Chapter 65
Sixty-Five
Marcus and Marguerite spent the next few days either in the cramped space of the Berlin, still crowded with odd bits of furniture, or (when they needed to pass through Bureau of Public Safety check points) within the even more cramped space of a compartment Aylesworth had designed.
The compartment was beneath the coach’s rear seat.
Its entrance was through a cleverly designed panel in the belly of the coach.
But the coach’s battered appearance, particularly the interior, stained with blood, and half-filled with furniture, encouraged the various local guardsmen to believe the story told by David and Andre’s forged identification papers.
They’d purchased the massive old coach for a song from the estate of a now very dead aristocrat and planned to use it as transport for the used furniture business they were setting up.
The appearance of the brindle dog, Isidore, who David had taught to growl on command, also helped speed the inspection process, for which the pair were incredibly grateful.
The record-breaking August heat persisted, and the compartment was suffocatingly hot and dark.
Still, with her back pressed against Marcus’s chest, his arms wrapped tightly around her, and his voice whispering in her ear details of the team’s many back-up plans, Marguerite felt oddly safe.
Marcus joked that he was beginning to like the dark.
Andre, scratching at his wrists and ankles, complained that the dog was giving them fleas.
Nights were spent sleeping in fields, in the woods, or if they were lucky, in the stables of members of the team’s networks.
It took nearly a week, but at last they reached a rocky path along the coast that led down to a pebbled beach.
The sails of their rescue sloop were tiny white triangles against the blue horizon.
David took out a small mirror, and with a quick series of flashes, signaled their arrival.
He was rewarded with a series of return flashes, which Marcus, spy glass to his eye, explained indicated the time and place a rowboat would be sent to meet them that evening.
“Have to admit, I was a bit worried Grenville would be too furious to send the sloop,” Andre admitted.
David slapped him on the back, “Not me. I knew he’d never pass up the opportunity to see us horsewhipped.”
“Will you be punished for saving me?” Marguerite turned to look at Marcus, who was leaning back against the Berlin’s cushions, sketchbook in hand.
“Won’t be the first time.” He sighed. “Grenville feels that this team, while highly competent…”
“Suffers from a shocking lack of discipline,” Tyndale, Scott, and Aylesworth said in unison.
Around midday, a sturdy man in rough clothes, with a pack on his back, wandered up to the parked coach. He inquired about the state of the roads. When the man climbed up on the box, Marguerite gasped and grabbed Marcus’s arm.
“It’s code,” he said, his callous-roughened hand settling over hers. “He’s here to dispose of the coach.”
David, sitting outside on the box, heard this exchange through the coach’s open windows. “Not dispose of, store.” He said it as if they were discussing the Mona Lisa, rather than a massive, aging coach.
“Eh, citizen, can I interest you in storing a dog, too?” Andre asked.
“This team leaves no members behind,” David said firmly. “Isidore’s coming with us.”
As Scott and Aylesworth began debating the value of the dog, Marcus tucked his sketchbook in his pocket and got to his feet. “Time to go.”
Marguerite glanced around the coach’s interior, then realized there was nothing to gather up, nothing to take with her.
But Marcus didn’t immediately open the door. Instead, he reached up and slid open a panel in the ceiling. He pulled out muskets, powder and shot.
“Will we need those?”
“No way of knowing, but you’ll definitely need this.” He pulled out a leather artist’s tube with a smear of green paint near the tie and handed it to her. He unknotted the tie when he saw her hands were shaking too badly to manage it herself, then opened it.
Marguerite peered inside. “My paintings,” she breathed. She reached a hand inside, felt the ragged edges of three rolled canvases. She looked up at him through a sheen of tears. “I have no words…”
“Words aren’t necessary,” he said. “Just show me your art.”