I’m supposed to make a judgment based on a personal meeting. Which isn’t the way we work in the States. We go by the record over there.”
“We go by the character over here,” Humes-Talbot said, with a bite of frost. “Sir.”
Shackleton smiled faintly. Well, at last he’d gotten a rise out of this stiff-necked kid. “Your secret service might have recommended Gallatin, but that doesn’t swing a shovelful of shit as far as I’m concerned. Pardon my French.” He snorted smoke from his nostrils, his eyes catching a gleam of red. “I understand Gallatin’s not his real name. It used to be Mikhail Gallatinov. He’s a Russian. Right?”
“He was born in St. Petersburg in 1910,” came the careful reply. “In 1934 he became a citizen of Great Britain.”
“Yeah, but Russia’s in his blood. You can’t trust Russians. They drink too much vodka.” He tapped ashes into the ashtray on the back of the driver’s seat, but his aim was off and most of the ash fell on his spit-shined shoes. “So why’d he leave Russia? Maybe he was wanted for a crime over there?”
“Major Gallatin’s father was an army general and a friend of Czar Nicholas the Second,” Humes-Talbot said as he watched the road unreel in the yellow gleam of the headlights. “In May of 1918, General Fyodor Gallatinov, his wife, and twelve-year-old daughter were executed by Soviet party extremists. The young Gallatinov escaped.”
“And?” Shackleton prodded. “Who brought him to England?”
“He came by himself, working aboard a freighter,” the captain said. “In 1932.”
Shackleton smoked his cigar and thought about it. “Hold on,” he said quietly. “You’re sayin’ he hid from the murder squads in Russia from the time he was eight to when he was twenty-two years old? How’d he do that?”
“I don’t know,” Humes-Talbot admitted.
“You don’t know? Hell, I thought you boys were supposed to know everything about Gallatinov. Or whatever. Haven’t you got his records verified?”
“There’s a gap in his records.” The younger man saw the dim glow of lights ahead, through the pines. The road was curving, taking them toward the sparkle of lanterns. “The information is classified, for the top echelon of the secret service only.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s enough to tell me I don’t want him on the job.”
“I presume Major Gallatin named those individuals who remained loyal to the memory of the royal circle and helped him survive. To expose those names would be… shall we say, less than prudent?” The small houses and clustered-together structures of a village were coming out of the drizzle. A little white sign on a post said ENDORE’S RILL. “I will pass on a bit of rumor, if I may,” Humes-Talbot said, wanting to throw a smoking grenade back at the ugly American. “I understand that the mad monk Rasputin was in Saint Petersburg and enjoyed… liaisons with several ladies of breeding in 1909 and 1910. One of those ladies, dare I say, was Elana Gallatinov.” He looked into Shackleton’s face. “Rasputin may have been Michael Gallatin’s real father.”
A small cough of cigar smoke came from Shackleton’s throat.
There was a tapping noise. Mallory, the driver, rapped his knuckles on the glass and put his foot to the Ford’s brake. The car was slowing, the windshield wipers slapping away the sleet and rain. Humes-Talbot rolled the glass barrier down, and Mallory said with a crisp Oxford accent, “Beg your pardon, sir, but I think we should stop for directions. That might be the place.” He pointed at a lantern-lit tavern coming up on the right.
“Indeed it is,” the young man agreed, and rolled the glass back up as Mallory cruised the big car to a stop in front of the tavern’s door. “I’ll be back in a minute,” Humes-Talbot said as he pulled the collar of his coat up around his neck and opened the door.
“Wait for me,” Shackleton told him. “I could use a drink of whiskey to get my blood warm again.”
They left Mallory in the car and went up a set of stone steps. A sign creaked on chains above the doorway, and Shackleton glanced up at it to see a painted sheep and the words THE MUTTON CHOP. Inside, a cast-iron stove burned with the sweet musk of bog peat and oil lamps hung from pegs on the wooden walls. Three men who were sitting at a back table talking quietly and drinking ale looked up from their conversation at the uniformed military officers.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” an attractive black-haired woman behind the bar said with a heavy Welsh accent. Her eyes were bright blue, and they quickly examined the two visitors with a thoroughness that seemed casual. “What may I do for you?”
