Black Madonna

17

It was a distinctly jaded huddle of people who managed to bluff and shuffle their way through the apparently equally tired and more than disinterested security at the Toulouse airport. They’d already soaked Michael’s jacket with a generous dose of brandy and proclaimed him dead drunk to account for his unconsciousness. Serrin, in contrast, had made a fairly swift recovery during the drive, surprising them all, though he was still not entirely himself. He seemed vacant, not attending to his surroundings, but he was able to talk coherently and seemed to be suffering no more than physical fatigue. Coffee from a flask, and a nip of the brandy left over from anointing Michael, had had a powerful restorative effect on him.

Streak talked them through without incident, and they were just fastening their safety belts in the Yellowjacket when a pair of airport security guards came racing up to their chopper.

“Oh, drek,” Geraint said. Streak frowned, but had no choice but to push open the chopper door again.

“You forgot to sign this,” one of the men announced. proffering a form that looked as if it had outgrown “triplicate” and was now heading for double digits.

“Yes, and this,” the other one grinned.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s chill. Sorry, we were in a hurry. Guess I forgot,” Streak said, managing to sound bored as he signed the top copy with a pen borrowed from one of the men. That pen, when it found its way back to the officer, was wrapped in a high-denomination French banknote.

The man smiled broadly. “That will do nicely, monsieur,” he said, and the pair retreated slowly back to their concrete watch-house.

“I was so busy trying to be casual I forgot the bleeding bribe,” Streak explained once he’d closed the door of the aircraft. “Sorry.”

“Thank God that was all,” Geraint said. He was overtired and jumpy. Of them all, he alone had seen the malefic spirit that had killed Gianfranco, and the sight had seared his nerves.

“London?” Streak asked again. Apparently no one had heard him the first time.

“Guess so. I’m too tired to think of anywhere clever,” Geraint said feebly.

Streak turned briefly to his fellow elf, but Serrin had his nose buried in paper. With Michael still unconscious, the mage had apparently decided to take over the task of plowing through the morass of data he’d unearthed in his investigations. His brow furrowed, he ticked off something on one page. then resumed chewing the end of his pen absentmindedly as he scanned the next. Beside him. Kristen gazed absently out the window, apparently mesmerized by her light-spotted reflection.

“Can’t go back to London… some mad Shi’ite ragheads have nuked it!” Streak announced loudly.

“Hmmm.” Serrin said, chewing hard.

“Does he often get like this?’ Streak asked no one in particular.

“Uh? What?” Serrin said, suddenly looking up.

“Never mind,” Streak said wearily as he prepared to taxi off. “It doesn’t matter.” He pulled on his headset and hailed the tower, asking for clearance and a runway The engines kicked into life, straining and purring like barely house-broken leopards.

When they were airborne, and heading up above the lights of the night-shrouded French city, Geraint turned to Streak with a look of real gratitude.

“Thanks,” he said simply. “Seriously. We weren’t in too good shape back there.”

“All part of the service, mate,” Streak said amiably leaning gently on the stick to start the copter into a long turn toward the north. “I’ll stick it on me bill for later.”

They fell to talking then Streak speaking of his mercenary life in hot spots around the globe, Geraint risking telling the elf something of the politics and intrigues that had created or exacerbated those incidents. A few times Streak whistled between his teeth at the mention of some exceptionally perfidious treachery or double-dealing behind the scenes. In the back, Serrin had his arm around Kristen but his eyes and his mind were on the papers and images before him. His wife gazed away into the darkness, but it was difficult to say whether she was seeing her dark reflection, the occasional yellow light from far below that glided eerily through it, or anything at all. Michael slept on peacefully.

London seemed gray even before dawn, not needing the drab morning light to pronounce its grayness. Slowly falling rain reduced visibility to an uncomfortably short range, and Geraint’s anxiety mounted steadily until at last they were safely back on terra firma.

“I don’t like the idea of Mayfair” he said to Streak. “Who knows who’s watching the flat now?”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that myself. Do you know old Carney over at MagSec?” Streak asked.

“Certainly,” Geraint said. The officious but highly respected midranking officer in the magical security subdivision of the Ministry of Defense was known to a lot of Foreign Office officials who had important foreign contacts they needed to keep hidden during their stay in London.

Streak smiled. “Well, your man Carney owes me a favor.”

