“Granted,” Michael said, “it wouldn’t be smart. But men do smoke—just not as much anymore. It turns out it causes cancer.”
Sinclair looked at him as if he’d just seriously suggested that the moon was made of green cheese. “Well, then,” he said, “do they drink?”
“Definitely. Especially here.”
Sinclair waited, expectantly, while Michael debated what to do. He knew it would be a gross breach of Murphy’s express orders to provide Sinclair with a drink, and Charlotte would probably tell him it was a bad idea, too. Hell, for that matter he knew it was inadvisable. But the man seemed so calm and so rational, and would there be any better way to gain his confidence and get him talking about the long and eventful journey he’d made? Michael still could not imagine how Sinclair and Eleanor had wound up wrapped in chains at the bottom of the sea.
“At the club, we always kept a decanter of very fine port on hand for our guests.”
“I can tell you now, we don’t have that. Beer is more likely.”
Sinclair shrugged amiably. “Beer would not be unwelcome.”
Michael looked around the locker. Most of the boxes contained canned goods, or crockery, but somewhere there had to be some Sam Adams crates.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Michael said, getting up and going into the next aisle, where Ackerley’s blood had left a stain on the concrete floor. Stepping around it—and trying not to think about it—he found a Sam Adams box and broke it open. He took out two bottles, and used his Swiss Army knife to pop the caps. Then he went back and handed one to Sinclair. He clinked his own against it, then moved back to his seat.
Sinclair took a long drink, his head back, before studying the dark bottle with its bewigged man on the label. “There was once a great scandal, you know, over a bottle rather like this.”
“A scandal?”
“It was a Moselle, served in a black bottle about this size, and set at Lord Cardigan’s banquet table.”
“Why was that such a problem?”
“Lord Cardigan,” Sinclair said, giving the nobleman’s name an especially orotund delivery, “was very punctilious about such matters, and he had expressly ordered that only champagne be served.”
“When was this?”
“Eighteen forty, if memory serves. At a regimental dinner.”
Michael found the conversation increasingly surreal. While Sinclair recounted the rest of the tale—“this is all, you understand, from the popular account, as I was still at Eton at the time”—Michael kept reminding himself that Sinclair and Eleanor had lived in an era, and a world, that was long gone. What was history to Michael was simply the news of the day to Sinclair.
Sinclair took another drink, with his eyes closed, and then, slowly—very slowly—he opened them again.
Had he just adjusted his vision?
“Thin beer,” he said.
“Is it?” Michael replied. “I guess the draft beer you were used to was heavier.”
Sinclair didn’t answer. He was looking fixedly at Michael. Pondering. He drained the bottle, and put it on the floor beside his shackled ankle.
“Thank you,” he said, “all the same.”
“No problem.” Michael was considering how to steer the conversation in the direction he wanted, when Sinclair took the wheel instead.
“So,” he said, “what have you done with Eleanor?”
This was definitely not where Michael would have wanted it to go. But he answered that she was well, and resting, which all seemed innocuous enough.
“That’s not what I asked.”
The lieutenant’s tone had abruptly changed.
“Where is she?” he said. “I want to see her.”
And Michael’s eyes flicked, involuntarily, to the chain holding him to the pipe on the wall.
“Why won’t you let us see each other?”
“That’s just the way the Chief of Operations wants it for now.”
Sinclair snorted. “You sound like some conscript, reduced to following orders.” He took a deep breath, then loudly exhaled. “And I’ve witnessed what comes of that.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Michael replied.
“We’re just a humble man and wife,” Sinclair said, trying another tack, and in a more conciliatory tone, “who have come a very long way together. What possible harm could there be in our seeing each other?”
Man and wife? Michael hadn’t known that, and he was sure he would have remembered it if Eleanor had said they were a married couple. Sinclair blinked again, slowly, and Michael noted that he seemed short of breath.
“Does that surprise you,” Sinclair said, “that we are husband and wife? Or hadn’t she mentioned it?”
“I don’t think it came up.”
“Didn’t come up?” He coughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Or you didn’t want to know?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m no fool, so please don’t take me for one.”
“I’m not taking—”