Black Madonna

10

Michael woke around five in the morning with a head full of murder. He felt like he’d had a head-on collision with the entire Giants defense, and his head throbbed horribly. Groaning, he tried to get out of bed and found himself tottering backward. So he stayed put for a few minutes, took a drink from the bottle of mercifully still-cool mineral water, and then stood up and poured the rest of it over his head, He managed to stagger into the bathroom, stuck his head under the cold faucet, and waited and hoped for the best.

By five-thirty, after two cups of Geraint’s finest coffee extracted from the espresso machine, he finally felt able to peer out between the veins of his savagely bloodshot eyes. He went back to the bathroom, showered and shaved, and by six-fifteen, dressed in one of his best blue Saville Row suits, felt almost human. He was on the verge of contemplating getting something to eat, his hunger having finally overcome the residual nausea from the gas, when Kristen managed to hang on to the doorframe of the kitchen and focus her uncertain gaze on him.

“That is absolutely the last time I drink lemon vodka with you,” he said with a weak laugh. “Kick like a pack of mules. Good morning. Want some coffee?”

She slumped into the chair opposite him, the effort of speech apparently beyond her, but she was just about able to lift a cup and drink. Her hair, which seemed to have grown thicker and more lustrous since he’d previously known her, was an untamed mane of frizz around her face. She was wearing only a short nightgown, and her silky brown legs stretched under the table, touching his. Her physical presence was imposing for all that she was small, still young, and having considerable difficulty engaging with reality.

“Give me a cigarette,” she begged at last.

“Sure?”

“Don’t ask,” she said. “Just do it.”

He didn’t argue. She inhaled deeply, drank the cupful at a gulp, and sat back with her eyes shut.

“Wish I had the real thing,” she said, looking forlornly at the cigarette.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea this morning. What happened to us? I can’t remember anything after getting in that taxi.”

“Me neither,” she said, and stretched like a jaguar in the sunshine. She hadn’t bathed yet, and her scent was musky and sweet. But as he glanced at her, he saw a mark on her arm. Reaching out, he took her arm in his hands.

“Pinprick,” he said. “Look.”

Kristen stared intently at her arm, chewing her lip in concern. “How did you see that?” she said doubtfully.

“Don’t know. It just caught my eye.” Then he slipped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

His left arm had the same tiny mark. He’d missed it while showering, the slight ache in his arm probably masked by the general feeling of fatigue. His head had still been full of cotton-wool at the time, the world a fuzzy haze around him.

“Drek,” he said, shaking his head. ‘Someone’s taken blood samples.”

She looked alarmed. She didn’t know what it meant, but she was probably wondering what else might have been done to her.

“Blood, maybe for ritual magic,” he said. “It’s not an uncommon practice. They probably snipped off some hair as well. Not good. We’re going to have ask Serrin about this. He’s the expert.”

Kristen wasn’t reassured. She knew little of the art, and what things Serrin told her were hard to understand. The magically talented and the mundane walked different paths, with many points of simple incomprehension between them.

On cue, Serrin appeared in the doorway, a silk dressing gown draped around his thin form. The contrast with the graceful figure of his wife could not have been greater. Knobbled knees and a mass of scar tissue on the leg shattered during a botched run for a corp many years ago were visible beneath the garment. He took one look at the coffee machine dispensing dark fluid, and made for it like a polecat after a baby rabbit.

“What happened? How did we get back?” Michael asked him. Serrin told him. Michael was indignant at first, and then, despite himself, laughed. “Shipped in a crate? The bastards. Well, I can’t say I take offense, not really. They could have killed us, after all.” Then he told the mage about the pinpricks and the possibility that blood samples had been taken from them.

“Then we’d better get down to Glastonbury damn quick,” Serrin said, rubbing at his short-cropped gray hair. “We’ll have more to ask than just information. We’ll need to be able to build magical wards around us too.” He paused as he heard what he was saying. “What are we getting into? Two days ago I was walking the Scottish coastline. Now we’re knee-deep in drek coming from all directions.”