“Camey owes you a favor? Are you sure? Of course you are; ignore my stupidity. Well, well I never.” Geraint was dumbfounded. Was there no end to this elf’s hidden depths? Horace Walter Arbuthnot Carney never owed anyone favors. They owed him. He had enough favors coming to him to be king one day, or so went the joke.

“Just don’t ask why.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Geraint said fervently.

“Carney has safe houses,” Streak pointed out. But it’ll cost you. Cashing in a favor with Horace means I’m losing a major fallback.”

“Whatever it takes, Just make the call.”

“You know, mate, you’re getting to say that an awful lot.”

“It’s because you’re so damnably resourceful, my man,” Geraint was smiling now, his spirits lifted. If they could find a bolthole in one of Camey’s secure houses, the Inquisition wouldn’t be a problem. The Pope himself couldn’t get in.

Streak rubbed his chin, and then his eyes. “Jesus H, but I’m seriously knackered myself. Any of that brandy left?”

“Just enough for the two of us to get steamed out of our heads.”

“Ahem.” There was a small cough from behind them. They turned to see Kristen grinning back at them, Senin’s sleeping head in her lap.

“Don’t forget me,” she said quietly, glancing down to make sure she wasn’t disturbing her husband. “You got any rags, Streak?”

“Not on me. But I’m sure I can rustle up the best toke in town in fifteen minutes once we’re through here.”

“That would be really great, man.”

“Lord, what kind of company am I keeping?” Geraint said in a tone of mock wonderment.

They all laughed. It was pure relief, relief at getting back safely. Arriving at Gatwick Airport, they climbed stiffly out of the chopper and prepared to go through the arcane and manifold rituals airport officialdom demanded of all its new arrivals.

When Serrin woke at nine in the morning, at first he couldn’t remember how he came to be in what looked like a high-security cell complex, with gentle lighting but no visible windows to the room. The magical power around the place all but screamed as it shimmered around the edge of his senses. Around him, the gently sleeping bodies rose and fell in time to their breathing but gave no sound.

“Where the frag am I?” he wondered aloud, his voice cracked with sleep, and then the events of the day before all came rushing back. He glanced over at Kristen’s sleeping form and smiled, then searched around for his stack of papers and was soon lost in their convoluted contents.

Michael was the first of the others to wake. It was around ten in the morning according to Serrin’s watch. He rolled over, sat up suddenly, groaned and rubbed his forehead.

“Oh, frag,” he moaned, delicately shaking his head in the manner of someone with a dropped parcel trying to determine whether the china tea service inside was in rather more pieces than it should be. “Frag frag fraggetty fragging frag! Some evil twisted bastard is drilling my skull open from the inside. This is becoming an almost daily occurrence. You know, I’m sure I can faintly remember some time in the far distant past when I didn’t wake up sick.”

“You fell on a rock,” Serrin said helpfully, barely looking up from the papers.

“Wonderful. Hell. I need something for this headache,” Michael said as he gingerly tested every last strain and ache in his body. A column of incipient pain seemed to run from the base of his skull to his tailbone. He felt dreadful. Then he took in his surroundings.

“Where the frag are we?”

“Some kind of safe house!” Serrin murmured, moving another page to the back of the pile on his propped-up knees. “Magically protected. The barriers around this place are something to behold, I can tell you. Geraint didn’t want to risk going back to the apartment, in case we had another visitor like Joan of Arc.”

“Right. Yeah, right,” Michael said dully. “Coffee. Give me coffee or I’m going to die. Now.”

“Try the blue flask,” Serrin said, his conversation still coasting on autopilot. His head was obviously full of what was in the printouts.

Despite the protests of pain from his aching body, and a headache that truly felt like an old-fashioned lobotomy had been inflicted upon him very recently, Michael tottered over, driven by his curiosity.

“What have you got?”

“Interesting. Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci was Grand Master of the Priory of Sion in the years immediately before his death?”

“Frag, why didn’t I get that from all my cross-indexing?”

“Because you wouldn’t have known to look for obscure connections when you’re not familiar with the background,” Serrin pointed out. He lit a cigarette, a habit he indulged in much less frequently than he once had. Michael had noticed the change, putting it down to the mage’s newfound domestic happiness.

“And Victor Hugo too. And Jean Coctaeu. And even, maybe, Isaac Newton.”

