Outside on the platform, the reporters started streaming away from the car where Sir Martin Luther King had spoken. Sir Horace Bragg took Bushell by the arm. “Now that His Excellency has finished out there, Tom, we throw you to the wolves.”
He laughed to show that was meant as a joke, but it held too much truth for Bushell to do anything more than skin his lips back from his teeth in the pretense of a smile. If any audience would be tougher than the press, it was Sir Martin’s staff. Bushell had embarrassed their patron. To any politico’s aides, that was more dastardly than murder.
None of the RAMs save Sir Horace accompanied Bushell into the next coach back. He had the idea they wanted as little to do with the governor-general’s staff as they could manage. From everything he’d seen of the men who worked for politicos, he was willing to believe the feeling mutual. The RAMs’ red tunics had provided a splash of color against the earth tones of leather and polished mahogany in their car. The governor-general’s men dressed like bankers and brokers, in muted grays and blues or funereal black. Bushell wondered if they did so in the hope of convincing people that they, like prominent capitalists, served a useful purpose.
His voice cool and formal, Sir Horace Bragg said, “Gentlemen, allow me to present to you my friend Colonel Thomas Bushell, commandant of the Royal American Mounties based in New Liverpool.” That my friend took courage. Not many commanders would have publicly identified themselves with a subordinate on whose watch disaster had struck.
The governor-general’s men realized as much. They came up one by one to introduce themselves to Bushelclass="underline" Roy Saunders, deputy minister of the exchequer, thin and sandy and acerbic; Hiram Defoe, postage minister and Sir Martin’s chief political fixer, who, if he didn’t know everything and everyone, made a good game try of not letting on; Sir Devereaux Jones, NAU Tory Party chairman, his ebony face clever and closed; and a couple of others whose names Bushell missed. In back of them, not pushing his way forward, stood Sir David Clarke. Before long, though, the moment could be avoided no more. The governor-general’s chief of staff came up to Bushell. “Colonel,” he said quietly, and held out his hand.
Bushell’s eyes flicked to the well-groomed appendage, then up to Clarke’s handsome, craggy face. The two men were about the same age, but somehow Clarke had managed to hide ten or fifteen years where they did not show. His smile was broad and perfect, his teeth even and gleaming, the whites of his blue, blue eyes untracked by red. He looked too good to be true.
“Sir David,” Bushell said. A quarter of a heartbeat late, he shook Clarke’s hand. A couple of Sir Martin’s aides whispered behind their hands to the rest. Bushell could not hear what they were saying, but he knew. He wanted to hit Sir David in those sparkling teeth, to wipe that condescendingly uncondescending smile off his face. He’d done it once. He couldn’t now. He rubbed at his mustache. Sometimes the price of duty was almost more than a man could bear to pay.
He asked the question Clarke was waiting for: “I hope Irene is well?”
“Quite well, yes, thank you,” Sir David answered, the picture of civilized restraint. Bushell hated him more than ever. Clarke twisted the knife a little: “When she learned I was coming to New Liverpool, she asked me to say hello for her.”
“Tell her hello from me,” Bushell said tonelessly. The inside of the railway car had gone very quiet; he could hear his words echoing from the walls and ceiling.
In the quiet, footsteps echoed on the platform at the rear of the car. “Here is Sir Martin now,” Sir Horace Bragg said as the governor-general came in. The two men got along imperfectly well; Bushell had never imagined his old friend sounding so glad and relieved to report the arrival of Sir Martin Luther King.
The governor-general of the North American Union had doffed his robe of office before coming up into the car in which his aides worked. Now he wore a suit and waistcoat of darkest navy, so dark the eye mistook it for black at first glance. With that as background, his skin seemed almost pale; he was a couple of shades lighter than Sir Devereaux Jones.
As Sir David Clarke had, he held out his hand to Bushell and said, “Colonel.” His orator’s voice filled the car. Bushell found it daunting to have that voice, trained to sway thousands in a crowd or millions over the wireless, turned on him alone.
He shook the governor-general’s hand and said, “Your Excellency, honored as I am to meet you, I wish it were under happier circumstances.”
“So do I, Colonel Bushell,” Sir Martin answered. Beneath the trained phrasing, he sounded worn. He was in his sixties, his hair and mustache graying, tired pouches under his narrow, slanting, almost Oriental eyes. Cross-country railway travel, even at its most luxurious, would tell on a man no longer young. “So do I, for more reasons than you yet know.”
“Sir Horace alluded to those reasons, sir,” Bushell said, glancing toward his commandant. “He said he was not the proper person to elaborate on them: that was your province, no one else’s.”
“He was correct.” Sir Martin Luther King also let his eyes slide toward Sir Horace, just for a moment, as if granting even so much praise pained him. After a brief hesitation, the governor-general went on, “We have a need more pressing than you can imagine to recover The Two Georges quickly. Were you not involved in this case, you would not hear of it for some time to come.”
“Your Excellency, I assure you that Tom Bushell is reliable in every way,” Sir Horace Bragg declared. Sir Martin did not answer. He did not need to answer. Had Bushell been reliable in every way, The Two Georges would not have been stolen, and he himself would have been comfortably back in Victoria.
“Your Excellency, if you don’t think I should have whatever this information may be, don’t tell me,” Bushell said. “I understand secrets and the need for them.”
“Well said,” Hiram Defoe murmured. Several of the governor-general’s aides nodded. Sir David Clarke stood unmoving. He understood secrets, too, and what they could do when they were secret no more.
“Colonel, I tell you frankly that I would withhold this information if I could,” Sir Martin said. “I am far from convinced you should know it. But I am convinced you must know it, to appreciate the urgency of our predicament. The Two Georges was scheduled to return to Victoria on 15 August - two months from now, less three days. That much you already know.”
Bushell nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Very well. What you do not know is that His Majesty Charles III is scheduled to arrive in Victoria on the following day aboard the imperial yacht Britannia, to view the painting in its colonial setting and deliver an address touching on the importance of the ties between the N AU and the mother country. Surely I need not emphasize for you the unfortunate symbolism which would be conveyed were The Two Georges to be missing upon his arrival.”
“No, Your Excellency, you don’t,” Bushell said. He had as little to do with politics as he could, but he didn’t have to be a fixer of Hiram Defoe’s caliber to figure out what would happen if the King-Emperor gave his speech in front of a blank wall rather than before the painting. A generation might pass before London again trusted the NAU to handle anything important on its own.
“I hate it when political considerations interfere with the investigation of a crime,” Sir Horace Bragg said, “but sometimes they do, and that’s a fact we can’t ignore.”
“Yes, sir,” Bushell said; Bragg might have been reciting any competent policeman’s creed. Of Sir Martin Luther King, Bushell asked, “Your Excellency, would the Sons of Liberty have had any idea the King-Emperor is sailing to the NAU? Is that part of the reason why they stole The Two Georges!”