CHAPTER TWO
“What on earth were you and the Old Man talking about?” asked Adrian de Graeff. “It was all beyond me.”
“Yes, I could tell you were a bit mystified there, at the end.” Rogers studied his wine glass moodily, gazing through the prism of his white bordeaux at the officers’ canteen where the two of them were having lunch. “Well, the fact of the matter is, I’m a direct descendant of—and, in fact, named after—one of New America’s historical villains.”
“I knew it!” De Graeff slapped his knee delightedly. “I’ve always suspected there was something sinister about you. What you need are black mustachios suitable for twirling.”
“No joke,” said Rogers with a wan smile. “Oh, not one of their major villains, you understand. Like George Washington, who accepted the rapprochement that ended the First American Rebellion and then went on to lead the loyalist forces against Benedict Arnold’s die-hard rebels. Or Robert E. Lee, who played a similar role about eighty years later; he had been one of the rising stars of the Second Rebellion, but he was reconciled to the concessions that the British Crown made to end the Rebellion, and later he put down the uprisings instigated by the breakaway Commonwealth of New England, which he subsequently reconquered.”
“Er…I’m afraid North American history isn’t exactly my subject.”
“Then you almost certainly won’t have heard of the original Robert Rogers. He was a hero of the French and Indian War—the Seven Years’ War to you. His instructions for his outfit, Rogers’ Rangers, are still considered a model for special forces. But after that war, he was a disaster as a frontier administrator…and, it seems, a bit of a crook. In fact, he ended up in debtors’ prison in England. Then, after the First Rebellion broke out, he returned to America, where he was arrested as a British spy by Washington, who at that time was still leading the rebels. He escaped, and formed a new unit of loyalist rangers. After the peace settlement, when they found themselves on the same side, he was reconciled with Washington, and seems to have recovered his old flair. He was instrumental in putting down Arnold’s rebel holdouts. In the end, he led one of his trademark daring raids and captured Arnold, who was subsequently hanged—and who is now regarded on New America as a martyr.”
A low whistle escaped De Graeff. “I can see how the New Americans might not exactly remember your eponymous ancestor with fond affection.”
“Scarcely.” Rogers chuckled. “You can probably also understand why the family found it advisable to leave its original homeland of New England—always the hotbed of rebel sentiment, you know—and move to the Dominion of Virginia, where we’ve been ever since.”
De Graeff’s brow furrowed, and he spoke with the almost impeccable Briticism he had picked up over the years. “But I say, old man, I’m confused. I’ve always been under the impression that Washington and Lee are remembered as heroes in North America.”
“Indeed they are. In fact, they’ve been so regarded by most North Americans for almost three centuries, and by practically all North Americans nowadays, when we and India are the twin pillars of the Federal Empire. But we’re not talking about modern North Americans. We’re talking about New Americans.”
“Ah, yes—those colonials. I confess I’ve never been entirely clear on where they stand vis-à-vis the Empire. I know, of course, that they are the descendants of humanity’s first, last and only attempt at slower-than-light interstellar colonization.”
“Right. You see, as late as the early twenty-second century there were still some irreconcilable separatists in North America. After a habitable planet was detected at Tau Ceti, they formed an organization called ‘New America,’ dedicated to establishing a colony so far away that it would have to be independent. The Empire was very accommodating about letting them try.”
“Must have been barely possible—and bloody expensive—with the technology they had then.”
“Yes: antimatter pion rocket, and magnetic sail for deceleration and in-system maneuvering once they arrived. But the Empire was generous with financial help. Of course you, having a nasty, cynical turn of mind, are doubtless thinking this generosity might have had something to do with wanting to get rid of some troublesome malcontents.”
“I’d never suggest such a thing!” De Graeff was the picture of wronged innocence.
“Anyway,” Rogers continued, ignoring him, “they departed in 2120 for Tau Ceti. It was a fifty-five-year voyage, which they spent in cryogenic suspension. But while they were still in flight, with only a few years to go, Bernheim invented the warp drive back on Earth. An expedition using his drive went to Tau Ceti in nine and a half days and founded an outpost there. So when the New Americans arrived and came out of suspended animation—”
“The first thing they saw was the Union Jack,” De Graeff finished for him. “What a miserably rotten disappointment!”