“Newton? Really? Tell me more,” Michael said, and as the others slept on, the pair were both soon engrossed in the data. Soon, pens were jabbing into paper, words were being underlined, key phrases highlighted, and Michael almost managed to forget his headache.

The hours ticked away and Kristen, in particular, was developing the first signs of going stir-crazy. Indulging in Streak’s special-delivery product made her a little less restless, but definitely more ready to complain.

She was doing her best to distract Serrin from his interminable note-sharing with Michael when a gentle tap came on the door. One of the guards answered Geraint’s “Come in”, smiling in a way that suggested he’d recently been the unfortunate recipient of a thorough mindwipe (or had just graduated from a Golden Arches managers’ university; it amounted to the same thing), and told them they had a visitor.

The gun was in Streak’s hand instantly, leveled steadily at the casually dressed visitor, but Serrin told him to drop it when he saw who it was. By all the odds, there simply shouldn’t have been a visitor. No one could have known where they were, and no one should have been able to get past the guards if they somehow did. But then their visitor wasn’t flesh and blood.

“Good afternoon,” he said pleasantly. “May I sit down?”

“Who the hell are you?” Geraint said furiously. “Streak, I thought you said-”

“It’s all right,” Serrin said rapidly. “I know him. What on earth are you doing here, Merlin?”

“I’m acting on my own initiative, I’m afraid,” the free spirit said with the sheepish look of a five-year-old boy caught perched on a high stool with his hands in the cookie jar. “I do consider that my master might have been a little more forthcoming than he was.”

“Then sit down,” Geraint said, waving the guard away. The man gave him a questioning look, then closed the door behind him.

Kristen already had a cup of tea in her hand, and offered it to the spirit. He took it in his right hand and took one of hers in his left, raising it to his lips to kiss it and bowing slightly as he did so. He caught Serrin’s eye and smiled.

“Do forgive me,” he said affably. “Please don’t be jealous. I’m not even human, after all.”

“Hmmmm,” Serrin grumbled, but Kristen looked pleased.

“So,” the spirit said as he sat down, crossing his legs at the ankles of his elegant cotton trousers, “I gather you’ve been abroad.”

“Might have,” Streak said suspiciously, gun still in his hand. “On the other hand, maybe we ain’t. What’s it to you anyway? And will someone tell me who this is, if he isn’t human? He looks bloody human to me.”

“He’s a spirit.” Serrin said. “Which is doubtless part of the explanation for how he got in here.”

“That worries me,” Streak replied. “If he can-”

“Ah, yes, well,” Merlin said hurriedly, “it’s rather easier to find someone when you’ve been involved in a hermetic ritual with them. The linkage is much simpler. Not an advantage the Priory or the Acquavivans would have.”

“Acquavivans?” said Senin, unfamiliar with the term.

“Those NOJ tossers,” Streak said. “They’re only one Jesuit faction, after all. Named after Claudio Acquaviva, devisor of the Ratio, their organizational code. Hard-nuts, the lot of ‘em.”

“So how does chummer here know about all this?”

“Please, please,” Merlin entreated them all. He sipped his tea and smiled at Kristen. “Most welcome and refreshing, thank you. It’s been a tong hard day and it isn’t even teatime yet.”

“I don’t believe this bloke,” Streak said to Geraint. “Are you sure he isn’t related to you? He sounds just like you.”

Serrin ignored him. “Tell us why you’re here, Merlin?”

“I thought you could use a little help.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Streak said. “But like I just said, mate, what’s it to you?”

“Look. Streak, leave this to me,” Serrin said irritably. “I know Merlin.”

“Why don’t we go and have a gin and tonic, Streak?” Geraint said pleasantly, with just the slightest edge in his voice that clearly implied, “This is not a suggestion” Streak looked uncertainly at him, and at the spirit, and then decided that if Geraint didn’t mind sitting it out, he’d settle for a secondhand summary too. They retreated to the kitchen.

“What does Hessler think of your being here?” Serrin said carefully He was hardly party to the details of the spirit’s dealings with the mage he had, after all, called “Master.”

“He might not be entirely pleased.” Merlin confessed. “But there are some things I think you really should know. Otherwise, you won’t be prepared for some of the opposition you may encounter.”

“Such as?” Michael ventured.

“The NOJ are hardly to be trifled with.” Merlin said. “Not when a matter of such importance is at stake.”

“But what can be so important to them?” Michael asked. “I mean, we’re not planning to nuke the Pope or something.”

