Dagger Magic

Chapter Thirty

THE full moon was well up in the sky by the time the Lady Gregory cleared the northernmost tip of Horn Head. Adam stood alone in the bow of the big cabin cruiser, dark eyes narrowed to mere slits as he scanned the serrated line of the shore. He had exchanged his tweed jacket for a waxed one, and he pulled the corduroy collar closer against the sea-spray as the Lady Gregory forged on, skirting the unbroken chain of sea-cliffs that stood frowning in the moonlight like the ramparts of some huge, forbidding fortress. So far, they had spotted no sign of their quarry.

But they were getting close. In the last half hour, all of them had begun to detect the first telltale signs that dark forces were building in this vicinity. Those emanations were growing with each passing minute - all the proof any of them needed that time was running short, and not in their favor.

The sound of soft footfalls and the rustle of a waxed jacket heralded McLeod coming up from the stern to join Adam. The inspector was carrying a pair of infrared binoculars, one of two supplied by Magnus's undercover contact. Another of Magnus's contacts had ensured that they were not detained at any of the border checkpoints coming out of Londonderry - which was just as well, because the cache by then secured in the back of the Hi-Ace van had included numerous tightly controlled items, the most innocuous of which were the half-dozen spare ammo clips for the Browning Hi-Power automatics that both McLeod and Magnus now were carrying. His nerves raw-alert, Adam reflected grimly that it was going to take something more than conventional firepower to stop whatever dark work their adversaries had in progress - but they must be prepared for conventional resistance as well.

McLeod trained the binoculars on the shore, scanned long and intently, then muttered, "Nothing!" in manifest frustration. "Damn it, we can all but smell them! If we don't find them soon, there's going to be hell to pay."

While his two superiors were keeping a lookout from the deck, Peregrine was up in the pilothouse with Aoife's nephew, Eamonn, owner and operator of the Lady Gregory. While Eamonn skillfully piloted the Lady G around and through the maze of offshore rocks and shoals, keeping an eye on his depth-sounder, Peregrine was using the second pair of night-binoculars in an attempt to get a high-angle view of the passing landscape. So far he had seen nothing worth mentioning.

"What exactly are you looking for?" Eamonn asked.

"I wish I knew," Peregrine sighed. "I'm just hoping I'll recognize it, if and when I find it."

Though he did not say as much to Eamonn, he was beginning to feel like a fifth wheel. His artistic abilities seemed of little use or relevance in their present circumstances, especially when compared with what some of his more senior companions were doing. Magnus, he had learned on their drive to Malin Head, had clairvoyant talents - the ability to visualize distant occurrences. At the moment, the retired RUC officer was below deck with Aoife, hoping to gain an extrasensory impression of who their adversaries might be and, even more importantly, what exactly they might be doing.

Which couldn't be anything good, Peregrine thought moodily. Even without Magnus's longer-range brand of perceptual acuity, he was himself queasily aware of shadowy forces on the rise. Even brushing the edges of that thickening miasma of evil was like being forced to wade at the edges of a polluted lake. What Adam must be experiencing, he could only guess.

Jagged rocks loomed ahead, too close for Eamonn's taste, and the young skipper expertly put the wheel over to navigate the Lady G safely past them. As they nosed around the next headland, Peregrine found himself starting to wonder if perhaps they ought to go ashore and proceed on land. That consideration evaporated an instant later, as his questing gaze was drawn toward a triangle of lights suspended between the moonlit water and the surrounding crescent of shadowy cliffs.

The source of the lights was a large fishing boat bristling with booms, slightly larger than the Lady Gregory. She was anchored several hundred yards out from a narrow strip of beach, her hull rising and falling on the shallow swell of the incoming tide. Down on the foredeck, McLeod gave a wolfish growl of discovery and subjected the newfound vessel to a close sweep with his binoculars.

"Rose of Tralee" he read out. "Do you suppose she's really just fishing?"

"Not for fish," came Adam's terse reply.

