“Later,” Michael said, but his back was already turned and he barely registered the Welshman trooping off to the bathroom. The Matrix beckoned like a warm swimming pool after a long, dusty day. He dived in.
8
Breakfast stretched into an extended brunch as people woke, bathed, gathered their wits, and exchanged tales over a series of mugs of coffee throughout the morning. Geraint’s kitchen became a virtual coffee fountain. His original claims for the excellence of his favored brand hadn’t been exaggerated, which encouraged everyone to drink too much. A caffeine buzz settled on them well before noon.
“And so I found out the package came from Clermont-Ferrand, France,” Michael finished. “It must have been delivered to the main office. The address is a false one. There isn’t such a number on the street. And the name of the guy who sent it isn’t in any provincial register.”
“Rather remiss of them,” Geraint said.
“Not really. I mean, what the hell, as long as someone isn’t trying to send a bomb it’s hardly feasible to run a retina-scan on every customer,” Michael protested. “Anyway, Jean-Marie Muenieres doesn’t exist. Not in the area, anyway. So all we have is the topic.” He looked at the elf.
“Its a genuine historical article as far as I can tell,” Serrin said. “But in terms of content it’s mostly a collection of fairy stories.”
“What did I tell you?” Geraint grinned, another mug of fragrant Jamaican in his hand.
“Though it does have some rituals for summoning undines in an appendix,” the mage continued. “Oddly enough, they’re not all that different from some shamanic rituals. Or so I’d say.”
“Are undines spirits or elementals?” Michael asked.
“I think the question is, are spirits or elementals what were know as undines?” Serrin said.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Kristen. She was bored, fidgety with a coffee buzz and fully recovered from the tiring travel the day before. Too much talk and inaction was making her restless. Michael noticed, but ignored it. He had one surprise up his sleeve, but he was biding his time. Serrin set it up beautifully.
“I’m still not certain why you asked me here,” he said doubtfully.
“To cover anything magical,” Michael said. “There’s an occult angle to this.”
“You mean, you think there is.”
“No, I mean there definitely is.” Michael paused. In the end it was Geraint who fell for the lure and asked the question that pressed the button.
“The assassin,” Michael said.
“You got an ID on him?”
“Not as such. Not an individual ID, that is. Of all things, he had face blacking,” Michael said. “Such an old trick, but it stiffs any hope of a photofit even with the best enhancing programs I’ve got, because it really messes up all the face contouring. But there was something else. He was slashed, as our friends put it.”
“So?”
“The knife cut his jacket and shirt. Judging by the lack of a real trail of blood-or so we were told-it must have been a superficial wound. No real harm done. But it did cut through his clothing and exposed some of his torso.”
“So?” Geraint repeated.
“So,” Michael said, retreating to the lounge and retrieving a glossy photo, here’s what the download of the head-camera film showed. Of course, I’ve enhanced it some, but the program says it’s a ninety-nine point nine percent match with the library image, which are certainly odds I wouldn’t bet against.”
The photo was grainy and plainly an extrapolated enlargement of a small body area. The sternum was protruding in part; the man must have been somewhat shallow-chested. Lithe and swift rather than muscular. But the marking, revealed except for the extreme right side where the material of his shirt still covered it, was quite distinctive. Two hands clasped together at an angle of perhaps thirty degrees from the vertical, the right hand in foreground covering the left; seemingly cut off at the wrist, disembodied, eerie.
“What on earth is that?” Geraint said, peering intently, but Senin’s sudden paleness revealed that he, at least, already knew.
“Those, my friend,” Michael said with relish, “are the hands of Ignatius Loyola, as rendered in the famous portrait of him. Poor dead Monsignor Seratini’s nocturnal visitor was a member of the New Order of Jesuits, that enthusiastic body of fellows sometimes known vulgarly as the New Inquisition.”
“Jesus Christ,” Geraint said.
“Well, absolutely,” Michael laughed.
“Was Seratini some kind of heretic?” Geraint said. “Oh, I wish I knew more about these people. Even the FO doesn’t say anything more about these Jesuits than it positively has to.”
“There’s nothing in Seratini’s history that I’ve been able to find to possibly explain why the NOJ would be after him. Oh, and don’t just say ‘Jesuits.’ There are Jesuits and Jesuits, as I’m sure you know. The NOJ is, shall we say, the hardline faction.”
“So how come they had him killed?”
“That has to be the reason,” Michael said, pointing to the treatise sitting under Serrin’s hands. “Or at least a pointer to the reason”
The elf pulled his hands off the book with a jerk, as if in some gesture of guilt or attempted expiation. “We need to know why it was sent, who sent it, who it was intended for, and what it means. I think this is out of my league. Serrin?”
“Yes, I can ask around,” Serrin said thoughtfully. “I’ve got some contacts who should know about this general area. I did some field work with an Amazonian guy once, he’d know. Can I use your phone?”
“All day,” Geraint told him.
“We get Joan of Arc, and our term with an interest in tracking you gets the Inquisition.” Michael smiled grimly at Geraint, “Reckon there’s some kind of occult angle?”
“Point made.” Geraint said. “I think I need to rattle some cages at the FO about the New Order bods. The Templars?” The last term was used questioningly.
“Somehow I don’t think so,” Michaei said. “Seeing that the Inquisition had the real Templars burned alive for a variety of sins, real or imagined, and wiped them out almost to the last man. Burned nearly fifty of them in one day alone in Paris, I seem to recall. I know the term is sometimes used mockingly, but it couldn’t be wider of the mark. A bit like calling the Pope a Satanist.”
“You haven’t been keeping up with affairs in Ulster lately, have you? There are plenty of people there who’d tell you he most certainly is,” Geraint shot back with a rueful smile. “Anyway, give me the afternoon to see what I can pick up. I also have certain feathers to unruffle about last night. You can make your own fun while I’m away?”
Michael looked over at the glum Azanian girl and nodded after a moment. As Geraint went through the ritual of putting on his overcoat and adjusting the hat he’d taken to wearing, and then calling his limo, Michael turned to Kristen.
“Serrin’s going to be busy,” he said. “I can’t do much until he gets some leads for me. But I guess you’ve seen the sights of London, haven’t you?”
“Some,” she said, but it was an invitation of sorts, and being confined within the four walls of the apartment, luxuriously appointed as it was, was beginning to lose its fascination.
“Then let’s go out and see some more,” he said.
“You mean they didn’t bring you here?” he said as they munched the free samples in the food hall. taking in the sights and sounds around them. That was remiss. I’m disappointed in Geraint, really I am.”
They stood in the middle of Selfridges, consuming a new almost-caviar, which, in truth, had little to recommend it other than the fact that it was free as part of some promotion or other and was accompanied by tiny, thimble-sized crystal glasses of a very good frozen lemon vodka. The high-class emporium did its utmost in a world of synth-this and fake-that to sell only food that hadn’t been forced into existence with steroids or boosters, on one hand, nor laced with pesticides or pollutants, on the other, and it almost invariably succeeded. The cost to the credstick was correspondingly high.