Warlord

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE QUEUE WAS TRUDGING FORWARD at last. Smith pulled his battered fedora down around his ears and pushed his thick "national health" eyeglasses up on the bridge of his nose. He'd considered a beard for the occasion but decided a lush moustache would suffice. He looked down at his long, baggy overcoat, making sure too much of his trouser legs didn't show.

That wouldn't do at all, he smiled to himself.

Shuffling along, looking bored, he pulled a well-thumbed brochure out of his pocket and studied it for the hundredth time. He was actually looking forward to this expedition in more ways than one.

This massive complex had been in continuous use since William the Conqueror had selected it as the site of a fortress after his conquest of England in 1066. Smith had frequently read how much the Queen adored the place. How she frequently spent her weekends at Windsor Castle, using it for both state and private entertaining as well as riding her horses on the vast parklands and estates.

She certainly had room to stretch her legs out here, he chuckled to himself, noting the statistic that claimed there were an astounding five hundred thousand square feet of floor area under this melange of centuries-old rooftops.

"Ah, these Royals, they do like to live like kings and queens," he said over his shoulder to an irritating, noisy American woman behind him. A mistake, he knew, but he was antsy, and he'd taken pity on the husband. She'd been blathering nonstop to her silent and clearly long-suffering spouse ever since they'd formed up the queue, loudly lecturing the poor soul in excruciating detail exactly what he was going to see once he got inside these hallowed walls.

"Don't they just?" the frowzy woman said, whirling on him, a tigress hungry to pounce upon fresh meat.

"Hmm," he said, wanting to take a knife to her wagging tongue.

"Well, they deserve it, I suppose. After all, the Royals are kings and queens," she said.

"Quite right, madam. I hadn't thought of it quite that way before."

She was surprisingly small for her voice, a beaky, birdlike creature, someone who looked as if she'd like nothing more than to pop up, perch on his shoulder, and start screeching into his ear. Had he not more important things to do, he might actually have taken the time to pursue this cheeky little monster. Follow her home into her cave and fillet her avian corpus.

"And where are you from?" she asked, thinking him exotic.

"Ah. A penetrating question. I am a Londoner, madam."

"London? Really?" she said, speaking as if it were some undiscovered, faraway destination instead of a thirty-minute train ride to Paddington Station. "We've just come from there."

"Fascinating."

"And what do you do?"

"Arson."

"How interesting. And what are you most excited about seeing today, if you don't mind my being such an old nosy parker?" she chirped. To his astonishment, she actually winked at him!

"Well, the Royal Private Apartments, of course. You know, the furnishings, the priceless works of antiquity. That sort of thing. How about you?"

"Oh, well, Queen Mary's Dolls' House, of course! I collect dolls and miniatures back home and I've never been so thrilled in all my life. We're the Harveys, by the way, Herman and Marva Harvey. From Celebration? No? Disney World? No? Well, you're obviously not much of a world traveler, are you? It's near Orlando, Florida. And you are?"

"Next in line, I'm afraid, madam."

"Oh." She looked devastated at this snide dismissal.

"Well. Lovely meeting you both," he said, moving forward and sliding his prepaid ticket beneath one of the half windows to one of the many pink-faced young English roses with their starched white collars. She smiled up at him after taking his ticket.

"If you'll step to your right as soon as you're inside, you'll find your tour group is just leaving, sir. You're the last one, so I shouldn't dillydally."

Which meant he'd be at the group's rear, just as he'd planned, counting off groups of twenty before joining the queue.

"Beg pardon, miss. The Queen's Private Chapel," he said, smiling at the pretty young thing with his brilliant white teeth. "Is it open today?"

"So sorry, sir. Closed. Restoration work."

"Ah, too bad. Maybe next time."

He moved inside and joined his group.

"LET'S BEGIN, SHALL WE?" the reed-thin male guide said in a properly fluty voice. "Our first stop, the State Apartments. If you could all manage to stay together it will make your visit far more pleasant, as you don't want me scurrying off in search of a lost duckling in midsentence, do you? If you have any questions at all, my name is Colin."

There was a brief moment of appreciative twittering and then they were off like the obedient little flock they were expected to be.

Smith paid no mind to the pontifications of their fearless leader, he just shuffled along at the rear, sometimes falling back to inspect a painting by Van Dyck or Rubens he'd always admired. Then he'd quickly catch up, making sure the palace guide noticed that he was a dutiful soldier, trying his best to stay with the squadron. He'd need a favor from this chap, and soon.

Fifteen minutes later, they were about to go to the right and enter the Private Apartments overlooking the East Terrace. It was at this point that he began making his way to the front of the group. He sidled up to the skinny guide and whispered, "I say, Colin, bit of an emergency here. I saw a loo back there on the left and I'm terribly afraid I need to use it very badly."

There was a distinct sniff of disgust, and then the man, clearly displeased with this glitch, peered down his long thin nose and said, "We shan't be able to wait. You'll just have to catch up."

