Johannes Cabal the Detective (10 page)

Or a wise victor drawing the teeth of a mad dog, thought Cabal, accurately if uncharitably.

“Those Senzans think
so
much of themselves, going around behaving like they own the whole region! They’ll even check the records of everybody travelling through their precious territory who hasn’t been blessed to be born Senzan to make sure they aren’t a threat to national security. They’ll search this ship when we reach Parila, you know? To make sure we’re not desperate anarchists and that none of the crew have been in the military, because they’ve decided to make
that
illegal, too! Because, obviously, we’re going to invade them with a luxury passenger vessel, and we’re carrying a load of deadly explosive potatoes that we’re going to drop on them. They are so
stupid
!”

Cabal felt obliged to raise both eyebrows. “Potatoes?”

“Calm yourself, my dear,” said Herr Roborovski, dismayed at his wife’s outburst. Indeed, such was the depth of her passion that a very, very faint pink the shade and intensity of a drop of blood on crushed ice had coloured her cheeks.

“Yes. Yes, of course.” She reined herself in from the towering heights of fairly annoyed to a simmering peevishness. Eager to change the subject, she said to Miss Barrow, “What part of England do you come from, Miss Barrow? The north?”

“Yes,” Miss Barrow said, laughing. “I know, it is a distinctive accent, isn’t it? I’m from the northwest, to be exact.”

The tension broken, the four made small talk (strictly speaking, only three made small talk, Cabal confining himself to the occasional grunt) until the Roborovskis made their apologies and went off to make more new acquaintances.

Cabal watched them go, the polite smile he had been keeping on his face by sheer force of will finally allowed to lapse into a faint sneer. Miss Barrow, noticing it, murmured, “Now,
that’s
more like the Johannes Cabal I know.”

“You know, by conspiring to conceal my identity from the Mirkarvians you’re probably committing some heinous crime, according to the comedic document they call a judicial code.”

“Is that concern for my welfare I hear?”

“It isn’t, no. It is a suggestion that, since we both have a lot to lose if my real name is exposed, it might be wise if you could stop blabbing it every few minutes.”

Stung, she glanced at him. “Why couldn’t you have decided to be something a bit less troublesome, Herr
Meissner
? A butcher, or a doctor—”

“There’s a difference?”

“—or a children’s entertainer, or … just something else. For God’s sake … Mr. Meissner, why
do
you do what you do?”

“That,” said Cabal, “is my business.” At which point, with the sharp ringing of a small gong, dinner was announced.

Chapter 5

IN WHICH DINNER IS SERVED AND ACQUAINTANCES ARE MADE

The same steward who had cleared up Cabal’s spilt drink also seated him. The dinner was being held in the dining room at the ship’s bow, the same room that Cabal had first entered when boarding. “Oh, there are so many more gentlemen than ladies on this voyage,” he confided. “I’m afraid we’re having to seat the men in twos, but at least every gentleman will have a lady to chat to.” To Cabal’s dismay, he realised that he was being placed next to Leonie Barrow. He sat down in silence and looked pointedly off into the middle distance. The steward, however, had not quite fulfilled his quota of mischief for the day. As he leaned over Cabal’s shoulder to pour the wine, he whispered, “I took the liberty of seating you with
this
young lady.”

Cabal looked at him. The expression “if looks could kill” does not begin to describe the pure corrosive abhorrence that he put into the glance. If, however, the steward had suddenly found himself transported far away and nailed, through his genitals, to the steeple of a church in the middle of a violent electrical storm, a more exact impression may be gained.

The steward winked conspiratorially and moved along, pleased with his work. Cabal turned reluctantly to find Miss Barrow smiling not altogether pleasantly at him.

“I think we’re the ship’s official lovebirds,” she murmured.

Cabal, stony-faced, took his napkin, flicked it out, and placed it on his lap. “Imagine my delight,” he said, apparently to his place setting. Miss Barrow tapped his elbow and indicated the rest of the diners with a surreptitious gesture. Looking around, he saw that every single man there was tucking his napkin into his collar. Moving smoothly to avoid attracting attention, he picked up his and followed suit.

“Don’t bother thanking me,” she whispered. Cabal growled slightly and ignored her. He was mentally kicking himself; he’d learned about this particular piece of etiquette during his stay in Krenz prior to the attempt at burglary that had ended in dog drool and disappointment. Now he’d allowed himself to get rattled and it had slipped his mind. Johannes Cabal hated being rattled. It was so … human.

