Heaven's Gate by Toby Bennett Read Free Book Online Page B

arranged it earlier.”
    “You think she had an accomplice?”
    “It’s possible. She seems to have disappeared very easily.”
    “You have begun a search then?”
    “Only a few trusted men but they should have found more to report than they have. I can’t afford to raise a general alarm, it might play right into the hands of whoever is behind her…disappearance.”
    “You cannot keep it hidden much longer, either or someone’s sure to accuse you of covering it up or even being involved in some way.”
    “I know! That’s why I need your advice.”
    “The first thing is to guess which way she might have fled. Do you think she might have gone back to her father?”
    “Unlikely, he wants this alliance as much as I do, she must know he’d just send her back.”
    “That remains to be seen. For all you know, Carter has been planning to embarrass you like this from the beginning. This may simply be the first move in an attempt to weaken or even unseat you.”
    “It is too early to think like that, there are not enough facts, no point in creating our own phantoms as you used to say. The question is what I should do now?”
    “The first thing would obviously be to find her and find out who was involved in her disappearance. We have little chance of finding her if we use only a few agents and we have no surety about where she is headed. If you take my advice you will announce that she is gone and get more people involved in the search.”
    “I just said I can’t afford for this split between us to become public. The alliance must seem solid.”
    “So it will, if you let it be known that she was abducted.”
    “Another lie that could backfire on me! Besides it makes us look weak.”
    “Not if she were abducted by supernatural forces.”
    “That will cause panic.”
    “Exactly! You yourself just said how our power has diminished since the beginning of the peace. The barons grow bold again and the Chief Pardoner grows in influence every day; almost certainly one of them is behind her disappearance, how else could she have escaped so cleanly.”
    “I will not believe it of Nathaniel, he all but suggested the match.”
    Rugan resists the temptation to point out that the man could also have done so in order to cause humiliation. The Pardoner still had great influence with the General, both on a personal level and because Leedon knew, as well as anyone else, that any conflict between the two of them could split the faithful into veteran Crusaders and the more modern brand of Inquisitors, who had come, as inevitably as vultures, to feast on the former’s success. Such a threat to everything the Crusade had achieved could not be countenanced on the say so of an old priest, no matter how high he’d stood during the Crusades.
    “Forgive me, Angus,” Rugan deliberately uses his first name rather than any title or rank, “it was you who mentioned the possibility that the Chief Pardoner might be looking for an advantage.”
    “I only mentioned it because of the possibility that the barons might look to him as one of their own if I do not find legitimacy soon. I do not think that Nathaniel is actively disloyal but I would be a fool to discount anyone of his stature.”
    “Very well, if she did have help and it’s unlikely that it could be otherwise, it means that someone with something to gain has been plotting against us, perhaps one or more of the barons. Indeed it may even have been our old enemies and if not, by claiming you suspect them rather than one of your new ‘advisors’, it may give whichever baron is behind it a false sense of security.”
    “How do we know the spoilt brat didn’t just decide that she wouldn’t marry me?”
    “Any way you look at it, she just could not have got so far without help or outside intervention. Hence you are safe to draw the conclusion and present it to the barons, the involvement of an outside agency prevents anyone suggesting that you were at fault in some way,” Rugan