“Who are you?” he said.
“I’m here to see Jean-Claude Deschines,” John replied.
“Just like that?” The gendarme had narrow eyes and a heavy black stubble. “I asked who you are.”
“And I asked to see Jean-Claude. Tell him John is here with the package he was expecting.”
The other man’s eyes narrowed; he nodded and trotted off. John set his back against a twisting granite column and wrestled his breath and heartbeat back under control, ignoring the sporadic shooting and cheering and trying to ignore the deadly whine of the occasional ricochet making it through the barricaded windows. Ten years ago he wouldn’t have been breathing hard. . . . The entrance hall was dark because of those barricades, just enough light to see the big curving staircase at its rear, and the usual allegorical murals depicting Progress and Harmony and Industry, the sort of thing the Syndicat d’Initative put up in any Unionaise town hall. One did catch his eye, a mosaic piece showing Bassin du Sud as it had looked a couple of centuries ago, with only the grim bulk of the castle on its hill, and a small walled village at its feet. That castle had been built as a base to stop Errife corsairs, back when the island pirates had virtually owned the coast, setting up bases and raiding far inland for slaves and loot.
The castle was still there. And it was the garrison HQ for the Bassin du Sud military district. The curtain walls and moats and arrowslits weren’t all that relevant anymore, but there were heavy shore-defense mortars in the courtyards, Land-made breechloaders, capable of commanding the harbor if the plotters consolidated their hold on the garrison.
A tall man with a swag belly clattered down the staircase; he had a police carbine over his shoulder and a pistol thrust through the sash around his waist.
“Jean!” he roared genially, and came toward John with open arms for the hug and kiss on both cheeks that was the standard friendly greeting in the Union. At the last moment he recoiled.
John looked down briefly at his shirt. “Most of it’s other people’s blood,” he said helpfully.
“Name of a dog! You were caught in the street fighting?”
John nodded. “Nearly got massacred by some soldiers with car-mounted machine guns, but somebody dropped dynamite on them. There seem to be a lot of explosions going on today.” He jerked his head towards the doors leading out onto the plaza.
“My faith, yes,” the mayor of Bassin du Sud said happily. “Copper miners. I . . . ah . . . arranged for a special train to bring in a few hundred of them from up in the hills. Ingenious fellows, aren’t they?”
John nodded. They were also anarchists almost to a man, those that weren’t members of the radical wing of the Travailleur party. A few years ago, when the Conservatives had been in power, they’d taken up arms in a revolt halfway between a damned violent strike and outright revolution. The government had turned General Libert’s Legionnaires and Errife loose on them when the regular army couldn’t put the insurrection down.
“You’re going to need more than dynamite and hunting shotguns to get the garrison out of the castle. Especially if you want to do it before Libert arrives. What’ve you got in the way of ships to stop him crossing?”
“Three cruisers were lost.”
“I saw it. Sabotage?’
The mayor nodded. “Time bombs in the magazines, we think. But there’s one corsair-class commerce raider, and some torpedo boats. There were nothing but merchantmen in Errif harbor at last report.”
“That’s last report. He may shuttle men over by air. Chosen ‘volunteers’ under ‘private contract.’ In fact, I wouldn’t put it past the Chosen to escort his troopships in with a squadron of cruisers.”
“That would mean war!” The mayor’s natural olive changed to a pasty gray. “War with the Republic.”
“Not if they could claim a local government invited them in.”
“Nobody could—”
“Mon ami, you don’t know what Santander lawyers are like. They could argue the devil into the Throne of God—or at least tie everything up on the question for a year or better. Which is why you have to get some transport down to my ship; she’s stuffed to the gills with rifles, machine guns, ammunition, explosives, mortars, and field-guns.”