The Bright Young Things left the office one after the other, each glaring in turn at Bushell, Stanley, and Kathleen Flannery. A couple of them muttered under their breath. Luckily for them, Bushell ignored the mutters.
“Well, come in, Colonel,” Kennedy said in that resonant voice, coming to the door and extending his hand. “Please introduce me to your friends - especially the charming lady here.”
With a mental sigh, Bushell shook hands with the publisher. Kennedy’s grip was firm, though he had to be well into his seventies. He did his best to deny his age, partly helped by nature, as with his voice, and partly by artifice: his hair showed silver at the temples, but the rest was a not altogether convincing red-brown. His teeth were whiter and more perfectly even than any not supplied by a dentist. With its peaked lapels and wide-legged pants that hung straight from the waist, his suit might have belonged to a university undergraduate - but few undergraduates would have had the taste to choose his Donegal tweeds... or the money to afford them.
He shook hands with Samuel Stanley, then made a production of meeting Kathleen Flannery: he pressed her hand between both of his before raising it to his lips. “Always a pleasure to make the acquaintance of such a fair flower from the Old Sod,” he said, overlaying the New England accent with a brogue obviously donned for the occasion. When he moved back to let Kathleen enter his office, he didn’t move quite far enough, so that they brushed against each other as she stepped in. Where his clothes did not, his office seemed made for a captain of industry. The only missing touch was a print of The Two Georges behind his desk. Instead, he had a picture of uniformed RAMs wading into a crowd of striking coal miners sometime in the early days of the century. No one who looked at it could doubt the artist’s sentiments; the RAMs were portrayed as bestial brutes, some of them grinning with ghoulish glee as they belabored the saintly-seeming miners with truncheons.
“Tea?” Kennedy asked, nodding to a silver service in the corner of the office. “Or would you rather have coffee? I prefer it myself - less British.”
“Just business,” Bushell said.
The publisher shrugged. “As you like.” He took a cigar from a humidor, held it up to get permission and to admire it - and then lighted it. The smoke he blew made Bushell’s mouth water; they didn’t grow tobacco like that anywhere in the British Empire, worse luck. After a couple of lazy puffs, Kennedy asked, “Well, what is it that’s so important it won’t wait till eleven this morning?”
“Conducting any investigation is hard,” Bushell said. “Conducting one with reporters dogging your heels is worse; they enjoy printing things you’d sooner see quiet a while longer. Conducting one with reporters working to make you fail. . . a little of that goes a long way.”
“I can see that it might,” Kennedy said. “But what has it got to do with me?”
“I knew you were going to say that,” Bushell told him. “Do you know how I knew?”
“No, but since you’re going to tell me, I have the feeling I will,” Kennedy answered. Bushell’s smile was hard and bright and cold, like February sunshine in Boston. “Because one of your demon reporters told me that was what you’d say. He tells us all sorts of interesting things about you. Would you like to hear some of them?”
“One of Shaughnessy and Doyle, do you mean?” Kennedy shook his head. “I don’t believe it, not a word. They’re good lads, honest lads, both of them, and I won’t let your lies come between me and them.”
“One of your reporters, I said,” Bushell answered. “I named no names, and I didn’t intend to. But if you think you can spy on the Royal American Mounted Police as we go about our business, why shouldn’t you expect us to spy on you as you go about yours?”
Kennedy glared at him. Bushell had been on the receiving end of some fearsome scowls in his time, but this ranked among the leaders. It was both full of hate and restrained, an unsettling combination. The man would make - probably did make - a bad enemy. Thanks to Common Sense, he’d been a bad enemy to the Crown for close to half a century.
Perhaps trying to defuse the moment, Kathleen Flannery said, “I think I’d like a cup of tea after all, please, Mr. Kennedy.”
The publisher went from glowering magnate to kindly host in the space of a heartbeat. He had charm in abundance when he wanted to, no doubt of that. “My pleasure,” he said, rising from his seat. “It’ll be Irish Breakfast, of course, but then you won’t mind that, being Irish yourself. Do you take sugar, Dr. Flannery? - Kathleen, if you’ll let me? No? I shouldn’t be surprised; you must be sweet enough and to spare on your own. Would you care for a biscuit with it? I have vanilla wafers there that go very nicely.”
“No, thank you,” Kathleen said. “Just the tea, please.”
Kennedy filled a bone-china cup from the samovar, then lifted a silver pitcher of milk from the ice-filled bowl in which it sat. Bushell had been wondering if he assumed everyone drank tea Russian style, but no, evidently not. The publisher carried cup and saucer over to Kathleen Flannery. “Here you are,” he said, patting her on the shoulder.
“Thank you,” she replied, her voice quiet.
After fussing over her a while longer, Kennedy went back behind his desk. “Where were we?” he asked Bushell, sounding affable enough. “Oh, I remember - you were telling me lies about my reporters.”
“No, you were telling me lies about not knowing what they’re up to and why,” Bushell answered with another of those wintry smiles. “Me, I’m not a reporter; so I’m more likely to be telling the truth.”
“A RAM a truthteller?” Kennedy shook his head; his wattled jowels wobbled slightly. “That’s funny enough for a joke, or would be if it weren’t so sad.”
Samuel Stanley bristled. “What the devil have you got against the Crown and the British Empire?” he demanded. “What’s the Empire ever done to you - aside from making you rich, I mean?” He waved a hand around to call attention to the splendid quarters in which they were conversing.
“The Empire hasn’t made me rich.” Anger sparked in Kennedy’s eyes, too. “I made myself rich, and the way I did it shows the Empire’s not so beloved nor so perfect as some blind fools think. America would be better off with its chains broken.”
“Nothing’s perfect,” Bushell said, uneasily remembering the slums of Charleroi and the low, dark tunnels underneath them.
“The Empire does things pretty well, though.” Stanley set his right forefinger on the back of his left wrist to remind Kennedy what color he was. “Britain freed the black slaves all through the Empire - even the southern provinces of the NAU, where the masters bawled like branded calves, screaming they couldn’t raise their cotton without us. For that alone - “
Kennedy slammed a fist down on the desk. “Yes, England freed the black man - and left the Irishman in chains. Oh, we were free in law: free to starve when the potato failed. One of my several-great-grandfathers was down under seven stone when he dragged himself aboard ship for what he hoped might prove a better life. They made him a factory hand here in Boston instead of the farmer he had been, but he kept right on starving.”
Bushell stood up and dug in his trouser pocket. “And you’re still starving to this day.” He found a shilling and tossed it onto Kennedy’s desk. Silver rang sweetly off polished walnut. “Here, you poor man, buy yourself a crust of bread.”