“Well, actually,” the spirit replied, “I think that’s more or less exactly what they think you’re planning to do. In a manner of speaking.”

“What?”

“The problem is that the situation you’re stumbling into is far, far bigger than you can possibly realize.”

“Wonderful,” Michael said. “You know, it always strikes me how funny it is that people say that when all they really mean is, ‘I want you to stop being a pest and go away’.”

“Perhaps, but I’m not people,” the spirit said pleasantly. “I look at things rather differently.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Serrin interjected. “What we know is that someone has been able to deck into big-time computer cores. He left behind a puzzling icon of religious significance. That choice wasn’t accidental or trivial. It’s the reason why the Priory and the NOJ are so interested in the entire affair.”

“Good,” Merlin said approvingly.

“And that icon holds the key to who he is,” Michael offered.

“Absolutely,” Merlin agreed.

“And to why he’s doing this…” Serrin said slowly, wondering even as he said it why he did.

“Excellent!” Merlin was beaming with genuine pleasure.

Michael looked at Serrin with a mixture of respect and a little admiration. The mage’s intuitive leap had struck paydirt.

“What’s odd is that quite a few people think they know who he is,” Michael said. “Even more odd is that Renraku is offering a very large sum of money for that information, but no one’s telling. Now doesn’t that strike you as peculiar?”

“Michael, you’re British,” the spirit admonished. “You should know that some things are priceless, simply beyond money. I do believe you’ve been bettered in this understanding by Serrin, who’s American. How times change.”

“Touche all right,” Michael said irritably. “But our decker is planning to cause the Crash of ‘Twenty-nine all over again. Isn’t that enough to make anyone speak up? Think about it for a minute. It will mean mass unemployment, social chaos and unrest, suicides, even revolutions and mass bloodshed in some lands if it’s anything like ‘Twenty-nine was. Doesn’t anyone care about that, even if they don’t worry about the money?”

“Yes, Michael, they do,” Merlin said wearily. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t think we can let him do this.”

“Then tell us who he is,” Michael demanded flatly, punctuating each word with the slap of his hand on his knee.

There was a long silence.

“It’s not as simple as that,” Merlin said at length.

“Funny, it never bloody is,” Michael snapped. “I shouldn’t have thought that speaking the few short words of a name was so terribly demanding, not really.”

“Don’t be facetious,” Merlin shot back, genuinely irked. Michael looked angry himself for an instant and then shrugged, sitting back quietly.

“You can appreciate that I’m not always free to speak of what I know,” the spirit said to Serrin.

The mage nodded.

“And this is one of those times. If I told you who and where, I’d be snuffed out of existence permanently and instantly as soon as it was learned of, and I don’t relish that prospect one bit, thank you.”

“I had not taken your Master to be so vengeful,” Serrin said, a little surprised.

“Oh, if it was only up to him, I’d be safe enough,” Merlin said. “Yes, I’d probably have to clean the kitchen every day for a year, but I do that most of the time anyway.”

Serrin couldn’t help but smile a little. The contrast of such a homely detail with the scale of what they were discussing was comical.

“There are powerful people with an interest in this,” Merlin said, “and there are those among them who could and would destroy me-and my Master, for that matter.”

“And If I told you who is responsible it would ruin every thing.”

“Pity about that,” Michael said.

“Look,” Merlin continued, a hint of irritation coloring his voice once more, “if I told you who was responsible you wouldn’t believe me. If you want to find him, you’ll have to do it on your own. The only way to stop him, I think, is by finding him for yourselves and persuading him, coming to some understanding. He needs the money for what he’s trying to achieve. He’ll need to get it. Or at the very least, a large slice of it.”

“That’s going to take some negotiating,” Michael said dryly.

“Understand that I, for one, agree with what he’s trying to achieve,” Merlin said sharply. “I have some sympathy for him. And that’s just when it comes to the initial goal. The deeper one I don’t think you’re ready to know about right now.

“Find him. He can be talked to, but you need to know how he thinks. There won’t be any substitute for finding out yourselves. Trust me, when you find him you’ll know what I mean.”

“Is this like reading a story, a mystery, and not wanting to know the ending in advance?” Kristen said uncertainly, leaning forward to enter the debate.

The spirit beamed at her. “Almost exactly so,” he said. “He will need to see that you feel as you should when you confront a wonder.

“Have you ever seen the Pyramids, Serrin?”

