“They were men!” Michael protested.
“That’s what I mean,” Serrin said dryly.
“So what’s our man doing playing with these images, and why is he so fixated on Leonardo?”
“That’s the million-nuyen question,” Serrin concluded. “And we don’t know the answer.” He paused while another thought slotted into place. “We also don’t know where he is.”
“Blondie was in Venice yesterday morning.” Geraint reminded him. “If he was, then so was whoever he refers to as his master.”
“That’s logical.”
“And I bet they aren’t there now,” Geraint reasoned.
“That also seems pretty likely.”
“So where have they gone, and have we any clue as to where and how they’re going?”
“Nope.”
“So we have to stay passive and wait for another move in the game, dammit!” Geraint growled. “I really don’t like this. We’re back where we were again.”
Michael flipped open his laptop. “Now that they’ve made a move, I wonder if there might be some information for us. Ah, right. Good one.” His face broke into a smile. Then he looked puzzled, even a little angry.
“Consider the Hejira,” he read from the email drop. “That’s it. Drek.”
“The flight of the Prophet,” Serrin said. “Mohammed fled from Mecca to Medina, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, you got it, but what’s that got to do with all this? Don’t tell me he’s convened to Islam all of a sudden.”
“Think metaphorically, Michael,” Serrin said exasperatedly. “Mohammed left one city of divinity. Our man has left Venice.”
“So he’s saying he’s some kind of prophet?” Michael sounded as if he disapproved.
“Maybe he is.”
“And maybe he’s suffering serious delusions.”
“Maybe,” Serrin smiled. “But we know he can sure as hell move mountains.”
“All right. So he takes a flight and-” Michael looked astounded at the idea that had just leapt unbidden into his brain. “No, it can’t be as simple as-”
He was already reaching for his traveling cyberdeck.
“As simple as what?” Geraint asked, puzzled.
“As simple as taking a flight,” Michael muttered, stabbing keys.
“Well, of course not, you wouldn’t mention the Hejira just to tell us that,” Serrin said.
“Maybe not, but maybe it actually is something as simple as that and then something more, so Let’s find out. And maybe we can get a proper look at our man. God bless them, the Italian states routinely keep photodata on all arrivals and departures at their airports for a year after the flights. Originally for security reasons.”
“Would that have included us?” Geraint fretted, implications tumbling into place.
“Sure would,” Michael said. “So let’s have a look.”
“Its going to take forever to scan every passenger into and out of Venice today,” Serrin lamented.
“Not necessarily,” Michael said. “He’d have been with Blondie, right? I feed a description of Blondie into Smithers and he rattles through, checking for anyone similar, and presto, all done in a couple of minutes. Smithers is very good at this sort of thing.”
Juan and Xavier, who’d been quiet up until now though clearly engrossed in a discourse they didn’t fully understand but whose logic they could appreciate, gave each other mystified glances.
Serrin threw them a grin. “Don’t ask.”
Just then, Streak came through the door, a pair of huge paper bags stuffed with snacks cradled in his arms.
“You greedy pig,” Kristen said happily, snatching one of the bags as he passed her. “You had a huge dinner.”
“So why are you stealing my food?”
“I stole some of your dope,” she explained with a giggle.
“Oh, well then, help yourself,” the elf said cheerfully, depositing himself on a bed and wrenching open a large bag of chips.
Michael sat back and drummed his fingers on the table as he waited. Then the image began to form on the screen, increasing its resolution with every split-second pass.
“Actually we may not even get him. Remember how he fragged the Doge’s scanners?” Serrin said.
Michael shook his head. “Not this time.” He watched the screen carefully. “Oh, very clever. Very amusing. You bastard.”
The ID was on the screen now, the unmistakable pony tail and cheerfully smiling young face of the man they knew as Salai, accompanying an older, equally slender but taller figure.
It was a serious face: a furrowed brow beneath a rather incongruous beret, an aquiline nose, and a chin neither weak nor exceptionally strong. The gray eyes were gentle and academic in appearance He had that ageless look some middle-aged men acquire when their heads turn to silver or the gray of his long, flowing, slightly wavy hair. Around his lips a slight smile seemed to be playing. For all the world that smile reminded them at once of the Mona Lisa, the smile that had intrigued and bemused scholars of the ages.
Which was not surprising, since the face was unmistakably that of Leonardo da Vinci, younger than his surviving self-portrait showed him in his old age, but him nonetheless. Michael leaned back and laughed, to all appearances on the verge of clapping his hands and stamping his feet.
Very clever, very good. So he decked the ID archive and changed the image. Neat, neat. I like it, my dear fellow. And now let us see where you’ve gone, on your Hejira.
“To Ahvaz,” he said, mystified, after a few moments. “Our man took a flight to Ahvaz, on a chartered plane. At just after midnight.”
“Tonight?”
“Of course tonight.” Michael said testily.
“So where the frag is Ahvaz?” Streak asked through a mouthful of Growliebar.
“In southwestern Iran on the border with Iraq,” Michael said, having already referenced the archival data.
“That’s real bandit country, chummer,” Juan informed him from across the room. “A hundred petty warlords and half of ‘em still shoot last-century guns off horseback. Really damn primitive.”
Serrin was staring closely at the printout that had now appeared of the image on the screen, but no one was taking much notice of him, apart from Kristen, who stood doing her best to peer over his shoulder. He was looking for something, or, rather, he knew something was in the image and he couldn’t see what it was, where it was, what it meant.
She showed him.
“Ah,” he said, with a low sigh of enlightenment. “Yes, of Course.”
“What is it?” Michael asked, breaking off from trying to find out more about Ahvaz and what kind of airport it had, if indeed it had one at all.
“His finger. The index finger on his right hand. Look.”
“It’s pointing upward. So what?”
Serrin struggled through his bag, cautioning an impatient Michael to wait, and extracted the book of paintings he was looking for.
“Look, John the Baptist, look. The picture is just his face and this image. Of the raised finger.”
“So? One picture and-“
“It’s in his painting of St. John-Bacchus as well. Look,” he pointed out, as he flipped the page over to the following plate.
“All right,” Michael said, taken aback now. “What’s he Saying?”
“Remember John?” the elf wondered aloud. “I’m not sure. But I know he didn’t make this gesture by accident.”
“A raised finger, eh?” Streak said. “I know what I mean by that.”
“It’s the index finger not the middle one,” Serrin said impatiently.
“Ahvaz,” Michael read. “It has a small airstrip built by an exploratory team from an oil company late last century. It’s apparently reasonably stable at the present time, which means that the same bandits have held it for a year or more and no one has actually been shot out of the sky during that time, and I think we have to go there.”
The samurai looked at each other and smiled, the lizard-like leer of all hired hands that says, “The price has just gone up!”
Geraint read the looks and the minds.
“Yes, you’re on overtime and bonuses” he told them. “We’re going to need you.”
“We sure are,” Streak said cheerfully. “Yessir, mad guys with big guns.”
“I didn’t mean-”