“Glastonbury?” Michael enquired.

“There’s a lot to catch up on,” Serrin said, and briefed them about the events of the previous night.

“So we’ve got someone else on board?” Michael said doubtfully.

“Look, we knew we should ask you first, but honestly there wasn’t time, and after all the guy was here when you arrived and when I took a call and he’d seen half the picture already. There was little point in not giving him the rest. After all, in a week’s time it’s all going to be public knowledge if this doesn’t work out,” Serrin said reasonably. “Anyway, we didn’t tell him everything. He thinks that someone’s going to wreck one big corp system and he wouldn’t expect us to say who we’re working for. He doesn’t know it’s the whole works.”

“Put like that I can hardly argue,” Michael agreed. “We can trust him for a week, I suppose.”

“Why is he called ‘Streak’?” Kristen asked.

“A childhood nickname apparently.” Serrin smiled. “He was very thin as a kid and apparently the Brits have an expression for people like that-‘a long streak of piss’?”

Michael laughed. “Well, I guess if he kept that moniker he must have a sense of humor.”

“Oh, he has that,” Serrin said with some feeling. “Often at our expense, I find.”

“You were talking about me?” The elf had snuck up on them while they were absorbed in conversation, and walked past them to the fridge, as if he owned the place.

“My, this is good,” he said, rubbing his hands at the delights within. “His lordship has real taste. You can’t buy that, you know. That’s one thing you Americans”-he grinned at Sethn-“never truly understand.”

“Okay, okay, let’s stop this now,” Michael protested. “Serrin says it’s down to Glastonbury today.” Streak was breaking eggs into a bowl. “Want some scrambled?”

Everyone nodded. Any original resentment at him treating the place like he owned it evaporated at the prospect of his acting as quartermaster-cum-chef.

“Best go out through the back door then. I assume we don’t want to be tracked,” Streak said. “Can you mask us against watchers, that kind of thing?”

“There’s a very good hermetic circle protecting this building,” Serrin told him.

“Yeah and I’m the Queen of bloody Sheba,” Streak said derisively. “You’ll have to do better.”

“I think I can,” Serrin said quietly.

“There are some service tunnels linking these buildings,” Streak told him. “We can get out of here half a mile or more away. Best to take an underground route first, I think. Need to arrange the motor, though.”

“We can’t take Geraint’s limo,” Michael said. “Have to hire one, I suppose.”

“Brilliant” Streak said derisively. “Traceable by anyone with a Radio Shack. Leave it to me. Unregistered except on hot police systems so we can’t be traced unless someone can deck ice thick enough to cover Antarctica. No names, no pack drill. Be here five minutes after I call it in. You want a limo or an APV?”

“I think an ordinary saloon will do us,” Michael said with a grin.

“Have we got any way of warning this guy that we’re about to arrive on his doorstep?”

“I don’t see that we can,” Serrin said. “Anything we do in that direction would be traceable. I thought of sending a messenger spirit, but it would be detected as soon as it left the area and there are ways of interrogating them.”

“I can at least find us somewhere to stay,” Streak said thoughtfully. “Want some bacon with this?”

“Wouldn’t say no. There are some mushrooms in the cupboard,” Michael pointed out.

“I can get a booking somewhere out of the way through an intermediary,” Streak said. “Hey, you want to go as mellows? I mean, taking in the sacred vibes, all that drek? I could get some wiz clothes for mellows. I know some undercover people, drugs-and-chips guys, who’ve got that kind of gear.”

That’s probably overdoing it. Anyway, I don’t think Hessler would be any too impressed,” Serrin told him.

“You know, you don’t all have to go,” Michael put in. “I’m the one who should talk with him. There’s no need for anyone else to go, not really.”

Kristen grabbed his arm and gave him a very reproachful look, but Michael nipped the idea in the bud anyway.

“Not a bad idea to stick together,” he said. “We’re a lot easier targets in ones and twos. Ask any taxi driver.”

