AUTHOR'S NOTES:  This fan fic. Was begun and has been waiting quite a while for a finish.  It's going to take some determination and encouragement.  So let me know what you think.

CATEGORY:  Drama, action, uh, would someone please tell me what adventure is?  Humor -- I try, but . . . 

RATING/WARNINGS: PG-13, I think. All my stories are essentially about Phileas, but this one is not particularly romantic.  Sorry.

MAIN CHARACTERS:  In no particular order: Passepartout, the entire Fogg cast (including Erasmus), Jules, Lazarus, Franz Draquot and Yvette Soretsky, Baron von Bresslau (he's the guy that lost Passepartout and the Aurora in the card game).

DISCLAIMERS: Phileas Fogg and Passepartout probably belong to some French publishing company that lost its copyright a century ago, Jules Verne belongs to himself (or maybe his great grandson), any other character that has appeared in an SAJV ep. belongs to Talisman Crest or whoever who holds the SAJV copyright, and the remaining characters belong to me.

August 1840, Castle Konigsthor, East Prussia

"Well, go on, ask him!" Rebecca Fogg urged Erasmus, her older cousin.  He was actually her second cousin, on her paternal grandfather's side of the bed; that's why she was a Fogg, not a Drysdale or a Pratchett.  And since neither one of those branches of her family tree had so much as offered her a carriage ride since her parents' funeral, Rebecca was quite pleased to be a Fogg.

Erasmus's eyes rolled in his head.  Had she egged him on just a little too hard?  "Becs!  We haven't even asked Phileas yet!" he protested.

No, she hadn't pushed him too hard -- Erasmus required a firm hand when it came to his confronting his father.  "Phileas'll do it!  I know he will.  He's as bored as we are.  Go on!"  Rebecca gave him an encouraging shove in the general direction of the grown-ups.  She would have asked Sir Boniface herself; but for something like this, one of the boys was more likely to get a "yes" out of him than she, and Rebecca really wanted to get out of the conference hall today.  Enough to swallow her pride and send Erasmus instead.  It had taken her ten minutes of non-stop whispering, but it looked like Raz had overcome his indecision.  Glancing at her with determination one last time, Raz straightened his cravat, smoothed his jacket, then walked toward his father.

This break would be their best chance to escape, as only the Englishmen remained in the conference hall.  Negotiations were in suspension as Junker von der Goltz and his pack of Prussian nobles had asked for caucus time and adjourned to a private office.  The last time they did that, Tuesday night, they hadn't been seen again for three hours.  More than enough time for them to sneak away to the dungeons and sacrifice a virgin or two to a local dragon – if they'd been so inclined and the dragon were hungry.

She had no reason to suspect any such outrageous thing of Junker von der Goltz, their host here at Castle Konigsthor, Rebecca reminded herself with reluctant but scrupulous fairness.  He was a big man, six feet four inches at least, and in his white and gray Cuirassier uniform with all its brass buttons and gold braid, he moved as tightly and precisely as a well-machined musket.  But so far he'd been civil to all of them, most especially Rebecca.  His own daughter Sabine was from home for a month and he seemed to miss her.  He gravely inquired Rebecca's health each morning before negotiations convened; and yesterday after she'd shown an interest, provided the venue of each antique weapon hung on the wall.

Sir Boniface had gone to stand with Sir Reginald, the trade ambassador, at a window on the east wall of the room.  Morning light streamed through a colored glass depiction of a striking basilisk.  The light illuminated Sir Boniface's sharp-featured profile, tightly strung shoulders and gesturing hands in checkers of blue, red and green,.

As Sir Boniface whispered, Sir Reginald bobbed his head in agreement.  Fleshy cheeks and a down-turned mouth gave Sir Reginald the look of a pouting baby.  It had been a difficult round of bargaining this trip.  At eleven o'clock in the morning both men already looked drawn.  They'd ordered a second coffee service.  The kitchen would be sending it up presently, no doubt.

Phileas Fogg -- Rebecca's other cousin and at fifteen years of age, nearly seven years older than Rebecca and five years older than Erasmus -- leaned back in the leather chair he'd occupied for the last two days of conferences, his eyes closed, his long loose limbs carelessly arranged.  He seemed to have fallen asleep again.  He dozed off at every break.

Erasmus approached his father and Sir Reginald at the window, heartened by the knowledge that Rebecca stood just a few paces behind him.  And Phileas, although asleep, was only a few paces away in the other direction.  "Father?" Erasmus asked, his voice quavering a little, "Father, may Becs and I go into the village with Phileas today?  It's such a fine day, Sir."  Well, he'd said it.  Not too well, but he had got it out.

Sir Boniface broke off what he was saying and glanced first at Erasmus and then in the other direction where his older son slept.  He frowned.  "Yes, certainly, Raz.  Go, but stay close to Phileas."

Erasmus hadn't expected permission.  Not only his face, but his whole body lit up -- perhaps lightened up would be more accurate.  On air he pirouetted back to Rebecca.  She bounced up and down clapping her hands soundlessly.  "And Raz," Sir Boniface continued.

Erasmus turned.  "Sir?"

"Never interrupt me when I'm in conference."

The reproof was mildly delivered but Erasmus blushed and bowed his head.  "Yes, sir.  Sorry, sir."

Phileas indeed proved cooperative.  In fact, he hadn't even been asleep.  When Rebecca went to wake him, she found Phileas already on his feet, trying to sort out his rumpled jacket and neck cloth.  "Where did you have in mind, Becs?" he asked as he tried to re-tie the latter.  Apparently, he hadn't been sleeping at all.  He knew in whose brain this expedition had been hatched.

Phileas was hopeless when it came to clothes.  Erasmus swatted his older brother's hands away from the disastrous neck cloth and told him to sit.  Undoing the rumpled mess, Raz re-tied it snugly and neatly into a very presentable knot.  He patted his handiwork with satisfaction then again tweaked his own cravat into a just tiny bit better position.

