Three Kings Read online

‘Oh no. Not staff. If I had to guess, I’d say he was one of those MI5 types.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Something about his hair, I think.’

  Green Man raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. Instead he stood up, being careful not to bash his head on the ceiling. ‘Thank you, Francine, you’ve been most helpful.’

  ‘Oh, not at all, it’s been so lovely to have …’

  She went on like this for some time but Green Man didn’t take in any of it. He was already planning to call Wayfarer and have her begin investigating all jokers born in 1948, with a focus on orphans and adoptions.

  ‘… can hardly blame him though. There’s so much on young people’s plates these days. I’m just glad to see him when he does come …’

  Green Man nodded politely and left, his cup of tea still steaming on the table, untouched.

  Alan hesitated outside the door of Constance’s atelier. The street was noisy, with cars rushing past and crows squawking overhead; she got a lot of foot traffic in this location. He could just stand here for a little while, observe the passers-by, play the little game of working out as much as he could about them from the tiny specifics of their lives. That game could lead to useful information; it had often, during the war. But Alan was procrastinating now, and he knew it.

  This wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation, and he was fond of Constance, in his own way. They’d worked together collegially over the years, and he’d enjoyed her sharp wit as much as he’d appreciated her skill with a needle.

  To make it worse, if she made Henry impervious clothes, that would make his own job all the harder. Alan had presented Richard with two plans early this morning:

  The first one requires your brother’s death. The second one doesn’t.

  Richard had wanted time to think it over, which was only prudent, though the clock was ticking and they should set plans in motion, one way or the other. But in the meantime, the Lion had called him in. Constance had backed out of tailoring for Henry. Ranjit demanded that he come down here and force Constance to clothe Henry. Whatever it takes, Alan. You know the stakes.

  Alan sighed, and entered the shop. Grey velvet chairs, pale grey walls, long silk curtains at the windows and oriental rugs on the floor. Modern and elegant; the Seamstress had come a long way, risen high. Of course, the higher you rose … No sign of the tailors and seamstresses here – just a single girl, coming to greet him. But no – Constance herself walked into the room, and with the tiniest gestures sent the girl away, slipping behind a curtain. Leaving Alan along with Constance.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘So, they sent you, did they? I should’ve known. Well, I suppose we’d best have a little chat.’

  Alan braced himself as she walked towards him, prepared with his arguments. Half an hour later, Constance hadn’t let him come even two inches further into the shop, and he was still arguing – the woman was incredibly stubborn. ‘Constance, if Henry is hurt or killed, you know you’ll be blamed for it.’

  Constance crossed her arms tightly in front of her and frowned. ‘Blamed by whom? Only a handful of people know about my power.’

  Alan hated himself for saying the words, knowing what a threat they carried – ‘That could change.’ The things he did for England.

  She took a quick indrawn breath, her eyes hardening.

  Alan continued, ‘We’ve kept your secret this long. But if this relationship is no longer a mutually beneficial one, the Crown has no obligation to continue to protect you. And if the world learned of your talents …’

  She snapped, ‘I’d be picked up within the hour, forced to slave the rest of my life for the Fists or some other equally horrible group. Is that what you want, Turing?’

  A few minutes ago, she’d called him Alan. ‘None of this is what I want. But I’m sworn to the throne’ – whose throne, was the question – ‘and if you continue to refuse, Henry won’t hesitate to order us to take action against you. Do you understand?’

  ‘I’m not an idiot, Turing. I understand perfectly well. I understand that you are a barking dog, and you answer to your masters.’ Constance turned and paced the length of the room furiously, before returning to spitting distance from him and saying, ‘I hope Henry chokes on his damned soup.’

  ‘I need your answer, Constance. What’s it to be?’ Alan Turing held his breath and waited, hoping that she’d make this easy for him. He had enough to worry about right now – he didn’t need trouble from the Seamstress too.

  ‘Fine,’ Constance said. ‘I’ll make Henry’s clothes.’

