Women, men and staff waited for the police. Dana entered the rink as covered up as possible, crept over to Jonathan and Fox, and whispered:
“He’s dead.”
This was not a normal state of affairs for an ice rink. Ice rinks waited for whistles, music, skates, falls, cheers, and occasionally for the repair of a cooling system. They did not like waiting for officers with notepads and the power to dissect an evening into statements, timings and contradictions.
Nevertheless, she waited.
Fox stood at the edge of the ice and observed the three groups he had just created himself. On the left the men, on the right the women, down by the boards the staff, maids, drivers, musicians, arena workers and everyone who had to work that evening, whilst others considered themselves charitable. The teams stood in their blocks, the captains visible, the cadets of the Wild Boar cohort like a gold-and-lilac-coloured barrier in front of the provisionally cordoned-off section of the ice.
The order held just as well as the tension.
A man from the circle of benefactors had been tugging at his cuff for two minutes. A lady in violet velvet was already recounting for the third time that she had never in her life been ‘treated like a suspect’. Among the servants, there was a quiet argument about the difference between maids, waiters and hall staff. The Japanese team was disciplined enough not to attract attention; the French were polite enough to appear dangerously elegant in the process; the Soviets stood too still; the Ottomans too alert; the British looked at Shane, who looked as though he was about to start a new game so as not to have to stand idly by any longer.
Jonathan stepped up beside Fox.
“This is going to tip over. When people hear that Franklin is dead,” he said quietly.
“Who could stop it?”
“The evening itself can. You can’t keep moderately wealthy provincials, very young athletes and very nervous local politicians standing around sorted into three groups for much longer without someone either fleeing, shouting or giving a speech.”
Fox looked at a city councillor who was just explaining to a security guard that his office presumably entitled him to “get some fresh air” for a moment.
“I would have expected the speech.”
“Then let’s stop the speech.”
“Do you have an idea?”
Jonathan looked at the Austrian cadets.
Fox followed his gaze.
Moritz Felinger stood at the edge of the barrier, upright and serious, in a lilac jacket and gold trousers, with the expression of a young man ready at any moment to accompany a poem, a command or a downfall with dignity.
Fox sighed. “Please tell me your idea doesn’t involve an armed formation of schoolboys.”
“Not an armed one.”
Jonathan raised his hand. “Cadet Felinger.”
The man addressed came over immediately, as quickly as was appropriate for a nineteen-year-old class representative who had just been summoned by an American billionaire and an FBI agent.
“Mr Hart. Agent Mulder.”
Fox looked at him. “You just greeted us quite correctly, without saluting.”
“Sir, we only salute on the first encounter of the day; and when reporting to superiors. That is why I saluted earlier, but not now, because you are not my superior.”
Jonathan smiled. “A quality most adults lack.”
Felinger accepted the compliment with a brief nod. He did not allow himself to be drawn out of his posture.
“We need something to keep them occupied,” said Jonathan.
“The suspects?” asked the cadet.
Fox raised a hand in a sweeping gesture. “The witnesses.”
Felinger looked past him into the hall. “Of course, sir.”
“Surely you can improvise something from your standard repertoire,” said Jonathan. “Something to keep people occupied, but keep them in their places.”
Felinger paused to think.
“A quadrille.”
Fox blinked. “A what?”
“A quadrille, sir. A ballroom dance in figures. Four couples per group, very easy to supervise, orderly, elegant enough to preserve the dignity of those present, and complicated enough to prevent them from whispering, fleeing and taking offence all at once.”
Jonathan looked at Fox. “I take it all back. Austria is strategically superior.”
“I’d already feared as much,” said Fox.
Felinger continued: “We can separate the suspects into your groups and have only small sets dance at a time. Men’s group, women’s group and staff separately. The crews dance on their own. The cadets will be distributed among the groups as lead dancers. I’ll call out the figures.”
“Have you done this before?” asked Fox.
“Every Thursday, sir, it’s part of the year representative’s duties.”
“Why do I even ask?”
Jonathan nodded towards the ice rink. “The floor?”
Moritz looked at the ice. “From the perspective of a trained firefighter, it doesn’t look ideal to me.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” said Fox.
“We’ve seen some carpet runners, sir. Red ones from the winners’ podium and two wide grey ones from the foyer. If we lay them across the ice and secure them with sandbags, it’ll be enough for a quadrille. Besides, that way we won’t destroy any evidence of the murder… er… the accident.”
“That sounds like an FBI guideline,” muttered Fox.
Jonathan clapped his hands softly once. “Then let’s do that.”
Felinger nodded and, without further ado, addressed the crowd without a microphone: “Ladies and gentlemen, so as not to delay Dr Franklin’s treatment, the Wild Boar Year Group of the Leopoldine Military Grammar School will now invite you to a lively public quadrille. Cadets Bardorf, Gamberger, Habicher, Schachner, Wallner and Winkler will organise the ladies’ groups of eight in a square. The men’s groups will be formed by Cadets Bock, Braimeier, Gissenwehrer, Hamberger, Manne and Meindlhummer. The seven mixed groups of staff are led by cadets Astner, Kromoser, Müller, Piskula, Rottensteiner, Schedler and Sieger. The carpet retrievers are cadets Steingötter, Stieber and the Thell brothers, who immediately resume guarding the side exits afterwards. I announce the pieces; Cadets Unger, Unterweger and Werni coordinate the three groups as assistant announcers. We start without music. I announce all six movements: Pantalon, Été, Poule, Trénis, Pastourelle and Finale.”
