Stiletto (19 page)

“Fine, yes, let’s go in,” she said. “Alessio, put that damn hat back on.” They hurried up the steps and through a massive rococo revolving door that deposited her in a semicircular marble-floored lobby. The walls were paneled in dark wood and rose very high. Large, impressive double doors stood at the head of the room, flanked by two sets of smaller, much less impressive doors. Behind each of two large marble counters sat two uniformed security guards. All of them were staring at her fixedly.

“Oh, hi,” she said awkwardly. It wasn’t immediately clear which counter she should be addressing. The guards at the right-hand desk stood up, and she turned to them.

“Good morning, Miss Leliefeld,” said one of the guards flatly.

“Welcome to Apex House,” said the other guard, equally flatly.

“Thank you,” said Odette, taken aback by their foreboding expressions and the fact that they knew her name. Their eyes flicked to the door behind her as Alessio and Pawn Bannister emerged into the foyer.

“You’ll be signing them in, Pawn Bannister?” asked one of the guards on the left-hand desk.

“Yes, might as well get started,” said Bannister. “Getting everybody logged in will take ages. How far behind are the other cars?” The guard put his hand to the side of his head, and Odette saw with a shudder that he had no radio or earpiece.

“Next car should be here in about three minutes,” he said.

“All right, well, let’s get the paperwork out of the way, at least,” said Bannister, sounding terribly bored. “Alessio, we’ll do you first.” Odette’s little brother looked a trifle alarmed as he was ushered to the right-hand desk, but he nodded obediently.

Odette had not been at all certain what the process of entering Apex House would involve. She’d been braced for laborious computer entry, typing in massive amounts of personal data and history. Or a shadowy member of the Checquy would glance at her and then give a silent nod. Or maybe she would stand in a scanner and guards would look at her naked. She hadn’t been prepared for a photocopied form on a clipboard and a piece of carbon paper underneath.

“Fill that in, please,” said the guard to Alessio. “Full name, address, date, and time. Oh, and do you have ID?” Alessio, whose personal effects consisted of a chunky wristwatch that monitored various vital signs including glucose and hormone levels, a mobile phone, and the ugliest hat in the whole world, looked at Odette, panicked.

“I’ve got your passport,” she assured him, and she retrieved it from her bag and handed it over along with her own. The guard examined the photos in the little burgundy booklets that were stamped with the Belgian coat of arms.

“Fine,” he said, returning them to her. He typed away on his computer and printed out a flimsy piece of paper with the word visitor in big red letters. He slotted it into a clear plastic sleeve clipped to a bright red lanyard and gave it to Alessio. “Keep that around your neck while you’re in the building,” he said sternly. “And be sure to hand it back in when you leave.” Odette was feeling a little torn — the guards were intimidating, but the casual security arrangements seemed almost absurd.

For heaven’s sake, we’re monstrous foreigners who have used our dark science and warped God’s handiwork to suit our own twisted needs. We tried to invade your country, and my centuries-old ancestor infiltrated your organization. The least you could do is pat me down or take my fucking picture,
she thought in irritation.

“I, uh, thought there was going to be some scanning?” she said to Bannister as she signed her name on the form.

“Oh, certainly, in the next room,” he said. “This is just your visitor’s pass.”

“Thank you,” she said to the guard as she hung her pass around her neck. The guard nodded back without smiling.

Bannister led them to one of the sets of smaller, unimpressive doors, which clicked and opened with a grinding noise. She felt slightly mollified when she saw that they were massively thick and made of layers of metal, wood, and stone sandwiched together.

Beyond the doors was a long, bland room with various pieces of bulky equipment dotted around it. The entire place — ceiling, floors, and walls — was covered in white tiles. A portly gentleman of African descent and wearing a lab coat approached them. Trailing behind him were a line of anxious-looking men and women in lab coats or scrubs.

“Good morning,” the man said cheerfully, holding out his hand. Odette shook it cautiously. “You are the first ones?”

“We’re the first ones to arrive,” said Odette. “We’re not, like,
ranked
first or anything.”

