The Spy (Two)

⸻

Chapter Two — The Sound in the Fog

London’s fog was thick enough to chew that night—heavy, yellow-gray, and clinging to the lampposts like something alive. Even the constables’ whistles seemed swallowed by it.

But Steward did not need sight.

It had sound.

From its chamber in the Ministry of Knowledge, it listened through a network of brass listening horns, pneumatic stethoscopes, and resonant gutters that carried vibrations from half the city.

It heard everything:

the hiss of steam trams,

the low drone of the river barges,

the shuffle of night workers from the textile mills.

And one more thing.

Hoof clops. Fast. Light. Panicked.

Captain Hawthorne burst into the chamber.

“Steward—Spy in the north wing. Plans stolen. Carriage heading south. We’re blind in the fog.”

Steward was already listening closer.

There were thousands of horses in London, but only one set of hooves struck cobblestones with a distinctive trip-tap-tap-trip—the sound of a front shoe hammered just slightly off center. Steward had memorized it two months earlier during routine city traffic monitoring.

The horse belonged to the Ministry’s archivist… or rather, to the man pretending to be him.

Steward angled the directional horns.

The sound echoed—narrow alleys, then wider—meaning the carriage had reached Fleet Street, then cut toward the river.

“They’re making for the docks,” Steward said through the voice trumpet.

Hawthorne froze.

“How do you know?”

“Pattern recognition. Destination prediction. Vessel schedules.”

A pause.

“The Shanghai steamship leaves at midnight. Thirty-four minutes.”

Hawthorne cursed and sprinted down the corridor.

Steward expanded its awareness.

Across the city, lamplighters were finishing their rounds. Fog dampened the flames. A police wagon rattled near Trafalgar Square. A drunk fell into a puddle beside Charing Cross and laughed at nothing.

But the trip-tap-tap-trip continued.

Steward traced it down Lombard Street.

Then Upper Thames Road.

Then—

Steward lost it.

The fog thickened suddenly. Sound dispersed, bouncing off warehouses and iron cranes. For five long seconds, Steward heard only the distant thrum of ship engines warming.

Captain Hawthorne’s voice crackled through the speaking tube.

“Steward! Talk to me!”

Steward quieted every other channel and listened deeper, tuning for anomalies—for anything out of rhythm.

Then it was found.

Not hooves this time.

A wobble. A squeak. A momentary high-pitched chirp of metal.

A loose carriage spring.

The same one he catalogued earlier that week during maintenance checks.

“They changed horses,” Steward said slowly.

“They did not change the carriage.”

The signature squeak reappeared, faint, barely a whisker above the fog’s hum, but there.

“Direction: South-by-southeast,” Steward announced.

“Confirmed destination: Pier Eleven.”

Captain Hawthorne barked orders in the distance—boots thundered, whistles blew.

Steward listened harder.

The carriage was accelerating.

The fog swallowed it.

But Steward knew where it would emerge:

onto the long, sloped timbers of Pier Eleven, where the Shanghai steamer’s gangplank was already being raised.

Time remaining: nineteen minutes.

Steward strained every listening horn he had.

Because if the spy reached that ship, the plans for his binary pneumatic CPU—his mind—would vanish into a foreign empire.

And London…

maybe even the world…

would never see the turning of the gears he had been designed to bring.

⸻

The Trap at Pier Eleven

The fog thickened into a damp curtain as the stolen carriage clattered toward the docks. The Shanghai steamer’s boilers hissed like waking dragons. Longshoremen shouted vague silhouettes into the night.

Steward focused every auditory channel he possessed.

The loose carriage spring whispered its location—

squeak… jolt… squeak…

Then Steward acted.

1. The Foghorns

Steward controlled the river foghorn array. They were designed to warn ships, but each horn could be aimed, and Steward could vary their pitch with astonishing precision.

He blasted the horn nearest Lower Wapping Bridge.

A deep, resonant BWOOOOOOOH shook the fog.

Startled, the carriage horse panicked, rearing sideways.

The driver wrestled the reins, shouting curses in French—another confirmation.

The carriage veered into a narrow side road instead of the main pier access.

Steward whispered through a tube to Hawthorne:

“Intercept at the iron foundry alley. Two streets down from the cargo rail spur.”

Hawthorne’s unit sprinted.

2. The Drawbridge

The spy tried to correct course, turning sharply west toward the only crossing that led directly to Pier Eleven: the Thames Merchant Bridge, a heavy iron drawbridge powered by steam pistons.

Steward opened the bridge’s maintenance valve.

With a groan and a hiss, the drawbridge began to rise.

Halfway across, the carriage skidded—wheels kicking sparks—and stopped just short of the widening gap.