  ‘I’ll send a car around tomorrow,’ Turing said. ‘The same as we did for Her Majesty. And no backing out this time.’

  ‘Very well,’ she replied, practically pushing him out of the door. ‘Now get out.’

  She shut the door and leaned forward, putting her forehead against the cool glass. She supposed Bobbin had been right, she was a traitor to her people. At least the Lion had been decent about it when he was pressuring her.

  ‘So, yer gonna go ahead and make clothes for that bastard?’

  She turned. Her tailors were clumped together at the end of the small catwalk in the showroom.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied with resignation. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Are you fucking mad?’ It was Jeremy, a tall joker with long, delicate fingers up and down his arms. He was brilliant at finishing work and could design the most marvellous knitted creations. Never had Constance heard him so much as say ‘damn’ or ‘bollocks’. He was the gentlest soul in her shop.

  ‘Are you fucking mad?’ he repeated.

  Constance could only stare at him, speechless. Several of the other jokers nodded.

  ‘I can’t believe you agreed to this after that whole display of “not going to clothe Henry. Not I”.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she began.

  ‘We don’t need to understand,’ Brian said. The smell of peppermint filled the air as it did when he was upset. ‘You said you wouldn’t, and now you’ve gone back on your word.’

  Constance was wounded. Not only had Bobbin left and was God-only-knew-where, but now her people, and they were her people, by God, were turning on her. And it was all because of Turing, cold-hearted machine-mind he was, and Henry. She positively loathed Henry at that moment, with Turing not too far behind.

  ‘I can’t trust you any more, Miss Russell,’ Brian continued, a hint of tears in his voice. ‘Been with you for twenty years and I can’t believe you’d let us down like this.’ He turned and walked into the back of the shop. A few moments later, he reappeared with his coat and hat. ‘I appreciate that you gave me a chance, but I can’t work for you while you serve him.’

  A few of her other tailors repeated what Brian had – going and fetching their bits and pieces, then they left the shop, the door swinging shut behind the jokers. A few were women who’d been with her for thirty years or more.

  Taking a deep breath, she looked over at the rest of her tailors. Some refused to meet her eyes. ‘If anyone wants to join them, you should go now,’ she began. ‘I’m not going to sack anyone or give you a bad reference. It’s up to you. Things look bad, I suppose, and I can understand if you want to leave, too.’

  They stared at her mutely. She couldn’t discern exactly what they were thinking, and not just because several of them had jokers that had transformed their faces into something terrible. Silently, they turned and went back up the stairs.

  Constance stalked into her office and plonked herself down at her drawing table. She stared at it, unseeing, uninspired, frightened. Bobbin was gone – she had no idea where. Half her staff had walked out and who knew how long she might keep the ones who’d stayed. And tomorrow, she was being forced to clothe a man she hated, to use her wild card power to protect someone who deserved no protection at all. Normally, her anger would have galvanized her, but now she only felt old, flat, and drained.

  The streetlights outside the MI7 office building had come on hours ago, but
there was no need for additional lights in Alan’s office: the six large screens spanning the far wall gave off more than enough. Alan’s eyes barely blinked as he scanned the data, endlessly scrolling. No nat could possibly make sense of the information coming so fast, but Alan’s mind, which forgot nothing he asked it to store, captured it all, analysed furiously.

  These computers had got much faster, but were still fundamentally ignorant. Even the best super-computers needed direction from a human: true AI was just a dream. And if you asked computers the wrong questions – rubbish in, rubbish out. If the researchers who worked on AI had known of Alan’s existence, they would have tried to draw him into the search. But would true AI actually be good for humanity, or would the machines resent their human progenitors? Might they even rise up against the humans?

  Alan was too old for such questions, and it was too late to imagine such a public life for himself. This path suited him better: sitting in a quiet room, lending his unique talents to the country he loved and remaining their closely guarded secret. Alan Turing had grown comfortable with secrets over the years. Though now, he was looking to unravel one.

