‘It’s too late,’ he said emphatically. ‘If you’d come earlier, it might have been possible. But not now.’
The engine-whine grew louder, and the golden glow suffused the entire wings, dazzling us. We had no option but to withdraw to a safe distance. The transporter headed off down the runway, rapidly picking up speed before it lifted off. I cursed Maxixca, whom I was sure had arranged matters so that I would have no opportunity to speak to Victoria.
She was lost to me, already lost. The transporter rose higher, its wing-glow reflected on the low-lying cloud. I watched it a diminishing point of brightness, until it was swallowed up in the grey.
I soon discovered that I did not even have Richard to turn to for solace: he had been dispatched on a goodwill tour of the Caribbean, leaving London on the same flight as Tetzahuitl immediately after the post-match dinner at Lords. I would have feared for his safety had the news bulletins not been full of him reviewing troops and inspecting historic buildings in Havana and Santo Domingo. It seemed improbable that the Aztecs intended to get rid of him when they were giving his tour such publicity. He had been conveniently removed from all the messy aftermath of the Lords débâcle, and I wondered if he knew what had happened to Victoria.
For days afterwards I brooded, feeling impotent and thwarted at every turn. Without Victoria or Bevan, I was friendless, and Extepan’s absence only made matters worse. Because I wanted to give Maxixca no further opportunity to humiliate or frustrate me, I spent much of my time alone in my suite, allowing only Chicomeztli to visit.
He, at least, remained cheerful and was confident that both Bevan and Extepan would return. I believed his optimism was genuine but naïve; he was forced to admit he had no explanation for Extepan’s abrupt departure and no information on when he would be back. Without ALEX, I had no means of getting any answers to the many questions which preoccupied me. What had happened to the disk? Had Maxixca found it? If so, why had he made no mention of it? Things were happening all around me over which I had no control and precious little information.
A week passed. Eight, nine days. Some mornings I took solitary horse rides, alternating on Archimedes and Adamant, venting my frustration in the physicality of the rides. I was
obsessed with the injustice which had been done to Victoria, powerless to do anything about it. Some evenings I would sit out in the garden and wonder what had been done to Bevan. He was unlikely to have escaped as lightly as Victoria: princesses could not easily be disposed of without creating a stir, but ordinary men like him could simply vanish, and hardly anyone would notice their passing. A deserted place, a swift bullet, burial in an unmarked grave, and scarcely a ripple would disturb the tide of history. How many thousands, millions, had died in this way?
One moment of brightness lightened my gloom. Returning one morning from a ride, I was taken aside by the leader of my escort, an Aztec lieutenant called Zacatlatoa. Without looking at me, he thrust into my hand a vellum envelope. It bore the double-headed eagle of Imperial Russia.
I could hardly wait to get back to the complex. In a shaded nook on the balcony garden, I tore open the letter and removed the single sheet.
It was from Margaret. In the cheery, chatty style so typical of her, she gossiped about the Moscow court, which now included many English refugees from the invasion, asked after my welfare and that of Richard and Victoria – the letter had been written before Victoria’s exile – and finally thanked me for ‘your splendid news, received with great joy and relief by everyone here’.
It was written in her sprawling hand, and signed Anne B. There was no question of its authenticity, and it was gratifying to know that my communication had reached her and eased Russian fears.
I was intrigued by Zacatlatoa, whom I had not encountered before. Was he a member of the underground? If so, he might know whether or not Victoria had really had any part in the bomb plot. However, he was not assigned to my escort again, and with Maxixca in charge, security remained tight, giving me no opportunity to make further enquiries about him without arousing suspicion.
Alone in my suite by day, I resisted Chicomeztli’s attempts to begin organizing my Citizens’ Aid Centre. An office had been set aside for our use, and a team of staff was waiting, but I was too busy sulking and had no capacity for such selfless pursuits.
Instead I sat and watched television for much of the day, with a mounting sense of incredulity.
Since the occupation, the Aztecs had reduced the four television channels to a dreary menu of game shows, variety spectaculars and endless serials and soap operas from the Mexican networks. Many of the imports featured white English-speaking casts, but all were Aztec in their sympathies and sensibilities. I made endless jokes about them to the long-suffering Chicomeztli but reserved my most scathing comments for those home-bred celebrities who appeared on banal chat shows in the interests of self-promotion. My fellow citizens, happily thriving under foreign rule. Chicomeztli must have found me sullen and tiresome during this period, but he was too courteous ever to show it.
