But since Julian had promised to drop by sometime in the afternoon, he decided that digging around in that area could wait. It had waited, after all, for several generations.
To keep his mind active, he seated himself down at his little antiquated mirror-engine. Yes, it was hopelessly behind the times, but he would have parted with his right foot before putting it out to pasture.
He entered numbers, smiled at the familiar sound of wheels, cogs, and gears smoothly interacting with each other. A tick-tock-clack-tock that still enchanted him, silly old fool that he was. The question of how far back to go was a valid one. Lucas’s PBIC had only been instituted a decade or so ago. Thus, following that thought, anything he found prior to that time might offer more substantial information.
For the next hour or so he delved into Arcvale’s financial history, hoping that Arcvale never found out. He refused lunchsince he really wasn’t hungry, and to stop in the middle of something like this inevitably fractured his concentration. And that was a lesson learned at considerable cost.
Thus when Giles silently opened the door and peered in, Alastair frowned.
“Air Commodore Pembroke is here, sir. Should I show him in?”
“Ah, yes, Giles. Yes indeed.” Alastair relaxed back in his chair. “Just the man I need.”
“If I had a crown for every time a woman said that to me...” His son grinned.
His father laughed and shook his head. “I’m glad to see you, lad. I’ve been looking at numbers for several hours now and my eyes are starting to spin like loose gears.”
Julian pulled out a chair and sat at the table, next to his father. “It’s gone three o’clock...not too early for a glass of wine, is it?”
“You know, that sounds perfect.Giles?”
“Sir?” The door opened instantly, and Giles rumbled in.
“We’ll have that Pinot Noir Lady Fortmason brought me. Two glasses, and you can leave the bottle.”
“Very good, sir.” He rumbled out.
“Lady Fortmason, hmm? Ladies bringing you wine, Papa? Should I be keeping a closer eye on you?”
Alastair sighed. “I’m afraid your lurid imagination is running amok, Julian. She’s got ten years on me, and wears spectacles so thick, I worry they’ll start a fire if the sun shines in the wrong direction.”
Julian burst out laughing. “I can see it now.”
After the wine had arrived, been poured and tasted, and announced to be ideal, Alastair and his son relaxed in their chairs. “So tell me, Papa. What’s going on with all these numbers?”
Alastair took a few moments to think. Everything he and his friends had investigated—it was highly confidential. But then he looked at his son. If he couldn’t trust one of the highest-ranking officers in the Air Brigade, then who could he trust?
So he leaned forward and began the story that had brought him and his friends together.
Julian listened quietly, asking one or two questions, pertinent ones, that reassured his father that the entire matter was becoming clear. At the end of his recitation, Alastair sighed and leaned back in his chair.
“Well,” said Julian. “This is quite a mystery indeed.” He pursed his lips in thought. “How far back did you manage to go?”
“About fifty years or so.”
Julian whistled through his teeth. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He paused. “No one can track your investigations, can they?
Alastair raised an eyebrow.
“I had to ask, Papa,” Julian chuckled. Then he, too, leaned back. “You know...this business...there’ssomething...”
“What?”
He held up a finger, thinking for a minute or two. “It seems to me that I heard about something not dissimilar. Years ago when I first joined the Air Brigade. Just rumours for the most part, but apparently, a dozen years or so before that, there’d been a bit of a kerfuffle in the Brigade Comptroller’s division. Something like clerical drift? Or market noise?”
“Really.” Alastair barely breathed the word.
“Yes. It died down, of course. But I don’t think it was ever fully explained.”
