“Are you kidding me?” Cam interjected, motioning at Cole with mock disgust. “He looks like his high school drama teacher went nuts with the spirit gum and the sheep wool!”
“I’ll have you know this is the real deal!” Cole said, tugging at his beard. Then he grinned. “I do look like I should be selling pot out of the back of my love van, don’t I?”
Even Dave laughed at that one. “If you are cornered,” he went on, “remember you’re Canadian students with relatives living in Tehran. You all have your passports and ID papers to prove it. Don’t lose them. Natch, is your camera ready?”
Natchez patted the pocket of his brown plaid shirt. “Yeah.”
“Good. We’ll want as many pictures as possible. We’ll be recreating the interior of the location on one of the upper floors so we can practice the takeout when we get back.” He didn’t need to tell them they’d only have one chance at this. They couldn’t make any mistakes. However, with a mole in the unit, he also couldn’t tell them they’d be scouting a false location and practicing the wrong moves for a bogus meeting. Only Dave, Vayl, and I knew the real time, date, and spot of the Wizard’s rendezvous with destiny. If we unearthed the mole before that time, Dave’s unit would join our hunt. If not, Vayl and I would be on our own.
Chapter Eight
Once the meeting disbanded, I gave Dave and my crew the come-hither nod and they followed me to the bedroom where Vayl slumbered. Without breathing. Helluva trick, yeah? One of the reasons I find him so fascinating.
Before anyone could talk I held up my right hand, pointed my left at Bergman. He pulled his wallet from his pocket, slid an item the size of a credit card from it, and replaced the wallet. Holding the card flat in one hand, he slid his thumb along its length. A whirring sound preceded the release of small wings that unfolded from each edge of the card, making it resemble a miniature saw blade. He flung the card into the air, Frisbee style. It flew on its own power, circling the room in ever-tightening circles. When it had completed its scan, it zipped to a spot next to the bed, where a white-shaded lamp sat on a round golden table.
I nodded to Cole. Check it. While he looked for the bug, the card moved on to a cherry valet with a built-in seat. It dropped to the floor there, so we must only have two devices to worry about. I found what I was looking for in a hollow inside the leg.
I motioned for Bergman to come and deal with the bug. He pulled a small tool kit from his back pocket. It contained an eye dropper with a plug on the business end. He pulled off the plug and bathed the bug in the liquid it contained. Cole had found his nasty, so he did the same lamp side. “Okay,” Bergman sighed as he replaced the plug, the dropper, and the bug snooper. “We’re good to talk.”
“Won’t the mole find it suspicious that his bugs died just while we were in the room?” David asked.
Bergman shook his head. “I just doped them with” — he glanced at me, his nose and upper lip pinching in his nunya-bizness-Jack look — “let’s just call it a robotic component that makes it seem as if the bug is picking up conversation. The listener will think he’s picking up words and snatches of phrases, but it’s all preprogrammed gibberish. The fault will be blamed on technical difficulties, not us.”
“You’re good.”
Bergman beamed. I hated to cut off his ego-feed, but, “So’s our mole,” I cautioned. “We’ve made it a point to keep an eye on Vayl all day, since he’s an obvious threat to the Wizard. Nobody’s been in here without one of us. But I guess we knew we were dealing with a smooth operator. And right now, that’s not at the top of our priority list.” I described the incident with the Magistrate. “He said he could find me anywhere as long as I had this Mark on me.” I resisted rubbing my forehead. Barely. “I’m sure the same is true of the reavers. And Raoul and my” — I stole a glance at Dave, noticed the way his brows were lowering, and decided to omit the fact that we might have a close relative in hell — “well, Raoul said I needed to get it off. So. Anybody have any idea how you remove a demonic Mark?”
Bergman looked at Cassandra. “Do you want me to get the Enkyklios?” Everybody took a second to stop and stare. I think for all of us that was the moment we realized his desire to break out, be more, was genuine. Was, in fact, going to take him places he’d never dreamed of going before. Three weeks ago he wouldn’t have touched Cassandra’s library with a welder’s glove. But even he was willing to admit that if any information existed that could help me, the Enkyklios probably held it. Cassandra shook her head.
“Thank you, no, I . . . I already know what to do.” Biting her lip, she walked to the window and pulled back the heavy blue drape. A sliver of sunshine framed her hands and face, highlighting the droop of her lips, the crinkling between her exquisitely arched brows.
Cole and I, having witnessed that expression before, understood the drill. He grabbed a pillow from the bench that sat at the base of the bed and handed it to her. I put my arm around her shoulder and patted gently. As she held the pillow to her chest, struggling with memories that might, or might not, bring on a torrent of tears, we stood close enough to speak privately if we all chose to whisper. Everyone did. At least to start with.
“You look pretty spooked,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I have lived a hundred lives. I suppose it’s inevitable there would be a few I’d prefer to forget.”
Bergman entered our circle. “You don’t have to whisper, you know. My bug stunners aren’t prototypes.” Bergman’s new innovations tended to fizz out or blow up unexpectedly.
Cassandra sighed. “That’s not —” She shook her head and smiled at him. “You are an original.” She looked over his shoulder at Dave, standing alone and somewhat forlorn in the middle of the room. “Come,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Join us.”
He nodded, melded with our little group as if he was the last kid to find base in a game of tag.
Cassandra looked deep into his eyes. When her own filled with tears, she dropped her gaze. “During the fifteen hundreds I lived on an island near Haiti. It was small. Privately owned by a merchant farmer named Anastas Ocacio.” Her jaw jutted, as if her teeth must shovel the words over her tongue. “Ocacio fancied himself an aristocrat. Despite the heat he wore stockings with garters and a floor-length gown. He oiled his hair, which was thick with dandruff and stank so badly we used to draw straws to see who would serve him supper. The first time I came to his table he pulled me down and whispered in my ear, ‘I must have you.’ The stench of his rotting teeth nearly made me faint.”
She shrugged, as if to rid herself of his grasping memory, but it hung on. “My circumstances being what they were, I had no choice in the matter.” She fell silent, giving us time to make the leap. It took a while. Even four hundred years ago women could often throw a glass of wine in a sleazy guy’s face and kick his ass out the door. But a black woman? I could only think of one situation where her choices might have been so severely limited.
“Cassandra,” I whispered, “were you a slave?”
Her nod resembled one of Vayl’s. Barely an acknowledgment at all.
Dave immediately took her hands. The anguish on his face seemed to bewilder her. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
“You had nothing to do with it,” she said.
“We’re white,” I told her grimly. “We can’t help it that those assholes were the same color as we are. But we’re ashamed of it just the same.”
Cassandra stared at each of us for a moment before she finally nodded. “After that first night, I swore I would die before I let him touch me again.” Even now, centuries later, the memories made her ill. Cole put out a hand to steady her and she gave him a grateful look. “I knew how to summon demons. Back in Seffrenem — my country,” she added for Dave’s benefit, “we had often fought demonic cults. You cannot combat them successfully without knowing their methods.”