“That’s fine,” said the man. “I am Dr. Francesco Hethrington-Ffoulkes, and I’ll be overseeing the preparations for you.” Odette introduced herself and her brother while Pawn Bannister tapped away on his phone in the background.

“Now, as you are formally guests of the Checquy here in the United Kingdom, and because several of your party do not legally exist, we are taking responsibility for your well-being and security. Accordingly, we will need to build a profile of your identifying characteristics. I’m afraid that it may seem a little intrusive,” he said apologetically.

“We will be taking fingerprints, palmprints, toeprints, voiceprints, and impressions of your teeth, tongue, and ears. We will collect fingernail clippings, toenail clippings, strands of your hair, swabs from the inside of your mouth, and samples of urine and blood. Not to fret, young fellow,” he said reassuringly to Alessio, “it will be just a few drops, and we’ll be as gentle as possible.” Alessio, who had been responsible for harvesting his own blood and bone marrow since he was nine, regarded him stonily.

“And that’s
it?
” said Odette before she could stop herself. Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes looked at her, startled. “I’m sorry, but you’re not even putting us through an MRI, or an x-ray, or, or one of those airport scanners...”

“Millimeter wave,” said Alessio helpfully.

“Yes, that. Don’t you want to run a Geiger counter over us? Or at least check my handbag?”

“Well, I suppose we could, if you like,” said the Checquy doctor. “But it’s not really necessary. You see, detailed descriptions of your, uh, enhancements were provided to us ahead of time. Although I would like a few drops of both the venoms that you carry in your system, Miss Leliefeld,” he added hopefully, “if you wouldn’t mind. I have to admit, though, that’s just for my own personal research. I’m a bit of a toxicology buff.”

“You
know?
” squeaked Odette.

“We exchanged dossiers weeks ago,” said Bannister airily. “As a sign of goodwill. So, everyone knows who you are. At least, everyone who works in the Diplomatic section. We’ve got details of your education, your rank within the Broederschap, your surgeries. I do hope everything’s healing all right, by the way. And don’t worry, we’ve made sure to have lots of cold, noncaffeinated beverages available so your throat shouldn’t be aggravated at all.”

Oh God,
thought Odette.
So
the entire diplomatic corps knows everything about me. They know about my spurs, they know I’ve got a sore throat. Hell, they’ve probably got a report on that time I wet my pants at the museum when I was six years old.
Despite her best efforts, she was blushing furiously.

“You’re our guests,” said Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes in a reasonable tone. “It’s important that we begin from a situation of mutual trust and security. And also that we verify everyone’s identity.”

“All right,” said Odette. “That makes sense.”

“Very good,” said the doctor. “I’ll be taking care of you, Miss Leliefeld. Pawn Winger will escort Mr. Leliefeld.” Pawn Winger was a pretty doctor with red hair, and Alessio was so entranced by her that he didn’t even seem to mind that she was a Pawn. Or that she looked absolutely petrified by him. She led him over to a machine on the other side of the room.

“We’ll start with the fingers and toes, shall we?” said Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes.

“Certainly,” said Odette.

“I’m afraid you’ll need to remove your tights,” said the doctor.

“Oh, okay,” said Odette.

“There’s a lavatory through that door, just over there.”

The bathroom seemed to date back to the Victorian period, and unfortunately it did not appear to have been cleaned since it was built. There were all sorts of pipes that might once have been gleaming brass but now looked as if they were supporting several ecosystems. Odette felt distinctly unglamorous and unbusinesslike as she hopped about taking off her stockings while trying not to put a bare foot on the slick floor.
So
this is the world of high-stakes supernatural diplomacy,
she thought grimly. She teetered on one high-heel-shod foot and fell against the sink.
Great, just great.
By the time she emerged from the bathroom, she was red-faced and her hair was somewhat less professional-looking than it had been. Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes escorted her to a corner of the room and helped her into a dentist’s chair. “Comfortable?”

“A little ill at ease,” admitted Odette as the chair rose up smoothly, presumably bringing her to a more convenient working level. The doctor smiled without looking at her. He was peering at her feet carefully.
I wish I’d gotten a pedicure,
she thought.
But who knew?
She realized, to her intense mortification, that there was a bit of dried slime from the bathtub under the nail of one of her big toes.

