The Ghost of the Revelator

Chapter 1

The late-October New Bruges drizzle—more liquid ice than rain on that Friday night—clicked off the Stanley’s thermal finish all the way down from the house into Vanderbraak Centre. Beside me, Llysette sat, drawn into herself, as she always was before she performed.
When you’re a professor and retired spy married to a former diva of old France who’s been the toast of a Europe now crumbled under Ferdinand’s boots, you always hope for peace and quiet. Especially when you’ve finally turned the disaster of two ghosts in your life into mere inconvenience. And sometimes you get it, but this time even the ice was only the calm before a bigger storm.
“The ice rains…at times, Johan, would that we lived where I did not need two coats and wool garments.”
“I know.” I’d learned early to say nothing controversial before she sang. “I was thinking that over midterms we might take a vacation in Saint-Martine. There’s a weekly dirigible from Asten.”
“I will not endure that long a time.” Llysette shivered. “And tonight, they will applaud like cows. For what do I sing?”
“Because you’re a singer. Singers sing. You sing magnificently—”
“Once I did. Now…I do not know.”
“You’ll be magnificent. I know it.” I eased the steamer to a stop right opposite the side door to the old Physical Training building, set the brake, and scurried around with the black umbrella to escort Llysette up and inside. I kissed her on the cheek, again. “You’ll be fine.”
“Fine is for gold, Johan.”
“You’ll sing magnificently.”
“We shall see.” She headed up the half-flight of steps to the practice room where her accompanist, Johanna, waited. She’d already warmed up at the house on the Haaren console grand piano. I’d purchased that for her with part of my “bonus” for resolving the governmental ghost crisis. Given what I’d put Llysette through, she deserved the piano and more. Given what Archduke Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and my own beloved country of Columbia had put her through, even a concert Steinbach wouldn’t have been the first installment on true repayment to her, but I was trying.
I went back to move the Stanley into a more legitimate spot in the car park, getting even wetter in the process because it was about four times as far from where I parked to the front of the Music and Theatre building.
“Good evening, Doktor Eschbach.” One of Llysette’s students was handing out programs, but I didn’t recall her name—Emelia van-something or other. Then, most of the students at Vanderbraak State University were from New Bruges. Most had a predominantly Dutch heritage—and that Dutch reserve that made Llysette’s teaching an exercise as much in trying to bring emotion to singing as to develop the basics of music.
“Good evening.”
To my surprise, the foyer was relatively crowded, and I turned toward the theatre itself, but didn’t get that far.
“Doktor Eschbach! Doktor Eschbach…” Katrinka Er Recchus had the kind of voice that penetrated, but I supposed that kind of penetration was sometimes useful for the dean of the university. Her bright and overly broad smile was dwarfed by the expanse of white lace collar that topped her too ample figure. Although the auburn hair was faultless, I suspected the original shade had been mousy brown, but there was nothing mousy about her—ratlike, perhaps, but not mousy.
“Dean Er Recchus.” I bowed to her and then to Alois, her even more rotund husband, a retired major in the New Bruges guard, as was obvious from the squared-off nature of his white goatee, the guard pin in his lapel, and the dark gray cravat and suit. He returned the bow without speaking.
“I had heard that your presentation on environmental politics and policies was masterful,” the dean continued. “Doktor Doniger was most complimentary.”
“I’m glad David was pleased.” Doktor David Doniger, my chairman and head of the newly reformed Department of Political and Natural Resource Sciences, was usually a pain in the posterior.
“Johan.” Her voice lowered, but not the overpowering quantity of that floral fragrance that some vain and aging women immerse themselves in under the delusion that olfactory stupefaction will result in visual illusion. “The vanEmsdens were so pleased that you are the first professor to occupy their endowed chair. Peter was particularly supportive of your past achievements and your dedication to Columbia. He served in the Singapore incident, in the Republic Air Corps, as you did. I am so glad that all such unpleasantnesses are behind us now.” The bright smile indicated that any such unpleasantness had best remain behind us all.
The Singapore mess, when Chung Kuo had devastated the city, had been well before my time, and Peter vanEmsden and I had merely passed pleasantries at the ceremony where I’d been installed as the first vonBehn Professor of Applied Politics and Ecology. I doubted most knew the ironies involved with my selection to establish the formal legacy of Elysia vanEmsden’s father’s forebear, and I wasn’t about to explain. After all, how could I—a spy carrying on the legacy of another spy?
“I am delighted that they were pleased.”
Alois merely nodded, as he did frequently when with the dean.
When I finally entered the theatre that had been the sole lecture hall of the old Physical Training center, I checked the program. At least Llysette no longer had to resort to under-the-table handouts from the Austro-Hungarian Cultural Foundation to make ends meet. Tucked in among the recital pieces, besides An die Nacht and Barber’s Monastic Songs, was Anne Boleyn’s aria from Heinrich Verruckt. Llysette had wanted to do that aria at her recital the fall before but had done the Mozart Anti-Mass instead. She’d needed the stipend from the Cultural Foundation. The recital had been the night Miranda Miller, the piano professor, had been murdered, and that had started Llysette’s and my adventures with several different covert operations, including those of my former employer, the Sedition Prevention and Security Service, more widely and less popularly known as the Spazi.
I shivered a touch. The last thing Llysette and I needed was anything more along those lines.
The house was almost full, with nearly all of the 450 seats filled nearly a half hour before Llysette was due to sing. I paused for a moment before I sat down, about halfway back, on the aisle, still surveying the audience.
In about the tenth row, in the middle, sat a bearded man in dark clothes, not the dark clothes of the Dutch, or even of a conservative southerner, but different, somehow, almost out of the last century. Not too far from the stranger sat Dierk Geoffries, Llysette’s chair. On the far side I even saw Marie Rijn, who cleaned the house for us, along with an older man I guessed had to be her husband.
After I seated myself on one of the all too inflexible Dutch colonial hardwood seats, I glanced back at the bearded man. The seats on either side of him had remained empty, even as the house filled.
The lights dimmed.
Llysette stepped onstage, dark hair upswept, almost imperial in the shimmering green gown, and I forgot about the bearded man.
Johanna’s fingers caressed the keys of the concert Steinbach, and the sound shimmered into the evening. Then Llysette began, a selection from Perkins, not one from a Vondel opera.
Llysette sang beautifully. She always had, but now...