He and McLeod retreated aft, keeping an eye on their quarry, as the Lady G nosed toward the other vessel, gradually slowing. Two sets of feet came thudding up the steps from the lower deck. Magnus arrived first, with Aoife right on his heels.

"What've you got?" the Irish Second asked.

"You tell me," McLeod muttered, handing him the binoculars. "Name's the Rose of Tralee. Do you think she's doing some moonlight fishing, or is this our bird?"

Magnus swept the glasses along the length of the other vessel, riding at anchor between them and the shore. As Aoife joined him by the railing, Peregrine came scrambling down from the pilothouse.

"I think there's somebody on board," he whispered. "I saw movement against the cabin lights."

The cabin lights suddenly winked off, even as he said it, and Magnus lowered his binoculars.

"This is your call, Magnus," Adam said quietly. "How do you want to play this?"

"By the book, I think, until we know what we're up against." He handed the binoculars to Aoife and glanced pointedly at McLeod. "Unless anybody else has a better suggestion?"

The Scottish detective shook his head. "Go for it."

Nodding, Magnus made a trumpet of his two hands.

"Ahoy!" he called in a loud voice. "Rose of Tralee, this is the Lady Gregory. Is anyone aboard?"

His hail boomed out across the intervening water. Before he could shout a second time, the cabin door opened and a broad-shouldered figure emerged into the moonlight.

"This is the skipper of the Rose," a rough voice called back. "What do you want?"

The Irish accent went with the locale, but the tone was suspiciously hostile, and the silhouette proclaimed "city," not the rugged attire one would expect on a fishing boat.

"We were just passing by when we saw your lights," Magnus shouted. "Are you in any difficulty?"

"Nothing we can't handle for ourselves," came the curt reply.

"Do you believe that?" Magnus whispered to Adam.

"No."

"Neither do I. Peregrine, go tell Eamonn to take us in closer. We'll see what happens if we refuse to take the hint."

As the young artist darted off toward the pilothouse, Magnus cupped his hands again.

"If it's engine trouble you're having, we've a mechanic on board," he shouted. "Why don't you let us come over and see if we can give you a hand?''

The Lady Gregory's engines changed pitch, and she began to nose closer.

"Why don't you go to hell?" snarled the self-proclaimed skipper of the Rose. And punctuated the retort with a sudden burst of gunfire.

Everyone aboard the Lady Gregory hit the deck as a stream of bullets swept across her bow, pinging off her steel hull and scattering shattered perspex from a forward cabin window.

"Jayzus, what's he got? A bloody Uzi?" Magnus gasped, from a prone position on the deck.

"Something bigger than that," McLeod replied, already drawing the Browning Hi-Power from his belt and snapping back the slide to chamber a round.

Aoife wormed across the deck on her elbows as far as the foot of the ladder that led up to the pilothouse.

"Eamonn, are you two all right up there?"

"Aye, thank God for steel bulkheads," came a voice from above. "Though heaven only knows what my insurance adjuster's going to say, when we get back to port!"

Magnus had taken cover behind the shelter of the superstructure, his own pistol now in hand, and was working his way toward one side, keeping his head well down.

"I don't think we need to ask any more questions," he muttered, getting his feet under him. "I don't care whether they're Nazis or the bloody IRA, they aren't meant to have firearms. Let's see what they've got."

Rearing up from cover, he squeezed off three quick shots over the forward bulkhead and ducked back down from a fierce blaze of return-fire. Bullets ricocheted and fiberglass flew in splinters.

"I guess that answers your question," McLeod muttered, keeping his head down. "Why do the bad guys always wind up with the biggest guns?"

He started to rise, then flinched back with a sharp imprecation as a bullet burned past his left cheekbone. The spiteful chatter of automatic weapons-fire continued, coming in fits and bursts.

"Are you all right?" came Adam's sharp inquiry.

"Aye, just a scratch."

"Somebody needs to teach that feckless bastard the difference between quantity and quality," Magnus said, as the strafing abruptly petered out.