Behind them Rebecca was talking about her plans.  "Oh, the chambermaid told me about the most marvelous storyteller down in the village!  She said he knows every Prussian fairy tale.  Come on!  Let's go!"  As Raz finished with the neck cloth, she grabbed Phileas's hand, then Erasmus's.  Towing them like a pair of mis-matched carriage horses, she led them out into the hall.

Sir Reginald turned to watch the children leave.  "That Rebecca is quite the romp, isn't she, Boniface?"

The other man chuckled.  "The trial of Phileas's young life, I'm afraid, but she's been good for both of my boys.  Rallies them together, keeps things from getting too morose.  I try not to hold too tight a rein.  They'll have little enough chance to be young."  The two men turned back to the window.  The children had left and the treaty had yet to be settled.

Finding the storyteller proved simple enough.  They walked down the cart road into the village and onto the green, and there he was, holding court with what looked to be every child for miles around.

They immediately discovered a problem.  The old storyteller spoke a colloquial German difficult for a foreigner to follow.  Of the three of them, only Phileas understood well enough to sort it out.

"Oh, do translate for us, Phileas!" Rebecca begged.

He gave her an apprehensive look.  "Becs, I don't think I can talk that long . . ."  Rebecca knew what worried him.  He hadn't stammered much since he started at Eton, but his wayward tongue still fouled up now and then.  It might grab hold of him if he attempted this translation.  Thinking in two languages at once tended to kink up even the straightest tongue.  Rebecca's own French translations came out in great knotty piles of mis-matched consonants and vowels.

"You can do it, Phil!" Erasmus encouraged him.

"Yes, please, Phil.  Please?  I promise not to rag you.  Please?" Rebecca added.

Phileas's lips pinched and quirked.  "Is that a 'maybe' promise or an 'absolutely' promise, Becs?"  Right after she'd moved into Shillingworth Magna Rebecca had teased him on almost every word he said.  He still had a tender sore where his trust ought to be.  But then she'd been what?  All of seven?  Now, as she'd be more than happy to tell you, she was a big girl of nine, and truly a bit more mature.  It least she didn't tease as often.

Rebecca wasn't to be ruffled.  "An absolutely, cross-my-heart promise, sweetest cousin."

Phileas's eyes narrowed in skepticism, but he said.  "Oh, very well, but you must listen quietly, or we shall all go back to the castle straightway and sit through more of Father's conferences.  Agreed?"

Both heads nodded and they murmured agreement.  It was only polite and besides they owed him for agreeing to join them.  Sir Boniface would never have let them leave the conference room without Phileas.

"I suppose you two would like to be up higher?  Here, let me give you a hand."  As Phileas spoke he lifted Rebecca to the top of the low, thick wall that divided the village green from the cart path.  Then he gave his brother a hand up.  Rebecca plopped down on the wall, her skirts all disarranged.  Erasmus sat down with more care, making sure no debris stained his trousers.  Phileas stood behind them, his head between theirs.

Their heads now level with Phileas's, Rebecca and Erasmus had a good view of the storyteller under the tree, an elderly man on a rustic chair of un-peeled sticks.  Children surrounded him, reclining on the grass at his feet, or on rough chairs of their own.  A few sat further along on the wall.  The old man's voice piped in the afternoon air, and Phileas whispered his translations.

"Uh, he's been telling about a dragon and two children lost in the marshes, but I think that story is complete.  Yes.  See that little boy?  The storyteller just asked him if he knows the reason a stork always examines its dinner before swallowing it down."  The tiny Prussian boy in question shook his head vigorously and spoke.  Phileas whispered, "The little boy says the stork in the chimney at home always looks his dinner over with one eye before eating."  Every child in the storyteller's audience nodded.  Apparently they'd all seen storks do that.

Phileas smiled as he listened to the storyteller's German.  "The old man says the stork wants to make sure it's not a tazelworm."

"A tazelworm!  What's a tazelworm?" Rebecca broke in.

"Shh, I don't know, Becs.  Maybe he'll tell us.  Now listen quietly or I can't keep up," Phileas admonished.  Erasmus took the little girl's hand and squeezed it.  The two youngest cousins grinned at each other.  There were times when being a Fogg was the best thing in the world, Rebecca decided.

Phileas continued the story.  "He's describing tazelworms now.  I think it's a lizard of some kind.  They have scales, and look like a snake with four tiny legs.  They live in the ground and only come out before a hard rain.  It's very shy, that's why you never see one.  And stubborn, you've never seen anything like it!  Once a tazelworm gets a grip, it holds on to the death!  And they live in large loving families, all in the same burrow.  Uh, I think he's telling about people who have sighted a tazelworm, Otto that lives down the street and Hans over the hill.  He says 'ask them if you don't b-b-believe me.'"

Rebecca looked up.  Oh, dear.  Phileas had stammered the "b" rather badly.  She hadn't heard him stammer in several months. He might give up and they would never hear about tazelworms.  Time for some major encouragement.  Rebecca kissed her cousin on the cheek.  "Go on, please, Phileas.  More?"

Phileas glanced at her in surprise but accepted the buss.  Rebecca's demonstrations of affection ran more towards thumps on the back and pinches in the bum.  She rarely did something so feminine and overtly loving as to kiss him.  It made a nice change.

From the other side Erasmus patted his arm and said, "Yes, tell us more.  Don't stop now."

"Well, now he's telling about the storks.  How they flew up from Africa and built nests up on the roofs and had v-v-very happy homes, with eggs in their nests and lots of things to eat, until one day a Papa Stork tried to eat a tazelworm for d-d-dinner."  Phileas paused for breath.

