Her Majesty's Western Service (46 page)

Rafferty spread his hands.

“Sorry, man.”

“
I am a sergeant of the Lakota Nation. I am not a pirate. There is a distinction.”

“Which they take seriously,”
Ahle added. “Rafferty, apologize more seriously to the honorable sergeant of the sovereign Lakota Nation.”

“Sorry for the misunderstanding, sergeant,” said Rafferty a little
more seriously. “Honorable sergeant, if that’s what you like.”

“Apology accepted, Imperial.
The invitation’s still open if you’re interested and available, but I don’t drink on duty. Should you?”

Rafferty moved to take another swig
from the flask. Perry slapped it down.

“Put that
back where it came from, Specialist.”

“And here we are,” said the
driver, outside a single-storey building that looked like it might have been carved from obsidian. Perry guessed that much of it was underground, like so much of the rest of Red Cloud seemed to be. “Welcome to the Black House.”

There were two layers of security, one at the entrance – where Perry,
Ahle and, since nobody seemed to be stopping him, Rafferty, were frisked before being allowed onto a slow elevator with three rifle-toting guards in plain khaki and the same Lakota sergeant who’d knocked on Ahle’s door and driven them here.

Perry couldn’t tell how far underground they were – it might have been twenty feet or a hundred – when the slow elevator
opened. More well-armed men in khaki – uniforms, Perry supposed – stood waiting for them.

“A more detailed search, Captain. Vice-Commodore. And” – to Rafferty – “who the hell are you?
”

“Specialist Third Rafferty, mate. Of the Imperial Air Service.”

“My bodyguard,” Perry explained.

“You’re under the security of the Kennedy organization here,” said the sen
ior man, who was clean-shaven, heavily moustached and forty-ish. “Your bodyguard can wait outside.”

“Mate-” Rafferty began.

“He’s with me,” something made Perry say. Assuming his old tone of command;
I am a Vice-Commodore of the Imperial Air Service
! “He comes with me.”

The senior
man paused for a moment.

“He’s a good man,” said
Ahle, to Perry’s surprise. “It won’t hurt anyone, and it’ll make the Vice more comfortable, if he comes in.”

“You’re personally vouching for him, Cap’n
Ahle?”

Ahle
nodded. “Yes. I will.”

“Very well; you can come in. Imperial officer, you first.”

“Just go with it,” Ahle hissed.

Not that
he’d ever met Her Majesty Victoria the Second himself, in person, but he’d heard stories about the security that even respected Imperial officers had to go through before doing so. From what he’d heard, this was worse.

The serious men in khaki had him remove his coat, boot
s and – saying something about how it contained metal – belt. They took the .40 from his shoulder-holster with a noise about how they’d return it when he was done. The knife from his right boot. His wristwatch, his wallet and the locket with Annabelle’s portrait that he wore around his neck.

Then they ran him through a magn
etograph, a new piece of technology – only recently introduced to Buckingham Palace, and Perry was
surprised
they had one here in the Black Hills – just to make sure. It rang, a small bell.

“Got any coins, Vice?” one of them asked.

Perry checked his pockets and found about a dollar’s worth of small change in one of them. Meanwhile, another man was – intrusively! None of his business! – examining the contents of his wallet.

“You’ll have them back with your weapons,” the man said, taking Perry’s coins. “Now, please step back through the machine and then put your hands above your head.”

What followed was a comprehensive frisking, the pirate king’s men making
absolutely certain
Perry wasn’t carrying a – wooden or ceramic? – blade on him.

Then, having inspected his boots and belt, those were returned to him.

“You can go through,” said the man in charge. “Fly on; the boss is ready.”

Jeez
, thought Perry.
Imagine a world in which people
do
have to go through this before they fly.

At least
Ahle and Rafferty had to go through the same indignity, Rafferty growling as the men confiscated not just an – illicit! – pistol from him, but three knives and two flasks. Ahle was carrying a pair of guns herself, plus a flask and more than one knife, but seemed to take the indignity in stride.

“Very well.
Ms. Lincoln will see you now,” said the chief guard.

Not a Kennedy personally?

The guard saw Perry’s look.

“Their private secretary. You’ve been admitted. Now wait.”

It was only a few minutes, sitting in a comfortable waiting room with more of the Kennedys’ khaki-clad personal security watching them – but yesterday’s editions of the
New York Times
,
Washington Post
and
Boston Globe
available for the reading.

If that was a gesture of power, thought Perry, it
was
one. To get those would have required an airship to steam through the night, daily, just to bring those editions. But he resisted the urge to actually look at them; that might have implied weakness in front of the stern-faced, black-haired woman who was apparently the Kennedys’ personal secretary.

Ahle
seemed impassive, as though she’d been through this procedure a few times before. Perhaps – probably – she had. Rafferty couldn’t stop grinning, to the point where Perry saw fit to give him a sharp backhanded slap on the thigh.

“Knock it off. This is serious.”

“Yessir,” said Rafferty, and at least wiped the grin off his face.

“You’re my bodyguard,”
Perry snarled in a harsh whisper. “Act like it.”

“Boss, there’s the guard
you can see, and there’s another one in that slit up there; mirrors and magnification most likely.”

What guy?
, Perry wondered and looked up. There
was
a small slit in the ceiling, which he hadn’t noticed before. Could well have been magnified mirrors through it.

