Bushell shifted his cigar to his left hand. He lifted an imaginary glass high with his right, brought it to his mouth, and tipped his head back. “Consider that drunk to.”
Her laugh exposed small, white, even teeth. “Are you serious enough to make a proper RAM? We’re a sobersided lot, most of us.”
He considered that - seriously. “I’m serious on duty,” he said. “Off duty, I’m no more serious than I have to be.” Even with whiskey in him, sobersided was an adjective that fit well, maybe too well, but he didn’t have to acknowledge it.
“That’s fair,” Patricia Oliver said with a nod. “Too many people take the office wherever they go, though.” She sipped her drink, staring pensively at the glowing coal of her cigarette and the thin, twisting ribbon of smoke that rose from it. After a moment’s silence, she asked, “Do you think we have any chance at all of recovering The Two Georges intact?” No sooner had the words passed her lips than she burst out with a long peal of laughter. “There I was, mocking people who bring their work with them no matter where they are, and now I’ve done it myself.”
“It’s all right,” Bushell said. “It’s what we have in common, after all.” He thought about the question, slowly answered, “The only way we’ll see it, I think, is if the Sons of Liberty think that’s to their advantage. Otherwise - ” He looked down at the bar and wished the imaginary shot of Irish whiskey he’d downed had been real. “Otherwise, I’ll have found a way of going down in history that isn’t the one I had in mind.”
Patricia Oliver’s red mouth closed on the cigarette. She took a long drag and let the smoke out a little at a time, so that she sat as if shrouded in fog. “It’s not your fault, or not altogether,” she said.
“I was in charge. By God, I was there,” Bushell said. “My duty was to keep that painting safe, and I didn’t do it.” He started to signal the bartender, but hesitated once more. Too soon since the last one, if he wanted to stay on the dry side of the slough of despond.
“It’s not that simple,” she answered. “It’s Sir Horace’s responsibility, too, but he’s not losing sleep over it.” That was literally true; Sir Horace had gone up to bed. Patricia continued, “Anyone who expects perfection is asking too much. The Sons of Liberty can try a hundred outrages; if they succeed with one, they come out ahead. If we fail one time in a hundred, we lose. That’s not right. You can’t blame yourself for not being perfect.”
“I found out I wasn’t perfect a long time ago,” Bushell said with a rueful twist to his lips that wasn’t quite a smile. “Of me as me, I expect what I can get by doing the best I know how. Of me as RAM commander here - the job needs to be perfect, even if the man isn’t.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said, almost angrily. “Not even priests ask that much of themselves.”
Bushell shrugged.
“How do you live with yourself?” Patricia Oliver wondered. He shrugged again, not sure if she was asking the question of some higher authority. She knocked back her drink with a flick of the wrist, man-fashion, and signaled the bartender for a refill. He’d been polishing the already gleaming wood of the bar for some time, and looked grateful for something better to do.
This time, Bushell, having exhausted his singles, handed the man a blue two-pound note. This time, too, he consciously noticed the reproduction of The Two Georges on the banknote. He grimaced and looked away; the image too vividly called to mind the original he’d seen and then lost. The bartender, mindful of his own tip, gave back a pound’s worth of change in a jingle of silver. Bushell left one gleaming coin on the bar and scooped the rest into his trouser pocket.
Patricia Oliver said, “Are you going to drink another imaginary toast with me?” Her eyes challenged him. Sighing, he dug out the change he’d just put away, and more besides. The bartender brought him a shot of Jameson and then went back to plying his cloth.
“Anyone would think you were a Son yourself, drinking Irish whiskey like that,” Patricia said, one eyebrow quirking up.
“I like it,” Bushell said. “I got a taste for it in my army days, maybe even before I’d ever heard of the Sons of Liberty. It doesn’t taste like medicine, the way Scotch does for me.” He sipped; Jameson was the medicine he needed, all right. “And I wish to God I still hadn’t heard of the Sons.”
“I don’t blame you.” She set her hand lightly atop one of his. He looked up at her face. He saw sympathy and - something else? He wasn’t sure. She went on, “You’re blaming yourself enough as is. This must be hell for you.”
“Now that you mention it,” he said, “yes.”
The weight of her hand on his grew slightly. Her skin was warm and very smooth. She said, “If it weren’t for the Russians and the Holy Alliance, the Sons would long ago have dried up and blown away for lack of blood - I mean, money.”
“Not much difference between the two, not when it comes to politics,” he said, nodding. He told her of what he’d uncovered while the special train was traveling west from Victoria: the Nagant rifle posted from Skidegate and the scandalous pamphlet commingled with accounts paid in gold roubles for the travel brochure about the Queen Charlotte Islands.
“Russian money,” she said with a quick indrawn breath, “and Russian guns, too. No telling how many more Russian guns are loose in New Liverpool, either.”
“I had that same happy thought,” Bushell agreed. “Of course, it doesn’t necessarily prove anything: men who aren’t Russians can lay hands on gold roubles, and on Nagants, too, I suppose, though that would be harder. But it gives us a place to start looking, and in a case like this - ”
“We’re grateful for any place to start,” she finished for him.
They spent the next considerable while talking about the case, and about other things. But for them, the bar was dead quiet: a slow weekday evening. Bushell had another drink, and then another. He nursed them instead of leaping headlong into them as he had before. He knew they were in him, but somehow they lacked the power over him whiskey sometimes seized.
With a yawn, the bartender sat down on a stool in the far corner of his little domain. He leaned against the wall, giving every sign of being about to fall asleep. Bushell pulled out his pocket watch, “Good heavens,” he said, staring at it. “How did it get to be a quarter to one?”
“For me, it was the pleasant company,” Patricia Oliver said.
Pleasant company was all very well. Bushell was thinking he was most of an hour from home, most if not all of another hour back to RAM headquarters, and not enough hours of sleep sandwiched in between there. Having gone through a day on no sleep a short while earlier, he did not want to do it again. “I think I’ll go over to the office and put my feet up on my desk,” he said. “I’ve done that before, a time or two.”
“Why don’t you come up to my room instead?” Patricia said.
He looked up from his glass to her. She met his eye with the same directness she’d shown in the railway coach. “What sort of invitation is that?” he asked slowly.
“Whatever sort you want it to be,” she answered. The pink tip of her tongue lingered between her teeth for a moment before she drew it back once more. “I hope you find the idea . . . inviting.”
That told him what sort of invitation it was. He had not been a monk since his marriage to Irene exploded, but this. . . “Mrs. Oliver - ” he began.
‘“Mrs. Oliver’?” she echoed, her voice still low, but mocking. “Not Patricia, not even Captain Oliver, but Mrs. Oliver? What on earth has this” - she held out her left hand: even in the muted light of the bar, the diamond on the fourth finger sparkled - ”got to do with anything?”