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“It is an important issue, and deserves the whole of my concentration,” Bereston said curtly. “I don’t know how to explain it to you, Grof, but if you have any hope of working with American publishers—as I and others trust you do—then we must determine the sorts of work you are planning to introduce to our people.” He sighed and sat more stiffly in his chair. “It isn’t easy for those of you who are devoted to the European way of life to comprehend how we Americans understand the limits of freedom.”

  “The limits of freedom,” Szent-Germain repeated. “An … interesting concept.”

  There was a blustery gust of wind that set the shutters to rattling.

  “You understand the reasons for it, surely?” Bereston said, his face a mask of goodwill. “Precarious governments will need to protect their populations from—”

  “I’m afraid I don’t—understand the reasons,” said Szent-Germain. “Perhaps I have not grasped your purpose in all this?” He spoke mildly, but he was aware of Bereston’s antagonism behind his smile.

  “If you can spare me an hour, I’ll be more than happy to explain it to you in detail,” Bereston offered.

  “Alas, I think not,” said Szent-Germain, as courteously as if he approved. “Since I have plans to go to Amsterdam, then to Copenhagen, and Paris in the next two weeks, I haven’t the time to give your venture the close attention it deserves. When I return here, we can set up an appointment for a proper discussion.”

  “If that’s all you’re willing to do, why didn’t you refuse to see me?” Bereston demanded, then visibly calmed himself.

  “I had insufficient information to know whether or not to hear you out; you will agree that your business card provides very little about your work beyond the most elementary outline. I am not a credulous man, Mister Bereston, and I would need much more than your assurances to support this plan you are planning to impose upon the world. It is the world you’re aiming for, isn’t it.” He rose. “If you will let Rogers know when you will be available for a meeting after I return, then I will have a better idea of your undertaking, and will be more prepared to respond to your plans appropriately.”

  Bereston glowered briefly, then forced his face into yet another smile. “If that’s the best you can—” He stopped, and when he spoke again it was calmly, with what might have been a touch of self-deprecating humor. “I made a mess of this, didn’t I? And you’ve been so courteous. Okay. We’ll talk later, when you return from Paris and I’m back from Washington.”

  “Very good.” He held out his hand. “I have to bid you good-bye for now. Rogers will see you out when you’re ready to go. If you want to remain where you are until you have had the last of your coffee, my staff will be pleased to accommodate you.” He inclined his head, then left the morning room.

  Rogers was waiting for him at the edge of the loggia. “What have you learned?” he asked in Egyptian Coptic.

  Szent-Germain answered in the same language. “He’s up to something; you’re right about that.”

  “What would you like me to do?”

  After the greater part of a minute in thought, Szent-Germain said, “I don’t know yet. Let me think about it.”

  TEXT OF A REPORT FROM NATHAN SINCLAIR WATERS ON ASSIGNMENT IN AMSTERDAM TO D. PHILETUS ROTHCOE IN LIEGE, BELGIUM; CARRIED BY DIPLOMATIC COURIER AND DELIVERED TWENTY-NINE HOURS AFTER BEING WRITTEN.

  October 27, 1949

  D. Philetus Rothcoe

  Hotel Saint-Sulpice

  Room 34

  17, Rue de Saule

  Liege, Belgium

  Dear Phil,

  This is my preliminary assessment on the group known as the Ex-Pats’ Coven, operating out of Paris, with members in France, England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland whom we have positively identified. I send this to you now so that you may inform me of what you would like me to pursue before I submit my year-end evaluation of their activities and their capacity to do our diplomacy harm.