Four cadets fetched the discarded carpet runners from the foyer, assisted by two hall attendants who smiled at the lilac-and-gold-clad lads, and a waiter whose confirmation suit, under the weight, revealed his sleeves that were too short. The carpets were laid across part of the ice rink, directly in front of the boards, far enough away from the scene of the accident. Sandbags, cable reels and two old wooden benches held the edges in place. The result looked absurd: an improvised dance floor on ice, under spotlights, next to a spot where a man had just collapsed.
But that was precisely why it worked.
People stared.
Alberica Alkba oversaw the distribution of mulled ginger ale with the authority of a woman who had already survived pupils, teachers, parents and possibly three generations of overcooked vegetables.
“Slowly,” she said to a young waiter. “We don’t feed geese before martinis.”
The waiter nodded as if it were a rule of service.
Fox watched her. “I reckon this woman could evacuate a government building if you gave her enough ladles.”
Jonathan nodded. “I wouldn’t argue with her.”
Moritz stepped onto the carpet, raised his hand, and four cadets lined up beside him. Two male cadets, two female cadets, gold skirts and trousers, lilac jackets, white gloves. The ladies’ jackets had a single row of buttons on the right-hand side, as Jennifer would probably note appreciatively when she saw them later. The female cadet’s gold uniform skirt ended just above the floor, short enough not to trip over, yet long enough.
Felinger spoke without a microphone, which Jennifer had not returned to the speaker but had released for this purpose.
“L’Engagement!”
The cadets formed up in pairs of four until the entire assembled audience had been divided up, with the squads being assigned to the servants.
“As the most generous donor of the evening, Mrs Jennifer Hart is the lady of honour. Follow the cadets’ lead! Salutation!”
The cadets turned towards Jennifer, who had taken her place beside Jonathan. The ladies curtsied, the gentlemen bowed. Everyone remained in this position until even the bewildered guests adopted this strange pose.
“Pantalon: Compliment to one’s own partner, compliment to the opposite couple, Chaîne anglaise, Balancé, Tour de Main, Chaîne des Dames, Promenade and Chaîne anglaise!”
Jennifer stepped up beside Jonathan and Fox.
“A quadrille? And I’m the object of the salute. I didn’t even have that at our wedding,” she asked.
Jonathan said: “Emergency measure.”
“I love Austria.”
The atmosphere on the carpets relaxed somewhat. The groups followed the instructions of the assigned cadets; some were still a bit clumsy at first, but by the second round it at least no longer looked like complete chaos.
Fox observed the hall. Luc Moreau glanced briefly at Cemil Arslan as the quadrille began. Cemil did not return the gaze, but his shoulders relaxed by a barely perceptible degree as he changed places as ordered. Ilya Rozanow was dancing in his team. Shane Hollander looked over as if he did not want to be seen and, for that very reason, did not want to look away, whilst performing a chaîne anglaise to the opposite spot. Kenji Takamura watched the figures with polite interest, as if tactical information could be gleaned from an Austrian ballroom dance. No one leaned in for the compliment as intently as he did.
“That’s the strangest witness protection I’ve ever seen,” said Fox, as Felinger announced the third round.
“But it works,” said Jonathan.
“That worries me even more.”
That was the moment when the mood finally stopped shifting. People who, just moments before, had been suspects, witnesses or poor actors in their own lives, became guests once more for a few minutes in a grotesque, overheated, poorly insulated ice rink. They danced in order and, above all, stayed put.
Moritz bowed. The cadets did too. The carpet had held. So had the order. “Été!”
A waiter walked past them, a tray of empty glasses in one hand, his head slightly bowed. He had dark hair, narrow shoulders and moved through the groups with a familiar, almost careless deftness, as if he always knew rooms from the back.
Fox froze.
The waiter disappeared between two hall attendants and a group of cadets who were directing the next figures.
Fox set his glass down.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
Jonathan looked at him. “What?”
Fox blinked, scanning the crowd again. “I just thought I’d seen Alex Krycek.”
“An acquaintance?”
“A dead man, a traitor, a man who usually turns up when reality has bad intentions.”
Jennifer looked at him with interest. “And?”
Fox couldn’t find the waiter again. Just trays, uniforms, punch glasses, lilac-coloured jackets, golden skirts, groups of men, groups of women, servants, dancers moving across the carpets in quadrille formations to Felingers’ friendly commands, as if an orchestra were playing.
He looked at his glass.
“Punch,” he said at last.
Jonathan placed a full glass very gently into his hand. “Are you sure?”
Fox looked at the crowd, then at the side door behind which Dana had disappeared.
“No,” he said. “But it would be more reassuring.”
At the other end of the hall, the wail of sirens announced the arrival of the police.
The quadrille prevented any panic, because everyone—women, men, staff and crews—followed the dance master’s instructions.