‘If you must.’ George’s face was bleak.
‘Well, if I’m speaking frankly, I need to tell you that Sophie Delroy is wonderful, and she is obviously, evidently and wholly enamoured of you. As she should be.’
‘Really?’
‘George, you fathead, of course she is.’
‘She’s not just using me?’ George looked away for a moment. ‘I couldn’t stand that. She’s ... special.’
Aubrey had never heard George talk like this. He liked girls. All girls. Lots of girls. He always had the highest opinion of them. Apparently, though, there was something special about Sophie.
‘George, you can grump about thinking the worst, or you can have faith in someone you appear to admire so much.’
George lay the binoculars on the ground. Carefully, he picked a blade of grass and ran it through his fingers. ‘Don’t you have doubts, old man?’
‘Doubts? Not many people don’t have doubts. The trick is not to listen to them.’
‘All right.’ George threw the blade of grass over his shoulder. ‘Let’s make a pact.’ He stood and brushed himself off, then he stuck out his hand. ‘Let’s promise each other not to listen to those doubts.’
Aubrey climbed to his feet, took his friend’s hand and shook. ‘Not unless they’re reasonable doubts.’
George growled. ‘Aubrey.’
‘Right. Sorry. I mean: let’s do the best we possibly can for those around us.’
‘A noble aim. Now, how do we get into that place?’
Aubrey had been wondering if a night approach may be best, but he was sure the light towers situated at the corners and halfway along the boundaries would have powerful beams and equally powerful machine guns.
Think, Aubrey, think.
Standard tactics came to him – a diversion, tunnelling, fence breaching – but he had a suspicion that this place might be well prepared for such approaches.
He lay on the leaf-covered dirt again, the better to steady his field glasses. They were the best the Department could supply, by the hands of the renowned Crouch Bros. The lenses were each hand ground and the brothers Crouch had moved with the times, incorporating some neat stabilising spells in the frame of binoculars, so Aubrey had a firm, steady range of view. This allowed him to see the double box arrangement atop the nearest corner of the fence, attached to the guard tower legs, about twenty feet.
‘I thought so,’ he muttered. He lowered the field glasses.
‘So did I,’ George responded, shaking his head.
Aubrey stared. ‘You what?’
‘I thought so too, old man.’ George paused a moment and seemed to enjoy Aubrey’s puzzlement. ‘You see, old man, I like to keep you on your toes. Sometimes, when I’m supposed to give a compliant “What did you think?” response, I prefer to throw in a googly.’
Aubrey couldn’t help but smile a little. George gave every appearance of being a solid, unsurprising sort of chap, but Aubrey knew from experience that this was far from the truth. His still waters ran deep indeed, and his mind worked in quick and sometimes capricious ways – and he had recovered some of his equanimity.
Aubrey was lucky to have him as a friend.
‘Thanks, George. I fell for it completely.’
‘Excellent. Now, what were you saying?’
‘This facility is even more important than we suspected. It’s guarded.’
‘I can see that, old man. Those big towers do stand out.’ George shrugged, a tricky job when lying on one’s stomach. ‘You know, you’re going to have to work harder in the “startling revelation” area. Good build-up, but a bit of a letdown afterwards, rather. I was getting all tense and now I’m left flat as a pancake.’
‘That’s not what I mean. Under the towers and–’ He picked up the field glasses again and scanned the rear fence. ‘About halfway along. Magical detection devices.’ He adjusted the focus, very slightly. The devices looked larger than usual. ‘And I think they’re not just for physical intrusion, they’re also capable of detecting magic.’
Aubrey chewed his lip. If this was the case, the devices must be extremely sophisticated. They had to be capable of filtering out authorised magic, otherwise whatever was going on inside the buildings would be setting them off all the time. And such differentiating was an advance indeed, as he’d seen nothing like this in Albion.
‘Aubrey,’ George said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘How did Sophie and Caroline get inside the place?’
‘Dr Tremaine’s imprint is all over this factory. He’s in there somewhere.’
George winced. ‘You told Caroline that Dr Tremaine was in there? That’d explain why she was so keen to get in.’
‘I’ve put her in harm’s way,’ Aubrey said. It pained him.
‘Don’t think like that, old man. Caroline wouldn’t like it. Suggests she’s helpless, in more ways than one.’ George pointed. ‘More important than worrying over that is the question of how Sophie and Caroline got in to the place.’
‘I hope Sophie didn’t try any magical means.’ In fact, Aubrey was reasonably sure she hadn’t. He hadn’t heard any alarms and the factory didn’t show any signs of a place that had recently been magically breached.
George thumped the ground in front of him. ‘We should have asked Katya.’
A voice came from nowhere. ‘They went through the front gate.’
If Aubrey had been standing, he would have given the world high jump record a distinct nudge. Katya insinuated herself out of a dense tangle of shrubbery with nary a rustle, emphasising to him what a city fellow he was. She crawled close to them. ‘They went in the front gate.’
‘Just like that?’ George said. ‘Bold as brass?’
‘They joined the soldiers who came this morning. Sophie performed some magic and they were in.’
‘Magic?’ Aubrey was startled. She must have used something extremely passive. He was already thinking of the possibilities. Some sort of passive concealment magic was most likely. Or a semblance spell? He needed to know more about Sophie’s capabilities.
Katya brought them to the spot where lorries full of soldiers ground their way around a bend and up a slight rise before reaching the factory gates. The lorries slowed here, she explained, and Caroline and Sophie had slipped themselves into the rear of the last in a column of three.
‘We can do that,’ Aubrey said and he was confident he could, especially since their effort in slipping into the fortress at Divodorum had required the same sort of disguising magic. It was good, sound special unit magic.
‘I will wait,’ Katya said as they took up a vantage point behind some thickly growing hazels, ‘and report back to von Stralick and Zelinka.’
‘I’d appreciate that,’ Aubrey said, and he felt a flutter in his stomach. At least someone should know where they’d gone.
George took some time checking his revolver. Aubrey, feeling a little foolish, followed suit. He’d been prepared to leave the firearm behind, never having felt totally comfortable with it, but George had insisted on his bringing it.
It wasn’t long before the noise of an overladen lorry came toward them. ‘Two only,’ Katya told them after disappearing for a moment. ‘Go to the last.’
‘Ready?’ Aubrey said to George.
‘As rain.’
‘What?’
‘Let’s go.’
George scrambled through the brush, nearly leaving Aubrey behind – because Aubrey hadn’t yet cast the disguising spell. ‘George!’ he called, but the roar of the lorries drowned out his voice. A mixed blessing, for it hadn’t alerted any soldiers, but George was ploughing through the brush, heedless of his lack of disguise. Aubrey rushed his spell as fast as he could, then put his head down and had to hurry to follow. Branches slashed at him, twigs plucked at his jacket, then he was through.