OK, so the insolent fucker is smarter than I gave him credit for. Not that I thought he was dumb.

“Keep that up,” Perry replied in the same low whisper, “and I may just allow you those drinks with the Lakota sergeant.”

“Right now you’re payin’ for `em, sir.”

Perry fought to control a smile. What could you do with cases like this man?

“Maybe I will, if you get the chance.”

Intelligence out of the Black Hills had to be worth something, right?

The stern-faced woman looked up from her board.

“Captain Ahle, Vice-Commodore Perry, the Vice-Commodore’s bodyguard? Joe Sr. and Jr. will see you now,” she said.

By this point, Perry had almost expected a throne room. Pirate
kings
, after all, he’d heard them described as often-enough. Including by Flight Admiral Richardson, a couple of times, and informally in at least one of MI-7’s – Fleming’s, damn that bastard! – briefings. He’d anticipated literal thrones, like Her Majesty’s, inside a large audience hall with a rug leading up to it on which supplicants could comfortably bend their knees in rightful abasement.

“
The scourge of the West and a damned pestilence elsewhere,” Richardson had once called the bald, clearly-aging eighty-ish man and his late-forties son, a handsome man with dark, slicked-back hair.

Josephs Sr. and Jr.
sat on comfortable chairs behind a large desk, which Perry had no doubt included built-in cogitator screens and keyboards. The room was comfortable and well-carpeted, perhaps three times the size of Fleming’s or Richardson’s offices; clearly designed for accommodating large audiences, whole groups of people.

And yes, there were a few trophies on the wall
s of the well-carpeted room. The eagle standard of a US Army regiment sat next to a pair of propellors, with plaques below – unreadable given Perry’s ten-foot distance and momentary time – probably telling the stories of their actions. A certificate of some kind sat next to the propellors. Similar decorations on the other side of the room.

“Captain
Ahle,” said the younger man, Joseph Junior, getting to his feet. His father didn’t, and Perry realized that that man wasn’t in a chair but a wheelchair. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Good to see you, Joe,” said
Ahle.

Her voice, Perry noted, didn’t convey an inch of the
apprehension that he himself felt. This seemed like routine business to her.

“Vice-Commodore Perry. Thank you for
your visit.”

“Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Kennedy.” It felt like the only appropriate response.

“And Airshipman Rafferty. I applaud your nerve coming in this far.”

“It’s good to be here,” said Rafferty. He advanced on the desk drawing something –

A notepad.

“Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy, my mates aren’t gonna believe this unless you sign here,” he said before Perry could intervene. “Your autographs, please.
”

“Excuse my—”

Rafferty advanced across the carpet of the spacious office and shoved the pad in front of Joe Senior.

“Excuse my subordinate’s
insolence
,” Perry snarled.

“Well excused,” said Joseph Senior. He drew a pen.
“Rafferty, is it? Let me guess, Jim Rafferty?”

“George, sir.”

“Well, Airshipman—”

“Specialist, sir.”

“Specialist George Rafferty, here’s something for you to show your mates in the enlisted mess.” Joseph Senior scribbled something onto Rafferty’s pad, finishing it with a flourishing signature.

“And here you go,” said
Joe Junior, writing his own note.

“I can only apologize,” Perry snarled, before being cut off.

“No need,” Joseph Senior waved him off. “But this is a large room for the five of us; meant for groups, not small meetings like this. Suppose we with business to do withdraw to the working office.”

“With business to do,” Perry said, glaring at his Specialist Third.

“With business to do,” agreed the pirate king. He leaned over to what must have been a mike. “Bill, you around? Entertain our other guest, will you? Bring a bottle or two.”

Joseph Junior got up, moved to – yes, it
was
a wheelchair – wheel his father through the unobtrusive back door of the main office.

“Mr. Rafferty, if you’d s
tay here,” Joseph Junior requested before he turned. “Officer-level business to discuss, I’m sorry. Our assistant chief of intel, Mr. Bill Colby, will entertain you while you wait.”

“Don’t he report to John Francis himself, Mr. Kennedy?”
asked Rafferty.

“He does. But wait here, please.”

“Damn straight! Sir!”

The inner office,
which Joseph Junior gestured Perry and Ahle into, was much smaller and more comfortable. Undecorated except for a couple of mechanitype printouts on one wall, it contained a single broad desk.

An elegant blond woman rose to her feet as the two entered.

“Miss Lynch,” said Ahle, recovering from her surprise a moment earlier than Perry.

“Thought those bastards had killed you,” Perry said. Not that he was
glad
to see the information-fencing bitch, but – he supposed – it was nice to know she’d lived.

Enemy of my enemy, and all.

And she did give me the location.

But how–?

“Oh, it was simple,” Lynch said, smiling. “By the way, please sit down.”

Both
Perry and Ahle glanced at the Kennedys before doing so. Joe Junior nodded.

“
Make yourselves comfortable,” said Junior. “The other room is for the big audiences.”

The seats were padded and well-appointed, with leather armrests. Yes, thought Perry, this was a room for
serious business.

“
Very simple story,” Lynch stated.

“Hold on,” said Joseph Kennedy
Jr. “Now you’re in our private
sanctum sanctorum
, if you will – are you hungry?”

“I’m fine,” said Perry. “We were just finishing breakfast when your Lakota henchman called.”