Geraint shook his head ruefully. The ork’s attempt at posh English had been so absurd, but he simply hadn’t thought of the possibility. Understandable, really. Few people, exiting from the scene of a murder, would have thought of it.
“Funny thing is, one look at a real toff and they go all slobbery and weak at the knees. The old hand starts tugging at the forelock before they know it,” Streak said, still chuckling. They knew you were class, Your Lordship. Tangling with you would be trouble. Get the real cops in, right? Not what they wanted at all.”
“Makes two of us,” Geraint said.
“Come on, let’s get to the van, get those pictures for you,’ Streak said to Michael, “and then our cash. It’s been a long night.”
“It certainly has” Michael said in fervent agreement. Too long by half.
By five AM., back in Mayfair and with their unexpected guests long gone back into the anonymous dawn. Geraint and Michael sat down to a brandy and waited for their over-stimulated systems to calm down to where sleep might be a possibility. Michael was painfully stiff across the shoulders and of course there was the permanent weakness in the small of his back. Whenever he exerted himself too much, he felt as if he’d spend a day on a rack. An image flitted across his tired mind of being tortured by devilish hooded figures from some historical Inquisition. Maybe it was coincidence, maybe it was psychic, but he dismissed it at the time.
Then he remembered the package he’d picked up in the apartment. lie took a dagger-shaped paper knife from Geraint’s desk and slit it open. Inside was a slim, leather-bound volume whose contents was written in Latin. He took in the long-winded title and shook his head slowly.
“Don’t tell me, it’s a book of fairy tales.” Geraint said.
“Actually, you’re not so far off. It’s a treatise on undines.”
Geraint looked thoughtful. “Go on. Refresh my memory.”
“I’m not sure myself,” Michael admitted. “Some kind of water spirit or something. Let me check.”
A few quick recourses to dictionaries and a database had the answer before too long. Michael summarized the spew of words. “Yes, nature spirits in watery form. Often female. The Rhine maidens, that sort of thing. Want me to go press some macros and call up more detail?”
“I think it can wait,” Geraint said, yawning at last. Finally, his body was telling him that it might be able to sleep after all. “But what does a-”
“…cultural attache want with a book on undines?” Michael finished his sentence for him. “Indeed. What does it mean?”
“Maybe it was intended for Serrault?” Geraint suggested. “His mage frend? The one absent from public records?”
“Could be,” Michael said. “Only one thing to do. Find out who sent it.” His rubbed his hands together with the smug grin that prefaced any decking activity he expected to be very straightforward. “I think we’ve got to go trawling through the databases again.”
“You do that, old man,” Geraint said as he got up, rubbing his eyes. “I need some sleep like the Conservationist party chairman needs a punch in the face. Let me know what you find.” He knew the expression in Michael’s eyes from old, and guessed his friend would be busy for some time yet. Whenever they gambled with cards, or just played some game for the fun of it, Michael would always want one more. One more hand, one more twist, one more puzzle or riddle to crack. Because you couldn’t have too much of a good thing. Geraint was just a couple of years older, and much less prone to riding waves.
“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.”