"Maybe he's out of ammo," Adam said hopefully.

"Don't count on it," McLeod muttered.

Cautiously he lifted his head. The response was a short, resurgent salvo that sent him diving for the deck. As he did so, Magnus reared up again and squeezed off a double round of two in the direction of the muzzle-flashes, immediately ducking down again. When the echoes subsided, there was only silence.

The two policemen traded glances.

"Either he's playing possum, or you've hit him," said McLeod.

"Only one way to find out," Magnus replied - and heaved himself to his feet, weapon poised.

Too late to prevent it, his fellow Huntsmen tensed in dread anticipation, McLeod ready to lay down cover-fire. When the silence held, a collective sigh of relief whispered among them and Magnus ducked back down.

"That's appears to be round one to our side," Adam said, "unless, of course, this isn't our quarry at all. Eamonn," he called up to the pilothouse, "take her in slowly. We'd better board and see what the damage is."

As Eamonn cautiously brought the Lady Gregory alongside the Rose, the two policemen took the opportunity to reload.

"How the devil did you get to retirement age taking chances like that?" McLeod demanded.

Magnus pulled a wry grin. "Just lucky, 1 guess."

"Better keep some luck in reserve," McLeod recommended. "It isn't bullets I'm most worried about."

He and Magnus went aboard the Rose first, weapons at the ready, Adam following cautiously with an electric torch. They found the gunman sprawled on the deck amidships, an assault rifle trailing loose from his lax fingers. The right side of his face was bloodied from a crease-wound above his right ear.

"Well, this could well be one of our common, garden-variety, home-grown terrorists, after all," Magnus muttered, kicking the rifle away from the man's hand. "That's Libyan shit - a Kalashnikov AK-47 - all too easy for them to get. I'll check below to make certain he hasn't got any buddies."

While McLeod kept the gunman covered, and Magnus went below, Adam knelt down to check the wound.

"He seems to be concussed, but there isn't much bleeding," he reported. "He'll keep until we can get the rest of this sorted out."

With an unsympathetic grunt, McLeod leaned down to confiscate the rifle, recoiling in the next instant as if he had been stung.

"Bloody hell!" he muttered, kicking the weapon farther out of the way. "Adam, look at this."

As he lifted the gunman's hand by the cuff of his jacket, light from Adam's torch touched off a glassy glint of red from the gold ring worn on the third finger of the right hand. The intaglio device incised on the underside of the stone was one all too well known to them in recent years: the snarling, tufted head of a big cat.

"So much for home-grown terrorists," Adam murmured. "And that explains the warning about an old enemy."

"Aye, we should've guessed as much,"McLeod agreed.

"Not necessarily. Lynx involvement is not inconsistent, given their previous Nazi connections, but Tseten was convinced that other forces are at work here - and I'm inclined to believe him. I'd guess this man is hired muscle - which is not to say he mightn't have been dangerous on other levels. Whoever the real boss may be remains to be seen."

"Adam?" came Magnus's voice from below. "Could you come down here?"

As Adam glanced in that direction, McLeod held up a hand in warning and got to his feet, raising his pistol at the ready beside his head as he moved toward the opening. Magnus' white head emerged from the doorway before McLeod could do more, and the Irish Second held up both hands, his weapon in one of them, and gave them a sheepish grin.

"Sorry, I just realized how that must've sounded. We've got another man below, but he's unconscious - drugged, I think. He may be one of the crew. There's something else you ought to see, though - and maybe have Peregrine take a look, if his talents run the way you've described."

Leaving McLeod to guard their unconscious prisoner, Adam summoned Peregrine to come aboard, then headed down into the cabin. Peregrine had been standing by anxiously at the rail with Aoife, who was scanning the shore with binoculars, but at Adam's summons he moved to the gap in the rail and leaped across to the Rose, stepping cautiously around McLeod's prisoner, to follow. He found Adam kneeling beside a man sprawled in one of the cramped berths below. Magnus was backed into the tiny galley, eyes closed.