"The Papa Stork usually went to the lake to hunt his dinner, but that day there was a thunderstorm, so he flew to the mountains just to see what he could find.  He saw something scampering through t-t-tall grass and swooped down to catch it in his beak."  Phileas stopped to listen again while Rebecca and Erasmus raptly watched the storyteller illustrate his narrative with flapping hand motions.

"Now remember this was before storks carefully looked over their prey, so Papa Stork had no idea what he carried.  He landed on a treetop and tilted up his beak to swallow the tazelworm, but it wouldn't go!  It had been snatched away from the very d-d-doorstep of his loved ones.  No, the worm thought, I will not be someone's dinner!  I want to see my family again!  He was that stubborn, you know.  So as the tazelworm started to slide head first into the stork's gullet, it reached out with two little legs and caught hold."  Phileas punctuated this with a pinch in the side for Rebecca and Erasmus.  They giggled and squirmed in his arms.

The storyteller had continued and Phileas burst out laughing.  Erasmus whispered, "What happened, Phileas?  What happened next?"  Phileas smiled at his younger brother and mussed Erasmus's dark hair.  The three of them hadn't had so much fun since they'd left England three weeks ago.  Rebecca's plot this morning had proved a great success.  This was ever so much better than another day of wheat tariffs and port duties.

"Well, the tazelworm was stuck in the stork's throat.  The bird tried very hard to swallow him, jumping up and down and flapping its wings and all kinds of things, but the tazelworm would not let go and slide down.  The worm wanted to return to his loved ones, you see, and it vowed to hold on.  Finally, exhausted and frightened the stork gurgled, 'If I open my beak, will you crawl out of my throat?'  The tazelworm saw an opportunity to protect all his family forever and thought it worth risking his life.  He answered the stork, 'Only if you promise storks will never eat tazelworms again.'  The desperate stork agreed and the tazelworm slowly backed out."

The narrator approached the conclusion of his story.  He bent forward and wagged a finger at a nearby little girl.  "Storks are very honorable," Phileas whispered.  "They don't make false promises.  The stork made sure all of his brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles knew about his pledge to the tazelworm.  And since that day every stork stops and looks closely at dinner so to keep the long ago Papa Stork's bargain."  He sighed.  He hadn't stammered for several minutes.

Rebecca hugged as much of Phileas as she could encompass.  She put a small hand on his throat.  "Do you think, Phil," she asked, "do you think there's a tazelworm in there?"

He chuckled and hugged her and Erasmus both.  "Yes, Becs, maybe so."

************.

1862, London, St. James

The sun-lit November afternoon made Phileas Fogg's walk from the jewelry shops below Westminster to the Reform Club on Pall Mall into a pleasant expedition.  A brisk breeze blew a shower of gold oak and red maple leaves out of St. James's Park and across Birdcage Walk.  The fluttering leaves spooked a mettlesome saddle horse.  Further along a drayman snatched at his reins and shouted a good round of cursing at a carriage that had almost smashed into his cart.

Surely a pleasing day to be alive.

As he walked along Fogg played with the small flat box in his left pocket.  It had taken all morning and visits to five different shops, but he had found it -- the perfect gift for Rebecca's birthday.  The box held a slender gold bracelet inset with diamonds and rubies nestled in a fold of black velvet.  It complemented the ruby choker he'd bought her for Easter, the one she favored when she wore red or maroon, and that was just about every day.  For Christmas, he'd buy her either a matching ring or diamond-crested hairpins to complete the set.

Fogg's mood was so sweet he didn't even mind walking a few blocks down Whitehall, a street he generally avoided.  Passing Secret Service headquarters, he gave the doorman, bull-shouldered George Redd who'd served there for years, a casual flick of salute, tapping his leather-gloved finger on the brim of his beaver hat.  He'd spent so many years going in and out of those doors.  Thank God he'd escaped.

The breeze grew stronger and graduated to wind status.  It lifted the skirts of Fogg's greatcoat and tugged at his lapels as he stepped quickly across the Mall, avoiding carts and carriages with practiced ease.  Unfortunately some of the splashed refuse still found him.  His new ensemble of smooth black wool seemed to show every fleck of debris, even more so than the fawn and honey fashionable last summer.  Passepartout would have the very devil of time keeping the thing clean.

Yesterday his tailor had sworn gentlemen of consequence would soon find black the only suitable color for daywear.  Bernard seldom postulated fashion trends incorrectly, but Fogg felt a hobgoblin in all this dark cloth.  He'd had black ensembles before, but never one quite this severe.  The ominous fabric sucked the light and life out of the air.  No ornamentation livened it up, either, as even the neck cloth was a simple black ribbon.  The whole effect approached the funereal.

Fogg considered walking the extra two blocks to Jermyn Street for a moment in Bernard's hands.  His trousers needed an adjustment in the waist and he wanted another go at persuading the tailor to moderate the suit's harshness just a bit.  But Fogg decided against it.  He had a luncheon appointment with Baron Harbin von Bresslau at two, and he respected the man too much to make him kick his heels.

As he reached Pall Mall and passed the Athenaeum, Fogg stepped just a tiny bit faster on the off chance Sir Jonathan Chatsworth might be visiting his club.  He'd managed to get past Service Headquarters without encountering Chatty and he didn't want to see him now.  It would kill the mood.  It had happened before, more than once, running into Chatsworth here.  It was one of the disadvantages of belonging to the Reform, having the Athenaeum Club (and Chatsworth) across the street.  Today Fogg felt too good for a dose of Sir Jonathan's dour condemnation.  Luckily he made it past the Athenaeum, across Pall Mall, up the steps of the Reform and inside its mahogany doors without a sign of the head of the Secret Service.

"Hullo, Harry, my man!" Fogg greeted the elderly clerk behind the front desk.  Harry nodded a greeting and checked off a square on the list before him, "So pleasant to have you back, Mr. Fogg.  May I venture to say you are looking in exceptional spirits today?"