“Whiskey, babe,” Shackleton said, grinning around his cigar. “Best poison you’ve got.”
She uncorked a jug and poured him a murky shot glass full. “Only poison we’ve got, if you don’t count the ale and bitters.” She smiled faintly, a sultry smile with a challenge in it.
“Nothing for me, but I would like some information.” Humes-Talbot warmed his hands before the stove. “We’re looking for a man who lives around here. His name is Michael Gallatin. Do you-”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and her eyes glinted. “I do know Michael.”
“Where does he live?” Shackleton took a whiff of the whiskey and thought his eyebrows had been singed.
“Around. He doesn’t entertain visitors.” She stroked a cloth across the jug. “Much.”
“He’s expectin’ us, babe. Official business.”
She considered that for a moment, looking at the shine of their buttons. “Take the road that runs through the Rill. It goes on for eight miles and then it turns into dirt, or mud, as the case may be. It splits into two. The road on the left is the rougher one. It goes to his gate. Whether it’ll be open or not is up to him.”
“We’ll open it if it’s not,” Shackleton said. He took the cigar out of his mouth and, with a grin at the bartender, swallowed the local whiskey.
“Bottoms up,” she told him.
His knees buckled as the whiskey seared down his throat like a trail of lava. He thought for a second that he’d swallowed crushed glass, or bits of razor blade. He felt sweat boil out of his pores, and he squeezed a cough down in his chest because the bartender was watching him, smiling knowingly, and he was damned if he’d fall on his ass in front of a woman.
“How do you like it, babe?” she asked, all innocence.
He feared returning the cigar to his mouth, in case the smoke caught fire and blew his head off. Tears burned his eyes, but he clenched his teeth and slammed the shot glass down on the bar. “It… needs… agin’,” he managed to croak, and his face flamed when he heard the men laugh at the back table.
“That it does,” she agreed, and her soft laughter was like the rustle of a silk curtain. Shackleton started to reach for his wallet, but she said, “It’s on the house. You’re a good sport.”
He smiled, more sickly than sporty, and Humes-Talbot cleared his throat and said, “We thank you for the information and hospitality, madam. Shall we go, Major?” Shackle-ford made something that might have been a grunt of assent, and followed Humes-Talbot to the door on leaden legs.
“Major, dear?” the bartender called before he went out. He looked back, wanting to get out of this suffocating heat. “You can thank Michael for the drink when you see him. That’s his private stock. Nobody else’ll touch the stuff.”
Shackleton went out the door of The Mutton Chop feeling like chopped mutton.
Full dark had fallen as Mallory drove them away from Endore’s Rill, between the wind-lashed woods and mountains carved by the fingers of time. Shackleton, his face tinged the shade of tallow, forced himself to finish the cigar and then thumped it away out the window. It blew a trail of sparks, like a falling comet.
Mallory turned off the main road-a mud-puddled wagon track-and onto the rougher one on the left. The axles groaned as the Ford’s tires plowed through potholes, and the seat springs yowled like pressured steam vents as Shackle-ton was thrown and jostled. The young British captain was used to uncomfortable roadways, and he clenched the hand grip over his door’s window and lifted his rear an inch or two off the leather.
“Man… don’t wanna… be located,” was all Shackleton could say as the Ford shook harder than any tank he’d ever driven. Lord have mercy on my achin’ tailbone! he thought. The road went on, a path of tortures, through the dense green woods. Finally, after two or three more brutal miles, the headlights found a high iron gate. It was wide open, and the Ford continued through.
The muddy road smoothed a bit, but not by much. Every so often they hit a bump and Shackleton’s teeth cracked together with a force that he knew would cut his tongue off if he didn’t keep it rolled up in his head. The wind swirled through the forest on both sides of the road, the sleet pelted down, and suddenly Shackleton felt a long way from Arkansas.
