“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.
Then he realized he’d put his foot in it. It was Serrin, her husband, who should have been showing her around town. Furthermore not mentioning Serrin was an implicit criticism that he wouldn’t be thoughtful enough to do so. Irritated at his clumsiness Michael tried to extricate himself from the faux pas.
“After all, he knows this city a lot better then old Serrin,” he continued. “He’s lived here eight years or so. Knows it inside out.”
“It’s all right, I know what you meant,” Kristen said coolly. “Serrin’s not a very worldly person, not really, for all he thinks he knows about things. But I saw a lot of the museums and galleries and I’d never been to places like that, and I did get to go to the best bagel shop in the universe.”
Her face cracked in a grin, and Michael reflected that when she smiled she did look very pretty, not because her smile might have graced the cover of some fashion tridzine, but because every gram of her spirit was in it.
“Better than the mock caviar,” he said ruefully.
“The vodka’s great though,” she said, the smile taking on a wicked aspect. “Can we get another?”
Michael looked at the bags he was carrying. He’d spent enough to make a return to the freebie counter entirely reasonable.
“If I bring you back drunk in the middle of the day Serrin will never let me hear the end of it,” he chuckled. “Can’t have you consorting with an ex, you know. Even one who only existed as a technical formality”
“Actually,” she said archly, “I think that’s a very English thing.”
He laughed out loud. The Cape Town Street kid was doing a creditable impression of being very worldly indeed, even if her husband wasn’t, despite his many years of traveling the globe.
Just before the second vodka, as they stood inhaling the splendid, biting aroma that rose even from the near-
frozen liquid. Kristen finally decided to confide her concern.
“I can see why Serrin’s here, but I don’t feel very useful,” she said. “I don’t even really understand exactly what’s happening, you know?”
“Neither do we.”
“Yes, but I don’t even know why I don’t know why.”
Michael looked at her standing there for all the world like a very serious child who has gazed up at the stars and thought to herself, “What is it with all this infinity and eternity stuff?” He wasn’t in love with her and never had been, but he could easily understand how any other man might be.
“In a nutshell,” he began, taking a deep breath, “some joker-some extraordinarily talented joker-says he’s going to frag up every computer system on the planet and gives every indication that he’s more than capable of fulfilling such a threat. He leaves an icon, a calling card, which is the most famous fraud in Christianity. He names himself after the greatest genius in the world’s history. I’m asked to find out all I can and maybe find him. I no sooner start making attempts to do so than an awful lot of people start getting very interested in that. One of them sends our party guest last night. One of them tracks Geraint and ends up dead at the hands of jesuits. At first I didn’t know what the image meant, the face of a black woman, but now it looks as if some very weird occult or religious stuff is involved. And that’s what Serrin’s helping me with. And, oh, we have seven days before our joker pulls his party piece-the systems crash and the world grinds to a halt. Okay?”
He had hardly paused for breath and did so now, gulping down big lungfuls prior to swallowing the vodka. It hurt the throat and brought tears to his eyes and he shook himself in a shivery spasm right afterward, but ten seconds later his throat was warm, his stomach glowed, and he felt wonderful. Kristen had done the same, but somehow managed the operation without the cough and sharp intake of breath.
“All right.” she said with that same serious-child look. “I don’t know much about Jesuits. Where I came from there were Sunnis and Shi’as, and a few Rastas, and the Dutch Reformed Church, of course, and some Hindus, and a few others as well. But I never heard of any black woman in Christianity.”