'Well, well,' he said and George stared at him when he burst out laughing.
'Are you pleased, sir?' George smiled. 'He really is very nice when you get to know him. And he is very fond of me. He has always behaved just like an older brother should. Protective, you know.'
Faro thought grimly that there wasn't much protectiveness about leaving his little brother in a hut to be blown to smithereens. If, that was, he had known in advance what was in store for them from the so-called brigands.
But although knowing Anton's real identity at least provided some of the answers to the questions that had been plaguing him, it still didn't provide any ideas about what they should do next. And worst of all was the certain knowledge that his German wasn't up to coping with this particular kind of situation.
As if George had read his thoughts, he said, 'When we reach the telegraph office, sir, I am going to send a wire to Uncle Karl - he is Mama's most trusted servant and he will have returned to Luxoria with her. He has lots of influence with people who can help.'
'He is not her equerry?' asked Faro sharply, remembering the first victim of the assassin who, according to Sir Julian Arles, had taken the bullet meant for Amelie.
If that loyal servant was dead, then their last hope was indeed gone.
Chapter 19
George laughed. 'Oh no, sir, Uncle Karl is much higher than that. He is a statesman as well as a soldier. He holds the rank of colonel in the Kaiser's Death's Head Hussars.'
'Is he also one of your President's men?' Faro could not bear to say 'father'.
'No,' said George firmly. 'He hates him because he has been very unkind to my mother, you know,' he added with a candour well beyond his years.
Faro did know, but his eyebrows raised a bit at hearing that piece of intelligence from the boy who believed the President to be his father.
'But Uncle Karl - Count Karl zu Echlenberg,' he added proudly, 'will make sure the train comes for us. And that we are safe.'
Faro had already taken that missing train into his calculations. Seen in the light of the last twenty-four hours' events, the landslide excepted - if that piece of information could be trusted - had there ever been any intention of sending the royal train? He could see the President's hand clearly directing the whole operation, the ambush at the railway merely a device to rescue Anton, his own son, and destroy Amelie's child.
Faro had little doubt that the plan had been worked out well in advance. Starting with the Grand Duchess Amelie's assassination while she was in Germany, the trap was then laid for George to be summoned home from Britain, and annihilated before he reached the frontier in an unfortunate accident.
Faro himself, whom the President had never heard of, as well as any other appointed bodyguards of George, would be regarded as expendable.
The plan was emerging clearly now.
After a brief time of national mourning, President Gustav would marry his mistress, Anton's mother, and take over dictatorship of Luxoria, declaring their son as the next heir.
Even an unskilled politician like Faro could recognise that this was not only a personal vendetta, but behind it was the fact that Kaiser Wilhehn II was a long term friend and supporter of the Grand Duchess and, what was even more important, he wished to bring Luxoria under the vast and ever-growing umbrella of Imperial Germany.
When Faro had agreed under duress to Her Majesty's request that he see her god-daughter's son back to Luxoria, he had knowingly entered into a situation involving political intrigue. Remote from any he encountered during his duties as a detective with the Edinburgh City Police, this was a development beyond his wildest nightmares or experience.
Realising the enormity of his personal involvement, he was tempted to blink rapidly, as he did in bad dreams, a technique he had perfected in childhood to wake himself up. Alas, for his hopes that he would open his eyes and breathe a sigh of relief, find that it had all gone away and he was back in his comfortable bed in Sheridan Place. That was the dream, but this was cold reality.
Here he was, sitting by a railway track, a foreigner in a strange land, with him a twelve-year-old prince, the heir to a kingdom, whose safety was entirely in his hands and whose real identity he must never reveal, much as he longed to shout out the truth.
He looked at the boy. They were both cold and hungry, prey to wolves and the President's secret army who would hunt them down once they knew that they had survived the explosion.
That vital link with the world of sanity and safety, the telegraph office, still lay far down the railway track somewhere out in that desolate landscape, haphazardly dotted with sticks of dead-looking trees and boulders that a little imagination might turn into crouching brigands. They could have been sitting on Mars, Faro thought, but for the occasional very distant and frustrating emblem of civilisation, an express train thundering into Germany, towards Frankfurt and Heidelberg. And Imogen Crowe.
While he wondered sadly if he had seen Imogen for the last time, he told George encouragingly not to worry.
'I have been in worse situations than this,' he said cheerfully.
'Have you really, sir?' asked George.
And Faro was glad he was not called upon to name one. At that precise moment he would have found it difficult even to remember anything of greater peril. True, he had fought villains in plenty in his long career. But on his own territory, where he made the rules; where he knew the terrain and the language; where people understood him and his requests to official channels were dealt with promptly; where Chief Inspector Faro was respected, obeyed. But here in this alien land Chief Inspector Faro did not