“I understand they considered it a bit of a letdown,” said Rogers dryly. It occurred to him that he had been in England too long; he was picking up the habit of studied understatement. “Still, the Empire was quite decent about it, and didn’t stand on its rights as the first to land and establish occupancy. The New Americans were permitted to go ahead and plant their colony, and even name the planet ‘New America.’ Since then, they’ve enjoyed a sort of ill-defined self-governing status.”
“Yes—that’s the part I’ve never quite grasped, as I mentioned before.”
“They’re quite self-governing internally. Of course, there’s an Imperial resident commissioner to sort of oversee things.”
“Of course,” De Graeff echoed, deadpan.
“Well, for one thing, there was the matter of the franchise,” said Rogers, just a trifle defensively. “There is, after all, a minority descended from the Imperial settlers—who, at least arguably, have a better right to be there than the New Americans. A certain degree of Imperial supervision has been necessary to prevent discrimination against them. It’s a case of history repeating itself; the Puritan oligarchy of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England could never resist the temptation to weigh the scales in favor of the godly, unless restrained from doing so by the Crown. I believe,” he added parenthetically, with a tight smile, “that they considered my own Scotch-Irish ancestors distinctly ungodly.” He tossed off most of his wine, dismissing the subject. “Anyway, they have a standing offer of dominion status, with full representation on the Imperial Grand Council. They’ve never accepted it.”
“Fancy that!” De Graeff’s irony was arch.
Rogers shot him a glance. “Hmm…I suppose it’s really not too surprising, is it? Still, it would simplify things if they did. More to the point, it would make my job easier if I didn’t have to deal with a lot of autonomous local security and law-enforcement people.”
“The courier service will let them know you’re coming, and why. Hopefully, they’ll assign you a liaison officer who takes a cooperative attitude. And surely they can’t like the Caliphate any more than we do.”
“They may not like it, but at the same time they may not take it very seriously as a threat. Remember, while there’s undoubtedly the odd Indian-descended Muslim among the Imperial people there, there are none among the New Americans themselves. So I wouldn’t put it past them to brush it off as our problem, not theirs.”
“Still, they can’t ignore the evidence I turned up.”
“You may underestimate their capacity for parochialism,” said Rogers dourly. He finished off his wine. “However, let’s go and review that evidence. I’ll read through your report and then later we can go over it in detail. From what I’ve heard so far, I’ll need some more convincing.”
* * *
It was six o’clock when Rogers spoke an irritable command, and the computer’s holographic display above the desk vanished. He sat back, stretched, and bestowed a disappointed look on De Graeff.
“This is pretty thin stuff, Adrian.”
“Well,” the Dutchman protested, “admittedly the individuals we caught had no direct link to any operation on New America. But the fact remains that one of them, under questioning with drugs and so forth, revealed knowledge of others who had such links.”
“But he had no idea what, specifically, those others were up to.”
“Remember, these were low-level members of a highly compartmentalized organization. We’re lucky they knew even as much as they did.”
“But what can it possibly mean? What can the connection be? As tiresome as the New Americans can sometimes be, I’m the first to admit that their values and ideals are poles apart from those of the bloody Caliphate.”
“Still,” De Graeff reminded him, deploying the final, unanswerable argument, “It’s sufficient to arouse the Old Man’s interest. And his wishes are our command.”
“True,” Rogers sighed. He glanced at the time. “Well, to hell with it for now. I told you I’d take you to dinner. There’s a place I go to often that will make you understand why I’ve finally acquired a taste for English cooking.”
“I look forward to having my skepticism dispelled,” said De Graeff rather heavily.
They threaded their way through ancient London. The feeling of an old, dark, mysterious city grew even more pronounced as the narrow, crooked streets became permeated with mist—seemingly the mists of antiquity. But the mood had evaporated by the time they arrived at the not-too-conspicuous entrance to Hobart’s Restaurant on a side street just off the Strand.