"He isn't dead; just sedated," Adam said softly, glancing back at Peregrine. "See what you can pick up in here. I can almost taste the residuals."

Closing the cabin door behind him, Peregrine leaned against it and let his gaze sweep around the cramped room, immediately zeroing in on the scarred table adjoining the ship's galley. A faint, telltale shimmer in the air in this part of the room hinted at the presence of powerful resonances.

He drew a long breath to center and let his deeper sight take over. The shimmer grew more distinct, resolving into the ghostly image of a tall man with fair hair. With it came a palpable aura of restless ambition and consuming malice.

Hardly daring to breathe for fear of losing the impression, Peregrine groped hastily for his pocket sketchbook and began to sketch. As oftentimes before, the very act of drawing served to fix and clarify the image. Temporarily oblivious to everything else in the room, he worked with rapid concentration, only venturing to look down at the page when he judged he was finished.

The face that gazed back at him was that of a lean, fair-haired man with chiselled lips and sharp cheekbones flanking a patrician blade of a nose. It was a likeness Peregrine had seen before in photographs, but never in the flesh. Even so, he was in no doubt as to its owner's identity.

"Francis Raeburn!'' he said aloud.

Instantly Adam came to join him.

"What did you say?"

Instead of repeating himself, Peregrine mutely held out the sketch he had just made. Adam stared at it intently, then handed the sketch pad across to Magnus, who had roused at their words.

"This begins to make more sense," Adam said, gesturing for Peregrine to open the cabin door. ' 'Now I think I understand the Nazi connection, given that Raeburn is the son of David Tudor-Jones. What I do not understand is how Raeburn hooks in with Eastern esoterica - though I expect we're going to find out."

They emerged from the cabin to find Aoife aboard the Rose and pointing out something on the shore to McLeod.

"Right there, in the lee of that outcropping," she said, as McLeod took the glasses and began to scan. "I think I'm seeing the stern of the Rose's dinghy. I couldn't spot anyone moving around, but that probably means they've already gone into the cave - wherever that is."

As Adam joined them, McLeod handed him the glasses.

"Straight ahead at eleven o'clock," he muttered. "You can see just a glint of moonlight on the outboard at the stern."

Adam found it easily, then scanned farther along the beach and upward, searching for an opening.

"That beach looks like it disappears at high tide," he said, "which is not long from now, if I'm not mistaken. Magnus, can we get ashore? I don't see a cave, but it almost has to be in those cliffs off to the right."

"Aye, just let me get chummie below and cuff him to something," Magnus grunted, as Adam headed back to the Lady G.

"First let me have that ring he's wearing," McLeod muttered, tucking his pistol into his waistband.

"What, spoils of the Hunt?'' Magnus asked.

"Hell, no." McLeod gave his Irish counterpart a decidedly feral grin as he pulled the ring off and hefted it. "How deep is it here?"

"Oh, probably thirty feet or so."

"Deep enough, then," McLeod said - and tossed the ring overboard. Magnus chuckled, then lifted their unconscious prisoner under the arms and dragged him below. By the time he re-emerged, Aoife and Peregrine had reeled in the Lady G's dinghy and drawn it alongside, and Adam was watching McLeod climb aboard, handing down a pair of the infrared binoculars.

"I've cuffed both of them, for good measure," Magnus said to Adam, with a jut of his chin back to the Rose's cabin. "They'll not be going anywhere. Shall I come with you and Noel, or do you want to keep your team together?"

"Ordinarily I would," Adam said, "but in this case, I think Peregrine ought to stay with Aoife and you come with me. You aren't armed, Peregrine," he added, at the artist's crestfallen look. "The backup you and Aoife can give us doesn't depend on brawn or firepower."

"Take one of these, then," Aoife said, handing Adam a pocket-sized walkie-talkie. "I'll put Peregrine in charge of the link aboard the Lady G. And be careful, all of you."

