Chapter Text
“Master Koen.”
The Count’s voice, quiet as it was, nevertheless permeated the farthest corners of the small, neatly appointed office tucked away at the back of the club’s premises. “What brings you to my office at this unusual hour?”
Both men knew that that would have been an amusing little barb under normal circumstances, seeing as the man who was known to most as Master Koen and to many as The Mad Belgian would customarily be found at or near the bar of the Caractacus Club pretty much as soon as the sun set, give or take an hour; given his punctuality, the accusation of government work would have been an easy one to level at him if it wasn’t for the savage scarring that marred most of the bottom half of his face.
And the fact that His Majesty’s Civil Service almost certainly frowned on facial tattoos.
“I… may I sit?” Koen’s glance darted around the room, flitting to the window more than once. The view of the neighboring building’s firewall was a nuisance at the best of times but appeared to somewhat appease his agitation.
“Of course, of course.” The Count smoothly pushed aside the correspondence he had been working on and placed his hands in the newly-freed space, loosely clasped. “If I may be allowed a frank observation, you seem quite agitated.”
“I… Lord Almighty.” Koen shook his head, blowing out a breath. “I’m forgetting my English.” He glanced around the room again, this time at the door. “I trust we can speak in confidence, you and I?”
“Always,” the Count replied smoothly. “A matter of some delicacy to the Club, I take it?”
Koen snorted, a pained smile tugging at his ravaged features. “Nothing to do with the Club. As far as I can tell anyway. No, this is a matter that… accosted me at work. Accosted? Yes, let’s leave that standing. All will become clear.” He fidgeted somewhat uncomfortably on his chair and then pulled a rather large and now somewhat rumpled envelope from under his waistcoat and placed it on the desk. “I came into possession of this late this afternoon. Barely managed to salvage it.” He made a face. “Would have been better off throwing a stick of dynamite after it and leaving it at that.”
The Count leaned forward, careful not to actually touch the envelope, elegant fingertips skimming just above the surface of the ornate embossed seal stamped into the paper. Master Koen appeared to have no such concerns, poking directly at the ostentatious crest with one surprisingly dirty finger. “Do you understand now?” he asked, voice quivering.
“I’m afraid you find me at a disadvantage,” the Count admitted. “Judging from the shape of your hands and the way you are thumping this poor seal, this is a matter of state, and a dirty one at that?”
“Belgian,” Koen sighed. “So ‘dirty’ isn’t that far off. Think battlefield. This is a military seal, John. One that has no business in the hands of a civilian.”
“...so unless you were concealing a significant part of your history in your application, it has no business in your hands, Master Koen.”
Koen made a noise that was somewhere between clearing his throat and expressing severe pain, and the Count surmised it had started life as a curse in Koen’s native Flemish. “Exactly,” Koen added, defeated. “And no, I was being honest with you. This isn’t a war wound. At all.” He ran a rough hand along the knotted scar tissue on his cheek and chin. “Thermite explosion. I suspect parts of me are still magnetic, even after all these years.” He chuckled sadly. “No, I was honest when I said I was a railway engineer, and I still am. That is where the trouble started.”
“Do tell,” the Count offered quietly. “And let me know if you’d like a drink. I assume you’re off the clock now?”
“Hell yes,” Koen agreed forcefully. “Ran right to your office. After stashing the less incriminating… no.” He took a deep breath. “From the beginning, Martijn. From the beginning. Fantastical though it sounds.”
The Count dutifully overlooked the slippage of the man’s legal name and did his best to project calm reassurance and solitude, which seemed to go some way towards getting Koen into a position to recount his woes.
“So you may remember the Great Northern and City line,” he began. “Or, more precisely, you may not remember it yet because it hasn’t opened yet. It will, Almighty willing, do so early next year.” He leaned in closer, grubby hands clutching the edge of the Count’s desk. “Underground work. All of it. Proper trains going underground, none of your puny little tubes that require a different gauge and rounded carriage walls.” He made a face in disdain. “And you can imagine that that’s not the most salubrious place to work, so we make do with the dregs and the hardheads. And this afternoon one of them almost shed tears on my office floor.”
The Count nodded slowly, letting his gaze slip unobtrusively towards the brandy decanter.
“No thank you,” Koen ground out. “So, picture, if you will, a man about my age, shorter and with arms like tree trunks, teeth stained brown from tobacco and a demeanor that could turn the air blue. That’s Jack. My foreman on the tunnel crew. Except he was white as a sheet. Like he’d seen a ghost.”
