Chastity Flame (20 page)

Chastity nearly chuckled at her modest
language and not for the first time wondered about the life of her
boss. What was Monitor like at home? Did she live alone or with a
partner? Did she have children? Chastity suspected not, although
the warmth with which she had treated her when a lost and awkward
teen had seemed genuine and practiced. It was strange—working
together with people for so many years, in life-threatening
situations and on such important matters—yet knowing nothing
personal about them but what could be gleaned from official
interactions. Kevin's love of Godley and Creme, Valerie's yen for
Sharpie pens, and Monitor's taste for Twining's Earl Grey. All were
clues to the person who had to remain veiled.

"But we still have to get him back.
Trust me: Wesenlund is ruthless. And irritated. He was very put out
by our uncovering his plan," Chastity argued. "He's not going to
keep Damien, er, 4CB for long. We need to find him and get him out.
I'm not just speaking for me. If he's also 0NR, then he's important
to the organization, right?"

Monitor looked at her, frowning. She
had to know that Chastity was right about the need to get Damien
back. He was not safe while he was in Wesenlund's hands. They had a
superb staff, of course. But she had been there. She knew the
man—and that had to be valuable. Monitor sighed. "Work with Kevin's
team. But keep your perspective. You know this has to end,
Chastity."

She nodded. "It will. But give me a
chance to end it in person." Chastity hopped up a little too
energetically and trotted off down the hall to the big conference
room. Ruefully, she couldn’t help glancing up at the discreet
cameras that kept the room under surveillance at all times. How
could she have forgotten? Then she blushed: she knew exactly why
she had forgotten. Damien's body could make her forget all manner
of things. "Kevin, I'm here to lend a hand. What can I do? Did the
plane ever land? Is there any sign?"

Kevin seemed a bit taken aback, but
recovered quickly. "Here's the stats: according to the paperwork,
that flight landed in Bergen and was accounted for, albeit with one
less employee on board. According to raw data from the tower, no
such plane ever landed there. We don't have a good idea where it
might be. Judging from the trajectory of its last known path, we've
made some guesses, but nothing's panned out."

"Is it likely to have stayed in
Norway, or somewhere in Scandinavia?" Chastity asked, shuffling
through the papers Kevin handed her with details of flights in and
out of Bergen. "How much fuel does something like that
have?"

"It's got a fairly good tank. It could
have made it as far as Iceland or down here to Ireland. It's
unlikely that it headed west, although it could well have made it
into the centre of Russia. It seems most likely that it's in
Norway, just because of Wesenlund's influence being the most
effective there, but we're still trying to find patterns that might
help us detect where it could be."

"Have we got any additional data on
Wesenlund?" Chastity asked, handing the useless flight information
back to Kevin. "I want to look through it, see if I can see any
connections that I can make from having spoken with him at some
length."

Kevin nodded. "Yes, yes, of course.
Super. Here," he walked around the table where several techs were
busily inputting data and retrieved a large file. "Have a seat.
We've been able to gather a lot in the last few hours. There's a
lot to examine."

Chastity sat down and opened up the
huge folder. It was overwhelming. She glanced up at Kevin. "It's
going to be a long night."

"Cuppa?" he said, smiling. One of the
techs hopped up without being asked and quickly returned with a
giant-sized mug, a couple of creamers and a sugar bowl.

Chastity thought it might have been
wise to grab something to eat, but for the moment, the big cup of
tea seemed like it would be enough. She began to sort through the
file which had been in a more or less temporal order. There were a
number of photographs of Wesenlund, always featuring his slightly
distracted look and vague smile. Staring at it, she considered
again his cruelty and determined that it would be quite enjoyable
to throw a spanner into his works.