Nodding his thanks, Adam tucked the walkie-talkie into an outer pocket of his waxed jacket, then climbed lightly down into the dinghy beside McLeod. His skean dubh was safely zipped into an inner pocket. Magnus handed down a pair of electric torches, then came aboard and settled in the stern. The little outboard came to life with a healthy whirr, and as Aoife and Peregrine cast off the bow and stern lines, Magnus goosed the throttle and swung the bow around to begin heading toward the shore. McLeod put the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the cliffs ahead, then glanced aside at Adam.

"You don't suppose that Lynx chap back on the boat will come to, and try to cause trouble, do you?"

"I doubt it," Adam replied. "He may come to, but he's going to have one hell of a headache - hardly conducive to any serious concentration. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I just took a bit of a precaution, that's all," McLeod said, returning to his scanning. "I tossed his Lynx ring into the drink; figured a little salt water would go a long way toward cleaning the nasties off it."

"He did; I saw him," Magnus confirmed, satisfaction in his tone.

Adam allowed himself an amused chuckle. "It's fortunate for you that our Lynx was unconscious," he said. "You both do realize, of course, that it was a valuable ring, and he's apt to scream 'Theft!' when he sees it's gone."

"Ring? What ring?" Magnus retorted. "When I arrested what I took to be a terrorist gun-runner, he wasn't wearing any ring."

McLeod did not turn, but his grim chuckle floated just above the sound of the little outboard.

They fell silent after that, though, for the air had begun to tingle with uncanny fluctuations of energy. As the dinghy neared the shore, heading for the now-visible second dinghy, Adam could feel that energy crawling over his skin like an assault of marching ants. He scanned the cliffs ahead and to the right, where an area of darkness just below the cliff-top drew his gaze like a magnet.

"Look there, Noel," he recommended, pointing. "Is that an opening?"

McLeod turned the glasses in that direction and gave a grunt.

"It's an opening, all right," he agreed, handing the binoculars back. "And I'd bet my next paycheck Raeburn's already inside."

"You won't get any takers here," Adam said, confirming with the glasses. "Magnus, let's get this thing ashore."

A rev of the outboard and an incoming wave swept them through the last of the shore-break. A moment later, they grounded on the sand mere yards from the other inflatable. At close range, they now could see a motionless form sitting hunched inside it.

"Bloody hell," McLeod muttered, drawing his pistol. "Is he dead?"

Leaving Magnus to secure their own boat, McLeod scrambled ashore with weapon at the ready, Adam following with a torch. The man in the boat was alive but unconscious, even comatose.

"Another of the legitimate crew of the Rose of Tralee, I would guess," Adam said, checking the man's pulse and peering under eyelids.

"There doesn't seem to be a mark on him," McLeod said. "Why is he not responding?"

"It appears to be some form of magical entrancement I've never encountered before," Adam replied as Magnus came to join them. "He's practically reeking of it - but I won't know how to counter it until I meet up with the person who cast the spell in the first place."

Magnus glanced nervously over his shoulder at the cliffs beyond.

"Well, he ought to be safe enough here, until we get things sorted out. Shall we?"

Back on board the Lady Gregory, standing shoulder to shoulder with Aoife at the side rail, Peregrine could see nothing of the shore party, though he could just make out the two dinghies. He lifted the spare binoculars to his eyes, but the moonlight itself confounded him, leaping fluorescently from rock to rock in some places, elsewhere leaving deep clefts of impenetrable shadow. As he fiddled with the sights, trying to get a clearer view, he became aware of the distant mechanical drone of a propeller-driven aircraft.

It seemed curiously out of place - a fugitive from some distant world of daylight and sanity. He looked up as he realized that the sound was coming closer - and glimpsed its swollen belly as it passed across the face of the moon. The shape did not register until it banked into the wind and he saw the pontoons fitted to its high wings.

"Aoife?" he breathed. "What the devil is a seaplane doing out here at this hour? You don't suppose it's going to land?"