‘You won’t get anywhere with that argument,’ said Robin.
‘Why not?’
‘Because they don’t care,’ said Robin. ‘It’s a war happening in a foreign land that they can’t even imagine. It’s too distant for them to care.’
‘What makes you so sure of that?’ asked Cathy.
‘Because I didn’t,’ said Robin. ‘I didn’t, even though I’d been told time and time again how awful things were. It took witnessing it happening, in person, for me to realize all the abstractions were real. And even then, I tried my very hardest to look away. It’s hard to accept what you don’t want to see.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Well then,’ Anthony said, with forced cheer, ‘we’ll have to get creative with our persuasions, won’t we?’
So that was the goal of the night: to shift the engines of history onto a different track. Things were not as helpless as they seemed. The Hermes Society had several plans already in motion, most including various forms of bribery and blackmail, and one including the destruction of a shipyard in Glasgow.
‘The vote for war hinges on Parliament’s belief that it’ll be easily won,’ Griffin explained. ‘And technically, yes, our ships could blow Canton’s navy out of the water. But they run on silver to work. A few months ago, Thomas Peacock—’
‘Oh,’ Ramy made a face. ‘Him.’*
‘Indeed. He’s a rabid enthusiast of steam technology, and he put in an order for six iron steamboats at the shipbuilders Laird’s. William Laird and Son, that is – they’re based in Glasgow. These ships are more frightening than anything the waters of Asia have ever seen. They’ve got Congreve rockets, and their shallow draught and steam power make them more mobile than anything in the Chinese fleet. If Parliament votes yes, at least one of them is heading straight to Canton.’
‘So I assume you’re going to Glasgow,’ said Robin.
‘First thing tomorrow morning,’ said Griffin. ‘It’ll take ten hours by train. But I expect Parliament will hear within the day once I’m there.’
He did not elaborate on precisely what he would do in Glasgow, though Robin did not doubt his brother was capable of demolishing an entire shipyard.
‘Well, that sounds much more effective,’ Ramy said happily. ‘Why aren’t we putting all of our efforts into sabotage?’
‘Because we’re scholars, not soldiers,’ said Anthony. ‘The shipyard’s one thing, but we’re not going to take on the entire British Navy. We’ve got to leverage influence where we can. Leave the violent theatrics to Griffin—’
Griffin bristled. ‘They aren’t mere theatrics—’
‘The violent high jinks,’ Anthony amended, though Griffin bristled at that too. ‘And let’s focus on how to sway the vote in London.’
So they went back to the blackboard. A war for the fate of the world could not be won overnight – this they all knew in theory – but they could not bring themselves to stop and go to sleep. Every passing hour brought new ideas and tactics, though as the hours dragged far past midnight, their thoughts began to lose some coherence. Suppose they ensnared Lord Palmerston in a prostitution scandal by sending in Letty and Cathy to seduce him in disguise. Suppose they convinced the British public that the country China did not actually exist and was in fact an elaborate hoax by Marco Polo. At some point, they dissolved into helpless laughter as Griffin described in intricate detail a plot to kidnap Queen Victoria in the gardens of Buckingham Palace under the guise of an underground Chinese crime ring and hold her hostage in Trafalgar Square.
Theirs was a harrowing and impossible mission, yes, but Robin also found a certain exhilarating pleasure in this work. This creative problem-solving, this breaking up of a momentous mission into a dozen small tasks which, combined with enormous luck and possibly divine intervention, might carry them to victory – it all reminded him of how it felt to be in the library working on a thorny translation at four in the morning, laughing hysterically because they were so unbelievably tired but somehow thrumming with energy because it was such a thrill when a solution inevitably coalesced from their mess of scrawled notes and wild brainstorming.
Defying empire, it turned out, was fun.
For some reason they kept coming back to the polemikós match-pair, perhaps because it did in fact seem like they were fighting a war of ideas, a battle for Britain’s soul. Discursive metaphors, Letty observed, revolved around war imagery rather often. ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘Their stance is indefensible. We must attack their weak points. We must shoot down their premises.’
‘We do that in French too,’ said Victoire. ‘Cheval de bataille.’*
‘Warhorse,’ Letty said, smiling.
‘Well then,’ said Griffin, ‘as long as we’re talking about military solutions, I still think we should go with Operation Divine Fury.’
‘What’s Operation Divine Fury?’ asked Ramy.
‘Never mind,’ said Anthony. ‘It’s a stupid name, and a stupider idea.’
‘When God saw this, He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest,’* Griffin said grandly. ‘Look, it’s a good idea. If we could just take out the tower—’
‘With what, Griffin?’ Anthony asked, exasperated. ‘With what army?’
‘We don’t need an army,’ said Griffin. ‘They’re scholars, not soldiers. You take a gun in there, wave it around and shout for a bit, and you’ve taken the whole tower hostage. And then you’ve taken the whole country hostage. Babel is the crux, Anthony; it’s the source of all the Empire’s power. We’ve only got to seize it.’
Robin stared at him, alarmed. In Chinese, the phrase huǒyàowèi* meant literally ‘the taste of gunpowder’; figuratively, ‘belligerence, combativeness’. His brother smelled of gunpowder. He reeked of violence.
‘Wait,’ said Letty. ‘You want to storm the tower?’
‘I want to occupy the tower. It wouldn’t be so very difficult.’ Griffin shrugged. ‘And it’s a more direct solution to our problems, isn’t it? I’ve been trying to convince these fellows, but they’re too scared to pull it off.’
‘What would you need to pull it off?’ Victoire inquired.
‘Now that’s the right question.’ Griffin beamed. ‘Rope, two guns, perhaps not even that – some knives, at least—’
‘Guns?’ Letty repeated. ‘Knives?’
‘They’re just for intimidation, darling, we wouldn’t actually hurt anyone.’
Letty reeled. ‘Do you honestly—’
‘Don’t worry.’ Cathy glared at Griffin. ‘We’ve made our thoughts on this quite clear.’
‘But think of what would happen,’ Griffin insisted. ‘What does this country do without enchanted silver? Without the people to maintain it? Steam power, gone. Perpetual lamps, gone. Building reinforcements, gone. The roads would deteriorate, the carriages would malfunction – forget Oxford, the whole of England would fall apart in months. They’d be brought to their knees. Paralysed.’
‘And dozens of innocent people would die,’ said Anthony. ‘We are not entertaining this.’
‘Fine.’ Griffin sat back and folded his arms. ‘Have it your way. Let’s be lobbyists.’
They adjourned at three in the morning. Anthony showed them to a sink at the back of the library where they could wash – ‘No tub, sorry, so you’ll have to soap your armpits standing up –’ and then pulled a stack of quilts and pillows from a cupboard.