  You have already asked me to help identify any members of this group who have business and personal connections to any European doing business in the United States. I have enclosed a list for your perusal. Let me draw your attention to Boris King, who has a number of relatives in Belgium and France, who is rumored to have fled the Russian Revolution at the end of W W I; I personally doubt the story—it’s too pat, but in case you run into one of Broadstreet’s crowd, bear this in mind; they think spying ought to be like the movies. Also, you may be interested in the meeting between Grof Szent-Germain and Charis Treat in Copenhagen earlier this month. As far as I can determine, Doctor Treat has submitted a manuscript to Eclipse Press for publication, and that would seem to be the extent of her ventures there. A few of the rest of the so-called Coven are looking into the possibility of publication with Eclipse, even though Professor Treat has received no response in regard to her manuscript so far, but it is generally acknowledged that Eclipse takes an average of four months to decide on any title, according to their own catalogues. Others in the Ex-Pats’ Coven may follow her example, but again, there appears to be no political or philosophical connection, only a simple attempt to have a work published. Given the group’s circumstances, you cannot be surprised that they seek publishers. What the work may contain, and how it is to be distributed if it is contracted for, I cannot say, and it may be a moot point if the manuscript is rejected. The same goes for the rest of the Coven.

  I have a copy of Paul Blount’s report on the Ex-Pats’ Coven based on the two months he was allowed to participate in their Parisian meetings. I would advise you to bear in mind that Paul is very annoyed that he was so quickly identified as a spy in their midst, and is blaming others for his failings; I wouldn’t put much credence in his assertions that the Coven gets its orders from Moscow, though most of the Coven are in favor of socialism as a way of providing economic parity for all those participating in it. Blount’s ticked off because he isn’t going out on a win, and this is his way of pouting.

  Is there any way you could get our department to extend my assignment here until May, or longer? I don’t want to be posted back to Washington quite yet, not while we have so many unresolved cases before us. I am certain I am making some headway with Tolliver Bethune, and that should gain us valuable intelligence. Bethune, aside from being part of the Ex-Pats’ Coven, has other connections as well that are most promising. Give me six more months—eight if you can manage it—and I know you won’t regret it. I, too, would like to leave on a win, and as you may not be aware, I’ll be retiring on the 1st of January, 1951. I don’t like the feeling that I’ve spent the last five years spinning my wheels with intra-agency cat-fights. The war felt worthwhile, bloody yet the right thing to do, but so much of what we’re dealing with now is petty—like changing the Central Intelligence Group to the Central Intelligence Agency? Please tell me when have better use we can make of our time. I wonder what Wild Bill Donovan thought of that little fracas.

  From this end, the bomb that blew up that bus in Grenoble was confirmed as Jimmy Riggs’ work. He’s left Europe by now, of course, and is back lounging on a beach in Mexico. That man truly loves to blow things up, doesn’t he?

  Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving, although we’re far from home, and the joys of Christmas and the New Year,

  Sincerely,

  Nate

  (Nathan S. Waters)

  NSW/js

  enclosures

  3

  A pair of barges were dredging at the far end of the canal, pulling up the broken remains of shallow-draft attack boats that had lain on the bottom of the canal for a decade, and were now being removed as a traffic hazard. Amsterdam looked like a sepia print in the veils of fog that shrouded the city, blending with the water, still as a whisper. In his office on the ground floor of his canal-side house, Szent-Germain was gazing out the window at the barges, his thoughts on the comments on Charis Treat’s manuscript that he had received from three of his five reviewers. So far the reports were generally favorable, which pleased him
for several reasons, not the least of which was that the accuracy of her depictions of communes brought back many memories of Padova and Saunt-Cyr and Montaubine. He took a sheet of cream-laid writing paper with the Eclipse Press letterhead from his desk drawer, removed his Mont Blanc pen from his waistcoat-pocket, unscrewed its cap, and began to write in his small, flowing, precise script:

  2 November, 1949

  Professor Charis Treat

  Hotel Louis XII

  23 Rue d’Ete Blanche

  Paris, France

  My dear Professor Treat,

  Despite my delays, for which I apologize, I am at last bound for Paris. I would appreciate it if you would be willing to join me at dinner on November 10 th at eight o’clock to discuss your manuscript. If this is not convenient, will you advise me on when and where you would prefer to meet? If you have a favorite restaurant, I would be pleased to reserve a table for us on the date of your choosing at the hour you select. I plan to be in Paris through the New Year, and at present have few engagements on my calendar.

