The Eterna Files (38 page)

“I will consider your thoughts, Miss Knight,” Spire said with calm that Rose found impressive.

At that moment, Lord Black burst in, waving a wire in hand, placing the telegraph sheet before her.

“My good citizens and most formidable civil servants,” Black began. “It would seem we need to send you, or operatives of your choosing, to the great Empire City.”

“New York?” Blakely asked excitedly.

“The very place. Besides all the clues you can gather on the ground about Eterna,” Lord Black began, “there is also one Mr. Francis Mosley attracting attention. It would seem Mr. Mosley can manipulate direct current. Electrical current. With his own body. It's said the young man hasn't aged a day in years.”

“Ah, so that's of interest, of course,” Spire said. Rose was taking notes. “
Longevity
.”

“Well, yes,” Black said. “Extension of life falls within our purview. And he's British.”

Spire sighed. “Of course he is.”

“So he has become a person of extreme interest,” Black added.

The whirring of the telegraph machine drew Rose to its side like a siren.

Blakely made a steeple with his fingers like the villain of one of those penny dreadful dramas in Covent Garden. “New York needs a circus!”

Spire scowled. “New York
is
a circus. And who said I was inviting you?”

Rose, decoding the latest message, dropped her pencil. With difficulty, she managed to neither scream nor faint. It took all her strength to walk over and hand Spire the paper. Her hands were shaking as he took the message from her and read it.

“Good God,” he gasped. “A shipping manifest examined by a British mail-packet operative has revealed four immaculately preserved bodies. Thought to be our missing scientists. Port of arrival: New York Harbor.”

Jaws fell open throughout the room. Lord Black stared at Spire and Rose realized that perhaps for the first time in his life, the nobleman was unsure of the next step.

Spire, however, clearly was not. There was a light in his eyes. He cleared his throat and spoke authoritatively, emboldened.

“If dead British bodies have been shipped to New York City, why, that changes everything,” he cried. “Damn those little upstarts. By all means, ciphers, pack your bags. Give the circus that is Manhattan a circus of your own. The Empire further infiltrates the Empire State.”

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

Often epic and prophetic, sometimes memories from previous lives, Clara's dreams tended to be interesting. She jotted some of them down in journals, but kept the books hidden.

This dream in particular needed to be remembered.

She was walking up a long pebble-strewn lane that was bordered by short hedgerows that grew higher until tall evergreens towered on either side of her. She did not feel she was being chased but whatever she was walking toward was important, she could feel it in her bones.

Her destination became visible: a vast, dark, Gothic-looking manor, all stone and turrets and sharp angles, the whole expanse luminous under a half-moon over which clouds raced in a strong wind as if fleeing from danger.

A dark-haired woman stood at the end of the lane, wearing a lovely dress the color of the evening sky.

Clara could not make out the woman's features, and though she strode on, she gained no ground. The house and the woman remained impossibly far away.

The waiting woman raised a hand, palm out. A gesture that clearly said,
stop
. Clara paused.

In the next instant, everything, the trees, the manor, the woman, all burst into flame.

Clara woke with a start. The dim light in the room told her it was not yet dawn.

A female figure sat at the end of her bed, dress and hair of an indeterminate color. Backlit by a bit of stray moonlight, her features were entirely shadowed, but Clara knew at once who it was. The visitor.

“Oh, God,” Clara said. “What terrible thing is about to happen now?”

“I'm always glad to see you, too, dear,” the figure chided. “I presage nothing this time. This time I am merely a messenger. What's missing isn't what you think.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You'll know. All your lives, Clara, something's missing in this one and it isn't what you think.
Who
you think. You're missing a critical companion.”

Her mind still muddled by the dream, Clara was not sure what to think.

“Are you an angel?” she blurted.

“I am whatever you wish me to be,” was the reply.

“That gives me too much power.”

“That is a most sensible answer, Miss Templeton!” The woman rose. “It isn't the search that will damn you but what's
done
with it.