The question came from the blue. The mage stared back at the spirit, keeping steady eye contact.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I have.”

“What did you feel when you first saw them?”

“Wonder,” the mage said simply.

“The Pyramids are the most accurate stone buildings ever made,” Merlin told him. “Forget all the half-witted theories about why they were built. They were built to connect people to heaven, and to remind people forever of wonder. There is a saying, I believe”-the spirit smiled slightly-“ ‘Man fears time, but time itself fears the Pyramids’.”

Kristen had only ever seen the colossal, mighty Wonder of the World on a scratched postcard, but the proverb made her spine tingle, though she didn’t know why. Maybe it was the way the spirit spoke, maybe it was the element of eternity in the words. Unconsciously she began rubbing one arm with the other hand.

“Be prepared to wonder, Serrin, I haven’t mentioned the Pyramids for nothing. But I’ll let that pass for now. What did you learn abroad?”

Michael looked uncertainly at the mage, but Serrin wasn’t in any mood to conceal anything.

“Not a great deal, I’m afraid,” he said sadly, and began to recount the events of the previous night.

The spirit looked disappointed, but Senin didn’t have anything more to tell him.

“I’m sorry about Gianfranco,” Merlin said, “though I knew him only very slightly. Did he say anything before he died?”

“I wasn’t there,” Serrin said. “I was out for the count. Unconscious. Geraint?” he yelled toward the kitchen. Within moments the Welshman appeared in the doorway.

“Gianfranco. You were with him when he died.”

“I certainly was.” Geraint shuddered at the memory.

“Did he say anything?”

“Famous last words? No, he was asleep at the time.”

“Nothing? There must have been something,” Serrin insisted.

“I’d given him drugs for the pain. Hang it, the man’s leg was shattered.”

That touched a chord in the elf. He could all too easily imagine what it must have been like for the man. “Oh, well.” Serrin sounded resigned.

Geraint rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Wait, there was something,” he said. “Something that didn’t make any sense at all. I thought at the time he was rambling because of the drugs… he passed out just after he said it. Oh, frag, what was it?

“Something about a statue. A statue.” Again he saw the statue of Joan of Arc lying, so impossibly perfect, among the smashed ruins of the chapel, and then he remembered.

“A statue in a city. There’s just one statue in a city, that’s what he said. No, I don’t know what it means and I didn’t have a chance to ask him.” He waved away Serrin’s puzzled look. “I couldn’t make head or tail of it.”

“Then you have all you need,” Merlin said, getting to his feet. “There’s nothing more I need say. You have your quarry and you will know where to look. He’s moved on by now, I suspect, but you won’t be far from him if you go to the obvious place. Besides, I believe you had no plans to stay here.”

“We certainly didn’t,” Michael told him.

“I don’t understand,” Geraint said.

“You will,” Merlin said. “If it takes you more than half an hour I shall be very surprised. Well, I hope we shall meet again some time in the none-too-distant future I can see myself out.” He stood smoothly and made for the door.

“That’s it?” Michael said.

“That’s it,” Merlin toid him. “I’ve seen all those notes you’ve got. If you can’t learn what you need from them, you’ll really disappoint me, and I have faith in people. I know you won’t let me down.”

He was grinning broadly as he opened the door and departed. The others looked at each other, bewildered.

“Statues,” Michael said. Geraint told him about the statue at the chapel.

“Yes, we’ve seen it,” Michael said, digging out the picture he and Serrin had found from among the piles of paper. “Is this the one?”

“That’s her,” Geraint said.

“He can’t mean this,” Serrin said.

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” Michael said. “Time for a fishing expedition.” He made for his portable cyberdeck.

“I’m afraid not,” Geraint said, putting a hand on his companion’s arm. “We had a once-over done on you when we arrived, when you were still flat out. Absolutely none of that for twenty-four hours. It would be dangerous with you still somewhat concussed, and no more than an hour a day for a week afterward.”

“Drek,” Michael groaned. How am I supposed to earn a living?”

“Use a laptop like everyone else.”

“Oh, sure,” Michael said between gritted teeth, unclipping the lid of his laptop instead. “Back to steam-powered technology, slow everything down, I hate this.

“He said we needed only half an hour.” Geraint smiled at his friend’s impatience.

“Yes, but that bastard already knows the answer. Me, it’s going to take weeks.”

Michael was wrong. It took him seventeen minutes.