“I wasn’t the only one who got it,” Bushell answered. “As best I can tell from the telephone calls I’ve got, word of the ransom demand went out to every newspaper in the civilized world except maybe the St. Petersburg lskra. I’ve not had a call from Russia, at any rate.”
As he spoke, he covered the typewriter and got to his feet. The governor-general had the power to bind and to loose. If he wanted to see Bushell, Bushell would indeed go see him. And if that meant Bushell didn’t get any paperwork done the rest of the day, he bloody well didn’t, and that was all there was to it. No denying the subject Sir Martin wanted to discuss was an important one - the important one, at the moment.
“Let’s go,” he said. With luck, he might even turn the meeting to his own ends. Sir Martin Luther King was staying in the Royal Suite at the Grosvenor Hotel. So far as Bushell knew, the suite had never actually been occupied by royalty, but, as the King-Emperor’s direct representative essentially, viceroy - for the NAU, Sir Martin came close to that exalted status. Only Bragg and Bushell represented the RAMs at the meeting. Sir Martin had with him but a single civilian aide: Sir David Clarke. Bushell nodded coldly to the man who’d taken Irene away from him.
“Thank you for joining me this afternoon, gentlemen.” The governor-general pointed to a sideboard atop which sat a silver tea and coffee service. “Please help yourselves. We’ll stand on no ceremony here, and the presence of servants would be not only distracting but possibly disastrous.”
Sir Horace Bragg poured himself a cup of tea - English Breakfast, Bushell thought it was, a safe choice whatever the hour. Sir Horace also picked up a couple of biscuits and set them on the saucer’s outer rim. Bushell took coffee. He looked at the biscuits but decided he didn’t care for anything sweet. He and Sir Horace set their saucers on the mahogany table in front of the couch where Sir Martin and Sir David were sitting, then brought up velvet-upholstered chairs. Bushell didn’t like the arrangement - it smacked of civilians vs. police - but could do nothing about it. He sat down. The chair’s upholstery enfolded him, almost like a lover’s embrace.
Sir Horace Bragg laughed. “We’d best get down to business, Your Excellency, because if we sit quietly here for long, these chairs are plenty comfortable enough to sleep in.” Having put his fundament at the none-too-tender mercy of a hard, wooden swivel chair the night before, Bushell could only nod.
“The business is simple, but unpleasing,” Sir Martin Luther King said. “Do we pay the Sons of Liberty their ransom, or do we say be damned to them? Neither course seems appetizing.”
“Were it up to me, I’d not give them a farthing,” Bushell said. Bragg sent him a surprised look; he seldom threw his opinion out with such reckless abandon.
“You’d let The Two Georges be destroyed?” Sir David Clarke said, shock in his voice. He put a little too much shock there, like an actor overemoting on stage. Bushell had been sure Sir David would oppose him - and sound shocked doing it - no matter what he said.
He answered, “Yes, I would. Why not? It would show the Sons of Liberty up for what they are: a pack of bloody-minded know-nothings who care only for themselves, not the NAU. As for The Two Georges, it’s very fine, but there’s more to bind the NAU to England than a stretch of oil paint on canvas. People know it, too.”
“You have no understanding of symbolism,” Clarke said.
“Maybe not, but I understand what giving the Sons of Liberty fifty million pounds will do. I understand that all too well.” Bushell leaned forward in his chair, even though it did not seem to want to let him go.
“And if you make one more smart crack, you’ll regret it for a long time.”
Sir Horace Bragg held up a hand. “Gentlemen, please - this is not quite an either-or proposition. We can negotiate with the Sons of Liberty for the picture’s safe return while we keep on trying to find it. Should our investigation prove fruitless as the deadline approaches, we can then decide what we ought to do next.”
“However attractive that may seem, it may also prove impracticable,” Sir David said. “Suppose the Sons of Liberty demand, as a condition for the safe return of The Two Georges , that we cease our search for it until the ransom be paid? Such a proviso, I fear, strikes me as all too likely.”
Bushell waited for Sir Horace to knock that into a cocked hat. When his superior sat silent, he gave Sir David Clarke his own answer: “Bugger the Sons of Liberty and what they want.”
Sir Martin Luther King had let the other men wrangle; he’d listened, fingers steepled, face inscrutable. Now he spoke for the first time: “Come what may, investigation into the theft shall continue. The Sons of Liberty would assume we made any pledge to refrain under duress, and that we would clandestinely break it whenever opportunity presented itself. They would not, in my judgment, hold such investigation against us despite their rhetoric to the contrary.”
“There is that, of course,” Sir David said. Flexible as a stem of grass, he bent to his chief’s opinion, whatever it might be.
“I can tell you one thing I’d like to see investigated, Your Excellency,” Bushell said, “and that’s how the Sons learned the King-Emperor was coming to the NAU. It can’t be a coincidence that the date they set for their deadline is one day away from the one on which His Majesty reaches Victoria. If we pay the ransom then, our humiliation is at its peak. If we don’t pay, they’ll greet Charles III by destroying the painting. How did they know?” By the way he scowled at Sir David Clarke, he had one possible answer in mind.
Clarke glared back. “See here, sir,” he said angrily, “I find your demeanor insulting.” Bushell folded his arms and said nothing, relishing the moment. Dueling was illegal in Upper California, as it had been in every province of the NAU for many years. Nevertheless, it did happen now and again. If Sir David said one more word, it would constitute a challenge. As challenged party, Bushell would choose pistols - and blow off Sir David’s handsome head.
“If we fight among ourselves, gentlemen, the only gainers are the Sons of Liberty,” Sir Horace Bragg said. “If it suits Your Excellency, I will take personal charge of finding out how - or if, if you’d prefer, Sir David - the Sons learned His Majesty was sailing to this side of the Atlantic on that particular date.”
“Please do, and I thank you,” Sir Martin said. “As you rightly pointed out, personal animosities serve no helpful purpose here.”
“You’re right, of course, Your Excellency,” Bushell said. “I apologize to you for the inconvenience I may have caused.” He did not apologize to Sir David Clarke.
“I have but one reservation, and that purely hypothetical, in regard to Sir Horace’s undertaking this investigation,” Sir David said. “If he is the guilty party, he would naturally be able to suppress that fact.”
Bushell sprang to his feet. Had the table not stood between him and Sir David, he would have gone for the bigger man’s throat. Easy, he told himself. And it would be easy, all too easy, for the real hatred he bore Sir David to turn on him and wreck everything he’d been trying to do here. Use the rage, don’t let it use you. “Listen to me, Clarke,” he hissed, all but spitting the unadorned surname, “you’ve already done your worst as far as I’m concerned, but if you start smearing tar on my friends, I’ll give you a thrashing to make the last one you got seem like a pat on the cheek. Do you hear me?”
“For God’s sake, Tom, sit down,” Sir Horace Bragg said, reaching out to take his arm and restrain him at need. “I’m not insulted, and there’s no call for you to be insulted on my behalf. Sir David said he was speaking hypothetically. He would be failing His Excellency if he didn’t examine all possibilities.”