  If Margaret had been telling the truth, if the whole idea hadn’t been some fever-dream of advanced old age, there would surely be traces of the lost prince, traces that could be found. Alan had gone back to the early sixties, examining DNA samples, looking for markers for the royal family. Richard’s pattern was intimately familiar to him, and a cousin would be a close match. Alan had been at this for hours. So far, nothing.

  He couldn’t help imagining the life of this joker child – living in obscurity for decades, likely with no knowledge of their true parentage. Maybe it would be best to simply let the sleeping dog lie? Richard was surely better suited to the throne. And would the nation even accept a joker, however good their claim? Opening the question might bring simmering tensions to the fore, lead to riots, death, mass slaughter. Alan Turing had seen enough of that during the war. His throat tightened at the thought of such violence returning to England’s shores.

  The delivery lorry reached the barracks just outside of London. Sentries looked inside; waved wands at the tyres, passed mirrors underneath. Then a pair of dogs gave it the once-over and failed to bark. ‘In you go,’ an officer said.

  It drove through a razor-topped gate; past blinking red cameras and motion detectors; watched by random patrols and even the vibrations of its passing were graphed by equipment sensitive enough to count the worms in the soil. Such was the paranoia of military intelligence in this age of wild cards.

  Badb wondered if the operators in the building were annoyed when a scruffy crow settled right in front of one of their cameras. Beneath her, she had a view of the officers assembling in meeting room 6a. A crow had better eyesight than any nat, and she watched with interest as Henry’s bodyguard was escorted right to the front of the long table.

  ‘Look at you, standing to attention.’ It was a young officer who spoke, his accent like something out of an old war movie. He should have had a moustache, really, but a nasty knife scar ran from just under his nose all the way to the tip of his chin. A present from Belfast, she felt sure. Perhaps that was what put such bile into his voice and it pleased her to think that her great work in Ireland had crossed the sea before her to plant such strong roots here. ‘What are you,’ he said, ‘but a glorified security guard?’

  An older man, sitting at the far end of the table, cleared his throat. ‘Now, now, De Vere.’ Good Cop’s accent was identical to that of his younger colleague. ‘I’m sure this gentleman has seen military service before. Am I right, Mr Savic? Reputable, honourable service?’

  Their guest gave them little satisfaction. The goddess had warned him they would be fishing. ‘You do not need this … pantomime. Is that good word? I told the King everything. Your Green Man is in his hideout. Now my part is done.’

  De Vere’s snarl was all the more savage for the way it made his scar writhe like a trapped lizard. ‘And yet you haven’t told His Majesty where you got your information, have you, Yuri?’

  ‘Yuri is not my name.’ He shrugged, as though indifferent to his surroundings. And in a way, he probably was. His mind would be with his daughter and his British girlfriend. Every word that came out of his mouth was keeping them safe. Safe from accidents.

  ‘My source will not be revealed to the likes of you. I will tell only Silver Helix. It is they who should handle Green Man for the king.’

  That got their attention. Every back in the room straightened. Fists clenched. But only the young De Vere was intemperate enough to actually snarl. ‘Aces!’ he said and not in the envying way most mortals spoke that word. ‘Barely once in the past decade have they laid a glove on the Green Man. And why would they harm their joker cousins anyway?’

  ‘What are you suggesting, Captain De Vere?’ asked the older man. He wasn’t chiding his subordinate; if anything, a slight smile tugged at the corner of his upper lip.

  De Vere snapped to sudden attention. ‘Sir!’ he cried. ‘Permission to clean out the vermin!’

  Now there was no disguising the older man’s smile. ‘Granted, my boy.’ He turned to the bodyguard. ‘There you have it, Mr Savic. You’re welcome to wait here until we have our man.’ There was no disguising the fact that this was an order. He stood up. ‘Some of my colleagues will continue our earlier conversation about your source of information. They are very patient. Now, if you’ll excuse me? I have a mission to plan.’

