Robert Charrette - Arthur 01 - A Prince Among Men (9 page)

This was exciting.

He wondered who the woman was and what she had done. Wait a minute: Bennett had said that what she
might
do was more important. John wondered who she was and what she was going to do.

This was better than a date.

Wasn't it?

He looked at the empty seat across from him.

It was better, wasn't it?

CHAPTER

5

The sign said that the Schmidt Institute was a Psychological Trauma Center, but Holger Kun knew better. He knew a nut house when he was in one. Better than most people. This place made the back of his neck itch. And the insides of his elbows. He suppressed the urge to scratch. Not good form, that. Made the orderlies notice. They knew. They knew.

The woman at the reception desk gave him directions to the research department. Having no desire to get lost, he followed them precisely, even though it meant waiting five minutes for the elevator. He could have burned off some of his nervous energy climbing the stairs, but she had said, "Take the elevator to seven." Explicit directions. He followed them.

The entry to the research department was secure. Holger buzzed and waited for the orderly inside the first door to open the lock. Once inside, he showed the man his pass. The man's mouth twitched and he spent an inordinate amount of time reading the pass. Finally he nodded and, using the controls at his desk, closed the outer doors. The inner doors wouldn't open until the outer panels were locked again. A decent enough system, though far better for keeping people in than out. But then, that's what this system was supposed to do.

A blast of chemical stink hit him when the inner doors opened. Underneath it, he could smell the vomit and the piss and all the other foul odors that went with these places.

"First left, then last door on the left," the orderly said just before the inner doors closed behind Holger.

Those doors wouldn't open again until the orderly gave them the command. Or until Holger did something about them. But there wouldn't be any need for that, would there?

The doors along the corridor were all fitted for security and observation. They had heavy locks with keypads, pass-through drawers, and peepholes to supplement the monitors set into the walls beside each frame. Holger avoided looking at the monitors.

The rooms were well insulated; he heard nothing save the sound of the air-conditioning equipment.

He took the turn. The door he was looking for would have been obvious even without the orderly's directions. It was the only one that was open.

The room was bigger than he expected, part of it out of his sight around a comer. There were several workstations scattered around, but only one was occupied. The woman seated there was middle-aged; her hair, cropped tight to her head, was more gray than brown. She wore no makeup to soften the lines of her face. From what he could see beneath the obligatory lab coat, she was well formed, if skinny. She matched the ident file perfectly.

His new boss.

Yeah, but he didn't have to like it. His request for transfer to another department had only gotten him an internal shift to Spae's team. A demotion, too, since he
was
Spae's team. The doctor was in no better odor with the big butts than he was. He knew why he was on their shitlist, but her file didn't show what she'd done to piss the bastards off. Spae had been one of the Department's first recruits. What had she done to fall from favor?

He stepped to the side of her chair.

"Dr. Spae?"

She made a noise without bothering to look up from the console she studied. After a moment, he decided that she probably had meant her noise as a confirmation that she had heard him. Self-important whitecoat.

"I'm Kun."

This time she looked up. She showed no sign of recognition.

"From the Department."

"Kun?" The light of understanding lit in her mismatched green and blue eyes. "Ah. The new bullyboy. Sit down. I'm working now, we'll push the papers later."

Holger found himself a place where he could keep an eye on both the door and the unseen portion of the room, pulled a chair over to his chosen spot, and sat. There wasn't much you could do with whitecoats. At least not when you were under orders to protect and assist them.

A whitecoat rounded the corner from the other part of the room. The stethoscope around his neck said M.D., and old-fashioned to boot. The frown of annoyance on his bearded face was old-fashioned, too.

"What are you doing here? Let's see your authorization."

Holger just stared at him. They didn't like that.

The doc blustered up, armored in his importance. Holger let him blow. Well before he got on Holger's nerves, Spae noticed.

"It's all right, Kevin. He's Department."

"Oh," Kevin said.

Bright boy, the doc.

Naturally, it turned out that the doc had come to talk to Spae. About a patient named Lambe. Holger listened closely; Lambe was the sleeper they were supposed to be investigating. From the way Spae was talking to this Kevin, he knew almost as much about the Department as Holger did. Certainly more than Holger had known when he had requested transfer to the then newly formed Department M. Back then, all he'd known was that the Department was where all the hotshots in the European Community Special Services were headed. Supposed to be the fast track.

Fast track to hell.

He cut off the memories. This was no time to dredge them up. This place was too much like where he'd spent the last two years. Focus, he ordered himself. Focus on the current mission. There is nothing else.

Like hell.

Hell was where you lived when you died.

You and all your friends.

Friends die.

And go to hell.

Like hell!

Do you like hell, Mr. Kun? Is that why you stay there? No, Doctor. I hate hell. Very good, Mr. Kun. We're making progress.

On hell?

Like hell!

Focus! The mission! Nothing else!

He pictured his orders, grabbing for the memory as if it were a rope and he was in water over his head. He hated water. He didn't think much of his orders either.

Assignment: Dr. Elizabeth Spae, thaumaturgic theorist.

Holger Kun to assist as resource specialist and expediter.

And bullyboy.

That part was never in the orders.

But then, there was a lot that wasn't in the written orders. The Department was a covert group, which meant they put nothing in writing unless forced to. Paper trails made covering your ass more than usually difficult.

The Department's putative mission was to investigate unusual phenomena. They were supposed to be a scientific inquiry operation. And they were that. That and more. The Department's whitecoats worked to gain an understanding of so-called magical effects. It was the expediter's job to acquire anything that the whitecoats confirmed for the use—preferably exclusive use—of the ECSS in specific and the European Community in general.

