New England 07 - The Lines of Laredo, page 1
James Philip
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THE LINES OF LAREDO
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The New England Series – Book 7
Copyright © James P. Coldham writing as James Philip 2021.
All rights reserved.
Cover concept by James Philip
Graphic Design by Beastleigh Web Design
THE NEW ENGLAND SERIES
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BOOK 1: EMPIRE DAY
BOOK 2: TWO HUNDRED LOST YEARS
BOOK 3: TRAVELS THROUGH THE WIND
Book 4: Remember Brave Achilles
BOOK 5: GEORGE WASHINGTON’S GHOST
BOOK 6: THE IMPERIAL CRISIS
BOOK 7: THE LINES OF LAREDO
FUTURE TITLES
In 2021
BOOK 8: THE HALLS OF MONTEZUMA
In 2022
BOOK 9: ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
BOOK 10: THE GATHERING PLACE
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Details of all my books and future release dates will appear first on my web site
www.jamesphilip.co.uk
Contents
PROLOGUE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Author’s Endnote
Other Books by James Philip
THE LINES OF LAREDO
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The New England Series – Book 7
A.D. 1978
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PROLOGUE
Chapter 1
Monday 23rd October
Café Blanc, Walnut Street, Philadelphia
Forty-one-year-old Sir Robin Maynard Longstreet, KC, the Recorder of the King’s Circuit of Camden, in the neighbouring Crown Colony of New Jersey, was a large, florid man with a rebellious mop of still jet-black hair that tended, boyishly to flop over his brow when he leaned forward. He was rarely seen abroad without his trademark long colourful scarf and was known to have inadvertently travelled all the way home from his offices down by the Delaware River opposite Old Philadelphia with a weighty legal tomb under his arm. He was a brilliant, if on occasion, absent-minded man but while he relied almost entirely on his long-suffering, Singaporean-born wife, Jasmine, and his devoted clerks to organise practically every aspect of his personal and legal life, in a court room he was renowned as one of the most ruthlessly dogged and forensic of men in the Empire.
“I hope I am not late,” he apologised sheepishly, bursting into the restaurant overlooking Cornwallis Square with its pantheon of statues to the heroes who put down the insurrection in 1776, and that subsequent generation of New Englanders who had fought with such peerless distinction in the Great War nearly a century later.
The trees in the park were still in full leaf, waiting for the first feisty storm of the autumn to spread their leaves in a browning carpet on the ground to herald the coming of the winter.
Melody Danson jumped up and pecked her old friend’s cheek.
It was several years since she had encountered Robin Longstreet, as long ago as 1974 when she had managed to escape Brooklyn for a few days to visit Philadelphia for the christening of the twins, Jemima and Pippa. Robin, well, probably Jasmine, had decided to stop adding to their brood after that, five young children was quite enough!
Melody had heard that the couple had moved into a big house at Cherry Hill – in colony on account of his appointment as Recorder - overlooking the Cooper River around the time of the Empire Day atrocities, and been meaning to catch up with her old friend forever but never got around to it until now.
She and Robin had been at law school twenty years ago.
They had never been romantically involved, just two among a gang of over a dozen approximate contemporaries – unlike Melody, Robin had had to discharge his colonial military indenture prior to starting at university and therefore arrived at the New Haven School of Jurisprudence in Connecticut, two years older than her - who had been close in their student days, and drifted apart as they pursued their careers. She had gone to the bar in Massachusetts, he in his native New Jersey, both served their time as articled solicitors, their lives diverging.
That they had kept in touch at all was probably because they were fascinated by each other’s ‘exploits.’ Melody had become a ground-breaking detective in the New York Constabulary; his youthful elevation to ‘the silk’ and a notoriety gained from a string of sensational cases, tending to represent the underdog both in civil and criminal proceedings, had brought him to public prominence, separated him out from the rest of the legal herd and when, two years ago, he had been appointed Recorder – making him the senior High Court Judge in the southern counties of the Crown Colony of New Jersey, part of a long-overdue root and branch clear out of the dead wood in that colony’s sclerotic judiciary – his elevation had been front page news.
“Jasmine heard you were networking on your new hunting grounds!” Robin Longstreet chuckled as he bent his head and they exchanged pecking kisses.
Philadelphia was not really Melody’s home turf. She had lived and worked most of her life – apart from those years when she was trailing around Europe with her parents as a child and a moody teenager – in Vermont, Massachusetts and New York, thus, the colonial capital of New England was still, in many ways, excitingly new and fresh, representing something of a new departure, the latest unexpected twist in her personal ‘feminist odyssey’ as Henrietta might put it.
This she readily confessed to her old friend as they took their seats in the table by the window.