The Count hummed thoughtfully. “Not uncommon to have superstition run rampant among the workmen though, is it? Especially underground?”
“Not Jack. Not as much as a miner’s good-luck ditty, that one. And today… you’d have thought he’d accidentally dug up the entrance to Hell itself.” He crossed himself hastily. “It was one of his crew that saw it first… and I say ‘it’ but it may have been a ‘him’ for all I can tell. They both saw it, except the other guy is in no shape fit to talk.” Koen shuddered. “Stumbled pell-mell up the partially laid line and smashed his teeth in on the fourth rail. They took him to Saint Bart’s Hospital.”
“But Jack was able to give you a report.”
“More than that. He showed up with this lead box, ancient and scraped-up like it had been underground since the Romans. And with a story of the ghost that had dropped it, after frightening him and his man half to death.”
“The ghost.”
“Jumped straight out of the ground. They both insisted he did anyway, and that they hadn’t seen him coming. Black as the night, with blazing eyes and a mouth full of teeth, and lunging at them with a hand made of metal - or a mechanical claw or some kind, depending on who you ask.” He sighed. “The story’s already started making the rounds, though the evening shift is still on for a little while, but I wouldn’t be overly surprised if I had an impromptu strike on my hands tomorrow morning.”
“And the box?”
“In my office at the site for now. There was some miscellaneous money in it, not a lot, mostly coins, and a map that I haven't been able to make sense of. Mostly because this was staring me in the face.” He groaned. “But yes, I will have to do the right thing and give the money and the box up to the police in the morning. And hope they don’t hold me up all day looking down a hole for someone who isn’t there any more, and may never have been.”
The Count frowned. “So we have a half-machine specter that appears to have sprung directly from a Gothic novel, a leaden box containing debatable treasure, and… Belgian military secrets?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Koen agreed, looking pained. “And you may be able to guess how many Belgians there are on the Great Northern and City tunnel project. I’ll give you a hint: they’re all currently hiding in your office.”
“So you are assuming this is aimed at you?”
“Almighty knows why, but that is the only conclusion I have been able to come up with. To frame me, for some perceived slight, as a thief of government secrets.”
“Who could have done such a thing, I wonder…”
“You and me both. I mean, you know I’m no angel -”
“Or you wouldn’t be sitting here, at this club, talking to me.”
“Right, right… but also, I have never… no. Cannot think of anyone looking for revenge on me. At all.” His face was painfully blank, even the scars and bluish-black swirls of the tattoo half-covering them fading into the background. “And I need help making this… go away.”
“Help from me?” The Count’s eyebrow rose ever so slightly. “Master Koen, I appreciate the high esteem you appear to hold me in but my connections most certainly do not reach into the august circles of my own government, much less yours -”
Koen stopped him with a shaking hand, held up between their faces. “Not you. I was hoping for the assistance of your… partner.”
“Rael?”
“The same. I was hoping to… get your assistance in persuading him to… apply one of his less savory skills to effect my salvation.”
The Count’s eyebrows caught up with each other, and a small smile flickered around his thin lips. “Larceny? Seriously, that man’s mouth… ”
“Well… the opposite, if you will. Smuggling this… this contraband back into the Embassy without anyone noticing. Or before they do, anyway.” He rubbed his face again, hard enough to make the miscellaneous stubble in the crevices of the scar landscape make a sound. “I mean, thank the Almighty it’s Friday, but…”
“If you are willing to entrust these documents to me,” the Count murmured, barely loud enough to hear, “I shall see what can be done. I should have an answer for you by tomorrow morning.”
Koen’s shoulders sagged in relief as he watched the Count fold up a piece of clean writing paper and pick up the offending envelope without actually touching it. Fingerprints. Of course. Too late to curse yourself for that now. “Thank you, John. Thank you. I will likely be in the clutches of the Metropolitan Police for most of tomorrow, not to mention the damned reporters or my own crews and their ghost stories, but… this is a huge weight off my heart. Really.”
“My pleasure,” the Count said, gently weighing the envelope in his hand before slipping it into an unassuming manila folder. “As well as my duty to help out a fellow human being. I shall consult with my favorite scoundrel and report back.”
***
“Fish? Are we going Catholic in our dotage?”
Rael made a face that was equal parts disdainful and flirtatious as he planted himself in the chair (naturally without first pulling it out), and he was already halfway to stuffing the napkin into his open shirt collar by the time the Count’s eyebrow had finished rising.
“Speak for yourself, youngling,” he replied coolly. “And I am sure you have a standing invitation to stew at your usual haunt.”
