“Voila!” Streak dumped the eggs into a serving dish. Milk, just a little cream, and plenty of butter had made them perfection. Kristen couldn’t wait long enough to scoop them onto her plate, but rammed a spoonful straight into her mouth looking as if an angel bad dropped down from heaven hearing her own personalized chalice of manna.
“This is better,” Streak said, and emptied the second serving, this time complete with melted cheese, onto a second plate.
“I told you we were right to hire this guy,” Serrin mumbled between forkfuls of egg.
“I think I’d better call Geraint while there’s still some left,” Michael grinned.
By the time Streak had broken every last egg in the place to feed the eager breakfasters, Michael was already jacked in, data-trawling getting every last piece of data he could before they set off on the short haul to the West of England. The problem was not that he didn’t know what he was looking for, but simply that he didn’t have the background knowledge to evaluate what he found. That was why Serrin was with them.
The downloads took a long time even for his Fairlight whose transfer speeds most deckers could hardly dream about-which this morning was just too damn long. He was impatient at having to wait for the archival material, and then dismayed by the sheer volume of it all when it arrived.
“This is the problem,” he explained to the freshly shaved and dressed Serrin. “The printouts go on forever. I can get a trillion tons of data dumped down in an hour, but it still takes me a lifetime to read and evaluate it, even with Simon’s filtering.”
“Serrin smiled. Another of your frames?”
“Yeah, but I don’t have the parameters to guide him as well as I’d like,” Michael said. “I need your brain in there, Serrin. There has to be a way to do that.”
“You leave my brain out of this. I’m very attached to it.” Serrin was feeling unusually chipper right now, it was partly the excellent breakfast, partly the sheer relief that his wife had been returned to him safely and partly anticipation of the audience he was hoping to get, He’d talked with a Scottish druid friend who’d spoken of the old elf they were due to visit with near-reverence and Serrin was both intrigued and a little awestruck In a cynical world, the latter was a nice feeling to have.
Michael pointed to the stack of material, the printers still dumping out text and pictures. Even a reader knowing what he was looking for Would take days to find what he needed in the mass of data-and they didn’t have days.
“I guess we can start reading this in the car,” Serrin said, idly picking up a stack of chromalins disgorged from the optical printer. He leafed through them idly. “What’s this, a rogue’s gallery?”
“Known or suspected members of the Priory of Sion, and known NOJ agents in London, then England, then Britain, then France,” Michael said. “Not that we could get all of them. Many will be unknown, many I couldn’t get mug shots for.”
“Don’t see a face I recognize here. Oh, good holiday snaps.” Serrin chuckled as he dropped the stack and picked up another.
“Various locations of possible significance,” Michael muttered. “You see what I mean? It takes forever to discover what we’re looking-Serrin what’s wrong?”
Serrin had suddenly gone even paler than usual and clutched the chromalin in his hands like a drowning man hanging on to a length of wood to keep himself afloat. Michael stopped in his tracks and went over to have a look.
“That’s her,” Serrin said in a whisper. “In every detail.”
“Good Lord,” Michael said. “What the-”
“You downloaded it,” Serrjn said, staring at him. “You tell me.”
Michael checked the codes and was rattled when he found the source of the picture.
“It’s a statue,” he said.
“Obviously,” Serrin said impatiently
“In the chapel building at Rennes-le-Chateau.”
“Go on.”
“Rennes-le-Chateau is just up the road from Clermont-Ferrand. It’s sacred to the Priory of Sion-well, sort of. It’s a tiny little village. You want more details? The demon over the chapel door and the warning written in Latin?”
“A demon on a chapel?”
“You got it,” Michael said. “This is no ordinary house of the Lord, not according to this.” He handed over the relevant pages.
“I think you’re going to have some background to take to Herr Hessler, Serrin.”
11
“I had no idea this was here” Geraint said as he followed Streak through the narrow, hot tunnels.
“Course you ain’t,” Streak said reasonably. “It’s people like me who have maps of such places. I could take you out in Bayswater if you wanted. Well, more or less. Will South Ken do? It’s where the Westwind’s waiting, so it’s probably a good move.”
They didn’t argue. Serrin had done his best to protect them from magical surveillance with extended masking, and at last they found themselves ascending steps, waltzing past a security inspector Streak seemed to know personally, and into the underground garage. The sleek dark blue Westwind was to all appearances merely a slightly bulkier version of the standard model, but something about that bulkiness implied that it had certain extras they might not necessarily want to think about just at the present moment. It was certainly armored, which was reassuring.
“I still think you’d look great kitted out as mellows,” Streak snickered.
“Don’t push your luck,” Serrin called out from the back. “Just drive us to the M-way and out of here.”
“And watch out for any tailing taxis,” Michael called Out.
They were almost high this morning. Of the five, not one could be called a “shadowrunner,” Serrin had been, some time back, but those days were recalled ambivalently. Good friends had been made and lasting associations formed, but he’d been rootless and left with a minced leg as a permanent memory of life in the shadows. Married now, and settled, he had no desire to return to his old ways especially with a wife who, though a survivor, had no experience of such things and was far from her country of origin. Michael’s work was strictly decking, almost always carried out from the high security of a Manhattan apartment in the city he had come to call home, and Geraint was a politician and businessman. Streak was the only one looking out for himself among the dangers of the street most days, but even he was an ex-military man.
They had an excitement about them, now they were on the move, which a team of seasoned runners might have buried under a veneer of experience and routine. And after the invasion of the apartment and the ambush in the cab, they felt almost like animals escaping from a trap, On the road as they headed west to the orbital and the huge freeway beyond, a simple sense of freedom lifted their spirits.
“Nice system here,” Streak said approvingly. “Constant camera op scans following vehicles, checks ID, checks for following vehicles, analyzes their motion patterns, all kinds of stuff. If they’re gonna follow us, they’ll have to use a convoy of the buggers.”
“Where’d you get this?” Geraint asked.
Streak smirked. “Never you mind. You just paid the bill.”
“I paid actually,” Michael said. “It’ll be on the corp’s tab. We’ll have to get something concrete today, Serrin. They need another update and report before they’ll give me any more money.”
“We’ll get something,” Serrin assured him. “I’ve brought the treatise on elementals with me. At the very least, it’s an intro to get Hessler interested, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t give it to him if he is.”
“Mind if I smoke?” Geraint asked.
“The filtration system can handle that,” Streak told him. “It’s not the full EnviroSeal job, but it’s enough,”
“What else do we have here?” Michael asked as Geraint reached for the lighter next to the ignition.
“We got ECM. We got signature masking. We might or might not have a little weaponry carefully concealed about the place,” Streak said carefully.
“What?”
“Well, what’s a little SAM between mates?” The elf laughed, “Hell, you’ll be worried about the machine guns next.”