All without letting anyone know what they were doing.

Beyond all the usual reasons for secrecy, there was the issue of credibility. Who would vote for a politician who believed in fairies? Beyond that, or maybe it was just an extension of the credibility thing, was the issue of power. It always really came down to that, didn't it? The bosses of the ECSS wanted power in the EC, and the bosses of the EC wanted power in the world. And who would have more power than the saviors of the world?

Holger listened to Spae and Kevin wrangle loudly over the validity of some of the tests the doc had conducted. The technical details were beyond him, but he knew an argument doomed by underlying disagreement when he heard one. Some saviors.

When the shouting match was over and Kevin had left, Spae tamed to Holger.

"You want to monitor the call?"

"Of course." She would have to report her conclusions to the Department. It wasn't in his orders that he monitor her communications, but he wasn't about to refuse an offer. The more he knew about what she thought she was doing, the safer he'd be.

Holger set up a tap feed from her console to piggyback the incoming signal and set up an inset window to show her outgoing signal. When she placed the call, he was not surprised to see that her security clearance was several grades above his. The machines did their handshake protocol, but the security systems didn't register Holger's tap as a violation; his own clearance was high enough for that. Once the line was secured, a broad-faced man with a Gallic cast to his features appeared on the screen. Holger was impressed. He hadn't expected Spae to have such ready access to Magnus.

"This trip is a waste," she said without preamble.

"Ah, Dr. Spae. How are you?"

Holger thought he detected a weary amusement in Magnus's tone. Spae answered him acidly.

"Tired. Annoyed. Lambe's not a sleeper."

That was fine with Holger, but Magnus didn't look pleased.

"Are you sure? Dagastino's been right before."

"So have I. More often than he has, as you well know. I'm telling you, we don't have a sleeper here."

Magnus frowned. "We had the lead on this one. I would rather not lose Lambe to the CIA."

"They can have him. He's just a garden-variety lunatic."

"But Dr. Dagastino's preliminary tests—"

"Looked good from the other side of the puddle, but over here it's plain to see the truth. It didn't take me long to ascertain that Lambe's got no aura to speak of. Dagastino's got nothing more than Lambe's ramblings to base a case on. He's a nut case, a waste of time."

"Still, we must be absolutely sure, Doctor. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this mission. Each and every sleeper is vital. They are the key to the future, perhaps the only hope for mankind."

"Can the pep talk. It won't change anything."

"Dr. Spae, as a specialist, you understand—"

Spae slammed her fist against her keyboard, forcing a protesting beep from the system. "I understand that I'm chasing phantoms while the real work is being done on the Cornwall project."

"This channel does not have a high enough security rating for discussion—"

"Anybody with access to this channel knows about the project. I want to work on Arthur."

Magnus shifted his tone, speaking softly but firmly. "This Department, of which you are a part, has a mandate that includes investigation of all unusual phenomena which may have a magical origin. Since you left, we have received several reports of incidents on the East Coast of North America. You are our closest expert, Dr. Spae, and you will investigate. The Department is relying on you to do necessary, and I must add, vital, work."

"Boondoggles," Spae muttered.

"What was that, Doctor?"

She cut the line. Holger began to understand why she was in bad odor with the higher-ups.

CHAPTER 6

She walked, the soles of her shoes scuffing a rapid beat on the concrete sidewalk. The bike was gone, stolen her first night in the sprawl. Normally, she wouldn't have minded. Normally, she had no need of hurry, but now the stars, wheeling in their marshaled array, offered little time, and she knew she was not as well hidden as usual. What the stars allowed, others sought to deny.

She didn't recognize her surroundings, but that was no surprise. It had been a long time since she had been in Massachusetts, and then it had been in another part. The signs proclaiming "Tewksbury this" or "Tewksbury that" suggested that the area was called Tewksbury. The name was vaguely familiar, but she didn't remember the crowds. Or the presence of skyscrapers, rezcoms, apartment blocks, and industrial centers. Or the decay.

The temperature was dropping along with the sun, and the wind was rising. She pulled her jacket tighter. Walking was easier at night, but tonight the wind would be a danger; she'd need a place for the night, somewhere out of the wind. But it was still only evening, and there was still time to cover ground, so she walked on.

Tewksbury was one of the northern fringe districts of the Northeast sprawl. Only the fringe, but still an unfriendly place. The sprawl was a principal battleground in the war between the ordered forces of urban professionals and the chaotic hordes of urban victims and predators. Victory lay unclaimed, but whichever side was the ultimate winner, the land would lose.

It was cold on the streets and getting colder.

Evening rush hour choked the street and the sidewalks. Cars and people, all moving in a complex dance. She moved along with the flow, fitting herself into its rhythms. She didn't look out of place, and that was good; being noticed held danger.

A large black limousine cruised slowly down the other side of the street. It was clean and had all of its trim, making it look out of place among the smoking heaps and battered E-cars through which it cruised. It might have been a giant grouper, cruising the reef of the sprawl among shoals of lesser automotive fish. It passed from her sight, and from her mind.

The people around her were a mix of types: workers of many kinds, homeless old men and women, drug addicts and pushers, whores, pimps, and their users, street vendors, and gangers. Some sorts were familiar to her from other cities and other times. Others, like the man and woman in matching, multicolored spandex bodysuits with shaved heads and flashing visors, were sights so strange as to defy categorization.