Gossamer Wing (22 page)

And there it was. Small, innocuous, a nearly flat bundle of oiled leather secured with a strap. The buckle was green with slime, the leather mildewed, but other than that it was none the worse for its years in hiding.

A prickling on the back of her neck made Charlotte wheel around again, scanning the rooftop frantically. Nothing. Still, her heart was thumping again. The fear and the physical exhaustion were starting to overwhelm her. As quickly as she could, she restored the stone and the statue to rights and made sure she’d left no other trace of her visit behind.

The statue’s brightly illuminated front meant the back was in deep shadow, so Charlotte knelt for a final check of her bearings, trusting that her pocket torch would not be spotted. Then, with her next destination firmly mapped in her mind, she swung her body into the harness, buckled in and released the mooring loop from the vent where she’d hooked it.

All that worry, and it was so easy in the end
, she laughed at herself.

Her foot kicked off from the roof at the moment the access door slammed open and a dark-clad, stocking-capped man burst through with an evil-looking weapon in his hands. He cursed in a torrent of foul French as he ran toward Charlotte, one hand outstretched, barely missing her toe as she snatched it up into the harness.

As Charlotte frantically turned the gas higher to gain altitude, she realized the object in the man’s hands wasn’t a weapon. It was a bull cutter. The chain and padlock on the roof access door must have defeated him too.

Straight up she flew until her ears had chimed at her twice, until she could no longer make out the tiny figure or the roof he stood on. Still she waited for a shot to rip through her from out of the darkness, and she wondered if she would even have time to hear the bang before she fell.

The shot finally came, a slam of noise that followed over a full second after an impact against her hip sent her swaying in the airship’s harness. Charlotte yelped and cruised higher still, waiting for pain to take the place of shock. It never did.

Fumbling with one hand, she reached for her hip and realized the bullet had buried itself in the box Dexter had secured to the rigging before she took off. The telegraph transmitter was no doubt ruined, but she herself was unharmed aside from the sharpening ache on her hipbone that presaged a bruise. As the knowledge that she’d escaped sank in, her heart quieted, but her body began to tremble as the massive influx of adrenaline seeped away.

He’d been . . . stupid. A stupid operative. Martin was in Nancy, he had probably seen her take off and surely notified his men here, yet this man hadn’t managed in all the interim to reach the roof of the Palais Garnier. Who knew how much time he’d wasted attempting to pick his way through that lock, how much longer it had taken him to find the cutters after he’d abandoned the effort?

He must not be much of a second-story man
, she thought, and laughed aloud with a sudden burst of ecstatic wonder at her escape by a hairsbreadth. The operative had waited too long to fire his weapon, and then he’d shot straight up into the night sky. He’d been lucky the bullet hadn’t careened back down to hit him. Charlotte laughed again at the idea of the fellow standing there, staring up into the darkness, never expecting the bullet that felled him to be one from his own gun. She sobered quickly, however, thinking of how different the outcome might have been, had Coeur de Fer been the man set to catch her on that rooftop . . . or if the incompetent lackey’s bullet had struck a few inches to either side.

No matter now. It was done.
Done
, she told herself, trying to generate more of that brief, giddy enthusiasm to sustain her for the last sprint of the night. She would land in the predetermined location on the roof of one of Murcheson’s nearby factory buildings, and if all went according to plan she could review the documents with him on the spot. Perhaps after a meal and a shot of something stiff, for nerves.

Then she’d have a well-deserved rest, another midnight flight across the French countryside, and she would be back in Dexter’s arms.

That prospect at last gave her some energy to go on with. Something to strive for. Half an hour later, her first glimpse of the factory’s smokestacks gave her a true second wind as relief flooded through her. She tacked toward the landmark, calculating the distance as less than a mile.

She was more than close enough to be half-deafened by the blast that came from nowhere and everywhere, to be seared by the wave of heat that flooded the air in the wake of that horrifying sound.

Not from nowhere
, Charlotte realized when her ears stopped ringing enough for her to gather her wits.
From the factory . . .