"Yes, you may tell me, Harry.  I am indeed pleased with the world.  I'm expecting an old friend for a guest, Baron von Bresslau.  Has he arrived?"

"Why yes, sir, and I took the liberty of seating him with a glass of wine and cakes."

"Excellent, excellent," Fogg declared as he divested himself of greatcoat, hat and stick.  The gold bracelet on his left wrist caught in his cuff as it sometimes did.  He paused a moment to untangle it then quickly strode across the foyer's marble floor.  Sunlight from the glass roof illuminated his black-clad figure as he started up the wide staircase leading to the card and dining rooms.

Long ago Fogg had come to terms with himself regarding his membership in the Reform Club.  The Club's rooms sighed luxury.  The halls murmured wealth.  Cut crystal chandeliers glistened in every room.  Fine, leather-bound books in all the most recent editions filled the enormous libraries.  Every wall held ornate mirrors and vast areas of wooden paneling.  Marble columns, statuary and floor mosaics accented the effect.  Servants glided about in swan-skin shoes that reduced noise and intrusion to a minimum.  It was privilege at its most pretentious.

It was also the most liberal gentlemen's club in London, perhaps on the entire European continent as well.  And it was an excellent place to eat.

Fogg stood in the door of the dining room for a moment trying to spot the Baron.  He waved off the maitre d' who came to seat him, then changed his mind and gestured for him to approach.  "Baron von Bresslau?" he asked.

He sighed when he saw where the maitre d' led him – a shaded corner close to the palm court.  It was too reminiscent of the old days when he, his father Sir Boniface and whatever agents were in and available sat here in a safe corner plotting the downfalls of dynasties.  It was even more painfully mindful of that very last council when Erasmus had joined the circle and died as a result.

The Baron would have asked for that corner table, since it was a good choice for a spy.  He had solid walls on two sides, proximity to the kitchen exit and an excellent view of the entrance.  A man could not be trapped here and would see everything that approached.

Since he'd left the Service, Fogg sat in the middle of the dining room, as far from the walls as possible and in full light.

The Baron stood and with a pleased cry of greeting held out his hand, "Phileas, my boy, I'm so glad you came!"

"Indeed, Baron, my pleasure," Fogg responded while he shook the man's hand and studied his face.  Older, definitely older.  The hairline had receded a bit further.  The lines from nose to chin were cut a bit deeper.  There was something different about the eyes, too.  When Fogg had last seen the Baron over that marathon card game after his father's funeral, there'd been a touch of humor there, a self-mocking and a willingness to laugh and enjoy the ridiculous.  These eyes held no humor at all, only the pinched look of fatigue.

The maitre d' pulled out a chair for him across from the Baron.  Flicking away his coattails Fogg sat, deliberately choosing to accept a chair that put his back to the room.  He didn't play the great game any more.  He wasn't a spy and he didn't worry about death walking in while his back was turned.  He calmly arranged himself, right leg crossed over the left at the ankle, his slender hands folded on his thigh, his expression benignly mild.  He would not let his good humor dissipate.

The Baron looked behind Fogg, towards the door, not on alert for dangerous invaders but seeking more of Fogg's party.  Fogg knew what, or rather who, the Baron had on his mind, but chose to ignore the unspoken question.  He hadn't mentioned this luncheon to Passepartout or even that Baron von Bresslau had returned to London after several years' absence.  It had been a selfish decision to keep that information to himself, but one he'd make again.  He wasn't sure what Passepartout would do if given the opportunity to see von Bresslau.  Fogg didn't care to risk it, at least not yet.  Not until he'd had time to think it over and devise an offer sufficiently sweet to keep Passepartout from leaving his hire.

Fogg's pleasant mood began to feel strained.

He called the Baron's attention back to the table as the waiter offered them menus.  "It was so good to see you at the Palace last week, Harbin.  You'll attend Her Majesty for a while?"

"Yes, yes.  She still mourns Albert deeply.  Gladstone asked me to do what I can to cheer her."

They talked of inconsequentials until the waiter returned for their orders.  The menu's best choices, the Baron's new address in Islington Gardens and today's pleasant weather all received due examination.

After they'd ordered, the Baron asked, "How is Rebecca doing in the Service?  Does Chatsworth still believe a woman agent an impossibility?"

Fogg snorted.  "If she should live so long, Rebecca will be running the Service, Baron, no matter what Chatty thinks.  She's the best agent I've ever seen, but reckless and bloodthirsty withal.  I constantly fear for her life."

The Baron smiled.  "She sounds like a young agent I once trained, a young man with a great deal of promise."

Fogg's head tilted to one side and he smiled at his old mentor.  "She's better player than I ever was, Harbin.  Smarter, more dedicated to the Crown.  And much more willing to endure incompetence in her superiors."

"But she's a Fogg as well."

"Yes, a Fogg, and has all that ferocious temper to deal with.  She handles it far better than I ever did.  But enough about the Foggs.  Tell me about your latest project.  Are you building another dirigible?  I had expected at least two more airships out of your Prussian shipyard by now.  You've been over there for what, three years?"

"Four.  They're too expensive, I'm afraid.  My financing dried up and I haven't found another source."  The Baron glanced beyond Fogg's shoulder again.  He plucked up his damask napkin and spread it in his lap as the waiter arrived with their bowls of bisque.  Conversation lapsed while the gentlemen paid the Reform Club's chef his due respect for a full five courses.

