"Ha! Ha!" the king bellowed. "The trumpet works too!"
"Papà!" Anne Cathrine hurried over and took Eddie by the arm. "You shouldn't humiliate him so! And you know Eddie's delicate. He'll likely get sick from that cold water!"
The king bestowed a sneer on Eddie. "Delicate, is he? Another false pretense, daughter, be sure of it! If my own doctors hadn't put it on, I'd have that wooden leg removed. Just to be sure! I might do it anyway."
He strode forward and wagged a very large royal forefinger under Eddie's nose. "Liar! I say it, again! Liar!"
Between the fear and the sudden freezing from the water—and, most of all, the presence of Anne Cathrine and his grumpiness about her continual insistence he was "delicate"—Eddie lost his temper.
"Don't wag that finger at me, dammit! It was you who broke the Geneva Convention! All I'm supposed to tell you is my name, rank and serial number!"
"And there was another lie!" If Eddie's shouts had caused even the slightest waver in that shaking royal digit, he could see no sign of it. "007! Ha! Your prime minister lied, too!"
"Well . . ."
Eddie didn't really have a good answer to that. God damn Mike Stearns, anyway. It was all his fault!
Ulrik cleared his throat. "Father, let's not forget that he didn't lie about the rest. Not when someone's life was at stake. It was not Eddie who urged the diving suit on us. In fact, he tried to warn us it was dangerous."
That caused a moment's pause in the finger-wagging.
Only a moment's, alas. Proving, once again, that the female is deadlier than the male, Anne Cathrine immediately shifted from distress and concern to indignation.
"But he lied about his betrothed!"
"I did not! That was Mike Stearns!"
Anne Cathrine glared at him. Still holding him by the arm, though.
"So? It was you who lied about Johannes Fitz-stupid whatever his last name was!"
"Well . . ."
The royal finger-wagging went back into high gear. "So he did! So he did! Toying with my daughter's affections, too, the rogue! I see it all, now! The snake in our midst! I ought to have him strapped into that diving suit, I should! Try it out for its new purpose!"
Anne Cathrine's indignation vanished. "Papà!" That wail was downright piercing.
Christian finally lowered the finger. "Well, I should," he insisted, followed by a truly majestic harrumph, complete with quivering royal mustachios.
"But—magnanimously—I won't. Take him to his new cell! Ulrik, make sure it's done properly. I want no daredevil last-moment escapes from—"
His sneer was just as majestic.
"Mr. Secret Agent, James Bond, 007. Ha!"
And, bundled off Eddie was, by the two soldiers, with Ulrik following behind.
Anne Cathrine came with them, and stayed in the new cell for half an hour, making sure Eddie was properly dried and tucked into his new bed. So he wouldn't catch a chill, or something. She must have repeated the term delicate at least a dozen times, to Eddie's disgruntlement.
It didn't occur to him until several days later, to wonder why the king of Denmark had let his daughter do any such thing.
Not until Ulrik and Baldur came barreling into the room. With Anne Cathrine in tow.
Wide-eyed, from his perch in front of the window, Eddie watched Baldur spread some sort of large diagram—sketch, rather—across the small table in the center of the room.
"We must be quick, Eddie," said the prince, in a low voice. He glanced over his shoulder. "One of the guards is likely to mention something to his captain, and the captain might . . . Well, never mind."
Ulrik turned back to the sketch and pointed down at it. "This is another lie, isn't it?"
Hesitantly, Eddie came over. Once he was close enough, he recognized the sketch. It was a depiction—very good one, too—of the huge radio tower that the USE had erected in Magdeburg.
"Uh . . . Well, no, it's actually pretty accurate."
"Eddie!" Ulrik, normally as even-tempered a man as Eddie had ever met, was obviously on edge and seemed to be controlling his temper. "Stop it. I know it's accurate. It was drawn by one of our best spies. But that's not what I meant, and you know it. You don't need this, do you?"
Eddie glanced at Norddahl. The Norwegian's gaze seemed very icy. Of course, with his color eyes, that came fairly naturally. It was impossible to tell if he was really angry or not.
For a moment, Eddie wondered which of the two had figured it out—the prince himself, or his hireling?
Probably Baldur, if for no other reason than the natural injustice of the universe, which the past half a year had made so blindingly clear to Eddie. In a world run according to sane and rational principles, it would be a shy and bespectacled seventeenth-century geek equivalent who'd manage to deduce, just from matching various entries in an encyclopedia against each other, that radio didn't actually require huge towers hundreds of feet tall. Not for every purpose, at least, especially military ones.