Read Golden Heart (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles) for Free Online

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    “Home sweet home,” said Vasquez cheerfully, tossing his hat into a corner. “Hok’ee’s getting a head of steam up so we’ll soon be out of here.”
    “Wait a minute!” said Katarina, following Vasquez back out on deck. “Where are we going? I’m the one taking you into custody, not the other way around.”
    “Not on my ship, lady! Here you do as I tell ya!”
    “But what’s your plan, Vasquez?” Lazarus asked.
    Vasquez grinned at him as he jammed a cheroot into his mouth and lit it with a match. “I know why you’re both on my tail, even if you won’t tell each other. Your respective governments are after that map of ours. Am I right?”
    Lazarus eyed Katarina and saw that she was doing the same to him.
    “Well, I’m done with the Confederate army,” Vasquez continued, “and I have no real desire to throw in my lot with the Yankees, so I was thinking the best plan was to fetch the damned thing and hold ourselves a little auction. Whoever pays me the most gets it and can take it to their chosen camp without my having to come with! Now don’t worry, we’ll hold the auction on safe ground and I’ll give you both plenty of time to wire your respective governments for money. I’m not sure how things’ll pan out after that. One of you is likely to shoot the other, but once I’m sailing away with my money, it won’t be my problem!”
    Lazarus and Katarina stared at each other as their host went about the business of preparing the vessel for its journey. They were clearly thinking the same thing. This whole affair had got wildly out of hand and the future for one of them looked bleak. But which one?
    “Either of you two gawking Gladys’s ever been onboard a dirigible before?” Vasquez called over to them as he wrestled with one in a series of six trapdoors set into the vessel’s deck.
    They both shook their heads. Lazarus had heard of the devastating effects these craft had wreaked on the unprepared Union troops. It was the Confederate Dirigible Corps that had bombed New York City and Boston into smoking ruins.
    “They’re a vast improvement on the old design,” commented Vasquez. “The early ones had a rigid shell and could only travel at five miles per hour. This craft has limp balloons and so is much lighter.” He jerked a lever in the cockpit and there was a loud hissing sound. Balloons began to inflate from the six trapdoors.
    “Isn’t hydrogen flammable?” Lazarus asked, looking nervously at the smoking cheroot that hung from Vasquez’s mouth.
    “Sure is. None aboard this baby, though. Helium, folks. It’s the new thing. Discovered by some eggheads in France. All airships use it now.”
    They stood and watched in awe as the light material began to rise higher and higher, expanding and billowing outwards, lifting the craft clean off the ground. Gas filled all the creases and soon the entire deck was shadowed by a monolithic balloon cluster. The anchor ropes strained and creaked as the craft bobbed in midair.
    They went below deck. Hok’ee was in the furnace room, bathed in purple light as he shoveled mechanite into the glowing furnace.
    “How’s she doing?” Vasquez hollered.
    Hok’ee replied in Navajo and Lazarus realized for the first time that Vasquez must have a good understanding of the language, considering his first mate’s reluctance to use English. They waited for the steam pressure to build up and then, by pulling a series of brass levers and knobs, Vasquez put into motion the great rear propellers that drove the craft forward. They drew in the anchor lines and soon they were drifting high and sailing north east through the starry clouds, with the chasms and plateaus of the desert far below them.
    By the lights of the gas lamps they sat in the cabin with the door shut against the chill air, and inhaled the smell of cooking bacon and eggs and canned beans as Vasquez prepared their meal. The smells reminded Lazarus of his favorite greasy spoon in London’s East