They both leaned back with satisfied sighs when the waiter brought Fogg his favorite after-dinner drink, a cinnamon-spiced claret, and the Baron a glass of eiswein and a Partagas cigar.  "Well, Phileas, despite appearances I did ask to see you for a particular reason," the Baron said while the waiter trimmed the cigar's end and prepared it for lighting.  The Baron took the cigar between his fingers and while the waiter held a cedar spill to its end, he puffed it to life.  The waiter placed a small sharp penknife on the table for trimming the cigar and left them to their pleasure.  A sweet, white cloud of cigar smoke enveloped them both and drifted in the general direction of the palm court, and away from the three or four of their fellow diners that remained in the hall.  The hour approached four, the closing time for the luncheon meal.

In addition to their claret and eiswein, they'd had a different wine with each course.  A bumblebee or two buzzed around inside Fogg's head.  Now it comes, he thought.  I'm about to find out the real reason why von Bresslau returned to England, not that I care.  It undoubtedly was a Secret Service matter, but Harbin felt much as Fogg did about Chatsworth -- a waste of perfectly good office space.

Really Rebecca ought to be hearing this, thought Fogg.  'S shame the Club didn't accept women members.

"Do you recall a Prussian junker named Eduard von der Goltz?  You might have met him as a child."

Fogg studied the painting hung on the wall behind the Baron:  a depiction of Saint George slaying the dragon.  Loose coils of the mythical beast surrounded the Saint and looped around the hillocks behind him.  Fogg considered for a moment George's silvery armor and the dragon's scaled helix.  It jogged his memory.  "I remember.  A bulwark of a fellow.  Just huge.  Erasmus called him the walking siege tower.  He had Konigsthor or some such castle -- that summer we all went with Father to the Prussian conferences.  Erasmus and Rebecca, they found this . . . well never mind that.  We never told anyone.  So what about this von der Goltz?"  Fogg's syntax meandered a bit from the liquor.

"He killed your father," von Bresslau said.  He drew heavily on his cigar and puffed a large cloud of smoke.  It hid his face from Fogg for a moment.

The flatness of the statement silenced the pleasant hum in Fogg's head.  He reviewed the words.  Killed his father?  His father had died five years ago of unknown but perfectly natural causes, or so the doctors all said.  Killed his father?  What made von Bresslau think . . .?  He straightened in his chair and opened his mouth to ask.  He felt the words jitter in his tongue.  If he spoke now, he'd stutter.  The moment passed.

Just as well.  The Baron continued without prompting, "Phileas, you have to understand I'm re-constructing this well after the fact, but one of my contacts in Saxe-Coburg has passed on that von der Goltz and his junker cronies have been slowly poisoning King Frederick.  It's the reason for his madness."  The Baron looked at his cigar, brought it to his mouth, puffed again.  "Do you recall your last Service mission into Prussia?  The one where . . ."

Fogg broke in, his annoyance heating.  "Of course, I remember it.  Erasmus was killed.  I left the service.  One does not forget a debacle, Baron."  He finished his claret in one gulp and slammed the goblet down.  The Baron's crystal ashtray rattled, scattering a few soft gray ashes on the white tablecloth.

Von Bresslau continued as if Fogg hadn't spoke, " . . . the mission to assassinate von Bismarck."

By now Fogg's alcoholic haze had finished burning away.  He felt clear as a bell, an un-rung, angry bell.  "Sir Otto was born under a very luck star, Harbin.  We never did get a clear shot at him and the Prussians got off several at us.  And our stars were not so lucky."

"They knew you were coming."

"Yes, they knew."  Fogg looked away.  He didn't like talking about the abortive mission that had stolen Erasmus's life.  "I hope you have a point to this, Baron, because if you don't, I have some rather important business I need to attend to in the card room."

The Baron picked up the penknife the waiter had left and trimmed off a small bit from the chewed end of the cigar.  He had more to say.  "Von der Goltz not only knew you were coming, he knew who sent you, Phileas, and why.  You and Erasmus didn't know the reason for your attempt on von Bismarck.  Your father knew and I'm guessing it was the plot to poison King Frederick.  When you failed, your father had to try again, even if meant doing it himself.  I don't think he would have since he was too old and well known, but you know how he was.  And von der Goltz apparently thought so too, as well.  After you resigned, he ordered your father dead."

Fogg became very still.  "You have proof of this."

"Tessat confirms it."  Tessat was the code name of von Bresslau's most reliable source.  From the information he'd passed along over the years Fogg had always supposed Tessat to be a high-born woman.

"Why ever did she wait so long to tell you?"

"She had . . . personal reasons, and I don't think she knew until recently."

They sat in silence.  The waiter returned with the bottles of claret and eiswein, but both men shook their heads.  The coffee service rolled by.  They accepted two steaming cups.  Fogg took his black, the Baron whitened his with cream.

Assassinations had never been official Service missions.  Sir Boniface had assigned them and the more violent coups d'etat to his son Phileas, to keep murder in the family as it were.

Under Chatsworth's fussy, file-clerk administration Fogg doubted the Service even staffed an assassin, unofficial or otherwise.  That would explain why von Bresslau had come directly to Phileas Fogg – he had murder in mind.  Retaliation, revenge – either taking down von der Goltz or another try at von Bismarck.  He wasn't sure which the Baron wanted.  Von Bresslau couldn't do it himself.  His ties to the Hanovers were too close.  He couldn't afford to be caught.  It wouldn't do to have Her Royal Highness implicated in that kind of violence.

Fogg found himself glad that Chatsworth was such a stiff that von Bresslau had bypassed him completely.  Rebecca shouldn't be involved in this.  He'd rather do it himself, if it needed to be done.  But he hadn't decided.  What would another death produce save one less scum on the earth?  There always seemed to be more waiting in the wings.  He'd disposed of far too many and he was tired of the killing.

His mind wandered back to the mysterious Tessat, the Prussian woman who knew so much.  "Who is she, Baron?  Tessat, I mean.  I think it's time I knew."