“It’s all a little strange, actually. Up until a year or so ago, I thought I knew what I was doing, and what people expected of me. Since then, things just get crazier. As for meeting up again with people from the old days, that’s not networking, Robin,” she corrected him, “it’s fun.”
“My, my, by all accounts you and Lady Henrietta had more than your fair share of fun in Spain earlier this year!”
Melody pulled a face.
“Trust me, that was far too much…fun!” She retorted, unconsciously raising her had to her still relatively short, barely shoulder-length red hair.
She still missed her unruly copper-burnished mane; although not the hassle of constantly trying to keep it in order!
A waitress materialised and they ordered food and drinks. She a fish salad and mineral water; he a lamb cutlet and a glass of red wine.
“So,” Robin Longstreet inquired, “much as it is lovely to see you again, Melody. What are you up to these days?”
“This and that,” she replied coyly.
“That, I doubt. Never mind, you must come around for dinner one night, Jasmine is dying to interrogate you properly on your adventures!”
Melody’s friend’s wife had been a neo-suffragist in her younger days, and discreetly, probably still was, before her marriage to New Jersey’s up and coming legal shooting star. Jasmine was a year or two Robin’s senior, a striking woman with a mind like a razor. None of her former feminist associates had understood – some had never forgiven her – for marrying into what they saw as the establishment, ‘the enemy camp.’ Melody had known her when she was Jasmine Tan, an indomitable campaigning journalist who never quite knew when to back off; she had virtually been driven out of Manhattan, and shunned in Albany because she had upset far too many of her natural allies.
From the sparse evidence of Melody’s telephone conversation with her yesterday afternoon, she had toned down a little in recent years.
“I’m not sure about the interrogation bit; but I’d love to catch up with you all,” Melody smiled, “and the kids.”
“Jasmine was telling me about the little man you brought back from Spain?”
“Pedro,” Melody almost blushed with pleasure. It ought not to have come as a surprise to her, or Henrietta, that four-year-old Pedro as Alonso’s son, from it seemed, a liaison with a woman of high birth. The two women had pledged never to press him further on the identity of the boy’s mother; sensing that only danger lay therein. Notwithstanding, Alonso and Henrietta had formally adopted the boy, with Melody becoming his number one godmother, as she also expected to be when in the early part of next year Hen produced her first baby. But all of that, and the concomitant ins and outs of her relations with Alonso and the Governor of New England’s youngest daughter, were…complicated.
Robin Longstreet flicked a horribly perceptive eye at the wedding band on Frankie’s left ring finger.
People were beginning to notice that…
“It tells people that I’m not on the market,” Melody said quickly, a little tartly. She forced herself to relent: ‘As Jasmine used to say, and I hope, still does, New England is the last bastion of male sexist recidivism in the civilised part of the Empire. Things are a lot simpler for a woman in the First Thirteen if men know what the score is. You have no idea how tiresome it can be having to draw a diagram for every man who thinks an unattached woman of a certain age is fair game!”
Her companion guffawed and shook his head.
The drinks and the food had arrived.
“Jasmine has me on a diet,” Robin complained unconvincingly. “Unfortunately, she’s seen the pictures of the esteemed, elder lineage of the Longstreets and determined that I shall not turn into quote: ‘another lard bucket!’”
“Good for her!”
They laughed.
Melody returned to his earlier question.
“What am I up to? This and that. As for networking, well, no ulterior motives, honestly,” she explained. “Given that it looks like I’ll be living in Philadelphia for a while, it seemed only natural to start to look up old friends.”
“I gather you’re staying with the de Guzmáns in Kensington?” Robin Longstreet observed, testing the waters.
“When I was on the Governor’s Staff, I had a broom cupboard in the residential wing of the official residence. Then I was on the road, as it were, with General Washington. I’ve only just got around to looking for somewhere convenient, in the meantime, Alonso and Hen are renting that big old house. It has about ten bed rooms, you know?”
“As many as that?” Robin Longstreet paused between mouthfuls. “So, what are you up to these days, Melody?”
She had expected that he would be persistently curious; impossible to shake off the scent of what he must suspect was one of those meetings that was not at all what it seemed to be.
That was inevitable, even when as today, she really did not have any ulterior motives. Bizarrely, she was a little at a loose end; Alonso with whom – and for whom - she was supposed to be ‘working’ these days, was off doing whatever he was doing and she and her new sidekick, Mike Llewelyn were killing time.
She had wondered how being Government Office’s own confidential spook-cum-detective was going to work out and truthfully, not been convinced it would but complacently assumed that in the colonial capital of New England, there would be no shortage of people seeking to avail themselves of her particular talents. Unravelling conundrums, picking through the inconsistencies in witness statements, finding patterns in what to other detectives was random background noise had used to be her forte, and she had been looking forward to getting back into that sort of work.