On the evening of the tenth day, I was sitting alone on the balcony when Bevan put a cup of tea down on the table in front of me.
I looked at him as if he were a ghost. He wore a hand-knitted navy sweater with shapeless bottle-green trousers.
‘You’re back,’ I breathed, fighting an instinct to jump up and hug him.
‘Miss me, did you?’
He looked just the same as ever: overweight, unkempt, half a cigarette tucked behind his ear.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Didn’t they tell you? Land of my fathers.’
‘I thought you’d been taken away. Murdered.’
He spooned sugar into a mug of mahogany tea. ‘Looks like I missed all the excitement.’
I felt a mixture of relief and resentment. ‘You’ve heard about everything that’s happened? The bomb plot and Victoria’s arrest?’
‘All over the news, wasn’t it?’
Was she really involved? Do you know anything?’
He shook his head. ‘Not the type, is she?’
‘They showed me photographs, transcripts of meetings she’s supposed to have had with people involved in the plot.’
‘I saw it in the papers.’
‘It just isn’t possible. If she was involved, I’m sure she would have told me. I would have suspected something.’
Bevan sipped his tea.
‘Do you know anything?’ I said again. Was she really involved with some underground group?’
‘Don’t see it myself.’
‘Then why arrest her?’
‘Obvious they wanted her out of the way, isn’t it?’
‘But why?’
‘You’ve got me there. Hard to imagine.’
Did I detect a sly tone in his voice? Did he, in fact, know of Victoria’s involvement in the plot? I had a strong feeling he wasn’t telling me everything. He had come back as if he had never been away, and all the time I had imagined him arrested tortured, dead.
‘How’s your mother?’ I asked.
‘She passed away two days ago.’
I hadn’t expected this.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘She was eighty-three.’
I searched for something to say. ‘At least you were there. At the end.’
‘Didn’t know a thing about it, did she? She never regained consciousness.’
I was torn between genuine sympathy and the suspicion that none of it was true. It seemed all too convenient that he had been called away on the very day when the assassination attempt was due to take place.
‘I really thought they’d done away with you,’ I said. ‘You didn’t even leave a note.’
‘Wasn’t time, was there? I had to go in a rush.’
‘Maxixca certainly pulled out all the stops for you.’
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘To be honest, I thought it was a set-up to get rid of me at first. But they’re big on the veneration of aged parents and all that. Gave me a room right next to her in Neville Hall, they did, all the mod cons. Let me stay there till she died.’
Neville Hall was the hospital in Abergavenny. I felt that I was being callous in continuing to doubt his honesty; but I no longer had the capacity to take anything at face value.
‘They took Victoria away before I had a chance to speak to
her,’ I told him. ‘Maxixca engineered everything. He’s been left in charge here.’
‘Acting governor. Nice for someone as power-crazed as he is.’
‘I don’t know what’s happened to Extepan.’
He put his mug down and reached into his trouser pocket.
‘Maybe we can find out.’
He had the disk in his hand.
‘Took it with me,’ he said. ‘I had a feeling Mad Mash might do one of his security sweeps while we were all out and about. I thought I’d keep it out of harm’s way.’
My suspicions redoubled. ‘How did you know where to find it?’
‘Your pillowcase? Come on. First place you’d look, isn’t it?’
ALEX’s face came to life on the screen. I hesitated, then whispered into the microphone: ‘It’s Catherine.’
He smiled.
‘Kate. Good to talk to you again.’
I was determined not to get involved in small-talk.
‘I’ve got something to ask you,’ I said briskly.
‘Ask away.’
‘Are you aware that Victoria’s been arrested?’
His expression became more sober.
‘I am. You must be terribly upset
.’
‘Do you know why she was arrested?’
There was a slight hesitation.
‘The formal charge, according to my information, was subversive activities against the Mexican state and its elected representatives.’
‘I need to know – was she really involved in the plot to kill everyone at Lords?’
A longer pause.