  Whichever arrangement is satisfactory to you, please reply to me at Eclipse Press in Amsterdam, which I have on my enclosed business card; your letter or telephone call will reach me promptly.

  I look forward to our meeting.

  Most sincerely.

  Ragoczy Ferenz,

  Publisher, Eclipse Press

  Grof Szent-Germain

  He read over the letter, then took an Eclipse Press envelope and copied her address onto it, slid one of his cards into it, then sealed it. Setting this aside, he got up from his chair and paced his room, pausing at the bookcases that held the publications of Eclipse Press through the last five hundred years. He regarded most of them with an affectionate pride, a few with dismay. So many books had been damaged or destroyed over those centuries, and the twentieth was no exception. Books, like art, he reminded himself in a language that no one but himself and Rogers spoke anymore, were vulnerable and defenseless but for the esthetics and curiosity of living human beings. What was this obsession about destroying books? Or paintings, scrolls, tapestries, or musical scores? The question nagged at him as it had done over more than three millennia; his long memories stirred and he again recalled the lessons of the priests at the Temple of Imhotep, who had unknowingly reawakened his humanity in his long centuries of service there.

  The bleat of a tugboat jarred him out of his contemplations, and he shook himself out of his perplexity. He glanced once at the fading photograph of a girl on the edge of puberty in garments of about twenty years ago, and felt her loss almost as keenly as he had that unspeakable day in Munchen when she had been killed during a riot; he had not been able to look at any image of Laisha, his ward, for more than a decade after the event.

  There was a knock at the door. “Grof? May I come in?” Rogers asked.

  Szent-Germain moved to the middle of the room. “Of course, old friend,” he said, setting the letter aside.

  Rogers entered the room, a leather-covered notebook in his hand. He was dressed for traveling, in a gray, three-piece suit of Scottish wool and English tailoring. “I believe I have a workable schedule for my tour,” he said in eighth-century Polish.

  “That’s excellent. You’re going to travel by rail?” Szent-Germain indicated a chair as he sat down on the small couch set at right angles to it.

  “Most of the way. I may have to hire a car in a few places, not all railways are fully rebuilt,” Rogers replied, and changed to modern Turkish. “I need a broader vocabulary. Combining a rail with road/path is clumsy.”

  “True enough,” said Szent-Germain in the same tongue. “This way we don’t have to invent words in an old language that had no use for present ideas. But it is good to keep in practice.”

  Rogers nodded. “And my Wendish is rusty.” He neither smiled nor laughed, but there was a glint in his faded-blue eyes that indicated amusement.

  “A problem for the long-lived—languages come and go,” Szent-Germain agreed; he once again looked out the window. “I know I’ve been a bit … distracted lately.”

  “You’ve been withdrawn,” Rogers concurred.

  Szent-Germain shrugged. “There are so many things needing my attention.”

  Fifteen hundred years ago, Rogers might have spoken more bluntly; as it was, he bit back the retort that rose to his lips. “I know you have not found a willing partner in four years, and being a pleasant dream is not as sustaining for you as acknowledged contact with someone who comprehends what takes place between you.”

  “True enough,” Szent-Germain said, all emotion carefully banked. “And since that cannot be changed at present, we had better discuss your travels. How have you set up your journey?”

  “With as little back-tracking as possible,” Rogers said with his usual quiet calm, accepting Szent-Germain’s reticence for the time being. “Since you will be in Paris and Genova, I have not included those places in my itinerary,” he went on, opening his notebook and the closely written pages. “Tonight I will board a train to Bremen—I am assured that the way is clear and delays are unlikely. From there, I take a ship bound for Norway. I will begin my inspections in Oslo, starting with Eclipse Trading offices and going then to your warehouses—you have been in Copenhagen recently and there is no reason I should return there—then go on to Scotland and England. I’ve already written to Sunbury Draughton Hollis Carnford and Bingley, telling them when I will arrive there, and what portion of your business they may continue to handle, which will disappoint them. They’re expecting me.”

