“Can’t go back to London… some mad Shi’ite ragheads have nuked it!” Streak announced loudly.
“Hmmm.” Serrin said, chewing hard.
“Does he often get like this?’ Streak asked no one in particular.
“Uh? What?” Serrin said, suddenly looking up.
“Never mind,” Streak said wearily as he prepared to taxi off. “It doesn’t matter.” He pulled on his headset and hailed the tower, asking for clearance and a runway The engines kicked into life, straining and purring like barely house-broken leopards.
When they were airborne, and heading up above the lights of the night-shrouded French city, Geraint turned to Streak with a look of real gratitude.
“Thanks,” he said simply. “Seriously. We weren’t in too good shape back there.”
“All part of the service, mate,” Streak said amiably leaning gently on the stick to start the copter into a long turn toward the north. “I’ll stick it on me bill for later.”
They fell to talking then Streak speaking of his mercenary life in hot spots around the globe, Geraint risking telling the elf something of the politics and intrigues that had created or exacerbated those incidents. A few times Streak whistled between his teeth at the mention of some exceptionally perfidious treachery or double-dealing behind the scenes. In the back, Serrin had his arm around Kristen but his eyes and his mind were on the papers and images before him. His wife gazed away into the darkness, but it was difficult to say whether she was seeing her dark reflection, the occasional yellow light from far below that glided eerily through it, or anything at all. Michael slept on peacefully.
London seemed gray even before dawn, not needing the drab morning light to pronounce its grayness. Slowly falling rain reduced visibility to an uncomfortably short range, and Geraint’s anxiety mounted steadily until at last they were safely back on terra firma.
“I don’t like the idea of Mayfair” he said to Streak. “Who knows who’s watching the flat now?”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that myself. Do you know old Carney over at MagSec?” Streak asked.
“Certainly,” Geraint said. The officious but highly respected midranking officer in the magical security subdivision of the Ministry of Defense was known to a lot of Foreign Office officials who had important foreign contacts they needed to keep hidden during their stay in London.
Streak smiled. “Well, your man Carney owes me a favor.”
“Camey owes you a favor? Are you sure? Of course you are; ignore my stupidity. Well, well I never.” Geraint was dumbfounded. Was there no end to this elf’s hidden depths? Horace Walter Arbuthnot Carney never owed anyone favors. They owed him. He had enough favors coming to him to be king one day, or so went the joke.
“Just don’t ask why.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Geraint said fervently.
“Carney has safe houses,” Streak pointed out. But it’ll cost you. Cashing in a favor with Horace means I’m losing a major fallback.”
“Whatever it takes, Just make the call.”
“You know, mate, you’re getting to say that an awful lot.”
“It’s because you’re so damnably resourceful, my man,” Geraint was smiling now, his spirits lifted. If they could find a bolthole in one of Camey’s secure houses, the Inquisition wouldn’t be a problem. The Pope himself couldn’t get in.
Streak rubbed his chin, and then his eyes. “Jesus H, but I’m seriously knackered myself. Any of that brandy left?”
“Just enough for the two of us to get steamed out of our heads.”
“Ahem.” There was a small cough from behind them. They turned to see Kristen grinning back at them, Senin’s sleeping head in her lap.
“Don’t forget me,” she said quietly, glancing down to make sure she wasn’t disturbing her husband. “You got any rags, Streak?”
“Not on me. But I’m sure I can rustle up the best toke in town in fifteen minutes once we’re through here.”
“That would be really great, man.”
“Lord, what kind of company am I keeping?” Geraint said in a tone of mock wonderment.
They all laughed. It was pure relief, relief at getting back safely. Arriving at Gatwick Airport, they climbed stiffly out of the chopper and prepared to go through the arcane and manifold rituals airport officialdom demanded of all its new arrivals.
When Serrin woke at nine in the morning, at first he couldn’t remember how he came to be in what looked like a high-security cell complex, with gentle lighting but no visible windows to the room. The magical power around the place all but screamed as it shimmered around the edge of his senses. Around him, the gently sleeping bodies rose and fell in time to their breathing but gave no sound.
“Where the frag am I?” he wondered aloud, his voice cracked with sleep, and then the events of the day before all came rushing back. He glanced over at Kristen’s sleeping form and smiled, then searched around for his stack of papers and was soon lost in their convoluted contents.
Michael was the first of the others to wake. It was around ten in the morning according to Serrin’s watch. He rolled over, sat up suddenly, groaned and rubbed his forehead.
“Oh, frag,” he moaned, delicately shaking his head in the manner of someone with a dropped parcel trying to determine whether the china tea service inside was in rather more pieces than it should be. “Frag frag fraggetty fragging frag! Some evil twisted bastard is drilling my skull open from the inside. This is becoming an almost daily occurrence. You know, I’m sure I can faintly remember some time in the far distant past when I didn’t wake up sick.”
“You fell on a rock,” Serrin said helpfully, barely looking up from the papers.
“Wonderful. Hell. I need something for this headache,” Michael said as he gingerly tested every last strain and ache in his body. A column of incipient pain seemed to run from the base of his skull to his tailbone. He felt dreadful. Then he took in his surroundings.
“Where the frag are we?”
“Some kind of safe house!” Serrin murmured, moving another page to the back of the pile on his propped-up knees. “Magically protected. The barriers around this place are something to behold, I can tell you. Geraint didn’t want to risk going back to the apartment, in case we had another visitor like Joan of Arc.”
“Right. Yeah, right,” Michael said dully. “Coffee. Give me coffee or I’m going to die. Now.”
“Try the blue flask,” Serrin said, his conversation still coasting on autopilot. His head was obviously full of what was in the printouts.
Despite the protests of pain from his aching body, and a headache that truly felt like an old-fashioned lobotomy had been inflicted upon him very recently, Michael tottered over, driven by his curiosity.
“What have you got?”
“Interesting. Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci was Grand Master of the Priory of Sion in the years immediately before his death?”
“Frag, why didn’t I get that from all my cross-indexing?”
“Because you wouldn’t have known to look for obscure connections when you’re not familiar with the background,” Serrin pointed out. He lit a cigarette, a habit he indulged in much less frequently than he once had. Michael had noticed the change, putting it down to the mage’s newfound domestic happiness.
“And Victor Hugo too. And Jean Coctaeu. And even, maybe, Isaac Newton.”
“Newton? Really? Tell me more,” Michael said, and as the others slept on, the pair were both soon engrossed in the data. Soon, pens were jabbing into paper, words were being underlined, key phrases highlighted, and Michael almost managed to forget his headache.
The hours ticked away and Kristen, in particular, was developing the first signs of going stir-crazy. Indulging in Streak’s special-delivery product made her a little less restless, but definitely more ready to complain.
She was doing her best to distract Serrin from his interminable note-sharing with Michael when a gentle tap came on the door. One of the guards answered Geraint’s “Come in”, smiling in a way that suggested he’d recently been the unfortunate recipient of a thorough mindwipe (or had just graduated from a Golden Arches managers’ university; it amounted to the same thing), and told them they had a visitor.