What she had not anticipated was being encouraged to relax, take a few days off…
She smiled: “Oh, this and that.”
The man raised an eyebrow.
Melody shrugged: “I’ve had quite enough excitement over the last year or two to last me a lifetime, Robin. I’ve been chatting with Albert Stanton about a book about my time as a detective in Manhattan and on Long Island, but apart from that I’m just treading water. Waiting to see what transpires, and all that.”
“So, nothing likely to place you on the wrong side of the long arm of the law in the First Thirteen?” Her old friend chortled.
“No, nothing like that!”
Which, to the best of her knowledge was the truth, and nothing but the truth at that moment. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, it turned out that her assertion could not have been more…mistaken!
Because about ten seconds later the first of about eight or nine – it was hard to keep count in the confusion – men charged into the Café Blanc and descended upon the window table where Melody and the Recorder of Camden were just beginning to enjoy their lunch.
Both diners were hauled to their feet, and their hands cuffed behind their backs. There was a short interregnum in which Melody’s shoulder bag, and the man’s wallet were searched for identity documents, then Melody was being frog-marched out of the restaurant onto the street.
Well, frog-marched in the sense that her feet were scrabbling at the ground as two very large men mostly carried her – one to each side – out into the bright autumn sunshine.
She would have protested but there were too many of them, including four men in the dark blue uniforms of the City Constabulary and, when all was said and done, she was just a girl and she was the one in hand cuffs.
Oh, shit…
There were photographers.
Lined-up and snapping away to their parasitic hearts’ desire!
Chapter 2
Monday 23rd October
El Palacio de Los Pinos de Oro, México City
For all that the war had turned the Presidential Palace – the Palace of the Gold Pines – into a partly militarised hilltop encampment within a veritable wall of steel, with its approach roads blocked by armoured vehicles and its wooded grounds constantly patrolled by heavily-armed soldiers, visitors often remarked that once past the security cordons, the residence, set among the ancient pines of the Chapultepec Woods on the site of a pre-Columbian Aztec Palace, was an oasis of calm.
In part, this was because from the day, nearly five years ago, that the former Chancellor of the University of Cuernavaca, Hernando de Soto and his wife, Luisa, had moved in, the complex had finally ceased to be the retreat of dictators and demagogues and become again a family home. Overnight, the military had been swept out of its corridors and for the first time in the long, troubled history of New Granada-Mexico, a man of the people had been elected by the people, concluding the country’s decade-and-a-half long march from tyranny to democracy.
As her uncle welcomed his guests, Margarita Medina-Mora Icaza, President de Soto’s niece, had poured coffee and checked that everything was neatly, carefully arranged on the circular conference table beneath the tall windows commanding an idyllic view of the wooded vista separating the residence from the city in the valley below. Margarita had been in her second year at university, studying Modern Languages – English and German – when, as the national crisis developed that spring she had volunteered to serve as an intern on the Presidential Staff for the duration of the current emergency. Not yet twenty-one, the young woman’s long jet-black hair was tied into a sensible pigtail, she wore no make-up, and she was dressed in the traditional fashion of a matron twice her age, covered up from neck to wrists, all the way down to her mid-calves.
“Thank you, my dear,” her Uncle smiled.
The poor man seemed tired and Margarita wanted to hug him; except, in this company it would have been completely inappropriate.
Margarita’s mother had died in childbirth when she was only seven years old and her father, Hernando’s younger brother, a diplomat presently in Manilla in the Philippines, not really knowing what to do with her and her two elder brothers, had never re-married. The two boys had been packed off to military colleges – both were in the Army now, while Margarita had been handed from family to family until, just after her tenth birthday she had been all but adopted by her Uncle and Aunt, who had always treated her as the daughter they had never had.
Margarita nodded her head respectfully to the other three men in her Uncle’s office, resisting the temptation to return the teasing, conspiratorial wink of the oldest of the three, and departed, closing the door at her back on the way out.
Colonel Rodrigo de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, lately Professor of Geology and Head of the Department of Natural Sciences at the University of Cuernavaca, chuckled to himself and shook his head as the young woman made her exit.
Margarita and Rodrigo’s twins, Rudolfo and Marija, who were her juniors by only a month or so, had pretty much been inseparable from the day she had come to live with her Uncle in the hills above Cuernavaca, within a stone’s throw of the de Monroy hacienda. Rudolfo, who was presently giving his father the silent treatment because he had refused to allow him to volunteer for the Rodrigo’s old regiment, the 4th Chapultepec Cavalry; and Margarita had been unofficially affianced since the spring.
