scored a toothbrush and miniature tube of toothpaste from a vending machine, found himself a shower stall, cleaned up using the liquid body wash from the dispenser on the wall—all army standard. He put on a clean Flying S swag T-shirt and, lacking a change of underwear, decided to just go commando beneath his cargo shorts. In flip-flops from the shower he walked slowly to the train, trying not to break a sweat or run afoul of any rattlesnakes or barbed plants, carrying his dirty laundry in a wad. This he stowed in the compartment they had assigned him in one of the Amtrak cars. He walked up to the fancy antique railway car where the queen and her staff usually hung out, but none of the Dutch were there except Amelia, standing at the far end of the coach. Her body language indicated that she was on duty, so he didn’t bother her.
> Where should I go?
> Just come to my compartment.
Just as a routine, automatic precaution, Rufus asked himself what were the odds that following these instructions could lead to his getting shot. The person most likely to do the shooting in this particular scenario would be Amelia. She and Rufus had gotten to know each other during the past few days, having a few meals together while the bigwigs did their thing, sharing vehicles. He’d have been interested in her if he wasn’t almost old enough to be her father. She wasn’t going to pull her Sig out of her shoulder bag and double-tap him. And yet still it was weird. It put her—Amelia—in an awkward spot. Rufus walked up the aisle toward her. She watched impassively through dark glasses that more than likely had a built-in AR display. She was a fine-looking woman in her big-boned, broken-nosed way.
“Her Majesty has invited me to—”
“I know, Red.”
“Okay.” He turned his back and began retracing his steps.
“Thanks for checking in, though.”
“Oh, no problem at all, Amelia.”
“That shirt looks good on you.”
“Think it’s my color?”
“It’s not our proper Dutch orange.”
“I know. It’s got a little Southern sunburn.” He threw her a glance over his shoulder and saw evidence of a dimple forming beneath those dark glasses.
He knocked on Saskia’s door. “Come in!” came the answer.
She had been in the bath. It was muggy and fragrant despite the best efforts of the modern A/C system that this car’s owner had shoehorned into the old-fashioned cabinetwork. Saskia, in a terrycloth robe, was flapping a towel, trying to dispel steam.
“I’ll leave the door open.”
“No,” she said.
“Might help get some air moving.”
“The air will be fine.”
What he had really been getting at was that people might get the wrong idea. Of course she was blind to that possibility. It was the kind of consideration her man Willem got paid to think of. Willem didn’t seem to be around, though. So Rufus was trying to step into his shoes, do his job for him.
Saskia actually stepped past him, brushing by close in the small compartment, and shoved the door closed. And locked it. “Everyone wants to pay their respects to the queen,” she said. “Not that many royals show up here.”
“How many of these people are what you’d call royals?”
“None of them. But I understand your confusion.” She smiled. In circumstances like this she could be taken for an affluent American woman of a certain class, the kind of lady you might see getting lunch with her lady friends at an upscale mall after Pilates. Not one of the snooty type, though. He’d seen her chopping celery. “‘Royal’ means actually a king or queen, or someone in their immediate family. I am the only such person here.”
“What’s up with that Cornelia?”
“She has a royal bearing and she comes from a family that is much older than mine. But Venice never had royals. They did have noble houses, self-selected, who elected a leader. That’s where she comes from.”
“She’s got a chip on her shoulder about Venice.”
“You could say that, yes.” Saskia smiled at him sweetly.
“The lord mayor?”
“He’s elected. You don’t inherit that job. But once you win the election—which is a very strange one, very English—you become a lord. Still, quite different from being a royal.”
“How so?”
“Broadly speaking, royals have tended to be like this with the nobility in most times and places.” She was banging her little fists together.
“Oh, see now that’s a new idea to me because I thought they were all on the same side.”