“I was hopin’ for oysters.” He pouted for a split second, then smartly jammed his fork into the flawless steamed trout, severed a fin, and licked it, just because he could. “One of us is gonna need stamina after all.” He preened.
“Imp.”
“Your chosen imp. Just sayin’. Mmh, this is good.” He cast an appreciative glance at the white wine in his glass. “Is there more?”
“There is,” the Count replied fondly. “Though I would appreciate it if you remained above board for a little longer than usual, my dear.”
“I will have you know I fuck with the best of ‘em when I’m in my cups.” Rael pointed one fork at his host and lover while continuing to shovel fish into his mouth with the other. “Mmmh. Anyway, you know that’s true.”
“I do,” the Count admitted. “And I shall look forward to sampling your wayward talents in detail later. But first I have a proposal, Rael.”
“Oh, I ain’t the marryin’ kind. You know that, love. Follow you around the world but not into holy matrimony. Ugh.”
The Count sighed. “Not that kind of proposal. It concerns a matter of some delicacy that Master Koen brought to my attention today.”
Rael swallowed, then washed his astonishment down with another generous swig of wine. “No way. The Mad Belgian gettin’ romantic with someone? Wonders will never cease.” He looked balefully at the puddle of wine left in his glass, then his eyes widened as a sudden thought hit him. “Not the cute brawny New Zealander that sorta followed us home from our Australian jaunt, is it? I’d been wondering what he’s been up to…”
“No,” the Count interjected, rather forcefully. “Nothing of that kind. Anyway, he did ask for your assistance.”
“Uh-oh.” Thinking for a second, Rael crushed the decorative lemon slice with his fork and sopped the resulting lemony, buttery mess up with a piece of white bread. “Spill, then,” he continued, chewing. “What does he want? Chemistry? Photography? Arabic?”
“Larceny,” the Count replied, fixing his bronze glare on his impossible beloved.
“You wound me.”
In retaliation, Rael reached for the Count’s still-full wine glass and found his wrist grasped quite conclusively. Oh, two can play at that game. Without missing a beat, he kicked his chair away and sidled around the corner of the table until he was very much in the Count’s personal space.
And then he straddled his lap, still smiling, and reaching behind himself with his free hand for the wine glass. “Cheers,” he said, grinning down at his now slightly flushed lover. “Stealin’ is apparently my game now.”
“Don’t… ahem.” The Count had to clear his throat, and the slight flit of annoyance across his face at that made Rael smile fondly. “Don’t pretend you’re innocent, boy. You don’t get to be where I found you without misappropriating the occasional personal possession.”
“Very well put,” Rael laughed. “You don’t get to be my age where I come from without takin’ what you need occasionally. Anyway, so what does our favorite mad Belgian need stolen?”
“He doesn’t. He needs it repatriated, so to speak.”
“To Belgium?” Rael made a face. “Not the adventure I was hopin’ for to be honest.”
“To Belgium. Specifically, to a small patch of Belgium located in Eaton Square, yes.”
Rael took a sip of wine, the wheels in his head visibly turning. He said nothing, which was frankly shocking, then took another sip of wine for good measure before directing his speculative gaze back at the Count’s face.
A slender finger stopped him short, just before their lips could meet. Rael swallowed, annoyed, and tried his best to look accusing through lowered lashes.
“While I will happily acquiesce to consuming the rest of my allotted portion of wine via your filthy mouth, I would prefer it if you gave the matter some consideration first.” He lowered his voice. “Before I fuck you senseless anyway.”
Rael’s eyes flew open, and his grin widened. “Right. Yeah. Break into the what, the Embassy? Sure thing. Now, where were we…?”
He poured the rest of the wine from the Count’s glass into his own mouth, and then proceeded to lovingly distribute it all over the man’s face, tracing the rivulets with his tongue and rubbing his face into the neat gray beard like a great scruffy cat.
“I’ll steal the fuckin’ Crown Jewels for you, you know that, right?” He snuck one tanned hand inside the Count’s waistband. “Although I don’t think there’s any shortage of those here… ooph!”
The grin took a second to reappear as Rael found himself suddenly on his back and splayed across the table with no regard for the dinnerware or indeed the dinner. He thought he smelled butter and lemon in his hair, and possibly a rather avant-garde fishbone ornament, before his senses came to their senses and directed most of the blood in his body downward.
The next witty remark died on his lips and received a thorough burial in the Count’s merciless mouth.
It was promising to be a good night.