Peculiar details emerged from the
information gleaned about Wesenlund's life. Chastity read with some
discomfort the account of how he had been one of a set of twins,
but during their gestation seemed to have absorbed his
sibling—apparently a not uncommon phenomenon, although she had
never read of it before. Strange to have been an only twin! As was
not unusual for such a wealthy family, he had been raised by a
series of nannies—rather a lot of nannies, in fact. One voluble
family friend had revealed that the Wesenlund heir had been known
for an early streak of cruelty, which drove many a nanny to a less
stressful position.

There were also rumors about the death
of his infant sister, but the medical examiner found nothing that
could not be accounted for by natural, if unfortunate, means.
Nonetheless, after her death, the Wesenlunds decided to send their
precocious boy off to boarding school. The timing may have been
coincidence, Chastity thought; it may also have been their
recognition of just what a strange cuckoo's egg had landed in their
nest.

Grabbing a chocolate biscuit from the
tray making the rounds of the room, Chastity turned to more recent
information on the financier. He had a number of houses in Norway
and across Europe, including a flat in London. The Financial Times
reported on his above board achievements and their own files
reported his connection with more nefarious workings, although
direct links had been impossible to establish. He may have been
consulted on those behind the murder of Roberto Calvi, "God's
banker" at the Vatican. Wesenlund may have had a hand in the
fraudulent goings-on at BCCI, but again no one was able to place
him in a specific place at any key time. Failures, swindles,
dubious schemes—he seemed to always be nearby yet never in the
thick of things. He was clearly a very clever man who knew well how
to cover his tracks.

Chastity sighed. This wasn't helping
her to find Damien at all. She itched to be doing something,
anything. Her eyes were glazing over. Rubbing her eyes, she
considered what to do next. She found herself blinking because
there was something in her eyes, but it didn't seem to dislodge.
The speck seemed determined to stay. Then it began blinking and she
finally knew.

It was happening again.

The moment of panic that this thought
engendered was almost immediately replaced by the hope that it
would prove to be as useful as the last migraine did. As the aurora
began to strobe across her vision, she grabbed for a pen and some
blank paper. Should I try to focus or just let it wash over me,
Chastity wondered. Certainly there was the possibility that nothing
at all would happen except that she would feel a headache come on.
But not for lack of trying.

"Are you alright?" Kevin called down
the table at her. "Chas?"

She ignored him. The lights were
strobing faster now, colors streaming into the black and white
arcing pattern. A horrible pain began like a crack from the back of
her head, spreading as if her skull were slowly breaking open,
filling with a terrible light. This was far more painful than the
previous episode and for a moment Chastity wondered if she was in
some kind of danger. Then the images began to flow and she
scribbled hastily in an attempt to capture what she was seeing. It
was like a stuttering slide show, except that many of the images
moved—a montage then.

It was Damien, of course. Naked and
roped to a chair: in another context, an intriguing vision, but
here, vulnerable and clearly hurt. She saw him from another angle,
two men shouting at him as they beat him with some strangely shaped
clubs, a third preparing some kind of electrical wires. Damien was
sweating and bloody, his right eye nearly swollen shut, with a cut
marring his smooth cheek. A third view: this time she saw
Wesenlund, looking at his watch rather than at Damien, as if he
were late for an appointment or even simply bored. In a flash,
Chastity's loathing for him grew instantly to a fiery
hate.

The flashing lights in her eyeball
began slowly to recede and with them the string of visions.
Chastity concentrated on capturing every detail about the room,
scribbling every stray fact she could glean, aware that there was a
rabbling noise surrounding her but paying it no mind as she tried
to capture the elusive images and sounds. However, all at once it
was simply gone, leaving only a crashing headache in its wake. She
set the pen down and pressed the heels of her hands to her
eyes.

When she opened them once more,
Chastity was startled to see herself surrounded by the crew.
"What?"

"What happened?" Kevin looked
concerned, most of the others looked nakedly curious.

Chastity shook her head. "Can someone
get me some tea? And a biscuit? Aspirin. Kevin, I need someone to
help integrate this information. Type as I talk."

