In Plain Sight

23 The Book

“Could they still be infected?” Alex asked Iggy. Iggy shook his head.

“Not after all this time. Remember the bodies at the Mission.”

Alex nodded and took hold of the handle.

“Here goes,” he said. The handle turned in his hand and the door opened. A wave of stench washed out into the hall and Alex recoiled, coughing and trying to keep from vomiting. Danny backed down the hallway, gagging. Only Iggy seemed unaffected, but he had taken the precaution of lighting his pipe.

“Dear God,” Alex gasped.

“Steady on, lad,” Iggy said. “You’ll get used to it in a minute or two. In the meantime, however, I’ll go in and open a window.”

“You all right?” Alex asked Danny, putting his handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

“Yeah,” Danny said. He didn’t look too bad. “I was on a stake-out down at the docks a couple of years ago. It was about the same.”

The two men took a deep breath and entered the apartment. Despite its seedy exterior, the room was neat and clean. There were no dishes in the sink, the ashtrays were mostly empty, and three portmanteau trunks sat in the front room, closed and secured. The only thing amiss were the three bodies.

One lay on the couch, her arms crossed across her chest as if she’d been laid out for burial. A man sat in one of the chairs, a book in his lap as if he’d just fallen asleep. A second man was slumped over the table, a pencil clutched in his lifeless hand. All of them were dressed far too nicely to be staying in this hotel.

Iggy came back into the room from the back; already air was beginning to move through the little space.

“So who are these three?” Danny asked.

Alex bent down and retrieved a book that had fallen to the floor beside the man at the table.

“I think these are our missing Germans,” he said, flipping through it. He held it open so Danny and Iggy could see the spidery script. “Anyone read German?”

“I do,” Iggy said, taking the book. He squinted at the text, the pulled his reading glasses from his coat pocket. “Give me a minute,” he said, running his finger along the text. “It’s been a long time.”

“If these are the Germans who came over with the plague, they’ll have their passports on them,” Danny said.

The man at the table had put his coat over the back of his chair before he died, so Alex checked its pockets and withdrew a small, leather-bound black book.

“Dietrich Strand,” he read, opening the front cover.

“This one is Greta Albrecht,” Danny said after going through the woman’s handbag. He pulled out his notebook and consulted it. “That would make this other guy,” he indicated the man with the book, “Helge Rothenbaur.”

Alex pulled the passport out of the dead man’s jacket pocket and opened it. “Sure enough. Helge Rothenbaur,” he read. Danny shook his head.

“What are these people doing here?” he said. “Didn’t they come to New York on the same airship as the plague jars?”

“Yes they did,” Alex said and nodded, “so why steal them once they get into a secure warehouse?”

“They couldn’t get to them on the airship,” Iggy said. He held up the journal. “Mr. Strand left us his confession. After declaring his love for Greta here,” Iggy nodded at the dead woman. “Strand says that the thief—”

“Beaumont,” Alex supplied.

Iggy gave him a withering look and Alex clammed up.

“—Beaumont told them to take this room and wait for him.”

“He must have used this place to preserve his anonymity,” Danny said. “Pretty smart.”

“Strand says that Beaumont came here claiming to have broken a jar and demanding an antidote. When he was told there was none, he fled before they could stop him.” Iggy looked around at the dead. “There are letters here from each of them to family members and loved ones,” he said. “They knew they were infected, that they’d have to stay here until they died.”

Alex looked around at the dead and shuddered. When his time came, he didn’t want to see it coming.

“Is there anything in there about why they wanted to steal the plague?” Danny asked. “They don’t sound like they intended to cause an outbreak.”

Iggy paged toward the front of the book. “It says here that these three were part of the team that developed the disease. They were told it was going to speed up disease research, cure things like polio and cancer.”

“What happened?” Danny asked.

Iggy paged back and ran his finger down the page until he found what he was looking for. “They overheard the project leader, an Alchemist named Josef Mengele, talking with a government official. Apparently the disease was meant to start a civil war here in America, giving Hitler and the Nazis free rein in Europe.”

“How are a couple of jars of a fast-acting plague going to start a civil war?” Alex asked. It didn’t make any sense. Worse, it looked like the European conference wasn’t the target after all.

“It goes on,” Iggy said, scanning the book. “The plague was supposed to be picked up in New York by spies operating in the city and then strike four specific targets.”

“Where?” Danny asked. Iggy shook his head and nodded at the dead man with the pencil.

“He didn’t know, but he thought it had something to do with New York’s sorcerers. Mengele was specific that the plague had to be resistant to magic.”

“So no one infected could use spells to purge the infection from their system,” Alex said.

