Richelieu has him. If not, then we can grab him and then we'll have a hostage. They'll have no choice but to listen to us! Either way, they'll have an adjustment on their hands, an adjustment made that much more complicated by our being here to interfere with it.'
'No, no, Jimmy, you see, you don't understand the game at all. I intend to make certain that Buckingham gets away.'
'But… why lure him to Paris in the first place, then?'
'To set up the next act in this scenario,' Taylor said. 'But you won't have to worry about any of that for now. You'll have another job to do. I want you and Tonio to find Jack Bennett and that agent. See if they'll lead you to any of the others. Find out what you can, then kill them.'
Jimmy left, feeling confused. Letting Buckingham get away made no sense whatsoever. Obviously, it would take an adjustment in order to attain their goal. The simple act of threatening to create a timestream split would never result in their demands being met by the warmongers. No, the threat would have to be brought home to them. They'd have to face an adjustment situation, one in which the interference of the Timekeepers would be a factor added to all the other difficulties inherent in such a task. They had a chronoplate now. That gave them the edge. They could create an adjustment situation, interfere with its resolution, and then clock out to another period and repeat the entire process. They could repeat their demands and continue to create one adjustment situation after another, forcing the warmongers to bring more and more attention to the problem, draining their financial reserves, putting a strain upon the Referee Corps and the TIA and the adjustment teams, nipping at the heels of the war machine until it was no longer cost-effective, until they realized that they could never win. It was the logical course of action.
But Adrian Taylor wasn't being logical. Or Jimmy couldn't see the logic. What was he planning? His cover was surely blown, yet he seemed completely unconcerned. He had created an excellent opportunity for an adjustment situation and he was walking away from it, using it to set up… what?
Jimmy was beginning to have a lot of doubts about the operation. Terrorist tactics had to be hit-and-run in order for them to be successful. They had an opportunity to hit-and-run now, but Taylor wasn't taking it. He was building up to something else, to some more elaborate game. Somehow, the TIA had received intelligence about their operation and they had brought at least one team of agents in. That didn't bother Taylor. Taylor's cover had been blown. That didn't bother Taylor, either. One of the group had disappeared, killed most likely, possibly taken prisoner to be interrogated, to reveal all the members of their cell. That didn't bother Taylor. What would it take to bother Taylor? Why this pointless stalking of the traitor, Bennett, and the agents? Why take unnecessary risks when all it took was to create an adjustment situation quickly, cut and run, and repeat the process somewhere else, tying up the opposition's manpower until they realized that they only had one choice-capitulate or face a timestream split? A split was something no one wanted, not the warmongers, not the Timekeepers, and certainly not the league. The key to success was to walk that ragged edge between adjustment and disaster, to exhaust the Referee Corps with adjustments until they faced their folly and brought the time wars to a halt. But to Taylor, it was all a game, a senseless, crazy rivalry with the agent who had dogged his heels for years. It was putting the entire operation in jeopardy.
Jimmy was wondering if Taylor could be trusted with leading the operation. Based on recent evidence, the answer had to be a resounding no. But Taylor could not be relieved. It would not be a matter as simple as holding a meeting of the cell and voting him out of office. No, if it came to that, Taylor would have to be eliminated and that would not be easy. Taylor was dangerous. Taylor was suspicious to the point of being paranoid. Taylor had that musclebound German, Freytag, a homicidal brute who could snap him like a twig with just one hand. And Taylor had the chronoplate. Jimmy was alone. He could sound out Tonio, but he would have to be very careful, very subtle.
There was nothing to be done now except to follow Taylor's leadership. Bennett and the woman would be found, questioned, and killed. It would be risky, but there was nothing else to do. He would follow Taylor's orders, but the operation would come first. He would sound out Tonio, he would watch Taylor carefully, and he would bide his time. In the end, it always came down to time.