Von Bresslau's cigar was burning down in the ashtray.  He picked it up again, played with the length, took a gentle puff.  "I don't know myself, Phileas.  Truly, I don't.  She's always posted me notes from Berlin when she had something worth my time.  I've only met with her once and I've never seen her face.  All I can tell you is that she's tall for a woman.  Taller than me."  The Baron stood about five foot nine.  That made the woman at least five foot ten.  Very tall for a woman.

Fogg knew that society at the Baron's level was a relatively small group of people, even in the complex German Confederation.  Von Bresslau would have an idea of who she might be.  He chose not to tell Fogg, at least not yet.

The silence stretched out.  The windows had turned from blue, to gray and now to a reflective black.  Beyond the Reform Club's doors, all up and down the cold streets of London hundreds of shopkeepers stood in doorways, keys in hand.  Hundreds of locks snicked in unison.  Twice that many sensible shoes headed for home.

A waiter would be coming soon to ask if Fogg and Von Bresslau desired carriages.  He would have to begin laying covers for the evening meal.

Fogg picked up the penknife from the table and played with it, tossing the slim knife spinning in the air and catching the haft again as it came down.  His eyes tracked its path.

The Baron's cigar burned to an insupportable stub and with a single stroke in the ashtray he put it out.

The men looked at one another.

Fogg realized von Bresslau wouldn't ask him to pick up the assassin's stiletto again in so many words.  Von Bresslau expected him to volunteer.  If Fogg chose not to do so, the Baron would have an alternate plan to take down his target.

It was all about choice, his choice.  Choosing to return to a life he'd denounced or to escape with some small piece of soul still intact.  Fogg stood the penknife up on end, haft down.  He rested the ball of his thumb on the point, lifted it away, and considered the bead of blood that formed there.  It enlarged and ran down the thumb and over his clenched fist.

"How soon will you be sharing this information with Sir Jonathan?" Fogg asked.

The Baron looked at Fogg's hand holding the knife.  His eyes flicked up to Fogg's face.  He shook his head.  "Not soon.  I haven't decided whether to involve the Service.  Not much can be done except for some, uh, appropriate pruning.  They're not equipped for that anymore."

"No, they're not," Fogg agreed.  He wiped the blood off his hand with a napkin and turned to look for the waiter.  Fogg summoned him from the far side of the room with a nod of his head.  It was time to order a carriage for the Baron to travel home, and Fogg's whist partner usually joined him at this hour (his bank closed at five).

Fogg continued as he stood up, "Baron, I suggest you keep this under your hat for yet a while.  I'll let you know in two or three days."  He held out his hand.  "Pleasant journey."

************.

1862, Paris, rue du Mont-Cenis

"Madame Soretsky."  A grand name for a medium, was it not?  So mysterious, so foreign, you could easily believe such a woman would know forbidden things.  But it was a total fabrication.  Madame Soretsky had been born Yvette de Chancie, the daughter of a boulanger, on rue du M___ in Paris, far too many years ago for a lady to reveal.

At seventeen Yvette's father had bought her a crystal ball.  "Use your talent to make money," he'd said, "not scaring your family out of their wits."

She'd changed her name to Soretsky, after her father's carthorse, and moved to a studio on the rue du Mont-Cenis at the foot of Montmarte.  Within two days she'd held her first seance.

Later she would tell friends that the name change had been the most important.  How could a famous medium be named "mouldy"?  It suggested far too much the more corporeal aspects of the grave.

Her father held no grudge for the name change.  He sympathized.  Everyone who bought his bread knew him only as "Pierre."

As she paced around her small set of rooms, Yvette muttered curses in her childhood's gutter French, rather than high-society Française or the oh-so-elegant Anglais she'd learned from her tutor.  Like many people, her vocabulary tended to revert to that of her earliest years when she was drunk and the hour was late.

Yvette was upset.  When she and Franz Draquot had returned from their dinner, her parlor had smelled of carrion, a miasma particularly revolting on a full stomach.  She'd spent the next half hour, candle in hand, poking around with her fireplace tool, looking for little dead creatures.  Her wide crinoline belled up and revealed white petticoats as she knelt down and bent over to check under the high boy, the bed and the skirted washstand.

She found nothing but dust and lint.  "Really!" Yvette muttered to herself and poked a particularly large nest of fluff, "I pay that maid to clean twice a week, and look at this!  I think there's a mouse in this somewhere."  Over by the fireplace Franz snorted.  He watched her prowling with only mild interest.

Deep shadows on the floor slithered and fled as Yvette walked to the loveseat where Franz sat.  "It must be a rat in the wall," she said, sitting down next to him.  "Or that Lazarus haunt, come back to do more mischief.  He had that same stink.  Every time he came to me, j'ai pensé que je vomirais."  She'd sent Lazarus down to Hell a year ago, but she looked around uneasily at the thought of his possible return.

Franz sipped a glass of brandy and considered the matter of smells.  With a sniff he tested the room's air.  "As of rotting flesh, you say, Yvette?  I cannot detect it.  Perhaps it's something in your neighbor's apartment or on the street, wafting in now and again."  Franz's voice had an indistinct, breathless quality, as though an asthma attack waited just beyond the next word.  Yvette untied his kerchief so she could stroke his throat.  She loved that breathy voice.

Franz wrapped his arm around her and smiled.  They must be the strangest pair of lovers in Paris, Yvette thought.  They ought to be enemies.  He, the doctor of ethereal science and lecturer at La Sorbonne.  She, the well-known medium and stage performer not above assisting the spirit world with mechanical contrivance.

Franz had another thought.  "Lazarus's manifestations smelled?" he asked.  "You've never mentioned that before, Yvette."

"Mon dieu, a smell to rot the sinuses, Franz."  She smiled under his steady gaze.  She knew that look.  He'd become the scientist studying his subject.  She patted his stocky, middle-aged chest.  "Let us not talk about Lazarus.  He's not here.  I know it.  He's more than smell.  He burns the air.  He crackles.  Don't put me under that microscope of yours.  Let's just be Franz and Yvette, a man and a woman."

