang on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, then standing in a washroom in Cincinnati, watching Kennedy run black dye through his hair while he examined his own barely recognisable visage in the mirror’s peeling face. Then Bowling Green, Memphis Junction... Each mile had drawn him further away from the world he knew.