  “I fear we may want to engage new attorneys in London to handle a good portion of my international dealings, and who will stay abreast of changes in international law; I’ve had too much of my representation in Sunburys’ hands, fathers and sons, for far too long. I know young Alfred has been curious about me and, now that Miles has retired, is examining the various matters they have handled for me in the past, not in the way that reassures me as to his fiduciary responsibilities or his probity. His recent letter to me hinted at changes to come.”

  “Blackmail?” Rogers inquired.

  “Or something very like it, so it would be prudent to find barristers and solicitors with an emphasis on international legal expertise, with offices in more countries than England. That should be an acceptable reason for the change. I would not want to give them any sense that I’ve uncovered Alfred’s game.” Szent-Germain made a gesture of resignation.

  “Will Sunbury protest this, do you think?” Rogers showed no sign of distress, though he was upset by this development.

  “On what grounds?” Szent-Germain countered. “He can’t appeal to the courts to be allowed to fleece me, unless he’s willing to confess his wrong-doings. No; I’ll send out a notification to them before I leave for Paris; perhaps you can make some preliminary inquiries while you’re in London. A new firm with international offices; see what you can find out about three or four of them. I’ll keep some of my British business with Sunbury, but nothing beyond the island.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather I carry your letter and deliver it for you?” Rogers asked, surprised that Szent-Germain had come to this decision so quickly.

  “No; that could be awkward for you. A special delivery letter should be sufficient, as I would send under ordinary circumstances. I think it best that you and I not visit their chambers, for the same reason. For the time being, everything between Sunbury and Eclipse has to be on paper, more’s the pity.” He rubbed his eyes with his hand. “I’ll let you know how Alfred Sunbury responds.”

  “I would appreciate that. Is there anything you want me to arrange about your new representation?”

  “Not until I have settled on a firm,” said Szent-Germain.

  Rogers waited for half a minute, then said, “I’ll send you reports from each Eclipse Trading office I visit. Do you want the reports in code?”

  “No; it would only raise suspicions if the reports are intercepted, which may indeed happen. How tedious it is, to have to ant
icipate deception at every turn. It’s as bad as Byzantium.” He shook his head, his dark eyes remote. “Write your reports in French or Romanian—both are easily explained.” He paused again. “By all the forgotten gods, trying to extricate Eclipse from skullduggery, we’re becoming more enmeshed in it.”

  “Do I provide curious officials with your address here or one of your other addresses?” The question was without any unease, as if he had never encountered such problems on similar missions in the past, and was not appetent to have the problem behind them.

  “It would be wise, I think,” said Szent-Germain.

  “You’re probably right,” Rogers agreed.

  “You will have to excuse my reticence: Constantinople—and Lima, and Lo-Yang, and Damascus, for that matter—have made me cautious.”

  “With good reason,” said Rogers, who had memories of his own.

  Szent-Germain gave a short sigh. “Hardly surprising,” he said, and patted the top of his desk lightly, signaling a change in subject. “So: Norway to Britain—then where?”

  “Rotterdam, Calais, and Le Havre. South to Bordeaux and Bilbao, west to Oporto and south to Lisboa, inland to Madrid and Sevilla. Cadiz, Valencia—”

  “Be careful in Spain; it’s not so long since we lived there, and we did not leave in the best of circumstances.”

  Rogers chuckled briefly. “With the Generals nipping at our heels.”

  Szent-Germain’s smile lacked humor. “That was a near thing; I wouldn’t like to see another departure like that one.”

  “Nor I,” Rogers admitted. “Perhaps I’ll skip Valencia and make my time at Barcelona brief.”

  “Keep your schedule flexible and send me information daily. If you think it urgent, telephone me.” Szent-Germain’s expression was carefully unrevealing. “Be discerning when you book your trains—check the stops and the connection times, reserve first-class accommodations all the way, or hire a car and a driver. I’ll supply you with a letter of credit for three or four different currencies, in case you should need more money than you’re taking with you: you won’t have to wait for confirmation on travelers’ cheques, as well as such authorizations as you may need for taking any necessary legal actions.”