The first course was soup. Mirkarvian tastes predictably eschewed consommé in favour of something a little more masculine. Miss Barrow filled a spoon but found that she couldn’t bring it to her mouth without the spectre of a gag reflex. “What is this stuff?” she asked Cabal. “Oxtail?”

“I’m not sure.” He sniffed cautiously. They seemed not to have stopped with the ox’s tail. “Possibly boiled bull’s blood.” He fished around in the dark depths with his spoon. “With croutons.”

The next course was more acceptable—poached fish—and Cabal took the opportunity to study some of his fellow passengers. The “captain’s table” was actually a construct of all the dining tables in the room unbolted from the deck, rearranged into a squat oval, and bolted down again. Captain Schten held court from the middle of the forward long side—and very uncomfortable he looked in the rôle, too. With Leonie Barrow to his left, Cabal was almost opposite the captain. Cabal watched without sympathy as Schten tried to look interested in what a self-made, self-satisfied, self-aggrandising businessman was telling him about pork scratchings, the
Bierkeller
snack of the future.

To Cabal’s right sat a man in his mid to late forties. His face seemed lived-in to the point of being secondhand, perhaps third. He was prodding his fish fitfully with the end of his knife and it was hard to tell who was unhappier with the situation. The man noticed Cabal looking at him. “Poached,” he said in a tone of defeated disgust. “Flippin’ Nora, it would be poached. I thought, Oh, your luck’s in here, Alexei m’boy. Fish.” He patted his stomach. “I’m a martyr to my guts. They ought to open an institute dedicated to the study of my guts. The Alexei Aloysius Cacon Memorial Institute.”

“It’s traditional to be dead before having a memorial institution named after you,” Cabal observed.

“And how long can it be, eh? Murdered by me own internals.” Cabal thought they would have to go to the back of a long queue. “Still, if they’re the death of me perhaps medical science can study them and find a cure for my ills, so that future generations can say, ‘His sacrifice was not in vain.’”

Cabal watched him carefully for any flicker of irony and found none. “Ills?”

“Plural.” Cacon prodded his fish again. “That would have gone nice with a bit of batter. Oh, yes. I’ve got a regular compendium of complaints, I have. Me doctor’s baffled, baffled. Well, I say ‘doctor.’ I go to him and he just sends me home with the milk of magnesia and tells me not to worry about it.” His lip curled and he sighed deeply, disgusted at the way of the world. “The quack.”

Despite himself, Cabal was fascinated. He’d never met anybody so profoundly … 
wrong
before. “I was under the impression that poached fish was supposed to be good for the digestion.”

“Oh, well,” said Cacon with the wearied yet supercilious air of somebody who’s put down
that
specious argument before. “They’d like you to think that, wouldn’t they?” No further indication of who the mysterious conspiracy of “they” might be was forthcoming.

The woman at Cacon’s other side started talking about how lovely it was to be away from that tiresome trouble back home, and Cacon had opinions on that, too. Cabal was unsurprised to discover that Cacon had been a tiger in his youth, a sergeant with the grenadiers. “Clickety-snitch,” he kept saying, to represent the pin being pulled and the spoon springing clear of an armed grenade. Cabal found something almost touching in the man’s self-belief, a faint tremor of empathy. Cacon seemed to live in his own little world, and where the real one impinged upon his it was always … disappointing.

Cabal looked around for other distractions. As the steward had intimated, the men outnumbered the women by a ratio of more than two to one. From his own place and running clockwise, he let his gaze slide from diner to diner, as a second hand sweeps a path around a watch.

To his immediate left was Miss Leonie Barrow, and he regarded her with an outer dispassion and an inner sourness for a few seconds before moving on.

On Miss Barrow’s left was an old soldier, a brilliant deduction that Cabal based upon the man’s no longer being young, and his wearing an impressive collection of medal ribbons on the breast pocket of his dinner jacket. The fact that the captain had called him “Colonel Konstantin” also helped. The dinner jacket in question was rather old-fashioned in style, featuring the sort of high collar normally seen only in regimental histories in these days of loud ties and ill-considered cuff links. The colonel was also old-fashioned in his manners: attentive to the ladies and sober to the gentlemen. He nursed his wine slowly, waving away an increasingly distressed steward, who seemed to regard topping up glasses as a religious duty. Cabal was pleased that Konstantin avoided war stories, and intrigued that he also avoided current affairs.

“Is this your first flight, Colonel?” Captain Schten asked.