“Probably,” Iggy agreed.

“It still doesn’t explain how four jars of instant plague could start any kind of war,” Danny pointed out.

“Four jars,” Alex said, the number tickling at something in his brain. There were six sorcerers, not four. He snapped his fingers as everything fell into place in his brain. “Where’s the phone?” he asked, looking around.

“There’s no phone here,” Iggy said. “If there were, these unfortunates could have called for help.”

“Why do you need a phone?” Danny asked.

“What would happen if four of New York’s sorcerers died from a mysterious magical plague?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Danny said. “I mean it would be a disaster for the New York economy, but we’d get through it.”

“What if the survivors were John D. Rockefeller and William Todd?” Alex grabbed the detective by the shoulders.

“Who cares who the survivors are?” Danny said.

“Everyone would,” Iggy gasped. “Rockefeller and Todd have been feuding for years.”

“And Todd is a paranoid hermit,” Alex said. “He’d accuse Rockefeller of starting the plague.”

Danny began to nod, a look of alarm on his face. “And Rockefeller wouldn’t take that lying down. It would start a war between them.”

“The New York Six are the most powerful and wealthy sorcerers in the world,” Alex pointed out. “With four of them gone, every other sorcerer in America would be lining up to support one faction or the other, hoping to move in once the dust settles. It would destabilize the whole country.”

“So, what do we do?” Danny said. “We don’t have any proof of this. You know Captain Rooney isn’t going to call anybody about this without ironclad evidence, especially not a sorcerer.”

Alex turned and ran out into the hallway. “You call Callahan and get someone over here to take charge of the bodies and the journal,” he called as he tore down the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Danny yelled after him.

Alex dashed downstairs and across the lobby, past the reception desk and the woman with the gossip magazine. Laying his good shoulder into the door, he stumbled out into the night, tearing off up the street toward the lights of the nightclubs. They might not serve any useful purpose, but you could always get a cab in front of one. He jumped in the first one he found.

“The Waldorf,” he said. “Quickly,” he added when the cabbie looked at him incredulously. Not many people went to the Waldorf from this neighborhood.

As the cab pulled away from the curb, Alex opened his kit and dropped Beaumont’s shoe inside, exchanging it for his 1911 which he slipped into his jacket pocket. Whoever had the plague jars had four targets, and one of them was Sorsha Kincaid. Thanks to Alex’s erroneous assumption that the Germans on the airship were the ones who owned the plague jars, she was right this very minute standing in a hotel ballroom at a conference of boring diplomats.

He might as well have put a bull’s-eye on her back.

To keep his mind off how long the cab took to reach the core and the Waldorf hotel, Alex paged through his rune book. He’d used a lot of his powerful runes in the last few days and there were precious little left. After flipping through it twice, he tucked it back in his pocket with a note of disgust. Unless he wanted to fix a run in the Sorceress’ stockings, there wasn’t much his rune book could contribute.

When the cab finally stopped in front of the Waldorf, Alex shoved all the money he had into the cabbie’s hand, hoping it would be enough, and ran to the enormous glass doors. Beyond them, inside the hotel’s vestibule, a security station had been set up. All the doors but one were blocked with potted plants, and two policemen stood on either side of the open door. Agent Davis stood in the doorway, clipboard in hand, and he looked up in shock as Alex came tearing through the door.

“Why are you here, Lockerby?” he asked, stepping in front of the open door. Alex stopped short to avoid running into the FBI man.

“Where’s Sorsha?” he demanded.

“Miss Kincaid is inside where she belongs,” Davis said. “Now why don’t you go back where you belong?”

“I need to speak to her! She’s in danger.”

Agent Davis laughed in his face. “She’s in the safest place in the city right now,” he said. “Those Germans aren’t going to get in here tonight or any other night.”

“You’re right,” Alex agreed. “Because they’re dead.”

Alex briefly relayed the story of finding the German alchemists and the details they had left behind.

“You have to let me talk to her,” he finished.

“Sorsha Kincaid knows how to take care of herself,” Agent Davis said.

“She doesn’t know this is coming,” Alex said. “She has to be warned.”

Davis vacillated for a long moment, indecision on his face.

“Fine,” he said at last. “She’s in the ballroom.” He stepped aside and let Alex through. “But don’t disturb the other guests.”

The ballroom of the Waldorf hotel was massive, three stories high with polished hardwood floors and arcades running along the side walls that housed recessed balconies. Carved columns ran up every wall to large painted cornices, and crystal chandeliers hung everywhere. The thick smoke of a hundred cigarettes hung in the room and a cacophony of voices filled the chamber with the incoherent buzz of conversation.