D'Artagnan was in love. More to the point, he was in lust, though he had not yet attained either the age or the experience that would enable him to tell the difference. He and the three musketeers, having become fast friends following their run-in with the cardinal's guards, had spent the better part of the evening discussing the mysterious woman who had intervened on their behalf. None of them had ever seen her before and each of them was fascinated by her. Each vowed to discover her identity, each maintained that it was he whom she had meant to save, and each had his own unspoken amorous designs upon the lady.
Over the next couple of days, their attention was occupied by this delightful mystery, but not to the exclusion of yet another illegal brawl with Richelieu's guards. Due to Treville's intervention with the king on their behalf and Louis's own secret delight at seeing Richelieu's men embarrassed, the musketeers were not only spared punishment, but they were given the sort of praise a master might lavish on his hounds upon discovering that they had torn apart a larger pack of dogs. The king had been especially delighted with Cadet D'Artagnan and, seeing that he was poor, he had gifted him with a purse containing the sum of forty pistoles.
The Gascon had celebrated by buying himself a fine new suit of clothes and procuring the services of a valet, a bedraggled, flea-bitten, scarecrow of a man whose name was Planchet. Porthos had found him sleeping in a garbage heap. He smelled terrible, but he was as grateful as a stray responding to the kindness of a stranger. All this was very pleasant to the Gascon, but it did nothing to assuage his mounting passion. D'Artagnan was a young man of extraordinary simplicity. His attention could be completely occupied by only one thing at a time. The new distraction appeared in the person of his landlord's wife, the pretty Constance Bonacieux. He already had the mystery woman of the mud puddle on his mind and he was preoccupied with his plans for courtship and seduction. However, the mystery woman was still a mystery, nowhere to be found, unknown, intangible. Constance, on the other hand, was very real; she was nearby and she was, it took no great perception to discern, available. D'Artagnan, being an eminently pragmatic youth, simply shifted gears and redirected his attention toward a more accessible objective.
The fact that Constance Bonacieux was also a woman of some mystery and the fact that she was married only served to add spice to the situation. In fact, her about-to-be-cuckolded husband had approached him just the other day, offering to forget about the rent if the dashing Monsieur D'Artagnan, who was already gaining something of a reputation as a swordsman, would help to rescue Constance from her abductors. This, in itself, had piqued the Gascon's curiosity.
It turned out that Constance's godfather was the cloak-bearer to the queen and that he had secured for her a position in the palace as both maid and companion to Anne of Austria. It was in the palace that Constance had made her residence, coming home to see her much older husband twice a week. After she had missed a visit, Bonacieux had received a letter. He had shown it to D'Artagnan. It read: 'Do not seek for your wife. She will be restored to you when there is no longer occasion for her. If you make a single step to find her, you are lost.'
D'Artagnan had not been at all certain about how he would go about finding the lady, much less rescuing her from her abductors, but the story had intrigued him and he was in no position to turn down the offer of free room and board. He had barely given the matter any thought when two singularly interesting things happened. Bonacieux was arrested by the cardinal's guards and taken away for questioning and, in his absence, who but the kidnapped Constance should appear, having escaped from her captors by letting herself down from a window by the means of knotted sheets. She had made her way straight home to be sheltered by her husband, but in his place, she found D'Artagnan. The Gascon instantly perceived that it was a situation Madame Bonacieux found not at all unpleasant.
He saw that Constance was very young and pretty and quite obviously possessed of a strong sexual appetite. He knew that the opportunities for romantic diversion at the palace were not rare, but Constance, being a married woman, had her reputation to consider. At the palace, there would be no telling who was an informer. For many at court, it was a profitable occupation. Moreover, most of her time would be spent being a companion to the queen.
Constance did little to hide the fact that the possibility of a passionate and deliciously illicit romance so close at hand was having an effect on her. Her smoldering glances were not lost upon D'Artagnan. Her husband was much older than she was and the Gascon suspected that Madame Bonacieux's twice-weekly visits to her husband did little to satisfy her cravings. She had, after all, seen the handsome gentlemen at court and, compared with such
