Ghosts of Columbia Read Free Page B

over the River Wijk and around the square toward the church. On the west side of the square, adjacent to the campus, was parked a single dull-gray, six-wheeled steamer, all
too familiar—the kind you normally saw in Columbia or the big cities like Asten or New Amsterdam, the kind the Spazis used.
    “Mother of God!”
    “God had no mother, not for you, Johan, you virtuous unbeliever.” Llysette’s voice was dry as she straightened the dark blue cloak around her shoulders and against the chill breeze that crossed the sunlit square, ruffling leaves on the grass by the bandstand.
    “That is a Spazi steamer.”
    “Spazis?” She shivered. “Are they—do you think they are at the church?”
    “With the Spazis, who knows?” My own thoughts were scattered. The steamer had to have come from Schenectady or Asten. The Spazis had a regional headquarters on the naval base outside of Asten. The last time I’d been there was when I’d been the Subminister for Environment, to see if the ruins of a house from the failed English colony at Plymouth should have been saved under the new Historic Preservation Act. That poor colony had been doomed from the start, with the Dutch bribing the Mayflower ’s captain to land in New Bruges, rather than Virginia, and with the plague among the Indians that had left the shore scattered with bones and the forests littered with ghosts. One of the women had jumped into the ocean and drowned, and her ghost supposedly still haunted the ruins.
    I’d never understood why the Congress gave Natural Resources the historic preservation program or why the minister had decided it came under environmental protection, but you don’t argue with either Congress or your minister if you want to hold your position in Columbia. I hadn’t argued, not that it had helped me keep my job once newly elected Speaker Hartpence set the Congress after Minister Wattson. My background certainly hadn’t helped, not with the Speaker’s distrust of the intelligence community and not my not-hidden-enough background in it.
    “You must know, Johan. You were in government. Aren’t the Spazi government?”
    “Former subministers are the last to know the plans of the Sedition Prevention and Security Service.”
    “Government ministers, they do not know what their own security service plans?”
    “Good government ministers have to use all their contacts to discover that when they’re in office. You may recall that I haven’t exactly been in office anytime recently, and the Spazi aren’t about to go out of their way to tell an ex-minister.” And they hadn’t. Since they hadn’t, and since the only strange thing that had happened was Miranda’s death, more than a little was rotten in the Dutch woodpile, so to speak. Simple homicides didn’t trigger Spazi investigations, and that meant Miranda’s death wasn’t simple.
    The bells ringing from the church tower forced my thoughts back to the mundane business of parking the Stanley.
    Even before we reached the steps to the side entrance of the gray stone church, another couple joined us. Alois Er Recchus was more than rotund; he wore a long gray topcoat, a cravat of darker gray, and a square goatee, nearly pure white, and dwarfed the still ample figure of his wife. His suit was a rich dark brown, typically somber Dutch.
    “Ah, Llysette. I heard that you sang so beautifully last night.” The dean of the university, Katrinka Er Recchus, smiled broadly at us above an ornate lace collar. “I did so wish to be there, but … you understand. One can only be in so many places.”
    “The demands of higher office,” I murmured politely, tipping my hat to her. Out of deference to tradition I did wear a hat to church, weddings, ceremonial occasions, and when my head was cold.
    “But you would so understand, Doktor Eschbach, from your past experiences in government.”
    I almost missed the slight stress on the word “past.” Almost, but not quite. “I find those in Vanderbraak