It burned as she floated closer, unable to grasp what she was seeing. Huge gouts of flame soared into the sky from the ruined smokestack, nearly as high as she flew. She lingered too long, wasting precious fuel and darkness, until she could no longer lie to herself about the source or the cause of the explosion. Factories were dangerous places, but the coincidence of the timing was too great. Murcheson had been compromised, and she could only hope he’d had enough warning to escape the horrific act of sabotage.

Though Charlotte knew she was too far away to be burned, she trembled anyway to think of it. To think of all the people who might have been trapped in the explosion or the subsequent blaze that was even now beginning to spread to nearby rooftops.

Tears soaked her helmet lining by the time she turned her tiny craft north and began searching for another place to land and hide for the coming day.

* * *

“IT NOT ONLY
can be done, it has been done. Not this application, precise, of course,” Arsenault clarified, tapping on the sketch that Dexter had brought along. It showed a round or spherical central object, surrounded by eight slender radiating lines. At the end of each line was a symbol, and at one corner of the sketch was a key indicating that the symbol represented a lamp. “Medicinal? Medical,
oui
, they use the glass tube to bring the light.” He gestured to his midsection. “
Içi
, here, inside the body. For the doctors to see when they do the operations.”

He’d had to do something to occupy his time, and to maintain their cover. So, although Dexter wanted to remain on the roof, scanning the skies until Charlotte returned, he forced himself to attend to the business that had brought him to Nancy, and made an appointment with Arsenault, the man Cormier had recommended. He spent the morning trying not to think of her, trying to think of glass instead, with moderate success.

Slight language barrier aside, Dexter found he had little trouble communicating with the young French glassmaker. More than once already that morning, he’d found himself silently thanking Cormier for sending him to Arsenault for this project. Even through his concern about Charlotte, he could tell the dynamic young Frenchman understood what he needed and could create whatever the project required, even if Dexter himself wasn’t quite sure what that was.

“What I’ve pictured, though, involves a much greater distance. Perhaps a mile or even more. And there is also a need for the system to be somewhat sturdy.” At the young man’s blank look, Dexter strained for another word. “Strong? Resistant?”

“Oui, résistant,”
Arsenault said with a smile. “It is not a single glass tube, what you require. Many, together,” he explained, bending to the page and rapidly sketching a cross-section of a bundle of tubes. “Inside a case,
comme une saucisse
. The only importance is the reflection of the light inside. And that you have not the loss of light over distance.”

Dexter finally realized the man was comparing the design to a sausage. An external casing, holding all the gathered glass filaments inside and helping the light remain on the desired path without leaking out. “From a light source at one end, all the way to the other, even if the tubes are bent, correct?”

The young Frenchman nodded, his sandy hair flopping forward into his eyes. He tossed his head impatiently, looking even more like a schoolboy than he already had.

“And it must also be waterproof,” Dexter said, presenting the final requirement.

Arsenault blinked a few times and then smiled. “Fresh water or salt water,
monsieur
?”

Dexter eyed him warily before answering. “Salt.”

Suddenly the Frenchman looked nothing like a schoolboy; his eyes were all too knowing, his shrug all too mature. “Just as it is with
Monsieur
Murcheson. Always the salt water. The flooding, it must be terrible in Le Havre.”

After another moment, Dexter gave a shrug of his own. “The high cost of maintaining our proximity to England and the shipping routes.”

“One week,” Arsenault said, tracing Dexter’s sketch with his fingers. “If the distance is as you say, I can deliver your filaments to Le Havre in one week.”

* * *

THE NEWS OF
the factory explosion had reached Nancy by the midday post. Dexter, sleepless and out of sorts with worry already at the ominous silence of the telegraph receiver, had to read the headline three times before his rough mental translation finally sank in.

“Charlotte!” he blurted, drawing curious looks from the other patrons in the sidewalk café where he sat over luncheon.

Flustered, he coughed and pretended to take a sip of coffee while his mind roared in an agony of fear. The grainy photograph of the still-smoking factory stared up at him from the paper on the table.

