Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

Her plan had solidified once she heard the report of where Coeur de Fer had taken Dexter. The agents traveling overland were at a decided disadvantage, Charlotte had realized during the debriefing. They were in steam cars, which ran far slower on average than the speeds the sub was capable of in calm waters. They had to travel on the convoluted byways of the quays of Le Havre, and they were beginning from the Murcheson factory well north of town. From the station, though it was farther away, Charlotte could steer the submersible in nearly a straight line to the dock and the hulk of a decommissioned cargo freighter that Martin was evidently using as a base. What’s more, she could use the sub’s specialized listening devices to pinpoint their location on the freighter. She might even hear something that could help them take Martin without risking Dexter’s life.

The main challenge, as Charlotte saw it, would be maintaining her sanity in the claustrophobic confines of the tiny submersible long enough to get to the docked ship where Jacques Martin was holding Dexter hostage. Once she survived that, she reasoned, the rest of the rescue would seem easy in comparison.

LE HAVRE, FRANCE

ICY WATER SPLASHED over Dexter’s head, waking him with shock, and he blew the salty, stinging stuff from his mouth and nose as he tried to get his bearings.

His stomach lurched and he choked back vomit, struggling to breathe, panic setting in as he began to remember his circumstances.

“Bastard!” he sputtered, finally realizing he was no longer gagged and could speak again. Coeur de Fer was standing a few yards away from him, an empty tin bucket next to his leg. “Where’s Charlotte? What have you done with her?” Dexter rocked back and forth on the chair to which he was bound, accomplishing nothing but nearly falling over.

The question seemed to surprise his captor. “I have done nothing with her, monsieur. Have you misplaced her?”

“What?”

They stared at each other, both confused now. Coeur de Fer finally broke the silence by coughing weakly. He shook his head and repeated, “I have done nothing with Lady Hardison, monsieur. I took only you. She will come to no harm, as long as you agree to assist me.”

What the hell would you want with me? Dexter couldn’t help but think. Despite recent events, he knew he was no spy. Unless Jacques Martin was interested in recent technological advances in seismology, or desperately required a specialized weapon harness or custom-made machinery, Dexter didn’t know what he could possibly do for the man. He feared what Martin might ask, knowing that his probable inability to provide whatever it was would most likely result in his death. Everybody knew that was how it worked: when the deranged killer no longer had need of you, he killed you. Usually not in a quick, merciful way.

“Are you after the documents?” It was the only thing Dexter could think of.

“Do you have them?”

“No.”

The former spy shrugged. “I suppose it was worth asking.”

Dexter looked at Coeur de Fer more closely, noting for the first time that he seemed not so much deranged as exhausted, like a man at the end of a badly frayed rope.

“What did you want them for?” he asked, figuring that if he was to die, at least he might clear some things up first. “Were you already working for Dubois before the treaty?”

Martin slumped back, letting the wall support his shoulders. “In all this time, Whitehall really never worked it out? Moncrieffe’s death was even more pointless than I supposed, if so. I wasn’t working for Dubois back then, monsieur, I was using the plans to pay him. For these.”

He waved his mechanical hand, then used one artificial “finger” to tap the shiny device that replaced his ear. Dexter winced at the unnatural clinking sound.

“Not for the post-royalists? Not . . . not for a return to the old French regime?”

Coeur gave an odd, humorless chuckle. “No. I’m not especially political. If anything, I lean Égalité.”

“But you’re working for Dubois now.”

“No,” Coeur de Fer corrected him. “I have been working for myself for days now. Dubois went too far. I may be a monster, but I do have some limits. I put Dubois down like the dog he was. France is better for his absence. Perhaps I’m a patriot after all.”

Dexter knew he was just forestalling the inevitable, but he didn’t want to ask Martin the reason for his abduction. Once he asked, it was just a short step from Martin realizing Dexter was no use to him. But the man seemed willing enough to converse, even if Dexter was having some trouble following Coeur de Fer’s train of thought. He wondered if Charlotte had noted his tardiness. Perhaps she would contact Murcheson if she grew concerned; then they would discover he was missing. If I can just keep him talking long enough . . .

“How did Dubois go too far?” The second after he asked, Dexter thought perhaps he should have first said something more conciliatory, like taking issue with Martin’s description of himself as a monster. Fortunately, the monster in question seemed to take Dexter’s query in stride.

“He was growing nearly as bad as he was during the war, killing indiscriminately to accomplish his goals. In war, this is one thing. In business, it is quite another. He was very put out that none of his attempts on Murcheson succeeded, you know. I thought it was . . . unseemly.”

“The factory. And the steam car!” Dexter brightened. “It really was all targeted at Murcheson because of his business, then. Charlotte was right.”

“You sound relieved.”

“It wasn’t you, then?”

“No,” Martin confirmed. “Those were both Dubois. I learned about them only after the fact. He would have been just as happy to rid himself of you, however, with the steam car. And I would have gladly killed Lady Hardison to get those plans. Don’t feel too relieved.”

CHARLOTTE HAD ENSURED the fuel was topped off, but she hadn’t asked whether the air supply was adequate. The oxygen meter read as near full, but Charlotte was convinced it must be broken because the air in the minuscule cabin was growing more stale and stifling by the minute.

“Almost there,” she encouraged the little craft and herself, consciously loosening her death grip on the steering assembly.

The red proximity light flashed, and Charlotte made out a great black mass looming close in the dark water. The breakwater. She slipped between the seawalls, breathing a shallow sigh of relief as the water calmed all around the Gilded Lily . A cargo ship was heading out of port, and she navigated downward to avoid it until her little craft was nearly skimming the sandy floor of the harbor. The ship passed over and out as she traveled under and in, toward the slip where a lone agent waited for backup while a killer threatened the love of her life.

Charlotte stuffed that thought deep down into the recesses of her mind, focusing every scrap of her attention on slow, careful breathing and the navigation instruments before her.

A few minutes later—though it felt like hours—Charlotte steered past a trio of docked freighters and around another breakwater into a smaller, less traveled channel. It was also shallower, and with her hands already shaking on the controls it was all she could do to keep the craft level and avoid any unexpected obstacles. Only the knowledge that she was almost at her destination kept her from breaching the surface and throwing the submersible’s hatch up to gasp for air.

There it is . She double-checked all the instruments and her map against the coordinates and topographical sketches she’d jotted down during the briefing, while Murcheson’s attention was elsewhere. The decrepit freighter, destined for the slag heap soon, didn’t merit a slot at Dubois’s primary docks. It was moored by itself in this less convenient byway, and it made the perfect hideout for Coeur de Fer.