Don Diego’s command of English was improving. Nonetheless, he and the archbishop usually conversed in Latin, while Rupen exercised his twentieth-century Spanish on this seventeeth-century Spaniard, quickly discovering that there were significant differences between the two tongues. For one thing, the famous Castilian lisp did not exist in Don Diego’s version of Castilian Spanish.
Of a day, while the pages, squires, and other servants were briskly clearing away the remnants of the fish and carving the poultry for serving, Archbishop Harold asked, “Tell me, Don Diego, have you any relatives, distant or near, living in this Kingdom of England and Wales, perchance?”
“No,” replied the Castilian knight, “that I do not, your grace. I own a few distant cousins in Valencia—outcome of the marriage of my grandsire’s half sister to one Conde Ernesto of that realm—and one of my younger brothers is secretary to his eminence, Cardinal de los Llanos Luviosos de Espana, who presently is in Rome. . . . May one inquire why your grace asks?”
“No thing of much import, Don Diego. It is simply that you chance to bear a truly startling resemblance to one of my scribes back in York, but he is of West Country English antecedents.” The archbishop leaned forward and bespoke his secretary, “Brother Hugh, see you not a resemblance between this noble knight and one of our scribes?”
“Why, yes, now that your grace mentions it,” replied that worthy, setting down his cup. “Don Diego looks the very spit and image of young Brother Matthew Olson. They two might be father and son or elder brother and younger, so very similar are they.”
But then the geese were served and there was no more talk for the while.
Arrived at the archepiscopjU estate southwest of York City, Bass proceeded with doing all that was necessary for getting the galloglaiches accustomed to the pairs of new flintlock horsepistols delivered in their absence by Pete Fairley. Those now with him would have the job of teaching those left in Norwich. Several pack-mule loads of the new arms and their accessories were ready and waiting at the manufactory in York.
Bass had intended to send Nugai—who was an old friend of Pete Fairley’s—over to York to arrange a rendezvous point for the loaded mules along his line of march, but surprisingly was unable to find the usually faithful little yellow-brown man. Nor did he come across him, not for more than two days. So he ended by sending Sir Ali ibn Hussain.
When the missing Kalmyk finally did turn up, it was with abject apologies. He recounted that he had been herb-hunting around the countryide, seeking out ingredients for the various salves and medicines he concocted, remarking that he had come to know the plants of England better than he was likely to know those of the land where they so shortly would be bound and where, was there fighting, they surely would have need of some of his nostrums.
For his own pan, Bass was so plesed to have back the little nomad with his quick, intuitive mind, his amazing level of intelligence, and his easy adaptability to all the circumstances that they had encountered, to date, that he forgot his brief flash of anger at the unannounced and protracted absence and got back to his own duties, leaving Nugai alone to sort and prepare his sacks of ingredients. For, with the dawn, they all would depart for Norwich.
The elder and the younger met but briefly, once more by night, once more in a graveyard, though not the same graveyard.
“We have a problem,” said the elder. “You set the controls and I sent all save two of them a-journeying, barely within the set time period. But I have just visited the point from which they all were snatched at the proper reference points. They are not there. Through manipulations, I jockeyed back and forth, and while I could witness their disappearances, 1 could find no trace of any reappearances. So where has your bungling inexperience sent these projectees? Riddle me that.”
The younger hung his head in contrition, while the elder went on. “Nor is that all, or even the worst of the problem. When I journeyed down to check the settings on the journey device, I found it and the entire repository gone, torn from out the earth like a rotten tooth, leaving only a hole wherein the foundations had been so long set.”
The younger gulped. “Then I am trapped here, with no way to journey in either distance or time or between the universes..”
“Just so.” The elder man nodded again. “And I’ll be far too busy on this level to journey to where I can secure you another device for some months. So lie low in York and live the part of your present persona until I return; it is all that you can do. Let this serve as a lesson to you. Our work here is vital to our people; moreover, the price of failure in performance of assigned tasks is usually suffering of some nature, sometimes personal extinction. Let us hope that your eventual price be not so steep.’*
State Police Lieutenant Martin Gear sat behind his office desk, chewing at the knuckle of his thumb until the two FBI agents were done. Then he could hold it back no longer.
He grinned maliciously as he said, “Well, you damn federal hotshots come up just as dry as me and mine did, didn’t you? I never knew just why yawl were called in on this case anyhow. It all fell within my state, and ain’t nothing to make anybody think it might be kidnapping.”
One of the agents looked quizzically at the other, briefly, and the other said, “Hell, Larry, it won’t hurt to tell him, now.”
“Lieutenant Gear,*’ began the agent called Larry, “the missing men, the ones to whom you have been referring in press interviews as ‘cheap A-rab musicians,’ are neither Arabs nor cheap, not by any means. Their band was a hobby to them. One was a Greek, one was a Syrian-American, but most of them were Armenian-Americans, all but one American-born. Two of them are very wealthy men in their own right, the rest are the sons of wealthy, well-connected businessmen.
“Surely you are familiar with Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated, and its subsidiary, Souvenirs, Incorporated?”
Lieutenant Gear nodded. “So?”
“All save a couple of the missing men are connected to those firms either by birth or employment or both, and one of the out-of-state Ademian plants is producing some very sensitive material under federal contract.”
“I’ll take over, Larry,” said the senior agent. “So sensitive is this material, Lieutenant Gear, that certain foreign powers have already gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to try to get samples and plans. So far their schemes have all been foiled.
“Now consider these facts, Lieutenant: All of the audience that night on that secluded estate far from the main roads were foreign-born—Iranians and a few assorted Arabs—and Iran shares a long border with the Soviet Union; Mr. Kogh Ademian is the chairman of the board of Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated, and the missing band leader, Arsen Ademian, is his son.
“Are you beginning to grasp an inkling of just why we were called in on this case, Lieutenant Gear? Why we intend to continue that investigation, however long it takes, until we turn up firm evidence of just what happened out there that night?”
Gear looked bewildered. “Well, what the hell can I do, boys? My department couldn’t turn up any more than yours could on it, and we all flat-out worked, too, till that fellow Asissi got a court order to keep us off his estate, anyway.”
“That’s Azizi,’ Lieutenant Gear,” put in Larry informatively.
The senior agent, Jerry, grinned. “Well, the distinguished Ameer Azizi knows better than to try that kind of garbage with us—he’d find his green card lifted so fast it would make his self-important head swim! He and his fellow oil millionaires may think that they’ve bought this country lock, stock, and barrel, but they haven’t, not yet, not by a long shot.
“No, what we’ll be needing from you, Lieutenant Gear, is the full cooperation of you and your department—willing cooperation, this time, not the grudging cooperation we had to pressure your governor into ordering you to give us. With that kind of help and with any kind of luck, we should be able to get to the bottom of these strange disappearances within the time that I’ve promised the director we can have the case solved.”
Martin Gear shook his head again, sorrowfully. “Boys, you got it. Whatever me and mine can do for you, give you, is yours. But I can’t help feeling this feeling that it ain’t nothing in this old world is going to help you one damn bit in finding them people. Nothing in this world.”