She knew something like this would happen. Somehow, she knew
, he kept thinking. And he thought of their parting—he so cavalier and straightforward, Charlotte so efficient and brave. He had pretended the danger was negligible, and he would regret that pretense for the rest of his life if anything had happened to her.

“I should have told her I loved her,” he whispered at his coffee.

Now she might be gone, burned to ash, as if she’d never been. All he could do was wait for more news. Dexter thought the wait might kill him too.

Sixteen

SOMEWHERE IN THE FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE, AND NANCY, FRANCE

WET. SLIMY.

A slithery touch and the sharp smell of cut grass directly under her nose woke Charlotte from her fitful slumber. She opened her eyes and nearly screamed at the monster she saw before her, until her eyes and brain sorted themselves out and she realized it was only a cow.

It had seemed like a monster in part because she was viewing it upside-down, as she was lying on her back in an empty hay wagon and her head was slipping off the open end onto the sloping tailgate. And in part because it was very, very close; the cow had evidently mistaken Charlotte’s sweaty, unwashed face for a salt lick.

In one swift move, Charlotte swung away from the cow and into a crouch on the bed of the wagon, scuttling backward to put even more distance between herself and the bovine creature.

The cow, unperturbed, began sampling the tufts of hay caught between the rough planks of the wagon’s side. Satisfied the beast meant her no harm, Charlotte looked around to assess her situation, wiping her horribly moist face on her sleeve as she did so. The assessment didn’t take long.

She was in a field somewhere outside Paris, there were no nearby farm buildings, and a gently persistent reddish-brown cow was eyeing her with what Charlotte could only read as curiosity. When it lowed at her, she shushed it automatically.

From what she could see it was very early morning, as the sun was up but dew still dampened the shorn, trodden timothy grass of the field. The chronometer from the
Gossamer Wing
’s instrument panel confirmed this. Ravenous, aching from her flight and the few hours’ dubious rest in the wagon, Charlotte pondered what to do next.

“Can’t walk to the nearest town, can I, Bossie? Are French cows called Bossie? I’m hardly dressed for visiting a country village, but I don’t think I can go a full day without eating either.” She tipped her head to examine the cow’s belly. “Hmm. I don’t think I’m quite desperate enough to try my hand at milking a cow, however.”

Bossie mooed again, and Charlotte heard a late-rising rooster crow as if in response. It was time for her to find cover, food or no food. With a last regretful look at the cow’s udders, Charlotte tucked the leather harness of the
Gossamer Wing
under one arm, stuffed the voluminous midnight blue folds of the balloon under the other, and took firm hold of the gas rigging to keep it upright as she leaped from the wagon and started toward the nearest stand of trees.

* * *

THAT DAY, CHARLOTTE
added theft to her list of dubious accomplishments.

It’s only sort-of theft
, she reassured herself as she wiped the black kohl from her face and neck with the clean cloth and butter she’d found in the farmhouse.

She’d left enough coin to pay for the cloth, butter and sprigged pale blue cotton dress many times over, right there on the table in the kitchen. Surely the farmer’s wife wouldn’t bemoan the missing items too long.

“I could hardly have walked up and asked somebody to sell me the things,” Charlotte explained to Bossie, who had turned up at the side of the stream in the wood adjacent the hay field. “I was dressed like a cat burglar, after all.”

She wondered if the cow was a runaway, or simply had the run of the place. A faded brand marked her as somebody’s property, but she seemed to inhabit the wood and the field rather than a fenced pasture or a barn as Charlotte would have expected a cow to do.

The dress was a bit too long and a good deal too wide, but it was cool and wouldn’t look suspicious if Charlotte ventured into the village she’d scouted a few miles away.

“My French may not be as good as Reginald’s was,” she told the cow when she’d cleaned herself up as much as she could, “but I think I can pass for a French milkmaid just this once. I just hope the farm wife doesn’t see me and recognize her dress. Wish me luck, Bossie. I’m off to the village, and shall take no prisoners!”

The morning fog had long since burned off, but the day remained cool and pleasant. Perfect for walking, although Charlotte regretted the riding boots shortly into her journey.

