The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

THREE The Brittania Club Nairobi, Kenya

A dry savannah wind blew along dirt roads lined with single-level stores, huts, and merchant stalls. A few natives loudly hawked overripe fruits and vegetables from produce carts. The smell was thick with rot, manure, and sweat. It seemed inconceivable that a person might choose to live here unless he had absolutely no other options.

Sanderson Reed looked at his surroundings with disdain, waving his straw hat in front of his face as much to chase away the odors as to cool himself. He was a pallid bureaucrat in his late twenties; to him, traveling so far from home was an unpleasant chore instead of an adventure.

"Nairobi. The big city… according to the map of Kenya." He made a snorting sound.

According to the briefing M had given him, this was little more than a glorified, boggy watering hole for the Maasai people. Not exactly civilization. Reed wished he was back in London. For all its faults, at least that city had culture.

Hearing him mutter, the dark-skinned driver of the wagon turned to him. "Sorry, sir? Did you say something, sir?"

"Nothing worth repeating. So, where is the Britannia Club? Are we almost there?" The drive had been as interminable as it was unpleasant.

"Almost there, sir." The wagon creaked ahead down to the end of the dirt road, finally stopping beside several horses tethered to a hitching post. With a sad attempt at pride, the driver gestured. "Here it is, sir. The Britannia Club. Nairobi's finest, sir."

With a sigh of dread, Reed looked at the rundown building. "I was afraid you were going to say that." He shook his head.

The Club was certainly one of the largest and sturdiest stuctures in all of Nairobi — but that wasn't saying much. The grounds had gone to seed, making the weeds indistinguishable from the once-tended flower beds. Union Jacks drooped from poles like dead fish, engorged with humidity. The heat and flies and squalor seemed to sap the life from even the flag of the British Empire. He doubted M would have approved.

As the patient driver waited, Reed climbed gracelessly out of the wagon. "Don't wander off," he said.

"No, sir."

Stepping toward the Britannia Club, the bureaucrat wrinkled his nose as he glanced over at a rundown graveyard nearby. "Couldn't they have picked a better place to put a club? On another continent, perhaps?"

Reed climbed the porch steps and entered the open front door; as many flies seemed to be wandering out as venturing inside. Not a good sign. He took a moment to assess the surroundings, observing the details of the room with a sour frown.

The Britannia Club spoke of weary, faded glory, a time when Cecil Rhodes and intrepid explorers had seen the dark continent as a treasure box to be unlocked. Allan Quartermain had personally done much to foster that impression on gullible English schoolboys who were hungry to read tales of adventure.

The walls were crowded with a hodgepodge of stuffed animals, tribal shields, stretched pelts of striped and spotted animals, and dusty portraits of forgotten English adventurers. Ivory tusks hung from the rafters.

The club was full of the empire's dregs, old men awash in gin and memories. They sat around at the tables snoring, playing cards or checkers, or endlessly repeating stories of their past escapades.

A black valet stepped up to meet him. "Good afternoon, sir. May I help you? A drink perhaps?"

"I'd prefer information." Reed explained who he was looking for, and the valet, showing no surprise at all, gestured in the direction of a red-faced fellow in his mid-sixties, who — from all appearances — probably spent more time drinking than adventuring.

Anxious to finish his assignment and catch the next steamer back to England, Reed briskly approached his target. A second man sat at the table, brooding and silent, probably drunk. Reed ignored the companion, now that he had found his mark.

"Excuse me, gentlemen?" He waited for them to look up at him with bleary eyes. "Do I have the pleasure of addressing Allan Quartermain?"

The red-faced man grinned at him with discolored teeth. "You do, sir. Indeed you do!" A breath heavy with the sour juniper of bad gin wafted up to him. "Only, it's Quatermain. Bloody press always misspells my name. Never asked them to print my adventures anyway, and then they can't even spell my name right."

"You're not… at all what I expected," Reed said, disappointed. But then, so far everything about Africa, Kenya, Nairobi, and the Britannia Club had also been a disappointment. But M had been very specific about this man.

"I presume you're another traveler, got it into your head to sample the dark continent? And while you're at it, why not hunt down old Allan Quatermain and have him tell his adventures, eh? Well, I've heard that one before, and I certainly welcome the company." Jovially, the red-faced man nudged his quiet companion. "He's not much of a conversationalist."

The other man just grunted.

"Well, actually—" the pallid young bureaucrat said.

"Sit down, sit down. Fill a seat, fill my glass." Quatermain shouted to the bartender. "Bruce! A double!" He turned back to Reed, smiling. "And I shall regale you with how I found King Solomon's Mines. Or I could relate my exploit in Egypt when I met Ayesha, Ayesha, 'She who must be obeyed."

As if they were old friends, Quatermain reached out to grasp Reed's elbow.

"Scintillating, I'm sure, but it is not your past that interests me," Reed said, peeling the man's moist hand off his sleeve. He refused to sit down.

"Not interested? That must surely be a first, sir." Bruce arrived with Quatermain's drink, which the old adventurer gladly accepted. The brooding man at the table glanced at the visitor with a faint flicker of interest.

"My name is Sanderson Reed. I am a representative from Her Majesty's British Government. Terrible things are happening, Mr. Quatermain, and the empire needs you." His words fell heavily on the humid air, and dropped like gassed flies.

