The Baltic War(113)

Smiling now, Ohde shook his head. "All right, I get the point. But do you really think she's seriously considering springing anybody but them?"



"Yup. I think she's mad enough she wants to get even as well as get out."



"Why not?" said George Sutherland heavily. "We were already planning to get Cromwell out. What's one more man?"



"Be more than that," his wife mused. "Wentworth's wife and kids are in the Tower, too. I can't imagine he'd leave without them."



Harry scratched his chin. "Good point." He stood up and waved at Paul, summoning him to follow. "Let's back up there and find out exactly how many people she's got in mind. I only figured on two boats. We might need another one."





The answer came back immediately. Paul didn't bother writing it down, with Harry at the receiver. He'd only written down the first one out of habit, anyway. At this close range, they were in direct verbal communication, not using Morse code.



"Don't know yet, Harry. From what we can tell, everything's up in the air. But we haven't been able to find out much, beyond the obvious fact that a coup d'etat is in progress. The Warders aren't talking to us, but Darryl says Vicky's whole family is edgy. 'Tenser'n cats at a dog convention,' is the way he put it."



Harry frowned. "Who's Vicky—and why's her family figure into this?"



"Oh. Forgot to tell you. Darryl got engaged. Vicky's his fiancée. Most of her family—men, that is—are members of the Yeoman Warders."



"You're shitting me!"



"Still cussing, huh? If there's a blackboard over there, write on it fifty times 'I will not use bad language in front of my ex-schoolteacher.' No, I'm not shitting you. Why is that a surprise, anyway? A lot of the men in the Tower are Warders."



"Not that! Darryl got engaged?"



"Sure did. Hey, we're in the seventeenth century, Harry. Age of miracles. If Darryl were a statue, he'd probably be leaking tears of blood."



Blankly, Harry stared out the window. The Tower was quite visible in the bright winter sunlight. The weather had finally cleared up.



"We're talking about Darryl McCarthy, right? I mean, you didn't get something criss-crossed and wind up with a different Darryl?"



"Don't be silly. How many other Darryls did I ever have write on a blackboard three hundred times 'My name is Darryl McCarthy, not Redd Foxx'? And then make him correct his spelling because he kept dropping the extra d's and x's."



Harry chuckled. "All right, good point. He was pissed as hell about it. Didn't stop crabbing for two weeks afterward. Still. I had him figured for a lifelong righteous bachelor."



"Like you, I take it?"



Even though she couldn't see him, Harry twisted his face into something that was halfway between a grimace and a questioning expression.



"Not actually sure any more, Ms. Mailey. The seventeenth century makes a man think about things a lot more carefully. God, I love this time and place." A bit hurriedly, he added: "Not that I'm in any hurry to get married, y'all understand."



"You would love this time and place, you young rascal."



"Damn right I do. Back home I would've just been calculating how long I could stay in the mines before I started getting black lung and had to quit and go flip hamburgers for minimum wage. Get to look forward to retirement, sitting on a rocking chair on a beat-up old porch wheezing to my buddies about the good old days. Hell with that. This here's like being in Las Vegas—the old, real one I'm talking about—except the bouncers've got swords and guns and the cops use red hot tongs instead of handcuffs. Just makes the odds more of a thrill."



"God help us."



"He might have to—if we're supposed to spring Darryl's whole pack of new in-laws too. I mean, jeez, Ms. Mailey, I was figuring on a couple of little riverboats, not a cruise ship."



"I don't think it would be all of them. They're Yeoman Warders, don't forget. Just Vicky. In fact, I'm not even sure—hold on a minute, Harry. From the sounds outside, I think something's happening."



Paul had drifted to the window, as he listened to the conversation—Melissa's end of which he could hear clearly from the microphone.



"Something sure is happening," he said sharply. "Better come here and look at this, Harry."



Harry came over to the window. Unlike late twentieth-century cities, which didn't use wood for heating, London in the seventeenth century had very few trees. So he had an unimpeded view of the Tower across the Thames—and he'd picked this house to rent partly because it had a good view of the fortress' main entrance on its western side.