“Do not trust voices without specific provenance. Look for your missing piece. Without it, you can't possibly weather the storm ahead.”

Message delivered, the visitor walked out the door. Clara heard her soft tread down the hall, heard the front door open, then close with its usual gentle click—so there was something corporeal about the apparition. But no one else in the house stirred or gave any sign of having noticed the trespasser.

Fully awake, Clara wrote down the particulars of both the dream and the visitation. Do not trust voices without specific provenance. The silhouettes, perhaps. Who or what was the missing piece?

She dressed and made her way to the office the moment the sun rose high, noting that there were new locks on the front door. The glass panels of the door and the first-floor windows were now protected by iron bars. Security guards had been posted around the perimeter of the building and the gentle fiction that the structure was a repository for city records had been done away with. Bishop had promised new security measures and he was a man who got things done.

After admitting her, Lavinia handed Clara three new keys—two for the front door and one for the office door, which had also been fitted with a new lock.

Upstairs, Clara sat stewing at her desk, thinking about her dream.

In this life, in any of her lives, the crux of the matter always came down to one thing: the people. Those she cared about and who cared about her made all the difference; life or death. So who was her missing piece and how would she know? Was it life or death for them, too?

The clock chimed half past nine when Franklin burst through the door in a beige frock coat. Lavinia was right behind him in a rather absurd black bombazine mourning dress, bringing their morning coffee and a Western Union Telegraph envelope.

“Fred Bixby dropped this by earlier,” she said. “He said it's from Effie.”

“Thank you, Lavinia,” Franklin said, bowing his head. The redhead returned to her downstairs post.

“I've been to the tailor,” Franklin began proudly. “About that lock picking set I saw in my vision, sewn into the coat. I
must
have something of the like. Miss Carter is going to help me. She's the costumer at the Astor Theater, I've seen her work in person and it's exquisite. So is she. I'll tell her what I'm commissioning is for a production.”

“Well that's nice,” Clara said. “If we're going to do this kind of work we ought to have finery and toys.”

They shared a smile as Franklin opened the envelope and began to read the wire. Clara saw his pensive expression turn into a scowl. He examined the letter closely, holding it to the light, then brushed a substance over the paper. Other words appeared. “From Effie,” he announced.

“Whatever evidence our abductors took gleaned from a visit to Tenth Street, was taken to England but there was an altercation over the material. Our English contact isn't sure where the material has gone, even his source seems vague on the subject. So the London group in charge of tracking Eterna may be at a loss, just as we are.”

“How does Effie know all that?” Clara asked.

Franklin shook his head. “It would appear she's gone to England herself and has been snooping. She must have tapped Bishop's elusive contact there.”

Clara laughed despite herself. “Clever girl. She's precisely where we'll need her.” Clara's smile turned into a scowl. “I doubt England's at a loss. I think they may be in deeper than we are, and darker. I believe they sent either an asset or did something to Goldberg's mind to turn him. That house is evidence, as is Stevens's extrication to London.

“All to sabotage our team and our efforts. Let their parroting ‘commission' be as lost as we are. Damn this work. Do you think we're doomed to hell for what we've done?” she asked sincerely.

Franklin shrugged. “For asking questions about the boundaries of life and the permanency of death? No, I don't think we're doomed or damned. But if it taxes you, strains you, then walk away, Clara. No one is forcing you to be here.

“I want many things in this life, Miss Templeton. For you to be happy is one of them.”

She stared at him. After a moment she smiled. “What a thing to say, Mr. Fordham.”

His cheeks colored and he looked at the floor.

“I can't walk away, Franklin,” she added. “As for what makes me happy? The trouble with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as goals is that the first two are so clear, the latter, so vague.”

Fred Bixby came running in, dressed in a vest, rolled shirtsleeves, and a bowler, looking like he'd seen a ghost.

