“That’s very interesting, Professor,” the President of the Republic said quietly.
“Yes, isn’t it,” Arturo agreed, lost in his thesis. “Do you remember I mentioned about Plutonium earlier? Well, my preliminary work strongly supports the hypothesis that at least one of the tests in northern Sonora was of a bomb utilising isotopic material with the properties of P239.”
Suddenly, the three other men in the room knew things were going to get worse and really did not want to hear about it, not then, not until they had had a stiff drink and an opportunity to get their mind around what they had already learned that afternoon.
The physicist ploughed on.
“If one built a Plutonium bomb inside a Uranium bomb the explosion of the outer, Uranium bomb might, theoretically you understand, implode the Plutonium core of such a weapon and lead to a fusion chain reaction like that which powers the Sun. In that event, it is conceivable that one might construct a bomb with an explosive potential equivalence of much more than just ten megatons!”
Chapter 27
Friday 5th May
Viano do Castelo, Portugal
Yesterday, when Melody had finally got back to the old hotel overlooking the Atlantic after a lonely, day-long journey by road and rail from Lisbon, she had been in a very odd mood.
Her ‘interview’ at the British Embassy in the Portuguese capital had been, as she had expected a job interview for the Imperial Intelligence Service. In itself, this was a little surreaclass="underline" she had been working for the IIS all the time she was in Spain! Moving on past that little quirk she had discovered that back home in New England, the CSS – the Colonial Security Service – was to be wholly subsumed into the IIS, thus removing it from either the oversight, or the funding peccadillos of individual New England Crown Colonies. This change had not wholly recommended itself to her; she was at heart a proud daughter of the Crown Colony of Vermont first, and a New Englander second, and in any event, she had not decided if she even wanted to go back home quite yet, anyway.
Thinking about it, it was not until she had left New England that she had recognised that she did not like living in a Commonwealth where individual colonial administrations honestly believed, that they had the right to legislate for its citizen’s sex lives.
She got it that if a woman slept with a man that she was not married to then she was, according to the prevailing sexual mores of the East Coast, de facto, a slut or a tart. That sucked but the notion that if she slept with another woman both parties could, theoretically be put in prison for it, and in practice sometimes dragged through the courts and the gutter press, had got really, really old since she had been in a relationship with Henrietta. Worse, back in New England, if she went anywhere near the woman that she loved she was placing Henrietta, and unthinkably, her family in huge peril of scandal; a thing she wished on nobody.
And then there was Alonso…
Which was where she started asking herself what she even meant by thinking she was ‘in love’ with somebody. It seemed to her that she was ‘addicted’ to Alonso, and ‘responsible’ for Henrietta. And that too, was a very peculiar way to look at things!
That first conversation with Queen Sophie had impossibly muddied… everything. She had thought she knew where she stood, known what she felt, and had understood her own motivations and then realised, she had been wrong all along.
In hindsight she had been hot about Alonso from the moment they met, and he, she guessed, for her. She had always been going to end up in bed with him and yet, she had had no real inkling that sleeping with him was going to have the effect it had had, if not entirely innocently then carelessly, on her part, on poor Henrietta. Melody had thought it was all about her; a mistake she made a lot but self-knowledge usually dawns far too late to stop one putting one’s foot in it. It had never occurred to her that, in her way – albeit in a much less carnal and rather beautiful, in a girlish, naïve sort of way – Henrietta was as stupid about Alonso as she had, obviously, become since she arrived in Spain.
And… now she was hearing her mother’s voice in her head reminding her what a selfish girl she was!
Things had never been this complicated when she was living a life as carnally blameless as any cloistered nun. She had loved being a detective, right up to the moment she had acknowledged that she was burying herself in her work to stop herself worrying about how she had screwed up the rest of her life.
No, that might just be her mother’s voice again.
Anyway, the Imperial Intelligence Service wanted her to come on board ‘for real’, this time. That meant spending a while in England which probably was not going to work for Henrietta. Her mother was ill, of course, and although there was no family obligation or expectation for her to return to Philadelphia she wanted, needed to go back some time soon.
Yes, things were… messy.
And that was before she even tried to figure out how to cope with the Pedro situation…
The boy had come running down the first floor landing laughing and calling ‘Mama Melody’ to welcome her back, and clung to her like she was the edge of a cliff. And, well, she had loved it. She had known the boy less than a month – some of which she had been away being a complete slut with Alonso – and he had missed her.
‘He asked where you were all the time,’ Henrietta had confessed.
Hen was devoted to the little rascal who seemed to get more confident, more precocious with every passing day.
Melody had been happy just to be back with Henrietta and last night had been gently, marvellously blissful; and with the women waking up this morning to discover that Pedro had inserted himself between them had been… perfect.
None of which made Melody feel any more settled that morning.
She had meant to have the big conversation with Henrietta, instead, they had kissed their lips sore and in the darkness of the night they had been far, far too preoccupied with each other’s bodies to worry about the future.
The two women had spoken daily on the telephone when Melody had been in Lisbon and Vila Viçosa with Alonso, they had gossiped away to each other, as usual. Henrietta had been fascinated to learn about Alonso’s business interests and estates, including a large winery in the Algarve, in Portugal. Henrietta had talked a lot about Pedro, and been frankly flummoxed by what little Melody had felt free to confess regarding her meetings with the exiled Spanish Queen.
Melody was still teasing out a rough outline of how, exactly, Alonso and his ‘allies’ had safely extricated the Queen and the two Infantas from the chaos, a parallel adventure which probably made her and Henrietta’s travails pale into insignificance.
It was a bright, warm day, so, Melody suggested they take Pedro for a ramble around the hilltop on which Viano do Castelo perched. Alonso was due that evening; and time was short.
“Things were a lot simpler when we were on the run in Spain,” she decided.
They had been walking for some minutes, not talking.
“Yes,” the younger woman agreed.
“We haven’t really talked… about things.”
“No.”
“But we should, don’t you think?”
Henrietta said nothing for several steps.
“I want to adopt Pedro,” she said, in a voice suggesting she had been a little afraid to say it.
It was Melody’s turn to lose her courage, she said nothing.
“How do you think Alonso will feel about that?” Henrietta asked anxiously.