Read The God of the Hive for Free Online Page A

Estelle?”
    There was no response, but I kept stroking, and started talking.
    “Once upon a time there was a lady from America. She was a singer, a beautiful singer, who—sorry, did you say something?”
    She turned her head slightly, and the faint murmur became words: “My Grandmama was a singer.”
    “I know, and this is a story about her.”
    I constructed a tale about the woman, a sort of midrash based on the little I knew about her, depending more on the drawings Damian had done of his childhood home than actual fact. The story was about opera, and her grandmother’s cleverness, and the French countryside, and it was a distraction as much to me as it was to her. Slowly, the child in my arms grew more solid as a sleepless night and the ebb of terror did their work. Eventually, she shuddered and went limp.
    I finished the story, and wrapped my arms around the warm little body. For the first time in hours, I had nothing to do but sit quietly and fret. Instantly, a wave of thoughts rose up and crashed over me.
    A sniper , in Thurso? Brothers might have got away from the Stones alive, but he’d been in no condition to place a rifle to his shoulder—although he’d had assistance on Orkney before, and after the War, firing a rifle was hardly an unusual skill. How difficult was it, to hit a low-flying aeroplane? As difficult as hitting a deer, or a soldier on the other side of no-man’s-land?
    I did not even consider the possibility of an accidental discharge—if we’d been peppered with stray birdshot, perhaps, but this had been a single round. Someone had wanted to bring us down.
    Not the police. Even if they had been unaware of the child on board, my crimes hardly justified a deadly assault.
    It had to be Brothers or one of his men—and yet he’d wanted the child: Back in the hotel, I’d found a forged British passport for him and Estelle. Had he decided that if he couldn’t have her, no one should? Had he given the order, not knowing I had her? If not Brothers and his local assistance, then who?
    My thoughts went around and around, considering the possibilities of what had happened, what it meant, what came next. I blame that preoccupation, along with the distraction of fear and the weight ofresponsibility, for missing the obvious. Of course, there was little I could have done even if I had known—ours was not an aeroplane with dual controls in the passenger compartment. Still, it took a shamefully long time for me to make note of the placement of the holes, to calculate the trajectory between the back of Javitz’s seat and the overhead windowpane, then compare it to the actual position of my pilot when the round passed through.
    When I had done so, I felt a cold that had nothing to do with the blast of air. I loosed an arm from the coat and stretched out to rap against the glass. Javitz slowly turned: The hesitation of his movements told me all I needed to know.
    “How bad?” I mouthed.
    He pretended not to understand. I grimaced, and began to trace the letters of my question, backwards against the glass.
HOW BAD IS YOUR LEG?
    I could see him waver on the edge of denial, but my glare changed his mind. He wrote on his pad, and held it up:
BLEEDING, BUT USABLE. I PUT A TOURNIQUET ON IT.
    In reply, I traced:
PUT DOWN AS SOON AS YOU CAN FIND A PLACE.
    He shook his head, so decisively I could tell there was little arguing with him, so I changed it to:
GIVE IT AN HOUR? TO PUT US WELL CLEAR OF BEING FOLLOWED.
    He started to turn back when he saw my gesture and waited for me to add:
LOOSEN THE TOURNIQUET EVERY TEN MINUTES OR YOU’LL LOSE THE LEG.
    He nodded, and showed me the back of his head. We flew on through the morning, a trapped woman, a sleeping child, and a pilot slowly bleeding to death at the controls.

Chapter 11
    H e’s bleeding to death,” Sherlock Holmes said with forced patience. It was good he’d had so much practice with stubborn females. Why couldn’t this one be more like Watson, who at