‘And we’ll get it for him,’ Jules said with determination. ‘Now that we know who’s got it, it’s only a matter of time.’
Ducos deigned to accept six grand dukes and duchesses as personal clients – among them Grand Duke Nicholas and Grand Duchess Olga of Sector Twenty – but that was all he would take. Working from that position of intimacy, Jules tried to delve deeper into the private affairs of that twosome, but to no avail. Their public facades passed the closest scrutiny.
Yvette tried working from a slightly different direction. Since Nicholas and Olga maintained three estates on Earth, each with a large staff, the turnover of their personnel was quite high. At every opportunity, Yvette managed to wangle one of her family members into those households – in kitchens, garages, and anyplace else – in an effort to find the slightest traces of information. Little bits and pieces manifested themselves – strange cryptic messages arriving at odd hours, an unusual assortment of people visiting the Grand Duke, and so forth – but there was nothing to prove that Nicholas was indeed Banion, that Nicholas was planning an imminent revolt, or that Nicholas had possession of the all-important Patent of Royalty.
‘We’ve got to take this to the Head, Eve,’ Jul es said at last, after several more weeks of fruitless searching. ‘I hate to yell for help on our first really big job, but Nicholas is just too fat a cat for us to tackle on our own. If we make even the slightest goof, there’s more than a possibility that it’d be the Head’s head that would roll, not Nicholas’. We simply can’t take that risk by ourselves.’
Yvette nodded. ‘You’re right, I’m afraid. The Emperor himself sits in judgment at any trial of a grand duke, and he’d be a fair judge even in a matter l ike this. If we can’t conclusively prove Nicholas guilty of treason, the Emperor would let him go.’
They met the next day with the Head and laid the whole mess out before him as clearly and concisely as they could. As they spoke, they could see him aging ten years; and when they were done he sat silent and motionless, in intense concentration, for a full ten minutes. Neither d’Alembert spoke another word while he was so engrossed. In the hushed atmosphere they could almost hear the master strategist’s keen brain at work.
‘Nicholas,’ he whispered at last, as though to himself. ‘I can’t say I’m shocked, particularly; but even so, I’ve known the man for years. We weren’t especially close, but he was polite enough company at some awfully tedious state banquets.’
He laid his hands out flat, palms down, in front of him and looked up at his two top agents. ‘You’re both right, of course – we can’t move against him without the genuine Patent actually in our hands.’
Jules scowled. ‘That’s what I was afraid you’d sa y. And I’m sure that Patent must be in the solidest safe-deposit vault on Earth.’
‘It isn’t,’ the Head said flatly. ‘The Emperor can open any bank vault he pleases, with no reasons or excuses at all. Nicholas knows that. Besides, he wouldn’t want that Patent anywhere out of his immediate grasp, and who knows what could happen to it in some bank? So the Patent’s got to be in a vault as good as any on Earth, but probably one in the deepest subcellar of his Castle Englewood. I’d stake my head on that. In fact,’ he added, enjoying the irony, ‘I undoubtedly will.
‘Theoretically, the Emperor could open even a grand duke’s personal vaults, too, at whim. But the legal machinery grinding into action would tip our hand, and probably spur the Bastard into precipitate revolt. Nicholas’ army and navy are of unknown strength; once he got them mobilized, who knows which side would win? At the very least, we would face a bloody civil war that would claim billions of lives on hundreds of worlds, and the scars would be with us for generations.
‘No, gentleman and lady, we are all going to have to stake our heads on this gamble. No matter how daintily we pussyfoot it, there’s always the chance of our touching off the explosion. We might as well all go out in style.
‘Now, as to the ways and means. At the slightest hint of trouble, Nicholas would try to kill the Emperor and establish his claim, so we’ll have to get Bill out of the way. Edna is a safer target, since there’d be little gained by killing the Crown Princess while her father is still alive. What do you think of this?’ and they discussed details for two hours.
Three days later, the various news media announced that Emperor Stanley Ten had had a heart attack.
It wasn’t too serious as those things went, they hastened to point out, but a battery of medical specialists agreed unanimously that he had to have at least two months of carefree rest – preferably at his favorite summer place, Big Piney in the Rocky Mountains. Wherefore Crown Princess Edna was given the most unusual title of ‘Empress Pro Tem’ and her parents departed the Imperial Palace with no pomp or circumstance at all. They did not go to Big Piney, however, but to a specially selected island in the Pacific that was guarded by every defensive device known to the military science of the age. And, just coincidentally, a small but able fleet of battle cruisers hovered in synchronous orbit over that spot to guard against a concerted attack from space.
Meanwhile, to relieve the concern in the minds of the Empire’s subjects, Empress Pro Tem Edna announced a Grand Ball – a getting-acquainted party that, beginning with a full Grand Imperial Court, would last for three days. All thirty-six grand dukes and grand duchesses and their families were invited, as well as all the nobles of Earth above the rank of count and any visiting nobles from out in space. There was, of course, no chance that any of the invitees would turn down such an event, which promised to be the social climax of the decade.
With the cat away, the mice set out to very serious work indeed. Castle Englewood appeared from the outside to be deserted except for the servants who managed the estate. Jules and Yvette invaded the castle with a small army of both relatives and technical experts. The staff – some of whom were much more adept with weapons and fighting than they had any right to be – were overpowered without too much fuss. Fifty cat-footed, fully briefed d’Alembert wrestlers were quite sufficient to take care of even the many-times-too-numerous Castle Guard. Once the help was dispatched, the Service people had free run of the castle – theoretically.
Architects and engineers had brought along the detailed blueprints of the castle, as registered with the Imperial Building Commission but, as had been expected, the plans were found useless. Most of the actual details that mat tered had never been registered. So the Service’s best electronic wizards moved in, unlimbered their ultra sensitive detectors and explored walls, floors and ceilings. They traced cable after cable, wire after wire; and as they traced, they figured out what each system was and cut it. Section after section of the vast castle went dark and powerless as these experts went through, skirting the defenses and dismantling the traps.
Eventually, after more than three hours of grueling, mind numbing detail work, they found the Grand Duke’s personal elevator tube. Riding it down to the subbasement, they found the enormous scale model of the Empire with its various colored lights still twinkling. The sight was awesome, and it forged one more damning link in the chain, but it still was not enough. They had to find that Patent.
It had, of course, been obvious from the start that Castle Englewood was no ordinary grand ducal residence. The invaders from SOTS found it a fortress; a fortress that, except for the Head’s brilliant strategy of deception and the d’Alemberts’ ability to carry it out, would have been starkly impregnable. And, even so, the attack almost failed.
The castle had been searched from top to bottom, with every possible place of concealment pried open and examined. No trace had been found of that all-important document. Finally, after exploring all the other subterranean tunnels and computer banks, Jules and his company returned to a grimly thick steel wall that stood boldly at the end of one broad corridor. ‘How about this, Major?’ Jules asked.
The officer in charge of the military aspects of this raid examined the wall in minute detail. ‘It opens from somewhere, somehow,’ he said, pointing out an almost invisible crack where steel butted against steel. ‘A lot of effort has gone into disguising it, though, so it’d probably take us a week to find out where and how it opens. I think we cut all the external leads in, but I’d bet this section has its own independent power source.’