“All right then,” Serrin said. The bacon was beginning to grill nicely now, and the smell was making Michael and Kristen, unfed for the best part of thirty-six hours, almost drool.

“Voila!” Streak dumped the eggs into a serving dish. Milk, just a little cream, and plenty of butter had made them perfection. Kristen couldn’t wait long enough to scoop them onto her plate, but rammed a spoonful straight into her mouth looking as if an angel bad dropped down from heaven hearing her own personalized chalice of manna.

“This is better,” Streak said, and emptied the second serving, this time complete with melted cheese, onto a second plate.

“I told you we were right to hire this guy,” Serrin mumbled between forkfuls of egg.

“I think I’d better call Geraint while there’s still some left,” Michael grinned.

By the time Streak had broken every last egg in the place to feed the eager breakfasters, Michael was already jacked in, data-trawling getting every last piece of data he could before they set off on the short haul to the West of England. The problem was not that he didn’t know what he was looking for, but simply that he didn’t have the background knowledge to evaluate what he found. That was why Serrin was with them.

The downloads took a long time even for his Fairlight whose transfer speeds most deckers could hardly dream about-which this morning was just too damn long. He was impatient at having to wait for the archival material, and then dismayed by the sheer volume of it all when it arrived.

“This is the problem,” he explained to the freshly shaved and dressed Serrin. “The printouts go on forever. I can get a trillion tons of data dumped down in an hour, but it still takes me a lifetime to read and evaluate it, even with Simon’s filtering.”

“Serrin smiled. Another of your frames?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have the parameters to guide him as well as I’d like,” Michael said. “I need your brain in there, Serrin. There has to be a way to do that.”

“You leave my brain out of this. I’m very attached to it.” Serrin was feeling unusually chipper right now, it was partly the excellent breakfast, partly the sheer relief that his wife had been returned to him safely and partly anticipation of the audience he was hoping to get, He’d talked with a Scottish druid friend who’d spoken of the old elf they were due to visit with near-reverence and Serrin was both intrigued and a little awestruck In a cynical world, the latter was a nice feeling to have.

Michael pointed to the stack of material, the printers still dumping out text and pictures. Even a reader knowing what he was looking for Would take days to find what he needed in the mass of data-and they didn’t have days.

“I guess we can start reading this in the car,” Serrin said, idly picking up a stack of chromalins disgorged from the optical printer. He leafed through them idly. “What’s this, a rogue’s gallery?”

“Known or suspected members of the Priory of Sion, and known NOJ agents in London, then England, then Britain, then France,” Michael said. “Not that we could get all of them. Many will be unknown, many I couldn’t get mug shots for.”

“Don’t see a face I recognize here. Oh, good holiday snaps.” Serrin chuckled as he dropped the stack and picked up another.

“Various locations of possible significance,” Michael muttered. “You see what I mean? It takes forever to discover what we’re looking-Serrin what’s wrong?”

Serrin had suddenly gone even paler than usual and clutched the chromalin in his hands like a drowning man hanging on to a length of wood to keep himself afloat. Michael stopped in his tracks and went over to have a look.

“That’s her,” Serrin said in a whisper. “In every detail.”

“Good Lord,” Michael said. “What the-”

“You downloaded it,” Serrjn said, staring at him. “You tell me.”

Michael checked the codes and was rattled when he found the source of the picture.

“It’s a statue,” he said.

“Obviously,” Serrin said impatiently

“In the chapel building at Rennes-le-Chateau.”

“Go on.”

“Rennes-le-Chateau is just up the road from Clermont-Ferrand. It’s sacred to the Priory of Sion-well, sort of. It’s a tiny little village. You want more details? The demon over the chapel door and the warning written in Latin?”

“A demon on a chapel?”

“You got it,” Michael said. “This is no ordinary house of the Lord, not according to this.” He handed over the relevant pages.

“I think you’re going to have some background to take to Herr Hessler, Serrin.”