He put his brandy glass to her lips.  He tilted it and she sipped.  He said, "Hmm.  And which are you?  Yvette or Franz?"  She laughed and unbuttoned more of his shirt while he nibbled at her neck.

They spent the next hour practicing their therapeutic massage and free-form exercises -- leg lifts, curl ups, push ups (lots of those), and deep breathing.  At the end of which Yvette's spare body lay tucked against Franz's side, much of her flesh pressing against his.  They fit together in such odd ways, and not just their bodies, she thought.  The great Doctor Draquot studied phenomena.  He understood events by measuring them -- their duration, electrical output, how much light was produced or how much matter was lost.  She, Yvette, understood everything through the heart.  She firmly believed it was the open path to her heart that attracted the departed.

Franz had fallen asleep.  His even breathing scented the night with brandy and a faint trace of the cigar he'd smoked after dinner.  His body smelled faintly of sweat and her own perfume.  She'd order a bath hauled up in the morning, she thought as sleep overtook her.  Mutual bathing was great fun.

Someone in the room spoke, a coarse bark of a sound without recognizable words.  Yvette sat up abruptly as though her bedmate had poked her.  She reached for him and asked, "What is it, love?  Are you having a bad dream?"

Yvette's hand fell on emptiness.  Franz no longer lay beside her.  She peered around the room looking for him.  The gaslight outside on the street a half block down provided dim light, but all she could see were the ghosts of her furniture in gray, blurred outlines.

She gasped.  A man sat on the loveseat.  In the grayed room he had the supernatural smoldering light of a spirit, but seemed flesh and bone.  He hadn't been there a moment before.  She'd swear it.  He was not Franz.

The stranger flicked a finger in the direction of the fireplace.  Flames leaped.  Fear pulled up Yvette's scalp and lifted her hair.  It was magic . . . or horror.

"Who are you?" Yvette cried.  "Where is Franz?"

The carrion odor returned, a near unbreathable gas, the same stench that had burned Yvette's lungs when Lazarus haunted them last year.  Oh God, the evil haunt had returned after all.  "Where is my Franz?  What have you done with him?"

Lazarus laughed in shocking hacks.  Rising to his feet from the loveseat, he came to stand at Yvette's bedside.  She cowered but didn't try to escape.  There was nowhere to go.

The Lazarus manifestation looked an ordinary gentleman in expensive evening clothes.  The dim gaslight from the street glinted off blond hair and profiled an aquiline chin and nose.  The air became more saturated with stink.

"'Your' Franz, is it?" he said, his voice cutting sharply like the bread knife her father used in his shop.  "Such a lucky man, that Draquot.  Come, Yvette.  I'll show you what I've done with him."  A cold hand took Yvette's and dragged her unresisting out of bed.  "Come," he said again and tugged her.  It took them five steps to reach the fireplace, and at each Yvette pulled back and was jerked forward.

"You sent me to Hell," Lazarus continued, that elegant face thrust into hers.  "Do you have any idea what Hell is like?  It's the inside of the sun, the surface of the moon.  It's all emptiness and you're the only thing that fills it.  There's no one else there, no one to either love or hate.  Just you.  No one but you."  Lazarus's hungry eyes examined her face, seeking for some effect from his words.  What he saw seemed to satisfy him.  "Look!" he commanded.  He forced Yvette's head down with hard hands.  She looked into the fire and saw what Lazarus had set ablaze on the grate: Franz Draquot's severed head.  Fire crept up his cheeks in narrow bands of flame and blisters.  His thin hair just ignited.  Faint heat radiated from the fire onto her cool bare skin.

It was illogical.  Yvette knew that in some tiny place in her head.  There was no blood, nothing else burned in the fireplace and raw human flesh would make poor fuel, but the shocking sight of her beloved's decapitated head overcame logical functioning.  Yvette screamed.  She closed her eyes to hide from the horror.

The monster's arms surrounded her.  She fought them.  A hand tried to cover her mouth.  She bit it and twisted away, as lithe and slippery as a snake in her nakedness.  She tried to run away and stumbled and fell against the love seat.

The room had grown much darker.  The only light left came from the horror in the fireplace.  The Evil One abetted His servant with a cloud of blindness.  Lazarus easily captured her again.

A familiar breathy voice spoke in her ear.  "Yvette, wake up!  Wake up!  You're sleepwalking!  Open your eyes.  Look at me!  You'll have your neighbors here in another minute!"

Lazarus tried to trick her with Franz's voice.  Yvette knew this demon too well to be fooled.  She knew his horrible stink and his crackle in the air, even if she couldn't see him in the black room.  "No!  I command thee in the name of the Most Holy God and Jesus His Son to return to the pit of demons!"  She struck out with her fists.  Lazarus grabbed them and bound them behind her back.  She couldn't move.

"Yvette, it is I, Franz.  I swear it.  Open your eyes, love."  Franz was dead.  Yvette despaired and surrendered to her fate.  She made a strange discovery:  Her eyes were indeed closed.  She opened them.

Early morning light filtered through the windows.  Franz's lapis blue eyes hovered inches away from her own in a head still very firmly attached to his body.  His brow, furrowed with worry, was un-blistered and white in the pale light.

A dream.  It had all been lying dream.  Yvette collapsed into Franz's arms, sobbing relief.  "Thank God you are alive!  Lazarus has returned.  He has tormented me with visions of your death.  We must warn Passepartout and his friends!"

**************.

August 1840, Castle Konigsthor, East Prussia

Lightning flashed from cloud to cloud.  A cannonade of summer thunder rattled the windowpanes in the room that had been assigned to Phileas and Erasmus Fogg.

