fire your pistols. That’ll warn us and it may give the soldiers pause, since they won’t know what they’ll be riding into. The moment Finn’s got Marguerite safely out of the inn, you all get to Pere Blanchard’s hut as quickly as you can. I’ll stay behind to redirect the Comte de Tournay and St. Just.”
“Alone?” said Lucas.
“Chauvelin doesn’t know me,” Cobra said. “I’ll be safe enough. Besides, without someone to guide them, they’ll miss that footpath down to the cottage in the dark. Now get going.”
Lucas and Andre split up, each of them running to take up their positions at opposite ends of the street, where they would have a good view of any soldiers approaching. Even if they didn’t see them in the darkness, they would hear the approach of mounted men and have enough time to fire their warning shots and run for it.
“How the hell did Marguerite find out-” Finn began, but Cobra interrupted him.
“You can ask her later. Right now, let’s get her out of there before Chauvelin shows up. We can worry about the fine points once we’re all safely out of France.”
They ran to the inn.
“Don’t waste any time,” said Cobra.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” said Finn. He opened the door and entered the Chat Gris. He noticed that Brogard wasn’t doing as badly as he usually did. At first glance, he estimated that there were perhaps fifteen or twenty customers seated at the tables. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the moment that he entered the inn, it seemed to him that there was a brief lull in the undertone of conversation. Standing there, he felt suddenly very vulnerable.
Pull yourself together, Delaney, he thought. This is no time to have an attack of paranoia.
He put an expression of vague boredom on his face and started walking casually across the room, heading for the stairs leading up to the second floor. He was about halfway across the room when he heard someone call out Blakeney’s name. For a moment, he froze, then turned around to see Chauvelin rising from a table about twenty feet away.
“It is you,” said Chauvelin, beaming. “What a pleasant surprise! Whatever are you doing in France, Sir Percy?”
It was with an effort that Finn kept himself from glancing toward the door. He would simply have to brazen it out. He hoped that Cobra was on the ball. With difficulty, he put a smile on his face and started walking toward Chauvelin’s table.
“Odd’s life!” he said. “Chauvelin, isn’t it?”
“I am so pleased that you remembered,” said Chauvelin.
“Imagine running into you again in a place like this,” Finn said. “I thought I’d just pop over and pick up some of your excellent French wine.” He extended his hand.
Chauvelin also extended his hand. There was a pistol in it.
“I think not,” said Chauvelin. His smile disappeared. “I am afraid that your diet will consist of bread and water from now on. However, you shall not have to put up with such an inconvenience for long. The guillotine has long been waiting for the Scarlet Pimpernel!”
There was total silence in the inn.
“I am sure you’ve got a pistol,” Chauvelin said. “Throw it down onto the floor. Carefully.”
Moving slowly, Finn pulled out his pistol, holding it gingerly with two fingers, and dropped it onto the floor.
“Now kick it away,” said Chauvelin.
Finn complied. Where the hell are you, Cobra? he thought, furiously. If Chauvelin had only allowed him to get a little closer…
“Drop your pistol, Chauvelin!”
The Frenchman’s eyes grew wide as he saw the man two tables away stand up and level a pistol at his head. Finn stared with amazement at Fitzroy. Looking suddenly frightened, Chauvelin dropped his pistol down onto the table. Before Finn had a chance to say anything to his rescuer, another voice said “Now you drop yours, Mongoose.”
Cobra was standing in the doorway, holding a laser.
“You haven’t got a chance, Cobra,” said Fitzroy. “Take a good look around you. I’ve got men all around…” His voice trailed off. Every single customer in the inn held a laser and they were all suddenly pointing them at each other.
Cobra fired, his shot catching Fitzroy squarely in the chest. As Fitzroy fell, Finn dropped to the floor and rolled as the inn became a violent crisscross of laser fire. He retrieved his totally inadequate pistol and hid under a table, trying to become part of the floor. It lasted perhaps a second or two; then Finn heard somebody moan. Finn looked up to see that Chauvelin, miraculously, stood unscathed, his jaw hanging open. Finn started to get up, cautiously. There were dead bodies all around the room.
“Shoot him, damn you!”
Cobra was on his knees. One arm was gone from the shoulder down and there was a hole in the side of his face.
Bewildered, Finn stared from him to Chauvelin. The Frenchman stared in horror as Cobra lurched to his feet
“Shoot him! Shoot him or you’re a dead man, Chauvelin! Shoot! Shoot!”
Even as it dawned on Finn that Cobra was shouting at the Frenchman, Chauvelin moved as if in a trance. His eyes were unfocused as he reached for the pistol he had dropped upon the table. As he picked it up, a thin shaft of light lanced out across the room and neatly sliced his head off. Chauvelin’s headless corpse remained standing for an instant, then it toppled to the floor, upsetting the table.
“NO!”
Cobra lunged forward, bending down to pick up a fallen laser. As his fingers closed around it, a knife struck him in the chest. At the same instant, Cobra screamed and vanished. The knife which had been sticking in his chest clattered to the floor. There wasn’t even any blood on it.
Finn heard a soft gasp and turned to see Jean Lafitte, staring slackjawed at the spot where Cobra had been an instant ago. His own eyes bulged when he saw Mongoose standing on the stairs, holding a laser in his hand as he casually leaned on the railing. Finn quickly looked to his left, seeing Fitzroy’s body sprawled over a table. Then he looked back in disbelief at Fitzroy’s double, who was standing on the stairs. The double grinned.
“Hello, Finn,” he said. “Long time, no see. By the way, we’re even.”
Epilogue
The five of them sat in the living room of Forrester’s suite in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters section of the TAC-HQ building. Forrester had broken out several bottles of a fine Napoleon brandy and Mongoose was swirling his around absently in his snifter as he spoke.
“Darrow wanted to prove to the Referee Corps that the agency should remain independent of the Observers,” he was saying. “We had accumulated so much power over the years that neither the Observers nor the Referee Corps suspected just how far out of line we were. A good number of us, myself included and Darrow in particular, were using agency resources to enrich ourselves. It’s not all that uncommon a practice, really. The temptation to clock back a short way and take advantage of market trends, for example, is particularly hard to resist. Right, Forrester?”
Forrester gave him a surly look.
“It’s all highly illegal, of course, but it’s one of those things that don’t present much of a threat of instability so long as you’re very careful and act conservatively. It also helps not to get caught. Obviously, the temptation is especially hard to resist for highly placed officials and Darrow was no exception. I knew Darrow very well and I knew that he was incredibly wealthy, but I had no idea just how heavily involved he was in temporal speculation until it all came out into the open during the past few days. Art treasures stolen by the Nazis that were thought to have been destroyed, gold liberated from pirates who had liberated it from the Spaniards, 20th-century stock portfolios-”