‘Documentary and photographic evidence suggested she was.’
‘Do you believe the evidence?’
‘There appears to be no reason to discount it.’
I considered, then said, ‘From what you know of her, do you think it likely that she would become involved in such a plot?’
Another pause.
‘On the surface, her personality profile does not suggest radical tendencies. But real people are notoriously difficult to fathom and predict.’
Amen to that, I thought grimly.
‘Is it possible the evidence was faked?’
‘Anything’s possible.’
‘But you believe it?’
A grave smile.
‘I have no reason to discount it on the basis of the information available to me.’
I began to wish I had Bevan beside me; he was better able to probe ALEX in a logical fashion. But I had been determined to speak to ALEX alone that night, without anyone else knowing.
‘I can’t accept it,’ I said.
A slow nod.
‘I understand that, Kate. If I were in your position, I expect I should feel the same way.’
There was a look of great sympathy on his face. I reminded myself that he could not see me, that ‘he’ was just a pattern of electrons on a phosphorescent screen.
‘Where have they taken her?’
Now there was a much longer pause while ALEX remained motionless. He suddenly looked to be what he really was: an artefact, an image, no more.
‘Beijing,’
he announced finally.
‘She’s joined the court of Prince Ixtlilpopoca under house arrest there.’
It was not a surprising choice. The Aztecs had succeeded in subsuming China into their empire thirty years before by a combination of strategic marriages into the Manchu dynasty and the military defeat of an unpopular republican government. Ixtlilpopoca was Motecuhzoma’s second son, and the Forbidden City had been used as a place of exile for unwanted royal personages before.
‘Do you know how long she is to be kept in exile?’
More deliberation.
‘No time limit has been specified, as far as I’m aware.’
His image was so clear I could almost count the hairs in his beard. Yet his movements seemed slightly more laboured, his responses marginally slower, than in the past.
I barely registered this though, being more preoccupied with thoughts of Victoria in her exile. She would not like the winters in that part of China, but at least her existence would be comfortable if restricted. It might have been worse.
‘I need to know something else,’ I said. ‘What’s happened to Extepan?’
A further contemplative silence.
‘My last record of his whereabouts dates from eight days ago. He accompanied his uncle, Tetzahuitl, to Tenochtitlan.’
‘You’ve no record of him since then?’
‘No.’
This was completely unexpected. With a tremor in my voice, I said, ‘Is he dead?’
‘Highly unlikely. It’s more probable his movements are classified. Unrecorded. For security reasons.’
I mulled this over. On the screen, ALEX’s image flickered briefly. Remembering Bevan’s earlier warning, I said hastily, ‘There’s one other thing.’
‘I’m here to help you if I can, Kate.’
‘It’s Bevan. Can I trust him?’
He seemed to frown.
‘Can you be more specific, Kate?’
‘I want to know if he’s working for the Aztecs.’
A long consideration.
‘There’s no indication that he’s one of their agents.’
‘Is it possible?’
‘I have no evidence to suggest it.’
‘Is he involved with any other group?’
Another pause.
‘None that I’m aware of.’
I sighed. Having ALEX as an oracle was more frustrating than anything when he could only reveal an absence of evidence.
‘Does he really have a mother who’s recently died?’
‘I can confirm that. He returned to London seven hours ago following her funeral. Would you like to see her medical records?’
‘That won’t be necessary. ALEX, I have to go.’
‘It’s been a pleasure talking to you again, Kate.’
‘And to you,’ I said automatically.
But before I could move to switch off the terminal, a voice behind me said, ‘How very touching.’
I spun around.
Maxixca stood there with an armed escort.
‘We suspected someone had gained access to our network. It is most gratifying to discover we were not wrong.’
There was nothing I could say.
‘Isn’t that your ex-husband? I must say he looks more alert than when I last encountered—’
I lunged for him. Two guards grabbed me and pulled me away.
Maxixca was bleeding from a long scratchmark on his cheek.
‘Really,’ he said, ‘this is most undignified behaviour for a princess of the realm. I thought you English always bore misfortunes with a brave face and a stiff upper lip.’
Again I strained forward, but the guards held me in check.
On the screen, ALEX was still staring out at me, the perfect image of the real person, memento and
memento mori
.