appreciated that Alois’s comments were at least half ironic.
“I imagine that after the affair at Buckingham Palace, you are little inclined to trust princes,” Alois went on. “Whereas I am much inclined to trust a man raised by a good gamekeeper. Gamekeepers are men who nurture the earth and the creatures on it. Nature forgives no mistakes.”
“Nor does Special Branch, yours or mine,” Pitt told him.
“Precisely. One might say the same of the tides of history.” Alois was very serious now. There was no amusement in his eyes, only intense emotion. Pitt could not look away from him. “Social change is coming in all of Europe, whether the House of Habsburg wants it or not,” Alois went on. “If we release our grip voluntarily, it may come without bloodshed. If we try to prevent change using oppression, then the end will be bloody, and the hate will remain.”
“Emperor Franz Josef does not agree with you,” Pitt said grimly.
“I know.” A flash of bitter humor crossed Alois’s face. “There is little I can do about that. But what I can do, I will, which is why I would find it very useful to be more aware of Tregarron’s information, and perhaps have a few more …” He hesitated. “… more managed details going in both directions.”
Pitt understood very well, even if he was not as certain of Alois’s motives as he would like to be.
“Yes,” he said, relaxing just slightly. “We might think of a few ideas that would be profitable to one or the other of us. Perhaps even to both.”
Duke Alois held out his hand. Without hesitation Pitt leaned forward and took it. Then he excused himself and went to check with Stoker.
Fifteen minutes later, he was in the hall outside the compartment, standing at the window watching the wooded countryside slip by. Suddenly the train slowed abruptly, as if the driver had jammed on the brakes.
Pitt stiffened, then turned and sprinted back the dozen yards to Duke Alois’s compartment. “Stoker!” he shouted above the screech of the wheels on the iron track.
The connecting door to the next carriage flew open and Stoker was there, immediately followed by one of the duke’s men.
The compartment door opened and Alois looked out. “What is it?” he asked, his voice steady but his face tight and pale.
“Farm cart on the rails,” Stoker answered. “Looks like its load of hay fell off and it got stuck.” He looked from Pitt to Duke Alois. “Sir. It’s probably nothing, but-”
“Get back in and keep your head down!” Pitt finished for him. He made it sharp, an order.
“Are you sure it was a farm cart?” Duke Alois questioned.
Stoker took a step toward him. “Maybe just an accident, sir, but maybe not.” He stopped close to Alois, as if to push him back inside the compartment.
The duke glanced at Pitt.
The train jerked to a halt.
One of Duke Alois’s men, tall, thin, and dark-haired, like the duke himself, came down the corridor.
“What the devil is-” he began.
A shot smashed the glass of the window. The man staggered backward and fell against the compartment wall, then slumped to the floor, a slow red stain spreading across his chest.
Stoker lunged toward Alois and forced him down onto the floor. One of the other men kneeled beside the fallen man, but Pitt knew without bothering to look again that he was beyond help. He turned and ran along the corridor toward the end of the carriage. Throwing open the door on the opposite side, he leaped down onto the track, his hand already on his gun. If he had gone onto the same side as the marksman, he would have been a perfect target, even an expected one. This gave him the cover of the train, but it also meant that he had the length of at least one carriage to run before he could get anywhere near the man.
Would the assassin want to take another shot? Or was he certain he had hit Duke Alois, and so would make his escape immediately? Who was it? Tregarron? Or one of the Austrian factions he had believed it was from the beginning? Tregarron would be alone. But if it was a political assassination attempt simply to draw attention, or any of the minor nations rebelling against Habsburg rule by shooting a member of the ruling family, then there could be half a dozen men. Was Stoker staying to guard Duke Alois? He hoped so. He was still a target.
He reached the end connection, and dropped to his hands and knees. He peered beneath and saw nothing but a narrow strip of woods on the other side. Was the marksman waiting just out of sight, ready to pick off anyone who appeared?
There had been no second shot. He probably knew he had hit someone, but he could not be certain it was Duke Alois. He would surely know that someone, either British, Austrian, or both, would come after him. Would the marksman retreat a little to a point from which he would see the train, but not be easily seen himself? Whoever he was, he had chosen a farm cart to stop the train, and a wooded area from which to attack. Perhaps he was a countryman; he was an excellent shot, possibly a hunter.
Pitt had grown up in the country as well. He had followed Sir Arthur Desmond on pheasant shoots, even deer hunts once or twice. He knew how to stalk, to keep low, to stay downwind, to move silently. He had only a handgun to the other man’s rifle, which perhaps even had a telescopic sight on it, judging from the shot that had killed Duke Alois’s man. Pitt must take very great care.
He went the length of the next carriage as well, then dropped to his hands and knees again and peered under. No one in sight. He scrambled through the gaps quickly and stayed low, rolling down the embankment into the underbrush and then up onto his feet again as soon as he was within the copse of trees.
Which way would the man go after making the shot? Probably to the high ground, where he would have a chance of still seeing the train, and also of seeing anyone who might come after him. A slight hollow would hide him better. It was instinctive.
But how long would he watch the train to make sure he had killed the right man?
Pitt wished he had told Stoker to make it appear that they were flustered, and in some way to indicate that it was Alois who was dead. It was too late now. But perhaps he would think of it anyway.
Pitt moved forward through the thickest part of the trees. The ground was damp. He was leaving footprints. That meant the other man would also. If Pitt could find the tracks, he could follow him. But the assassin would realize that.
Pitt moved as quickly as he could toward where he judged the shot to have come from, trying to move silently, looking down to avoid snapping sticks or getting tangled in the long, winding branches of brambles. Every now and then he glanced up, but all he could see was underbrush and tree trunks with glistening wet bark, a lot of them birch, hazel, and black poplar, and here and there a few alder.
He looked backward once. The train was out of sight, except for the engine, which was stopped a few yards short of the huge hay wagon still splayed across the track, its load now largely moved onto the embankment. From the way the whole thing listed, it seemed that one of the wheels had broken, or come off. But if it was off, somebody would have found a way to put it back on again. There were half a dozen men working to clear the track. When they did, surely the train would go, whether Pitt had returned or not? Stoker would see to that? Or the duke?
Pitt stopped and stood still. He strained to hear movement anywhere ahead of him. How long would the marksman wait? Even if he had not seen Pitt through his scope, he would likely assume his presence, or the presence of someone else coming after him. Why had he not shot at Pitt, at least when he was on the embankment? Had he been concentrating on what was going on inside the train?
Pitt could hear nothing except the steady drip of water off the branches onto the wet leaves, which by this point in March almost moldered down into the earth.
Was there any water here? Yes, a stream along the lower ground. That would be the place to hide tracks. What would a clever man do? Go to the stream, leaving footprints easy enough to follow, then walk along the bed of the stream, leaving no trace at all, and then step wherever he would leave the fewest marks. Perhaps he would even create a false trail, and go back into the water again upstream or downstream from his entry.
How did the assassin get here? How would he leave? Not by train, perhaps not by road-at least for the nearest few miles. Horseback. It was the obvious way, perhaps the only way in this part of the countryside. Faster and easier than walking.
Then where was his horse? He would have left it tied somewhere; the last thing he needed was to come back and find that it had wandered off. If Pitt could find the horse, then the man would come to him. And where
