“I believe I do.” Robin began to smile. Emile had a pretty good racket of his own going on… as long as he looked busy and useful, he would be immune to Capone’s bullying. In the meantime he’d pull as many people up from the slum of Pisstown as he could.
Robin knew, then, that he’d found an ally. He just had to convince Emile of that fact.
After the ten-hour workday, as the others hurried out to place their grails in the grailstone, the Dutchman took Robin’s arm and held him back. Robin paused, curious.
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Emile said, “You’re no gunsmith.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Robin said.
“I’ve been watching you, and you don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re doing. If you are here to spy on us—” Emile began.
“Actually, I am.” Robin lowered his voice. “I was sent here by Jules Verne.”
Emile took a step back as if struck. “Verne—he is still alive?”
“Yes. He wants to capture Capone and free New Chicago.”
“I would welcome the day!” There were tears on Emile’s face. “Verne was a good friend of mine. Where is he? I want to know all that has happened to him!”
Quickly Robin gave him a summary of Verne’s life since he’d escaped on the riverboat. The Dutchman kept nodding happily.
“I have something to show you,” Emile said when Robin finished. He led the way into the back room. Several of the floorboards were loose; he pulled them up, revealing a crawlway. Inside were dozens of pistols and muskets.
“These are oar rejects,” he said proudly. “They all work perfectly, so of course we cannot give them to Capone. When he comes to see our progress, we fire the defective guns for him. When they explode, we tell him it is a problem with the forging process. When it is refined further, we say, the guns will work.” He chuckled. “He is a fool. One of Capone’s men even lost an eye to a bit of flying metal.”
“How many guns do you have?” Robin asked.
“Thirteen flintlock pistols, eight rifles.”
“I need to leave here in five days to rejoin Verne and
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his men. We’ll return ten days after that. Will you be
ready to help us?”
“Yes,” Emile breathed. “All we need is a signal.” “A flaming arrow at dawn,” Robin said. “Watch for
it. Two minutes after it crosses the sky, join us in the
attack..”
Emile and the other two gunsmiths covered for Robin over the next few days. As a gunsmith—even a new one—Robin found he had rights and privileges denied most other residents of New Chicago. He found he could move freely through the city, poking into its darker corners, mapping the streets in his mind. He even visited the roofs of several buildings, “for stargazing is my hobby,” as he put it.
There were countless places from which his men might strike. One of the smaller gates on the northern side of New Chicago seemed to offer the best possibilities for invasion: it was barred from the inside each night, with a single guard posted to watch over it.
Robin also learned that Al Capone left his palace early each morning to look over pet projects, accompanied by Eichmann and a few other trusted lieutenants. Such a routine begged closer examination, so Robin visited the city library one morning (several dozen authors were re-creating famous works from memory, and interested readers could inspect new drafts of Moby Dick, War and Peace, Ubik, and Little House on the Prairie). Since the library faced out on the central plaza, he had a clear view as Capone—a small, round-faced man with powerful arms and shoulders—crossed the square. The gangster smoked constantly, his words interspersed with short, sharp hand motions. It took maybe three minutes for
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Capone and his men to cross from the palace to Eichmann’s office building.
Robin stared up at the rooftops surrounding the square and thought about ambushes. Yes, he thought, the more he studied the matter, the higher he believed their chance of success.
On his fifth night in New Chicago, Emile drew him aside again. “I have it arranged for you to leave tomorrow,” he said. “We need more flint. You will be going to a high-quality outcropping you spotted some weeks ago in your wanderings, and two of our apprentices will accompany you to carry it back.”
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