“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-”
“I meant them,” Streak said. “Out there in the desert. By the way, you guys got jabs for all the diseases you can catch?”
“Drek,” Michael groaned. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“We professionals get regular shots all the time,” Streak said happily. You never know where you might have to go next.”
“We haven’t got time,” Geraint fretted. We’ll just have to buy several gallons of insect repellent. And water purifying tables. And-”
“Don’t worry, Your Lordship. I was only pulling your pud, a wind-up, We’ve got all we need. Don’t we boys?”
“Sure do,” the ork grunted.
“Well, then, that’s it. It’s now three-twelve AM, and I for one need some sleep,” Michael said wearily. “Tomorrow we go to Ahvaz and we get our man.” He flipped his deck off.
But, for once, Michael hadn’t been secure enough. It would have appalled him at the time as it did later when he realized it, to know that he’d been decked himself. The saturnine man responsible gave the information to his master without emotion.
“Then it is so,” the man said as if expecting what he learned. “He has gone back to the heart of heresy. Like a dog returning to its own vomit. It is always so.”
He considered his options. Of his best men, half were still recovering from the events in Venice. He doubted now whether hermetics or assassins would do the job for him. They had pursued their quarry long enough, and it had eluded them every time. He could no longer trust to the work of his juniors.
He reached for the private line and told the Vatican secretary that, despite the lateness of the hour, he would have to speak with His Holiness in person on a matter of most Unique urgency.
Across the Mediterranean, in a fertile land spreading over the wide, lazy valley of the Karun River, a young man was shown through the underground part of the building. having already seen for himself the dome and the observatory above, extraordinary constructions for so poor a people in such a ravaged place. He smiled, and hugged the dark-eyed man who had showed him around so nervously, obviously desperate for his approval.