“Bodies. In boxes. Bodies in boxes,” he blurted. “Four of them.”

“Pardon?” Franklin rose to his feet.

“Someone sent the English scientists here,” he said, trying to calm himself. “The dead ones. My source at the shipyards sent word that bodies from England's own Eterna Commission were sent to these shores.”

“Who did this and how does anyone know who they are?” Clara said, shocked.

“Some strange things were in their boxes. Caskets. Whatever. I wired Bishop's contact in London, who confirmed that they had gone missing and were presumed dead,” Bixby replied.

“Where are they being taken and can we intercept?” Franklin asked, putting on his coat as he was never one to be seen in shirtsleeves outside of work.

“The city morgue, of course,” Bixby replied.

“I'll tell Bishop if he's home,” Clara said, sweeping out the door. “Otherwise, we'll have to wire wherever he is. He might have to delay his return to Washington.”

*   *   *

The senator was not home. According to the housekeeper Miss Harper, he was out drinking with congressional colleagues. Thus Franklin could go and ruin his night with news of dead bodies.

With all the new information, with the game getting ever more dangerous, she had to do what she could to protect what was left of their team. After painstaking thought, she concluded having any of the Eterna material at all, even Louis's papers, was dangerous and damning. Smith had given her a hint in leaving something burning for her in his office.

The clock struck quarter to midnight. It was time.

Clara had asked Lavinia for help and thankfully her friend hadn't asked why but agreed straightaway.

Lavinia's task was to engage a police officer in conversation. This particular police officer patrolled near Trinity Church and Lavinia was to keep him occupied and facing down Wall Street. Josiah, their trusty errand boy, had been paid handsomely to distract the officer who patrolled the back lot. After fifteen minutes they could resume their regular activities. That was all Clara had told them.

Clara donned her favorite sporting skirt, seeing no scandal in the garment's separate legs, which she carefully tucked into the tops of a tall pair of boots.

She waited until Miss Harper had made her last rounds downstairs, then cast a black cloak over her head and, clutching a black bundle in her arms, darted out into the street.

Always a brisk walker, she made quick headway over to Broadway and the mouth of the church, a small Gothic building whose edifice had been rebuilt countless times since its founding. In a shadowed patch between gas lamps, Clara launched herself over the iron gate, grateful for her trouserlike apparel. The last thing she needed was to have her skirts caught up on a graveyard fence.

A small pack slung beneath her dark cloak, she scurried among the old stones, having already decided on a fitting patch of earth between Alexander Hamilton's grave and that of the Mulligan brothers, members of General Washington's infamous Culper spy ring.

So much of her work and life was focused so near to addresses central to the first spymaster's operations and those of his associates. She couldn't have ever predicted there'd again be such espionage between her city and England, but the reality was upon them all and they needed to be better equipped for the fights to come.

Hamilton's pointed obelisk of a grave was easy to spot in the dim evening light, which was augmented by gaslight and the electrical lighting that was cropping up downtown. She kept low, where the shadows still clung, as she slipped past the tomb's pale, nearly white stone.

Dropping to her knees, Clara removed her pack and reached a gloved hand inside for the trowel. Working quickly, she pried up divots of earth, careful to keep the sod intact on top, then dug, pausing at any sound that might indicate she'd have to run, glancing about to make note of a good hiding place among the eighteenth-century stones and slabs.

She felt like she was digging up layers of hopes and dreams, of innocence and altruism, of pasts and mitigated futures. She wanted to bury sentimentalism in exchange for a more stoic, steeled self. Her heart, that unwieldy instrument, pounded hard. There was no going back from this precipice.

“
This
is why me,” she murmured, hoping the visitor could hear her. She paused to inspect her work—the hole she'd created was about a foot deep and as wide as the span of her hips. It looked large enough. “I am forcing a turn in the road, no longer sitting on the sidelines. Some ideas should have never left the ground. So into the ground I return it.”