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ribbons by enemy fire, or else frozen in the trenches or blown apart by mortar fire. But, amazingly, he'd managed to make it out alive, ferried back to England by airship after the Behemoth Land Crawlers—the giant war machines unleashed by the British forces to bring an end to the conflict—had effectively rendered the Kaiser's army impotent.
    Rutherford had seen one of them in action while still out on the front in France. It was like a fortified city on wheels, an enormous land tank bristling with gun turrets and machine gun emplacements. It was slow moving and ponderous, but it was utterly impregnable.
    The British forces had shipped them over the channel on massive floating platforms and set them loose on the battlefields of Europe, where they had simply trundled across no-man's-land to the enemy-occupied territory. Once there, they had unleashed a storm of death, gun turrets blazing as the Behemoths had rolled over the enemy trenches, crushing those who hadn't fled or been mown down by the all-consuming gunfire. The machines had even rolled into the enemy-held cities, remorselessly leveling buildings and razing all before them to the ground.
    The Behemoths were weapons on a scale never seen before—weapons of mass destruction—and while they had won the war for the Allies, they had inspired a sense of nervousness in the Americans. The British Empire was still a significant power in the world, and now, harboring such monstrous weapons and led by a monarch who was keen to reclaim the glory of her ancestors' days, many thought it was only a matter of time before they mounted an invasion of their former colony.
    Rutherford wondered if that were really such a wild claim. Queen Alberta regularly referred to the American government as “upstart colonists,” and, party as he was to many of the strategic secrets of the British government, Rutherford had himself wondered whether the reclamation of the American continent was the endgame they had in mind. Whatever the case, a cold war between the two nations had developed as they'd jostled for position in the new world order, and while things were not outwardly hostile between them, Rutherford knew the gloss of cooperation was only skin deep.
    By the time he'd returned from the trenches, of course, Rutherford had given up all hope of ever settling down to become a teacher. Instead, finding himself feeling dislocated from normal life and isolated from his family and the people he had left behind, he had enlisted in the secret service. At least that way, he had felt, he could still make a difference.
    As a veteran of the war he had risen quickly through the ranks, and having shown an aptitude for espionage work, he was soon assigned to work in Chicago, and then Washington, and most recently New York, operating out of the embassy.
    He'd been in New York for over a year now, during which time Rutherford had managed to ingratiate himself into New York politics, adopting the persona of a rich young bachelor from Boston. He'd attended parties and soirees, funded carefully selected political campaigns and written articles for the Globe. He'd made his presence felt, and soon enough he'd been drawn into an inner circle of senators, councilors, businessmen, and statesmen. He'd played their games, taking part in their petty political squabbles, earning their confidence and trust. He'd listened to everything, recording it all in his eidetic memory, searching out each of their weaknesses and flaws in case he found need to exploit them later. They all had their secrets: booze, whores, boys, bribes. Rutherford knew them all.
    For a while, little of any importance had happened: more political games, more character assassinations, more bribery and corruption. Then, when he was least expecting it, something had fallen into his lap, something so big and so startling that, at first, he hadn't known how to react.
    That night—last night—he'd gone straight to the embassy to report his findings.