Alex stood paralyzed for a moment, scanning the crowd, but moments later a head of platinum hair in an A-line cut came into view. The Sorceress had taken off the hat with the veil and now her white-blonde hair shone like a beacon in the dimly lit room.

“Mr. Lockerby,” she said with an unamused smile when she caught sight of his approach. She quickly excused herself from the group she’d been conversing with and turned to meet him. “I used to like your penchant for showing up in the most unexpected places,” she said. “Now, I’m starting to tire of it.”

“Nice to see you too,” he said, taking her by the elbow and gently pulling her along in his wake. “We need to talk.”

She looked as if she were about to object, but something she saw in his face made her hesitate.

“This way, then,” she said, pulling free of his grasp and making her way toward the back of the room where a large stage and podium had been set up. She moved behind the podium and entered a small door so cleverly set into the wall that Alex didn’t even see it until Sorsha opened it. Inside the door was a hallway that ran behind the ballroom and enabled the hotel staff to deliver food or move furniture without being seen.

“Now,” she said, imperiously. “What is so important?”

“This convention isn’t the target for that plague,” he said. “You are.”

As quickly as he could, Alex recounted the story of finding the dead alchemists, Dietrich Strand’s journal, and his theory about how the plague could be used to start a civil war. Sorsha listened quietly with her arms crossed, absently tapping her arm with her fingernail.

“That does make some sense,” she grudgingly admitted when Alex had finished.

“The only thing I can’t figure is, why haven’t they acted yet?” Alex said. “I mean they’ve had their plague for almost a week now.”

“I can answer that,” Sorsha said. “As soon as I learned of this alchemical plague, I warned my fellow sorcerers. They’ve had round-the-clock protection since then. Whoever these agents are, they’re going to find it difficult to get up to one of our flying homes and carry out their attack. After all, there are more than policemen guarding those dwellings.”

“Policemen?” Alex asked. He’d naturally assumed a sorcerer would have living gargoyles or something like that to protect his house.

“The sorcerers contract with the New York Police for our protection,” Sorsha said.

“So what now?” Alex asked. “Whoever has that plague isn’t going to stop just because the job is hard.”

Sorsha turned and set off at a fast walk, moving along the hallway toward its end.

“I’ll need to speak to Captain Rooney,” she was saying. “If we organize it right, we might be able to create a weakness the German agents will believe they can exploit.”

“You want to set a trap?”

“Yes,” Sorsha sighed. “I want to set a trap.”

“Then why didn’t you just say that?” Alex asked, irritation in his voice.

“Mr. Lockerby,” Sorsha fumed. “I hardly need—”

“Sorsha, there you are,” a new voice boomed.

Alex’s hand dropped into his jacket pocket and curled around the grip of his pistol as he turned. The newcomer was a well-dressed man in an expensive dark suit. He still wore a turned-down fedora, so he’d only just arrived, having not had time to check his hat. He was tall with a mass of close-cut curly hair the same color as copper and bright, intelligent eyes. His smile was crooked and his jaw angled down from his sharp cheekbones to a cleft in his chin.

Alex decided he didn’t like the man.

“Director Stevens,” Sorsha said, a surprised look on her face. “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”

He took Sorsha’s hand and kissed it gently.

“How could I not come when you call for help?” he said, the crooked smile returning to his face. Sorsha, on the other hand looked confused. “Call for help?”

“I know you didn’t do that exactly,” Stevens said, and laughed. “But I think you were right to request more security. Who’s your friend?” he wondered, pointing to Alex.

“Uh,” Sorsha said, clearly thrown off balance. “Director Adam Stevens of the FBI’s New York field office, this is Alexander Lockerby, Private Investigator.”

“The one who found out where the plague came from,” Stevens said with raised eyebrows. He stuck out his hand and shook Alex’s. “I have to be frank,” he said. “I’ve never had much use for P.I.s, but that was some damn fine work, Mr. Lockerby.”

“Thanks,” Alex said.

Maybe this guy isn’t so bad.

“What did you mean about me requesting additional security here?” Sorsha said. She seemed confused.

“Not here,” Stevens said. “For the sorcerers.”

“What?” Alex and Sorsha said together. Now Stevens looked confused.

“Agent Warner called a few hours ago,” he said. “Told us to round up the agents that you wanted and send them up to flesh out the police details protecting the sorcerers.”

“Where are they now?” Sorsha demanded. Steven shrugged.

“I sent them over to Police Headquarters,” he said. “They’ll catch a floater there to take them up to their posts.”