"I can do that," a young man she
vaguely recognized offered. Another two raised their hands. It
seemed like a good idea to have as many hands as possible. Someone
was bound to notice something she missed. Chastity took the hot mug
gratefully and swallowed a mouthful that immediately burned the
roof of her mouth. Somehow the sensation seemed to bring her fully
back to consciousness. One of the crew brought her a bottle of
aspirin and glass of water, which she gulped down
gratefully.

"All right, this is a bit strange,"
Chastity said, feeling oddly vulnerable with all the attention
focused on her. "But it's happened before to me. I had a vision. I
don't know how it works. I don't think it’s anything mystical. Once
before, I got information this way that I couldn't otherwise have
known. I hope it's true this time, too."

Kevin shrugged. "We don't have much
else to go on so far. What have we got to lose." He gestured to the
group and they took their places while Chastity gathered her
hastily written notes in front of her.

"I saw the room where they're holding
him," she started, hesitating before going on. "I think I was
seeing snippets of different times because different things were
happening, different people were there." She described the scenes,
the people she had seen and the time when Wesenlund had been there.
When they had most of the descriptions recorded, Chastity sighed.
It really didn't seem like enough. It wasn't really much more than
she had written herself, although a few more memorable bits came
through while she was repeating the situations.

"Close your eyes," Kevin suggested.
"Try to remember other sensory details."

Chastity did as he asked. "I hear
water dripping in the background. Maybe a sink or a—"

"Don’t try to interpret," he
cautioned. "Let us put them together."

Chastity nodded and continued.
"There's the dripping, there's a faint clanging sound. I can hear
voices far in the background, another room perhaps. I can smell
sweat and blood. Something else, too." She wrinkled her nose. It
was familiar but unusual.

"Concentrate on the smell. What pops
into your mind?"

"A match."

"Sulphur?"

"Yes," Chastity said, the surprise
evident in her voice.

"Anything else?"

Before Chastity could answer, one of
the team shouted out, "Iceland!"

"What?" Chastity and Kevin spoke at
the same time.

It was the mousy looking young woman,
who looked like a sort of Monitor in training to Chastity's eye.
"One of the possible trajectories of Wesenlund's jet, he has
holdings there, the omnipresent sulphur in the water from the
geothermal source. If there's water dripping, it would be
particular strong."

"Give that woman a bonus," Chastity
said, grinning widely.

"We should double check the stats, the
trajectory and the location of the holdings," Kevin said. "It's a
lead but—"

"You do that," Chastity said, closing
the folder and grabbing her notes. "I'm going to get a team
together."

"But—" Kevin sighed. "Alright. Luck.
We'll get you the likeliest locations."

"Ta." Chastity said over her shoulder
as she headed down the corridor toward Monitor's office.

Chapter Sixteen

"Got everything you need?" Chastity
asked her three companions as the helicopter scudded across the
barren landscape. Abel, Baker and Delta they were for today, as she
was Charlie. No extra thought required when you stuck to the
manual. They nodded an assent to her question, silent and focused.
Like herself, they were dressed in the special op's battle gear,
although Chastity had gone for a lighter load of guns, the better
to remain mobile. She hated to be weighed down.

Out the window, the basalt rubble
looked like a lunar landscape to Chastity. There was a fierce wind
blowing and a spattering of rain that pinged against the windscreen
of the 'copter. Somehow the last few minutes of the journey were
the hardest part. She just wanted to be doing something.

Monitor had not been too pleased with
Chastity's breakthrough vision. In fact, she had been down right
dubious. Her refusal to consider allowing her favorite op to put
together an extraction team seemed adamant, until Kevin called down
with a few likely locations for the target. When the three of them
reviewed the choices together, Chastity had quickly lighted on this
warehouse as the optimum one, which only seemed to make Monitor
more obstinate. It took Kevin's certainty to bring her around,
although he wasn't as willing as Chastity to focus on this single
site.