Read The Empire of Night: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller for Free Online

responsible for the shortage of artillery shells—had to resign no matter what they did with Asquith.
    Buffington drew Trask toward him. I leaned along as well and neither of them made the slightest gesture to suggest I was not invited.
    Buffington said, “Stockman’s throwing a weekend house party.”
    “Your man?” Trask said.
    Buffington said, “In the vicinity.”
    Trask nodded. And then he made the tiniest intentional movement of his head, so tiny that I instantly doubted my perception, figured I was an example of how you can overtrain a secret service agent. The movement, I thought, was this very slight turn in my direction—since I’d drawn near, behind Trask’s right shoulder—as if it was a subtle gesture to Buffington, reminding him of my presence. “Is she ready?” he said.
    What did all that have to do with me?
    I sat back in my chair.
    My eyes moved across the table and between the two steel-gray heads, who had sat back as well, now that they’d agreed to throw out Asquith and Kitchener and all the rest of them.
    I looked into the darkness of the corridor.
    And the darkness moved.
    That was the first impression, lasting only a brief moment. The darkness shifted, swelled, and then points of light began to clarify into a face, hands, and a piano started playing the instrumental introduction to a song—and I recognized it, the intro to “Keep the Home Fires Burning”—and the face emerging from the shadows of the corridor, heading this way, became clear, and now I recognized it as well, even as I had a sense of movement to my left, Buffington no doubt standing up to address us all. He said, “Gentlemen, in the interests of preserving civilization as we wait out this latest barbarous attack, I give you the great Isabel Cobb.”
    My mother emerged fully into the room, dressed in black, and she stopped, framed in the doorway, as the men at our table wrenched around, turned their chairs, applauded, and cried out “Hear! Hear!”
    The introduction was over and Mother shot the piano player a brief glance as he fumbled a bit with the transition to the verse. I glanced with her, and it was the stout man Buffington had replaced at the table. This was a select and secretive group; Isabel Cobb’s accompanist was drawn from one of our own number. He wasn’t terrible at this, however, and he found his way into the verse and Mother looked back to us and began to sing.
    I heard her voice, but for a few moments, as far as I knew, she could have been singing a soliloquy from Hamlet , as I grappled with my surprise at her presence here. And then she was inserting that phony ache into her voice that she was so good at. Phony mostly to my ear, of course; fans loved it. But, indeed, she drew even me in with it now as she sang:
    “Let no tears add to their hardships
    As the soldiers pass along,
    And although your heart is breaking,
    Make it sing this cheery song.”
    The secret service pianist did all right with the transition to the chorus and Mama floated on in, more achy than ever. “Keep the home fires burning, while your hearts are yearning,” she sang and she began to work the room, gliding along the tables, singing to each stiff upper lip individually—“Though your lads are far away, they dream of home”—and bringing a tear to each eye and a stirring to each stirrable part—“There’s a silver lining, through the dark clouds shining”—and she gave me a little less eye contact than the others and a pat on the shoulder as she slid by. “Turn the dark cloud inside out, till the boys come home.”
    I watched her as she moved on to Trask.
    He lifted his face to her, and a son knows certain things for reasons he can’t put his finger on easily. Or the reasons seem minute and insubstantial. But Trask’s eyes and my mother’s held on each other for one pulse beat, one intake of breath, and I knew there was something between them. This particular son knowing certain things about this particular mother