Cabal: Johannes Cabal, the Detective Part 5

His wife had a good six inches on him and was younger, no more than thirty. She was wan rather than simply pale, and she wore her loosely coiled strawberry-blond hair like an affliction. She had an unlovely dress in mustard yellow hanging about her that in no way complimented her complexion. She stood beside and a little behind her husband, and they looked like the makings of a poultice. They served to remind Cabal-should a reminder ever be necessary-why his social skills were so poor: people were loathsome and not worth the practise.

"Meissner," he said, shaking hands with Roborovski. "Gerhard Meissner." He hadn't even let Roborovski's hand go before his wife was offering hers, palm down. Hoping he successfully suppressed the weary note that would surely colour his voice should he let it, he clicked his heels and kissed her hand. "Enchante," he added, for want of anything sensible to say. In his experience, it was possible to talk any sort of rubbish in a foreign language and so sound sophisticated.

As he looked up in straightening, he noticed a glimmer in her eye that he didn't altogether like. There was something calculating there, and the fact that he had no idea what she was calculating caused him a twinge to his sense of self-preservation. In an instant, the glimmer was gone and she was looking at him with the gla.s.sy expression of a bourgeois hausfrau, or a head of livestock.

Herr Roborovski was looking enquiringly at Miss Barrow. "And your friend is ... ?" he asked Cabal.

Miss Barrow, however, was not going to be spoken for, no matter what pa.s.sed for etiquette in Mirkarvia. "Leonie Barrow," she said, and held out her hand. That she held it out thumb upwards, for shaking, may have been lost on the Roborovskis, for they both shook her hand with polite smiles and the ghost of a curtsey from Frau Roborovski.

"You're English, aren't you?" she asked Miss Barrow. "I've always wanted to visit England, but Linus is so busy, we never seem to get the chance to have a holiday."

"Oh? Why, what do you do?"

She addressed the question directly to Herr Roborovski, but he just looked blankly at her like a rep actor who was considering what to have for supper instead of watching for his cue. After a moment, Frau Roborovski said, "He's a cabinetmaker." Her husband jumped slightly, like a rep actor who has finally decided to have Welsh rabbit for supper and returns to the here and now to discover a stage full of his fellow actors glaring daggers at him.

"Oh, yes," he said, as if the statement was so astounding that it required confirmation. "I'm a cabinetmaker."

"And that keeps you busy, does it?" asked Cabal, seeking to reconcile cabinetmaking, extreme busyness, and journeys on luxury aeroships to his satisfaction.

"Ah, um. Yes?"

"Linus," interjected his wife with the mildly acidic tone of someone who suspects that they're being made sport of but isn't quite sure, "is very successful. He runs one of the most respected workshops in the country!" The end of the sentence was punctuated with a sharp nod of the And don't you forget it, buster variety.

"Running a cabinet manufactory." Cabal activated the muscles that careful research had revealed would create a supercilious smile. It was one of his more convincing ones. "How fascinating."

Herr Roborovski beamed, a happy hamster. His wife did not. "What do you do, Herr Meissner?"

"Me? Oh, I'm just a cog in the Mirkarvian civil service, I'm afraid. I neither sow nor do I reap, in all but the most figurative way. Making things with your hands, though, that's something to be proud of." To ill.u.s.trate the point, he held out his own hands, palms upwards. They hadn't seen any serious manual work in the past four months, at which time they had been calloused from unofficial nocturnal exhumations-the necessity of bludgeoning several recalcitrant revenants back into an inanimate state, and then the resulting unofficial nocturnal cremations. Now they looked like the hands of a pencil-pushing administrator who might occasionally do a little gardening in a window box.

Herr Roborovski unconsciously mimicked Cabal's action, holding up his hands. Cabal noted that they showed some signs of labour but, like his own, not recently. While coming to the conclusion that, boringly enough, the little man and his irritating wife were just what they appeared to be, Cabal distractedly added, "I mean, all that arcane business with G-clamps, sh.e.l.lac, dovecote joins, lathes, and suchlike. Always nice to actually make things with your hands."

"It is nice," he agreed, a little mournfully.

"In your own time, of course." The wan Frau Roborovski seemed to take exception to building anything that was not for profit. "You have your company to think of." Deciding that her husband was clinically incapable of self-promotion, she said to Cabal and Miss Barrow, "We are hoping to expand into Katamenia. Linus's designs are popular there, but having to transport things through Senza when those brutes insist on dismantling everything-as if one is likely to hide a cannon in a credenza-is costing us money. The intention is to open a workshop in Katamenia and cut out all that Senzan nonsense entirely."

