Chapter 48

CHAPTER 48

I SAT DOWN and leaned back, trying to look neutral. But inside, I was dying for information. Any information. At this point, I'd take whatever I could get. Like Kira told me, always know what you're up against.

"You come from a fabled family, Doctor Savage," said Leo. "We have that in common."

"My family was all about science," I said. That wasn't entirely true. There was a lot of adventure and violence in there, too. I looked around the room. "If this castle belongs to you, you must come from money. Lots of it."

Leo nodded. "Money. And power." He took a breath, then launched right in. "Doctor Savage, I'm the descendant of the illegitimate son of King Leopold the Second of Belgium. The child was born to the king's teenage French mistress in 1907. He was born with a deformed hand."

"Philippe," I said. "The bastard son's name was Philippe." I'd heard this story in one of my graduate European history classes.

"Correct," said Leo. "Philippe, Count of Ravenstein—a minor title his father conferred on him." Leo gave me another tight smile. "See? I knew you were well educated."

Over educated, probably. But at least I knew some historical trivia. "Philippe died young," I said. "Age six or seven."

Leo nodded. "So everybody thought. The truth is, his mother got weary of people mocking his deformity, so she faked his death and hid him away in a castle." Leo gestured toward the walls. " This castle."

It was getting harder and harder to look objective. This story was getting wilder by the minute.

"Philippe grew up here, totally in secret," said Leo. "Eventually, he took a mistress of his own. He had a son. And a grandson. And a great-grandson." Leo tapped his chest. "Me." He held up his gnarled right hand. "All with the same unfortunate genome."

"So… you're royalty."

" Tainted royalty," he said. "The most interesting kind."

I felt uncomfortable staring at his hand. So I glanced across the room at the flag. "Your family crest?"

"It's aspirational," said Leo. "The standard of my future regime." He stood up and started pacing across the stone floor. "As a student of history, you know that my ancestor King Leopold once owned a huge chunk of the African continent. A million square miles, give or take."

No mystery about that. King Leopold's massive African colony was on every world map for most of the twentieth century.

"The Congo," I said. "The Belgian Congo. What about it?" The Congo was now a so-called democratic republic, splintered by ethnic conflicts. It was one of the most fractious and dangerous places on earth.

"My family gave it up more than sixty years ago," said Leo. He turned to face me. "I want it back. Every steaming acre. And you're going to help me get it."

Leo sounded intelligent. But now I wondered if he was all there.

"Retake the Congo ?" I said. "You'd need an army for that."

"Correct," he said. "I've started on one."

"Just out of curiosity," I asked. "Why would I want to be part of that kind of illegal insanity?"

"First," said Leo, "because I saved your life. Second, because I can keep you from being executed for homicide. And third… because I pay very, very well."