  The knock at the door came after Jasper had been put to bed. Noel looked up from the book he was reading and frowned. He was expecting no one. La Traviata was playing softly on the Bose Wave player. He left it. It would cover his footfalls. Kicking off his loafers, he removed the pistol from his shoulder holster and approached the door, staying well off to the side.

  ‘Yes, who is it?’ he called.

  ‘Zachary Pike.’ The name meant nothing to him and Noel said as much. ‘I’m senior equerry to the King.’

  Well, that was odd. Noel rubbed his chin. He hadn’t shaved in several days and had actually raised a bit of stubble. ‘May I see some identification?’ He unlocked the door and opened it the width of the chain. He also took a quick three-second look through the crack, and recognized him as the man from the cathedral who had reacted when Henry decided to pause for questions. Then as now he was wearing a very elegant suit with no suspicious bulges. Pike handed over a card that had the royal crest and his information. Noel opened the door fully and stepped into the corridor.

  ‘My son is sleeping so if we could talk out here.’

  ‘Of course. His Majesty wishes to speak with you.’

  ‘Really? That’s … odd. He wants a magician?’

  Pike gave a discreet cough. ‘I believe His Majesty is more interested in your other line of work.’

  ‘Knowledgeable bastard, aren’t you?’

  ‘I have the honour of His Majesty’s confidence.’

  ‘Look, my son is nine. I can’t leave him alone—’

  ‘A member of the royal protection squad served as my driver. Would he be an acceptable babysitter until you return?’

  Curiosity warred with caution. Naturally curiosity won. ‘All right.’

  When she got to Bobbin’s flat, Constance let herself in. She’d had a key for as long as she could remember, but had never used it before. There had been times when she’d been curious about how Bobbin lived and what she’d find there, but it would have been a terrible intrusion to use it unless asked. And he’d never asked.

  ‘Bobbin?’ she asked, pushing the door open. The curtains were drawn and the room was shadowed. She fumbled for the light switch then clicked it on. She saw a comfortable room, not unlike the parlour in her own flat. Deep leather chairs and a wide sofa were arranged next to the fireplace. There was a beautiful but well-worn oriental rug on the floor. The memory of tobacco hung in the air.

  ‘Bobbin?’

  She made her way into the kitchen. Like the living room, it rather r
esembled her own in taste. The colours were similar. Thinking back on it, she never realized how much they liked the same things. It just seemed perfectly normal that they agreed on so much.

  Though she didn’t want to, she went to the bedroom. She worried that she might find the worst there. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw only that the bed hadn’t been slept in. But then she wondered, with no small worry and annoyance, where the hell he could be.

  ‘Bugger,’ she swore softly. Then she stepped forward and touched the cover on the bed. It was a soft wool blanket and she gave it a little pat before she turned and made her way outside.

  One did not shake hands with a king. One paused in the door and bowed one’s head. Noel had been taught that in his earliest days at the Silver Helix when Flint and Turing had been busily coaching a sixteen-year-old how to dress, how to dance, how to seduce and how to kill. The etiquette around royals had been drilled into him on the off chance that he might one day meet one. Now twenty-three years later he was about to. He was not to offer his hand unless Henry did. Henry didn’t. He just waved away Pike who withdrew and closed the door to the study behind him.

  The room was fussy and cluttered with heavy furniture that sported dull gold upholstery and a faded oriental carpet. The bookcases were filled with leather-bound volumes. Noel wondered how long ago they had actually been touched. The room smelled of cigar smoke with a faint underlying scent of perfume. This had obviously been the Queen’s study before her death, even though Noel had suspected as much given the Dresden figurines on the mantelpiece. The charming shepherdess and her beau didn’t seem in keeping with the personality of the man who stood before him.

  Unlike most of the other Windsors, Henry had the benefit of being the child of the vivacious Margaret and Peter Townsend and the vestiges of handsomeness remained, though right now his expression was a mix of fury and frustration. He moved behind the desk and sat down. He didn’t offer that Noel should do the same.