Rebecca, standing at their window, exclaimed, "Oh, nice one!  But still not quite up to Shillingworth standards, I'm afraid.  I've seen better."

"Becs, can you bring that candelabra over here, please?" Erasmus asked.  "I can't see if I've got Phil fixed up right."

Rebecca picked up the five-candle brass candelabra from the table where their study books piled high and brought it over to the bedside stand.  Erasmus knelt on the bed so he could look his much taller brother in the eye while he pulled, tweaked and tucked Phileas's clothing into order.

"Ouch!  That hurt!" Phileas exclaimed and jumped back out of Erasmus's reach.  Raz's tugs had pulled a strand of his long black hair.  It had strayed into his collar.

"Oh, you're such a bust-up, Phil," Rebecca observed behind him.  She had on a pair of Erasmus's trousers and a short cloth jacket.  Her copper hair fell down her back in a single, thick braid.

She and Erasmus had already eaten in their rooms.  Phileas would dine downstairs with the adults.

Rebecca had come from her room next door to see if she could help with Phileas's nightly struggle into his evening clothes.  He had a ways yet to go.

Phileas smirked as he gingerly stepped back over to the bed and let his brother resume his ministrations.  "A bust-up?  Wherever did you hear that, Rebecca?"

"Uh, I don't know."  Phileas would scold if she revealed that she'd been idling in the servants' hall again.

A hand knocked on the door.  "Master Fogg?  Are we ready yet?"

"He's almost ready, Harry.  He'll be there in a minute," Rebecca answered for him.

Sir Boniface's valet Harry had been assigned to attend Erasmus and Rebecca as well, but children made the confirmed bachelor of fifty-two years uncomfortable.  They'd set up a truce with him early on -- if he didn't bother them, they wouldn't bother him.  So far it'd worked out nicely, and Phileas, when it suited him, provided cover.

Finally satisfied, Erasmus asked Phileas to spin around.  Instead Phileas stepped over to the cheval glass on the other side of Rebecca.  He turned his back to it and tried to look over a shoulder to observe his backside.  The twisting movement pulled his jacket out of alignment with his shoulders.

Phileas spun around on tiptoe, arms out, then stopped, folded an arm to his chest and bowed to an imaginary partner.  His short black evening jacket and gleaming white smallclothes made him look rather like one of the storks performing some sort of ritual mating dance.  His cravat added to the effect by choosing just then to fluff up around his chin like a feathery ruff.

"How do I look?" Phileas asked and tugged his cuffs down.  They'd begun to creep up.

Erasmus sighed.  "You'll pass.  You'd better hurry."

"I'll pass, is it?  Oh well, you're probably right," Phileas pulled at his jacket lapels and tried to re-settle the garment on his shoulders with a wag of his head.  "Thank you, Raz."

He walked to the door, but turned before opening it.  "Do be careful, you two."

"Oh, Phil, it's not like we're trespassing.  We're just exploring some more in the basements.  We've got candles and lucifers and chalk and everything. I've even got one of the knives out of Bec's trunk if we should run into a rat."  Erasmus held up a sheathed Scottish dirk half as long as his arm.  "We'll be back before you are."  For the right price, Phileas could be quite a good sport, thought Erasmus.

"Just be careful!  If anything happens to you, it's my bum that'll be birched, you know!" Phileas added as he walked out the door.  "And no lock picking!"

"Right-o!" Erasmus called after him.  The last admonition had surprised him.  Did Phileas know the plan?  Or was he just guessing?  Phileas was an awfully good guesser.  Or had Rebecca's mouth once again got ahead of her brain?  He looked to her.  "What did you tell him?"

"Nothing!  You know Phil, he's better than a gypsy with a crystal ball."  She fished in her pocket and held up a tiny buttonhook.  "I brought my hook.  We'll get through that door tonight."

Loading her own pockets with chalk and a small tin of lucifers, Rebecca handed Erasmus one candle and tucked two more in the pockets of his dark jacket.  As usual, he'd changed into appropriate dress for the occasion – for this escapade, his oldest traveling outfit, a bit short in the leg and no great loss to his wardrobe.

"Well, what did you bribe Phil with tonight, Raz?" Rebecca asked.  Last night it had been polishing his shoes for the rest of the trip.  Rebecca had promised to help and at one shoe apiece it wouldn't take them long.  It had only taken five minutes tonight.

Erasmus stood with his hand on the doorknob, giving Phileas time to clear the stairs.  "Nothing special, just the answers to those maths he's been working on all week," he answered.

Rebecca's lips indicated her skepticism.  That wasn't enough of a trade.  What else had Erasmus promised him?  Phil and Raz kept secrets from her all the time.  It wasn't fair.  She was a Fogg too.  "Did you promise to give him the iron arrowhead we found last night?  Tell me you didn't!"  After all it had been Rebecca's fingers that found it.  She still bore a cut as proof.

The arrowhead had been sticking out of the locked wooden door that ended their exploration of the previous evening.  Tonight Rebecca's little buttonhook would get them past that blockade.  Rebecca had an especial affinity for almost any type of lock.  If she'd been born a boy and in a poor family, she'd be a lock-pick by now.

Erasmus had his ear to the door.  He waved for her to be quiet.  He nodded, satisfied and stood back.  "Ready?" he asked.

"Yes, yes!  Get on with it!"

Erasmus opened the door a slim crack and stuck his head out.  With a cry of, "Let me through!" Rebecca pushed past him and almost made it into the hall.

With his free hand Erasmus grabbed her braid.  "Hold on!  We have to do this right.  Spies always reconnoiter first."

"Then I'll do the 'noitering!  Give over, Raz!"  She pulled her braid free from his hand and stepped out into the dark hallway.  Hugging the wall like close kin, she sidled quite dramatically in the direction of the servants' staircase.  Erasmus snorted in disgust.  He closed the bedroom door behind him and followed.