For all her worry, she must have made a passable milkmaid. Nobody batted an eye in the tiny bakery when she bought a baguette, and the fruit seller in the market square winked at her and gave her two pears for the price of one. He also supplied a large cloth napkin that he cleverly folded and tied into a sort of carryall for her. She decided perhaps the French were not so bad after all, taken individually. Charlotte went on to secure a wedge of cheese and a bottle of cider before she decided she’d had enough of deceiving these gentle, unassuming and honest people.

She ate the first pear on the walk back to her spot by the creek. Bossie had wandered away again, leaving only deep hoof prints in the mud by the stream. An odd sort of wood sprite the cow made, but Charlotte still felt she’d been visited by a friendly spirit. She saved the second pear in case her bovine friend returned.

Half a baguette, a good deal of cheese and several swigs of surprisingly hard cider later, Charlotte felt like a new woman. The solitary walk, the charming little village, the sweet summery stillness of the wood, all seemed to fill her with an ease she hadn’t known in years.

Things had not gone according to plan, it was true, but for the moment she was safe and fed, and she had at least retrieved the documents. She could do no more that day, and there was a strange peace in accepting that simple fact and this quiet stretch of time it afforded her.

Charlotte slept most of the afternoon away in the quiet glade. She had to laugh when Bossie—or perhaps another cow who resembled Bossie—woke her in exactly the same way as before. It was her own fault, probably, for using butter as face cream.

“Needs must, Bossie. I didn’t have any other choice if I wanted to get away with a trip to town. Lucky for you, because I don’t think you’d like my usual night cream one bit. Have a pear, woodland spirit.”

The cow took the offering and ambled away, and Charlotte began to change clothes. It was sunset, and soon it would grow dark enough for her to fly.

* * *

MURCHESON’S MESSAGE REACHED
Dexter in the late evening. A few short words, no specifics, enough for a shred of hope at best. No trace of a small dirigible or a small woman had been found on the factory grounds, the telegram implied. Nobody but one bystander injured, no other casualties known.

Dexter read it, repaired to the powder room and vomited, then returned to the sitting room to read it again. The flimsy paper had all but disintegrated in his hands by midnight, when Dexter finally gathered up a book, a blanket and a torch and left the room to take up his lonely vigil on the rooftop.

A few hours later, Charlotte nearly landed on Dexter’s head when a gust of wind tugged the
Gossamer Wing
astray as she alit on the rooftop of the hotel and cut off the gas feed.

He didn’t care. He wouldn’t have cared if she had landed feet-first in his face and concussed him on the way down, so long as she returned. He opened his mouth to say he’d missed her, he couldn’t live without her, he loved her. When she pulled her helmet off and he saw her grimy, weary face, however, all he could do was sweep her into his arms. Words weren’t enough, so he didn’t waste them.

After a time, Charlotte removed her face from where she had pressed it into his shirt. “Harness needs to come off.”

Dexter realized the
Gossamer Wing
was still attached to her, sagging slowly behind her as it cooled. Charlotte held up the rigging with one hand, clinging to Dexter’s coat with the other.

With quick, efficient motions he set the fuel assembly down away from the spent balloon, unbuckled the harness at Charlotte’s shoulders and feet, and simply lifted her out of the thing.

“I’ll come back for it,” he said when she pointed over his shoulder. He was halfway to the window that would lead them back inside, back to their suite, where he could bathe and feed and cosset her until she was in the right frame of mind to hear his declarations of devotion.

“Somebody could find it,” she murmured, sounding half asleep already.

“I don’t give a rat’s arse.”

“Hmm. That’s sweet.” Her head settled onto his shoulder, and Dexter’s heart soared as his mind churned out a simple refrain.

She’s alive. She’s alive. My Charlotte is alive.

* * *

MARTIN COULDN’T KILL
Philippe, although the thought did cross his mind. He was out of the business of indiscriminate killing now, the Dominion rat had been his last. Now he took only the lives Dubois ordered taken; he would only take a life to save his own.