“The grilled Scotch salmon here is one of London’s well-kept secrets,” Rogers assured De Graeff as they proceeded to their table. “And they’ve been in this location forever.”
“It looks it,” said De Graeff, gazing around at the heavy oaken timbers crossing the plaster ceiling, and the dark oak-paneled bar.
Rogers was thinking the same thing. This, he told himself, was the concentrated and distilled essence of Old London, with its reassuring atmosphere of tradition, stability and order…
All at once, like an alarm disrupting a deep dream, a discordant note entered into his consciousness—a subliminal psychic tingling that had always signaled danger, and had never been mistaken.
At a table just ahead of them and to the right, a man was sitting with his back to them. Somehow, a split second before it happened, Rogers knew that man was going to stand up and turn around to face them. It probably saved his life, for he was already starting to twist aside when the man reached inside his jacket and whipped out a weapon—Svoboda-Hoche Model 2279 needler flashed through Rogers’ brain automatically—and swung it from side to side. There was a sharp crackling as a stream of electromagnetically accelerated steel flechettes broke the sound barrier in the restaurant’s confined spaces.
But Rogers was already ducking under that fusillade and launching himself forward. With the restaurant still suspended in a state of shock, he crashed into the man and wrestled him to the floor, one hand grasping the Svoboda-Hoche and sending its spray of needlelike projectiles cracking into the plaster of the ceiling, and the other arm going around the man’s throat. It brought their faces close together—close enough for Rogers to smell the man’s breath and take in a fleeting impression of his olive-complexioned face. Then the man’s jaws clamped shut as he bit down at a certain angle, and Rogers heard a snap whose import he recognized. Instantly, he released his opponent and rolled away, turning his back and pulling a chair over behind him. That chair probably saved him, for it was barely down when a small but sharp explosion rang out. He, along with everyone else nearby, was showered with blood, brains and bone slivers.
The spell of shock was broken, and the restaurant erupted into screaming panic. Ignoring that pandemonium, Rogers turned over to face the shooter’s headless body. Its neck was a ragged stump from which blood was still weakly pumping. He sat up, and saw that De Graeff was down.
He scrambled to the Dutchman’s side, shouting, “Somebody send for a doctor!” But his shout went unheard in the stampede, as everyone able to move frantically crowded out of the restaurant with its stench of death. And he saw that it was too late anyway. One of the things—besides its small size and concealability—that made the Svoboda-Hoche a favorite assassin’s weapon was that its long needles were unstable in flesh. They disintegrated against body armor, but they did vicious internal damage to an unarmored target. Blood was already oozing from De Graeff’s mouth.
“Stay with me, Adrian!” he pleaded. But by the time the last of the fleeing restaurant patrons had struggled out into the street he was alone with a few moaning, injured bystanders and two corpses.
* * *
“The police have naturally run a DNA scan on the shooter’s body,” Gopal Singh reported. “But it doesn’t match anyone they have on file. All it proves is that he was almost certainly of Near Eastern ancestry. Of course they’re pursuing all other avenues, and we’re extending them every possible assistance.”
“Of course,” said Sir Angus morosely.
“I think it’s safe to say,” the chief of staff went on, “that Commander Rogers was the target. After all, he’s a regular patron of that restaurant.”
“Still, the matter on which he was working with De Graeff may be related to the motivation for the attack. In other words, it may not be just a coincidence that this happened at this particular time. I want you to investigate the possibility that there could be a leak within this office, by which they would have known that the two of them were going to dinner together.” Sir Angus turned to hitherto-silent Rogers and, uncharacteristically, addressed him by his first name. “I’m sorry, Robert. I know he was a friend as well as a professional colleague.”
“Thank you, sir,” Rogers said mechanically. With most of his consciousness, he was assuring himself over and over that Adrian’s death was not his fault. Who knows? he thought. Eventually, I may even succeed in convincing myself.
“We may wish to delay your departure for Tau Ceti,” the director went on, “pending further investigation of this…incident. And also giving you a chance to—”
“That’s quite all right, sir. Please don’t delay anything on my account. In fact, I’d like to depart as soon as possible. You see, I now take Adrian’s investigation with great seriousness. And besides…it’s become personal.”