Floaters were basically flying police cars invented by the sorcerer William Todd. They could fly, but they weren’t fast, and they could only hold about five people at a time, so the police didn’t use them often.

“They’re going to need more than one floater,” Alex said. “If I were the police dispatcher I’d probably send each group up in their own car.”

“Stevens,” Sorsha said, her tone one of a general commanding field troops. “Call whoever’s in charge at Manhattan Station and tell them to stop those floaters from leaving. All the FBI agents are to be detained and warn the police to be careful; some of them are German spies carrying the three remaining jars of plague.”

“You’re not serious,” Steven said, but the look on Sorsha’s face told him otherwise. “What if the floaters have already left?”

“I’ll call the sorcerers,” Sorsha said. “They’ll be able to capture anyone coming up in a floater as long as they know they’re coming. Now go.”

Stevens ran off toward the front desk and its telephone but Sorsha just reached into her handbag and pulled out what looked like a makeup mirror in a case. She opened it and set it on the floor facing her. Taking a few steps back, she uttered something in her deep, echo-y voice, and a moment later the image of a man in his late fifties with graying hair and a handlebar mustache appeared, floating above the mirror.

“Sorsha, my darling, you look radiant,” the man said in an easy voice. “To what do I owe the great pleasure of this call?”

Sorsha quickly outlined the German plot and its purpose.

“So,” the man said, twirling the ends of his mustache. “Hitler thinks he can put one over on us. I’ll show that Charlie Chaplin impersonator.”

“Focus, Andrew,” Sorsha said in a hard voice.

Alex was startled when he heard the name. Andrew Barton, the Lightning Lord, the man who provided power to all of Manhattan.

“Right now,” Sorsha was saying, “you are going to pass the word to everyone, and make sure they catch the men in those floaters.”

Andrew cupped his hand and a ball of lighting appeared in it. “That won’t be a problem, my dear,” he said.

“None of that,” Sorsha barked at him. “Some of the men in those cars are ordinary policemen. I don’t have to remind you what might happen if you kill any of them.”

Apparently, Andrew didn’t have to be reminded, because he closed his fist and the ball of lightning vanished.

“You take the fun out of everything, my dear,” he said with a sigh. “Speaking of which, when are you going to finally come dine with me?”

Sorsha cocked an eyebrow at him. “If I want to be chased around a table by a dirty old man, I’ll go to a bawdy house,” she said. “Now get the word out before someone gets killed.”

She snapped her fingers and the image disappeared.

“I’m guessing,” Alex said as the Sorceress bent down to pick up her mirror and fold it into its case, “that since you didn’t give any orders for extra FBI personnel, that Agent Warner took it upon himself. How long has he been with you?”

“He’s new,” Sorsha said, marching off toward the front door. “He and about a dozen other agents arrived in the New York office at the same time.”

Alex thought back to his associations with the young, blonde agent. Warner didn’t like him, but that was not surprising from an FBI man.

“I don’t see him as a Nazi agent,” Alex said.

“Let’s find him first,” Sorsha said. “Then you can ask him. He’s working the front door with Agent Davis.”

“No, he’s not,” Alex said, pulling Sorsha to a stop. “When I came in, Davis was there alone. Where else would Warner be?”

Sorsha thought for a moment, then set off toward the elevator. “I have a suite that we’ve been using as an office,” she said.

“Must be nice,” Alex said as the elevator operator opened the door for them.

“Penthouse,” she said, and the man turned the lever that sent the car rising into the air.

A long minute later they reached the door to the east penthouse room. Alex pulled his pistol from his jacket pocket.

“I have a rune that will unlock the door,” he said, before realizing that with his pistol in hand, and his other arm in a sling, he couldn’t reach his rune book.

“Never mind that,” Sorsha said. “Turn your back.”

She didn’t wait for him to comply, she simply raised her arms and spoke a word and the door burst as if it had been stuffed with gunpowder. Alex barely averted his face before he was showered in splinters and sawdust.

Sorsha strode into the room as if she had just been announced at Buckingham Palace. Alex followed after her, brushing chips of wood from his suit jacket with his pistol. The room beyond was a parlor, with a sunken area lined with elegant couches and chaise longues. A long bar of some light-colored wood filled one entire wall, and several hallways led out of the room.

Sorsha turned left, so Alex went right. He pulled open the first door he came to and found a bathroom. At the end of the hall was a tiny sunroom with a writing desk, a small couch, and a telephone.

“Sorceress,” Alex called, tucking his gun back into his pocket. “I don’t think Agent Warner is your Nazi.”

“Why not?” Sorsha called from the parlor.

“Because he’s dead.”