“In an aeroship, yes. I’ve been up in the observer’s seat of a few entomopters, though.” He gestured vaguely with his fork. “This is a great deal more comfortable, Captain. She’s a fine vessel.”

“You’ve flown in an entomopter?” said Miss Barrow. Konstantin turned to her and, as he did so, his demeanour shifted slightly from that of a professional speaking to a professional to the pleasantly avuncular.

“Indeed I have, Fräulein, and trust me when I say that this is a far more pleasant way to fly. I have had need to see the land from above on some occasions, and an entomopter reconnaissance was the best way of doing it. I am an infantryman through and through, though—I cannot tell you what a relief it was to set foot on terra firma once more.”

“Herr Meissner here used to be a cavalryman,” said Miss Barrow. Cabal’s fork stopped en route to his mouth.

“Really?” Konstantin regarded Cabal with a neutral stare. Then he smiled. “You would have broken your lances on one of my squares, sir, let me assure you.”

Cabal smiled, too, a purely technical exercise. “I do not doubt it, Colonel,” he replied without the faintest idea what Konstantin was talking about.

Next to the colonel was a floppy-haired youth, which is to say, he was perhaps five or so years younger than Cabal. Cabal had, however, worked hard to cram such grotesque quantities of responsibility, activity, and learning, both theoretical and practical, into every one of his days, that his years became akin to dog years. This youth, whom—after muttering into his chest when questioned by the colonel—Cabal had finally been able to name as one Gabriel Zoruk, swung from moodiness to airs of unwarranted moral superiority, depending upon how out of his conversational depth he found himself. Cabal disliked him instinctively, having identified him as a man still prey to his hormones while his intellect puttered around in the background like an embarrassed parent. He was dressed simply, but not cheaply, judging by the tailoring, and it seemed safe to assume that somewhere along the line he had decided to be a political activist without regard for his painfully apparent lack of competence, knowledge, or acuity. It seemed that nice hair and the eyes of a cherub had gained him attentions that he had construed as somehow inspired by his political thoughts. In this he was mistaken, an error of the sort commonly found among millionaires who believe that they are charismatic.

Beyond Zoruk was Frau Roborovski, sitting apart from her husband presumably as part of the etiquette of “mixing.” He was to Cabal’s right, two places beyond Cacon, and apparently not enjoying his liberty to chat with strangers. This may well have been because of the proprietary glances she would occasionally shoot him if he showed any sign of coming out of his shell. Marriage, it seemed, was truly an institution; in this case, something along the lines of a prison or an asylum. Cabal avoided any eye contact with Frau Roborovski that might result in conversation and moved on.

Captain Schten had managed to settle into a far more interesting conversation with the next man along—a gentleman in his sixties, whose taste in clothing was a trifle fusty but whose eyes and manner were bright. “It’s a fascinating vessel, Captain,” he said, a piece of fish falling unnoticed from his fork back to the plate. “A fascinating vessel. I’ve been out of the job for a while, but you always keep your interest.”

“This isn’t your first trip aboard an aeroship, then?” said Schten, helping himself to more potatoes.

“Oh, good heavens, no.” The man laughed in the indulgent manner of one about to make a revelation. “I used to design the things.”

“Really? You astonish me, Herr DeGarre.”

“Ah, please,
Monsieur
DeGarre, if you would. ‘Herr DeGarre’ sounds a little too much like ‘hurdy-gurdy.’”

“Hurdy—?”

“One of those ghastly boxes that the English imagine is a musical instrument. Yes, I retired from aeronaval architecture, cah, it must be seven years ago. You’ve heard of the
Destrier
class? That was one of mine.”

“
Destrier
?” Schten looked uncertain. “But that was a warship, was it not, m’sieur?”

“It was.” DeGarre took a sip of wine. “Three were built. The
Bucephalus
was sold off for scrap about five years ago, the
Marengo
is now the entire aerial navy for some little republic in the tropics, and the
Destrier
herself ploughed into a mountainside in bad weather.” A few people listening in on the conversation showed mild signs of discomfort; nobody likes to hear tales of aeroship disaster while travelling in one. “I told them not to use that type of altimeter, but you know military contractors—anything to save a few francs.” He shook his head and picked up the piece of fish again. This time there was no escape for it.

“And all three were used in the Desolée Suppression, were they not, m’sieur?” said a clear voice, cutting across all other conversations. Heads turned to look at the interjector. It was Gabriel Zoruk, all dark-haired, clean-jawed, handsome, and probably riding for a fall. He looked, Cabal thought on further consideration, like the sort of man who does all the wrong things for all the right reasons.