“There isn’t going to be any problem with me taking a clipping of your toenails, is there?” he asked, looking up at her. “They
can
be cut, right?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. She flinched a little when he touched her foot — his hands were much cooler than she had expected — and his assistant flinched in response, which made Odette flinch again. Whereupon the assistant flinched even more violently, and it took a real effort for Odette not to continue the cycle lest they both end up convulsing on the floor.

The assistant handed Hethrington-Ffoulkes a tablet computer, and he consulted it briefly before pressing it against Odette’s left foot. “Now, if you could just flatten your foot as much as you can, please. We want as complete a scan as possible. Good.” The doctor looked at the result and nodded. “Nice, clear images of the toes,” he said approvingly. He tapped away at the screen, and a frown grew on his face. “Oh, dear,” he muttered to himself. “Oh, dear, oh, dear.”

“What?” asked Odette nervously. “Is there a problem?”

“Not with your foot,” he said absently. “I’m just checking the cricket scores, and the West Indies are thrashing us.” He shook his head at the computer before pressing it against her other foot. Meanwhile, his assistant was gingerly using another tablet to take prints of her hands. Odette smiled and the woman looked away. “Now we just need to get some ink-based prints as backup, and then we’ll move on to the casts,” he said.

For the next half hour, the doctor and his jumpy assistant did their thing, scanning and copying and taking samples. Whenever new members of the delegation filtered in, there would be a pause in the proceedings as Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes stopped what he was doing and went over to introduce himself, leaving Odette gagging on a mouthful of dental putty or reciting the first stanza of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” into a microphone. At one point, she had to suffer the indignity of reentering the unpleasant bathroom and peeing into a container while a wide-eyed nurse watched to make sure she didn’t substitute someone else’s urine or give birth to some stoats or something.

Of course, the Grafter envoys submitted to the examinations without any complaint. They were accustomed to taking business calls even while undergoing thoracic surgery, so a few scrapings and clippings couldn’t throw them off their stride. The Checquy doctors and nurses were careful in their work, although they seemed aghast at the fact that they were working on actual Grafters. There was a slight commotion when Grootvader Ernst’s fingerprints insisted on changing even as they were scanned, and the nurses were somewhat at a loss when one of the visiting dignitaries turned out not to have fingernails or toenails, but apart from these setbacks, the proceedings proceeded without incident.

“You’re quite thorough,” remarked Odette as the doctor held a container of molding putty against her left ear.

“Ah, we’ll be taking even more samples once our organizations are united,” said Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes. “The Checquy keeps very, very detailed records of all its operatives. All this is just for security and legal purposes.”

“Legal purposes?”

“We need to establish beyond a doubt who is present at what meetings and who signs what. Now, we just need to take some pictures of your eyes.”

The dentist’s chair sank down, and Odette put her bare feet on the cold tiled floor. The eye machine was just a few meters away and she had watched as her colleagues had their retinas and pupils scanned and the insides of their eyeballs photographed. “It’s pretty standard optical coherence tomography,” said the doctor. “No unusual technologies. And after that, you’re done.” She sat in the chair offered, and there was a mechanical whining as the apparatus was lowered and closed around her head. “Right, now, if you can just look directly into the lenses.” Odette obediently stared ahead, keeping her eyes wide open as a light erupted out of the machine. It flared with the force of a thousand supernova suns into her unnaturally dilated, gorgeously large belladonna-style pupils.

“Ow!
Klootzak!
” she shouted, flinching back and slamming her head against the equipment.

“What happened? Are you all right?” asked Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes in the frantic tones of a man who might have inadvertently sparked a diplomatic fiasco.

“Yes,” said Odette sourly, holding her hands over her eyes. Her head was pounding as though she’d just walked into a wall, and there appeared to be a disco-kaleidoscope arrangement on the inside of her eyelids. Her tender rods and cones were screaming bloody murder. “It’s my own stupid fault. I didn’t even think. My pupils were bigger than they should have been.”

“Oh,” said the relieved voice of Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes, somewhere to her left. Then, with obvious curiosity: “Why?”