"Why would you ... why would one want to hide a cannon in a credenza?" asked Miss Barrow.

"Military aid. The Katamenians are barbarians, of course, but they are our historical allies. The Senzans fear a war on two fronts and use some silly treaty or another to prevent Katamenia rearming."

"Rearming? How did they lose their last lot of weapons?"

The Roborovskis looked uncomfortable. "I'm sure Herr Meissner can-"

"No, no," Cabal a.s.sured Frau Roborovski. "You're doing a good job."

Cornered, she admitted, "There was a war. More of a border dispute, really"-Cabal, listening, thought of the many invasions that had started with a trifling "border dispute" to provide a casus belli-"that the Senzans blew out of all proportion. The next thing you know, the Katamenians are expected to demobilise all their armed forces and melt down their weapons. Just enough for police actions, that's all they were allowed. A disgraceful affront to a nation's sovereignty! A calculated insult to a proud martial tradition!"

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 pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.sion 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 ident.i.ty from the Mirkarvians you're probably committing some heinous crime, according to the comedic doc.u.ment 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 G.o.d'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 surrept.i.tious 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 consomme 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 pa.s.sengers. 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 role, 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 inst.i.tute dedicated to the study of my guts. The Alexei Aloysius Cacon Memorial Inst.i.tute."

"It's traditional to be dead before having a memorial inst.i.tution 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 dispa.s.sion 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 gla.s.ses 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, Fraulein, 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 a.s.sure 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 quant.i.ties 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 embarra.s.sed parent. He was dressed simply, but not cheaply, judging by the tailoring, and it seemed safe to a.s.sume 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 sh.e.l.l. Marriage, it seemed, was truly an inst.i.tution; 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 cla.s.s? 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 sc.r.a.p 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; n.o.body 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 Desolee 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.

Cabal leaned back in his seat and, inclining his head towards her, asked Miss Barrow quietly, "What is the 'Desolee Suppression'?"

She looked at him, suspicious with disbelief. "You're joking?"

"Not at this exact moment, no."

"You've never heard of the Desolee Suppression?"

Cabal bit his lip and sought patience. "If I knew, I'd hardly be asking, would I?"

He received no useful reply. She was no longer listening to him but to the exchange between DeGarre and Zoruk. "I'll tell you later," she said offhandedly to Cabal, leaving him to stew.

"Yes," said DeGarre, evenly and without rancour. "They were used in the Suppression."

"Your gleaming death machines," said the young man, showing an entirely unconscious attachment to the melodramatic turn of phrase. Another mark of his breed, Cabal observed. "Against women and children. Does that make you proud?"

"Mein herr," began the captain, beginning to heat at this discourtesy. DeGarre interrupted him.

"Monsieur, you are a romantic, non?"

Zoruk frowned, uncertain.

"I was young once, too," continued DeGarre. "Things are pleasantly blanc et noir, are they not? All morality is a matter of certainty."

Cabal glanced significantly at Miss Barrow, but she was listening attentively to the exchange.

"The ships I built were intended for aerial warfare. Their every line proclaims it. Warship against warship. That was my brief and that was my design. The Suppression, as has been repeatedly shown and famously proclaimed, was the decision of an aeroflotilla commodore straying far, far beyond his orders. When he took those ships into a low-level attack against the villages of the Guasoir Valley, he did so out of a rage of frustration. He had been sent to fight the partisans. They, awkwardly, did not wear uniforms. They did not simply vanish among the villagers. They were the villagers. They slaughtered patrols and then vanished amongst their kindred. It was an impossible situation and should never have been given to an aeroship flotilla to resolve. A case for the infantry. Von Falks should have deployed his marines to prove as much and then reported it to his superiors. As we all know, he did not. It was regrettable."

"Regrettable?" spat Zoruk, but DeGarre hadn't finished.

"The Destrier and her sisters were built to fight a good war, by the rules of war, to the honour of war. Commodore Von Falks sullied those rules, his family, and, to my chagrin, the reputation of my ships. Direct your ire elsewhere, monsieur. It is wasted here." He reached for his winegla.s.s and took a calm sip amidst a light patter of applause from other pa.s.sengers who preferred that war crimes not be discussed at dinner. Zoruk glared at him, picked up his cutlery, and made as if to start eating again but, after a moment's wavering, slammed them onto his plate, stood up, and walked out with less dignity than he supposed. Cabal watched him go with approval: anything that distracted attention away from, say, a fugitive necromancer travelling abroad under the alias of a comatose civil servant, was to be encouraged.