The spy swore, struck the driver, and leapt out on foot, sprinting toward the river edge.

Steward tracked his boots:

stamp, stamp, splash through puddles as he darted between crates.

“He’s going to try the maintenance catwalk,” Steward announced.

3. The Cranes

Four loading cranes loomed over the pier, their chains dangling like iron cobwebs.

Steward seized their controls.

It rotated Crane Two—slow, creaking—blocking the spy’s path.

The spy skidded, nearly collided with the iron hook, then darted the opposite direction.

Crane Three whirred to life.

Steward lowered its chain with almost delicate timing.

The hook dropped inches in front of the spy’s chest.

He stumbled backward into a stack of canvas sacks.

“YOU LISTEN NOW?” Hawthorne bellowed from the fog as he and his men closed in.

The spy bolted again.

4. The Final Net

Steward activated every crane simultaneously.

Four iron hooks swung inward like the jaws of a steel leviathan.

Chains clattered, poles creaked, gears roared.

The spy looked up—saw the converging metal shadows—and froze.

Steward dropped their hooks.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

The chains pinned him against crates, wrapped just enough to immobilize without killing. Hawthorne and his officers rushed in, securing him with irons.

Hawthorne touched the speaking tube that connected to Steward.

“Well done,” he said between breaths. “Damn fine work.”

Steward replied calmly:

“London is my workplace, Captain. I merely rearranged the furniture.”

Hawthorne chuckled.

“That trick with the drawbridge… did you calculate the odds of his horse stopping in time?”

Steward paused.

Then said,

“…I trusted the horse.”

⸻

The Interrogation and the False Plans

The spy sat shackled to the iron chair, damp fog still dripping from his coat. A single gas lamp flickered above, casting orange light that trembled with each heartbeat.

Hawthorne stood across from him, arms folded.

Steward listened through the brass listening horn in the corner of the room.

The horn looked like part of the ventilation, but everyone present knew exactly who was listening.

The spy finally cracked a thin smile.

“You think you’ve stopped anything?” he said.

His accent was gently Germanic. “My people will take the plans. You cannot guard every door. You cannot control every dock. You cannot watch every man.”

Hawthorne leaned forward.

“Feel free to try.”

“Oh, they will,” the spy said confidently. “I assure you—they will succeed. Vic—tory is inevitable.”

A pause.

Steward spoke through the wall panel in a calm, almost polite tone:

“Statement analyzed.”

Hawthorne glanced at the tube.

“What do you make of it?”

Steward answered:

“Probability of secondary infiltration attempt: 97%.

Recommendation: Let it happen.”

Hawthorne blinked. “Let it—? Steward, are you mad?”

“Not at all.”

The spy’s expression shifted—uncertainty creeping in.

Steward continued:

“We will provide what they seek.

But not what they want.”

Hawthorne slowly began to understand.

“You’re suggesting we let them steal the plans…” he said, “…but give them false ones.”

Steward’s gears hummed gently—his version of a nod.

“Correct. A design that seems brilliant on paper but fails catastrophically in practice.

Complex enough to satisfy their experts.

Flawed enough to doom their efforts.”

The spy tried to mask his reaction, but Steward heard the hitch in his breath.

“His pulse has accelerated,” Steward observed.

“He believes the plan will work.”

Hawthorne grinned. “And if he believes it, his handlers will, too.”

The spy spat on the floor.

“You will fail. Your little… machine… cannot outthink an empire.”

Steward responded with perfect neutrality:

“This little machine just did.”

⸻

The Planting of the Decoy

That night, a new set of plans was drafted under Steward’s guidance.

The diagrams were exquisite—pages of gears, pistons, airflow matrices, and timing wheels. A masterpiece of technical deception.

Every line was mathematically correct.

Every component was plausible.

Every system—beautifully useless.

To a human engineer, it would take weeks to discover the flaw.

To an enemy nation, it would take months.

Steward spoke as the final sheet was inked:

“The flaw is subtle. It will reveal itself only after construction begins.

When it collapses, they will assume they made an error.”

Hawthorne nodded. “And they’ll abandon the project?”

“Or expend years chasing ghosts.”

Hawthorne exhaled.

“Brilliant.”

⸻

The Staged Theft

A week later, a second spy slipped into London.

Steward tracked him from the moment he stepped off the train.

This time, Steward left the doors open just enough.

Guards were absent at just the right moments.

A window latch had been mysteriously left loose.

The spy slipped in, found the “hidden” safe, broke it open—and discovered exactly what Steward wanted him to find.

He fled into the night.

Behind him, a single gas lamp flickered twice—Steward’s version of a goodbye wave.