Blinking his gin-reddened eyes, Quatermain was unsure of what to say. Fumbling, he looked over at his companion, full of unspoken questions. Then the quiet man leaned back to look Reed in the eye, his gaze sharp as a surgeons scalpel.

Startled, Reed realized that he had been duped. As he looked more carefully at the other man, he understood that this must be the real Allan Quatermain. His past was written on his face, his visage etched with hard lines from a life on the veldt.

"But the question is, young man, do I need the empire?" said the real Quatermain. His voice was rough and rich, with a pleasant lilt.

"I—" Reed started, rummaging through his rehearsed lines to find one that might fit the situation.

The jovial impostor clutched his fresh drink, as if it were a prize that he would allow no one to pry from his hands. He looked crestfallen, as if his favorite game had been spoiled. "I'll toddle off then, shall I, Allan?"

"Yes, of course, Nigel. You toddle off." Quatermain turned back to Reed. "Nigel is useful for keeping the story-seekers at bay. I'm Quatermain. Now, either sit down or leave, but don't just stand there like another one of those tiresome stuffed hunting trophies."

Reed quickly took the seat that Nigel had vacated, "The empire is in peril," he said again, lamely. He had expected that phrase to be sufficient.

"I'm sure you're too young to know, Mr. Reed, but the empire is always in some kind of peril," the old adventurer answered. "It gets to be as tedious as Nigel's inflated stories of things I may or may not have done."

Reed remained insistent. "We need you to lead a team of uniquely skilled men, like yourself, to combat this threat."

Quatermain gestured for the bartender to refill his glass and pour a stiff drink for Reed, who by now felt he needed one. "Very well. Explain yourself, and please try to make it interesting."

The bureaucrat sniffed. "You may not be much aware of current events, since Nairobi is so… unfortunately isolated. Believe me, there is great unrest. Europe, the Orient, parts of Asia, and even here on the dark continent. Many countries are on the brink of war on an unprecedented scale." His voice finally found its fervor.

Quatermain raised his eyebrows. "This is 'news'? The natives realize that they don't need their Great White Father. It's about bloody time."

"You think this is just unrest among the British colonies? If it were that simple, we'd deal with it in a snap," Reed said. "The Queen's army has plenty of resources to deal with ordinary problems such as that."

The famous old hunter ignored his fresh drink as his indignation grew. "Oh, yes, I know the practice. Send in the troops, kill a few villagers, and peace is restored." He made a disgusted sound. "No. Request denied. I'm not going anywhere." He crossed his arms over his chest. "You may leave now."

Reed did not accept the rebuff, but pressed on as he had been instructed to do. "Europe is a sticky place at the moment. Countries at each other's throats, baying for blood. It's a powder keg. The trouble of which I speak could set a match to the whole thing, extending far beyond the British Empire. War."

"You keep saying that. But a war with whom exactly?" Quatermain said, irritation and curiosity coloring his tone.

"Everyone. A world war."

Instead of reacting with shock, the old adventurer nodded slowly, digesting the information. "And that notion makes you sweat, Mr. Reed?"

"Heavens, man! Doesn't it you?"

"This is Africa, dear boy. Sweating is what we do." Quatermain turned from Reed and picked up a copy of The Strand Magazine lying beside a deck of worn playing cards on the adjacent table; the issue was several months old, featuring a new story by the imaginative young writer H. G. Wells. "It's been almost interesting talking with you, Mr. Reed. Good day. Have a nice trip back to England."

Reed just blinked at him in disbelief. "Where's your sense of patriotism, Quatermain? Even though this is godforsaken Kenya, we're in the Britannia Club, for heaven's sake."

Quatermain stood, snapped to comical attention, and turned to his fellow drinkers as he raised his glass. "God save the Queen!"

Everyone in the bar responded with automatic enthusiasm, like windup toys. "God save the Queen!" A moment later they fell back to their drinking and card games and snoozing.

"And that's about as patriotic as it gets around here, Mr. Reed," Quatermain said as he sat down.

At the front entrance to the Britannia Club, he noticed more new arrivals, one of them carrying a leather case. The valet stepped up to the four travelers, who asked him what was obviously a familiar question by now. The adventurer sighed and turned back to Reed, who remained oblivious.

The young bureaucrat insisted in a low voice to keep the man's secret. "But you're Allan Quatermain! Stories of your exploits have thrilled English boys for decades."

"That I know. Nigel does a grand job of reminding me."

Predictably, the four new travelers approached jovial Nigel, who sat up on the sagging leather couch where he had gone to rest. One of them carried a brown satchel, which he tucked under a small table near the bar before stepping in front of the red-faced "adventurer."

Smiling, Nigel prepared for another performance. Quatermain's stand-in had already finished the drink he'd ordered upon Reeds arrival; these new visitors would no doubt buy him a new one.

Quatermain sighed sadly. "With each of my past 'exploits' those English boys find so entertaining, Mr. Reed, I have lost friends. Dear friends, white men and black— and more besides. I am not the man I once claimed to be. Maybe I never was."

In the background, Nigel spoke now-familiar words, putting his heart into the act. "Yes, indeed. I'm Allan Quatermain. Sit down — fill a seat, fill my glass." He signaled the bartender for his usual. "Bruce—"

Suddenly, one of the travelers pulled a handgun from his vest. In a single smooth movement, he shot Nigel in the chest. The florid-faced stand-in adventurer slammed backward into the leather sofa, then he slumped down, seeping red from the deep wound. His empty gin glass clattered to the floor.