"Won't be long. Thanks so much," he said and made his way through the group and back along the corridor to the Gents they'd passed a few minutes earlier.

Entering the loo, he quickly ducked into one of the four stalls. He shed his overcoat, rolled it up tight as any City man's umbrella, and shoved it into one of the large painter's pockets. Beneath the innocuous overcoat he wore paint-spattered coveralls. Inside the coveralls, under his armpits, hung two plastic containers. He had secreted them in two large curved aerosol flasks, strapped to his ribs, invisible.

He hung his fedora on the hook provided, flushed the apparatus, and stepped outside the stall.

The green-tiled room was empty, as he'd expected. He'd taken this tour enough times to know how much the guides loathed letting anyone use this particular facility, holding everyone up. Returning to the corridor, he only had a few feet to walk before he came to a door opening outside onto the Upper Ward, or Quadrangle as it was popularly called.

Walking quickly across the manicured grass, he was able to make his way to another door that led to the Queen's Private Chapel just as his group was trooping by. No one, of course, took any notice at all of him, especially the snooty guide who wouldn't be caught dead acknowledging the existence of one of the many painters currently doing restoration work in the Chapel.

He looked at his watch. Eleven twenty. Plenty of time until the painting crew came back from their "elevenses" tea break. He stepped over the red velvet rope and pushed through the carved oak doors with the sign no entry! closed for restoration. Once inside, he quickly took his bearings.

It was a small room, this private chapel. Most beautiful, he thought, was the ornate wooden ceiling decor of blue Romanesque arches edged in gold. The eight red silk upholstered chairs that were normally arranged before the altar had been placed in a corner and draped with a protective cover of thick canvas. The floor as well was covered with canvas and scattered about were paint buckets, solvents, ladders of various heights, and tall, tripod-mounted spotlights with powerful thousand-watt halogen lightbulbs.

His eye alit on one of the spotlights. It had been left on. Quite hot already. Perfect. It was standing atop its sturdy tripod, dangerously close to a lovely blue satin curtain that extended down from the ceiling. Close, he thought, smiling to himself, but not quite close enough.

He quickly moved a tall ladder next to the spotlight and climbed to the very top. Then he reached inside his overalls for the flexible plastic spray tube attached to the aerosol canister under his arm.

He pushed down on the button that controlled the nozzle and a strong stream of powerful accelerant jetted out, soaking the curtain. He moved the nozzle up and down, saturating the material. When the first canister was empty he began to use the second, soaking a second curtain only a few feet away. Then he descended to the floor and admired his work. The curtains were ideal. He picked up the tall illuminated spotlight and placed it so that its scorching bulb was nearly touching the first curtain.

It only took a second.

The lovely blue silk draperies literally exploded into violent scorching flames, reaching up instantly to lick the beautiful wooden ceiling above. Then the second curtain ignited, spreading the fire rapidly to another part of the ceiling.

The alarms wailed.

Earsplitting warnings blared throughout the state apartments as he slipped out of the Chapel and headed back across the grassy Quadrangle to the loo. Inside the stall, he once more donned the long overcoat and fedora. That done, he stepped back out into a corridor in chaos. Above the shouting, he could hear the sounds of sirens, fire companies already racing up narrow winding streets from the town of Windsor. He quickly made his way outside onto the Quadrangle again, walking at a steady pace away from the conflagration.

He'd spent months preparing for this day. At first, the mere notion of what he had done had seemed unthinkable. No one could do what he dreamed of doing. The barriers were insurmountable, the chance of success nil. No amount of ingenuity was sufficient, no derring-do could do it.

And yet…Smith had done it again, plunged yet another stake into the rotten innards of his nemesis, nothing fatal, mind you, but still a devastating psychological blow to the Monarch. He would not stop until he dealt the last, deadly blow, but in the meantime he would savor these small triumphs, rejoicing in each as they came.

Now, making his way hurriedly but inconspicuously out of the castle grounds, he saw that the fire was now burning completely out of control, fire teams pissing water everywhere he looked. It was beginning to look to Smith as if he'd managed to burn down a good portion of one of the most potent and enduring symbols of British imperialism.

Yes. He had practically burned down the Queen's favorite castle. Poor old dear would be heartbroken, he imagined. He could not know it, of course, but his success today would be one of monumental proportions:

More than a hundred rooms would go up in flames that day. It would take more than 250 firefighters over fifteen hours and one and a half million gallons of water to put out the blaze he'd started. It would take five long years to restore it at the staggering cost of thirty-seven million pounds from the Queen's coffers.

Not bad for a single day's work, Smith thought, descending on the endless moving stairs down to the tube. Not bad at all. Standing on the grimy platform waiting for the train, he found himself literally shivering with pleasure.

Another day of retribution to salve for a moment his aggrieved heart, his tortured soul, his fevered brain.