Martin sent orders for Claude and Jean-Louis to beat Philippe thoroughly, put the fear of death into him and advise him to leave the country and make a life for himself elsewhere.

“Perhaps he should consider apprenticing with a locksmith,” Claude retorted.

Martin chuckled, keeping the transmission switched off so Claude wouldn’t hear his mirth; he had a reputation to uphold. He had recovered fully by the time he thumbed the switch back to the open position.

“Advise him as you see fit, my amusing friend. As long as you advise him to be gone before I return to Paris.”

Get to the rooftop
. Had that been such an unreasonable request? The others had managed it at their respective locations, but hours after Martin gave the order, Philippe had only just made it to the roof of the Palais Garnier. He was right on time to see the quarry escape with the documents, and the fool had only attempted a shot at the balloon after it lifted off and was nearly out of range. Philippe’s had been the only rooftop that mattered, and if anger and frustration were sufficient justification for murder then Martin would be halfway to Paris by now.

Instead he was still alone in Nancy, entering the glamorous old hotel through the service entrance. He hoped to strike it lucky rifling through the Hardisons’ suite for the bundle of documents while they dallied over brunch in a café down the street. For once, he might be able to use Dubois’s pathetically outdated perspective to his own advantage; if he brought the documents to Dubois—even after all these years—the industrialist might finally grant Martin the freedom he’d all but given up hope of attaining.

Depending on luck, rummaging through rooms like a two-bit burglar looking for a poor man’s life savings under a mattress. Sickening. Next, Martin supposed, he would be flipping coins to decide which mark to follow. He, who had been one of the finest agents in France during the war. Who prided himself on leaving nothing to chance.

Martin was dressed as a courier, carrying a large package and a clipboard and wearing the most apathetic expression in his repertoire. Nobody stopped him, though he passed a kitchen full of chefs, a room-service waiter and at least three chambermaids on his way in.

The rooms were fairly small and the Hardisons were tidy, so Martin thought he could do the job quickly and perhaps leave things looking as he’d found them, always his preference.

As it happened, however, not even that much effort was required. Two things happened at once. Martin spotted his long-lost leather pouch, in plain view on the console table in the sitting room. He also heard the squeaky wheel of the housekeeping cart in the hallway, not directly outside the suite he stood in but perhaps only a few doors away.

He could find a way to hide from the maid—a difficult prospect in rooms so small—and complete his search afterward, or he could snatch what he’d come for and walk away without risk of being spotted in the suite.

With a moue of distaste at the moldy patina on the leather, Martin slipped the pouch into his shirt. He hoisted his box again and set his false ear to the door. Even with the prosthetic on, his implant gave him more acute hearing than any unenhanced ear. He could mark the progress of the cart by the squeaks, and the progress of the maid by the soft knock and the sound of an opening door.

When he was sure she was safely in the next room and the corridor was clear, Martin moved. It was out, down and away with his prize, his only concern that it had been too easy.

* * *

THE PACKET OF
loose papers Charlotte had retrieved crawled with scribbled notes and hasty sketches. There were also a panoply of scattered letters, numerals and mathematical symbols, but Charlotte insisted it wasn’t actually a cypher and Dexter was not inclined to argue. His attention was torn at best anyway—between the paper scattered across the broad table in the restaurant’s private dining room, Charlotte and Murcheson’s discussion of what was on those documents and his own vivid memories of the previous night.

He had run a bath and mustered up what food he could for Charlotte, assuming she would fall asleep immediately afterward. After a few bites of a sandwich and two cups of tea, however, she astonished him by dragging him into bed for a bout of fierce, celebratory lovemaking. Sated, exhausted, she finally collapsed into a deep slumber with her head still snuggled against his shoulder.

Dexter’s body still tingled from the manic intensity of the interlude, but what kept his mind returning to it was the memory of Charlotte’s weight against his chest and the utter trust and relief on her face as she drifted off. He knew her expression had mirrored his own. Relief and humble gratitude, because having her back in his arms was nothing short of miraculous.