“Yes, Colonel. I’ll get a squad over there right away.”
“And I need death warrants written up, date sensitive, for Professor Charles Smart, who will live on Half Moon Street. And Cadet Chevron Savano, who will be a student in the Boxite Academy, which I will found after the second round of Boxstrike, apparently.”
Rosenbaum jotted down the details in a notebook.
“Method of execution?” he asked.
Box waved his hand. “Oh, at the executioner’s discretion, but both terminations must take place at Smart’s residence.”
“Discretionary, Colonel,” said Rosenbaum. “Noted.”
“I need a picture of the Pietà to hang behind my desk, and begin moving all this junk out of here.”
Rosenbaum could have pointed out that they were leaving the catacombs the following day, but the colonel was not fond of people questioning his orders.
“Send a cleanup crew to the Orient. I want all those bodies dumped in case they lead back to us at this crucial moment.”
“At once, Colonel.”
Box pointed at Vallicose’s coat. “And I would like this symbol, the Boxite symbol, stitched onto all uniforms.”
Rosenbaum nodded. “The dual symbolism is quite clever.”
“It is efficient,” corrected Box. “It conveys our ethos and loyalties in the minimum amount of strokes.” He bent to his ledger and was sketching the Boxite symbol when Farley entered the room, looking a little the worse for wear but a lot less terminal than he had when the Thundercats had found him in the orchestra pit.
“Colonel,” he said, “Malarkey’s bug is pinging loud and clear. He has run to his Grosvenor Square address. I would wager that Savano is with him. Let me take a small group of men…”
The colonel raised his large, bottom-heavy head from the twin waves of his ledger.
“No, Major,” he said. “I need you at the Hidey-Hole, to make the offer. The Rams know you. And Grosvenor Square is a privileged area; there will be plenty of police around. We need someone quiet and deadly. Rosenbaum, you are the sneakiest of us. Do you think Malarkey is a man you could kill?”
Woodrow clicked his pen. He was tired of being the secretary; it was not what he had been trained to do. He was trained to kill people without drawing attention to himself, and he hadn’t had a mission in months.
He could have answered: I can kill Malarkey in a heartbeat.
Or:
I could end his life in a flash.
Or his favorite from the Godfather movies.
Malarkey will be sleeping with the fishes.
But imagery and metaphor would simply confuse the colonel, who prized plain-speaking above all else.
So he said, “Yes, Colonel, I can kill Malarkey.”
“Good,” said Box. “Do it tomorrow morning.”
The thing that nobody ever factors in is personality. Time is like water: big people make a big splash.
—Professor Charles Smart
THE BATTERING RAMS’ HIDEY-HOLE, ROGUES’ WALK, LONDON, 1899
The distance in miles from Grosvenor Square to the Haymarket was barely a single unit, but measured with a moral ruler, the divide between Otto Malarkey’s town residences could fairly be judged as worlds apart. Where Grosvenor Square was the genteel, garden park where lords and dukes were happy to pay in excess of fifty thousand of Her Majesty’s guineas for a single dwelling and spend such a fortune on brocaded Louis Seize boudoirs that it would have in fact been more economical to paper every wall with pound notes, the Haymarket thoroughfare was such a concentrated collection of vice and crime that its environs were religiously avoided by all but the most corrupt bluebottles on the beat. If Grosvenor Square might be described as the jewel of the capital, then the Haymarket could be fairly called London town’s phony diamond. From a distance it glittered, but at close quarters it became clear that its glitter came not from a precious stone, but from the blade of the dagger coming to slit Johnny Punter’s throat.
And this is where they have sent me, thought Michael Figary, as he stepped down from a carriage on the top end of Regent Circus. This is where Missus Figary’s only son must go for his master.
The Haymarket rolled out before him in all its tawdry glory. Even at this time of the late morning, with the sun barely rising from the chimney pots, the revelers had begun to shake their musty feathers and make the pilgrimage to the market for their opium pipes, gin jars, and gambling parlors; clustering around these sporting gents, eager to lighten their purses with or without consent, were the shoals of sharp-faced rogues, thieves, and shamsters.
Michael Figary pinched a handkerchief over his nose as he picked his way along the sidewalk, stepping nimbly over fallen troopers in the brandy wars, and skirting the splashes from droppings carelessly deposited by wilted cab horses. The handkerchief was not an effective barrier against the assault on his nostrils, but then, how could a mere square of perfumed lace hope to compete against the odor of a hundred years’ unchecked decadence?
On first listen, Figary’s instructions had seemed simple: Gain access to the Hidey-Hole and find the lie of the land viz the Rams’ loyalties, then skip smartly to Grosvenor Square with any informations.
Straightforward it sounded, but this forthrightness crumbled under examination. Firstly, how to gain entrance to the Rams’ citadel? How then to remain during a war council? Finally, how to emerge unscathed with a pan full of intelligence to convey to his master?
Michael Figary mulled over these questions as he approached the double doors to the Hidey-Hole, definitely the most notorious den of vice in all of London, and certainly in the top five in Europe. The answer to all his problems was as plain as it had been since he arrived at it in Grosvenor Square: hard cash would open doors for both his casual admittance and hurried exit. Shining sovereigns would buy the nuggets of information he sought. These men were the princes of corruption, and princes of every court had one thing in common: a desire for currency to pay their tailors and romance their ladies. There was not enough money in the world to satisfy princes.
Well, perhaps for one night, thought Figary, feeling the weight of sovereigns in the pockets of a second pair of breeches he wore beneath the outer tweeds, breathing deeply to feel the shift of the pound notes tied to his chest. The commodore had given him over two hundred pounds to spend at his own discretion this evening.
And were I less loyal, or indeed more sober, then I would book a first-class berth on a steamer to Dublin.
But Figary was both loyal and slightly drunk,
and he intended to see his mission through. For although Michael Figary affected an Irish Catholic innocence, in actuality he had once been employed by the Dublin crime boss Lord Brass as a dipper on commission in the Monto area of Dublin, which bore some resemblance to the Haymarket. In fact, Michael Figary had operated as one of the best pickpockets in the city until he saved enough money to relocate to London, where he reinvented himself as Missus Figary’s only son and butler extraordinaire. So Figary was perhaps not as out of place as he pretended; indeed, he was more familiar with the goings-on in this class of place than he cared to admit.
The Hidey-Hole was open for business, and though Figary had never been in this particular establishment, he trotted up the steps with the confidence of an inveterate degenerate.
There were a couple of real beauties guarding the door—beauties in the ironic sense that even their own mothers could not refer to these mugs as beautiful, or even handsome. Plain would be stretching it. Ugly would be closer to the mark, and terrifying would be spot-on.
I suppose that’s why they are at the door, thought Figary.
He addressed the men as though answering their question.
“Yes indeed, it is a brisk morning, so it is.”
“So it is, what?” asked malevolent bludger number one, who Figary could now see sported a glass eye in the place of his own right eye. A glass eye with a purple skull instead of an iris.