Divided by Magic

by Rebecca Danese

  "Blimey, this guy is tough on security. Do you want to give it a go or should we try knocking?"

  "Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt," she says, and gives the door a light rap with her knuckles.

  To our astonishment the bolts start sliding back. There are indeed eight locks of various types, some that require keys from inside and others that appear to need passwords, as we can hear the pushing of buttons from behind the door. Eventually the door opens to reveal a pasty-faced man with greasy blonde hair and an impressive beard.

  "Come in, quickly!" he hisses and opens the door wide enough for us to pass through, closing it definitively behind us and re-locking it, which takes nearly a minute in itself. The flat smells like unwashed body, and although there isn’t much more to see than a corridor with two doorways branching off it, I suspect that if we were to go into them we would find more dirty laundry than a launderette.

  "So?" the man I presume can only be Marvin says to us, his hands placed on his wide hips.

  "So, er, hello," I say holding my hand out for him to shake. He looks at it but doesn’t take it.

  "Names first," he says, ignoring my proffered hand.

  "I’m Curtis, Curtis Mayes," I say, dropping my hand to my side.

  "Ella Cooper," Ella says not bothering to put out a hand but instead folding her arms and looking at him impatiently. She’s not yet given up using her alias, it seems.

  "Marvin, no last name. You have something to show me?" he says abruptly. He’s not the most likeable guy, I observe, lacking some of the social niceties we’ve become accustomed to. Evidently, he doesn’t get out that much.

  I fish into my pocket and pull out the switchblade that the Duke gave us and hand it to him, although I feel unsure as to whether handing a knife to him is a good idea or not. He grabs it from me and flicks it open, inspecting it for a few moments before closing it up and handing it back to me. "And the drive?"

  This time Ella fishes around in her pocket and pulls out the small silver oblong, handing it to him with a similar amount of reservation.

  He squeezes past us to a doorway through which he can just fit, without inviting us to follow him, but we do anyway. The room, which would otherwise be considered a living room to any normal person, looks like the inside of a dilapidated space ship. A large desk runs along each wall with several computers on, under and above each. There are no less than ten different screens, some on, some off and one playing cartoons with the volume on low. Marvin sits on a chair which looks far too small to accommodate his weight and wheels from one machine to another, eventually settling on one that he taps furiously at before plugging the USB drive into the computer. He rolls over to a drawer on the other side of the room and scoops out two more USB sticks, one in the shape of a teddy bear and the other a plain red plastic item. Whisking back over to the computer he started at, he plugs the drives into a little box with dozens of ports in it and hits the keyboard several times with enthusiasm. He doesn’t bother to give us a running commentary of what he’s doing, but he does murmur a little while he’s working. I get the general gist that he’s trying to use an isolated and un-networked computer to do the job of transferring the data onto two separate drives. As far as my basic knowledge of computers goes, I take this to mean that the data can’t be accidentally hacked or retrieved if it isn’t connected to anything else. It takes him all of about five minutes, and it would have taken less, he tells us, if he hadn’t had to decrypt his own encryption.

  "You encrypted it originally? So, you supplied the information in the first place?" I ask, realising that this is the mysterious source of the data that the Duke was so unwilling to share.

  "Yeah, well sort of. Me and one of you," he says, meaning an Augur I’m guessing. "Interesting girl, but she was killed." That was what the Duke had said, yet Marvin says it as if it was just another day at the office. I’m sad for her, whoever she was. "I told him at the time that it made no sense to put all his eggs in one basket, but he didn’t listen. So, I made it virtually unhackable, even by me," he boasts. I make a noise that sounds like I’m impressed although I’m only vaguely listening, my mind still on the Augur that lost her life.

  "This one’s for the papers," he says, pulling out the teddy shaped USB stick and handing it over his shoulder without looking at who is going to relieve him of it. I take it begrudgingly, wishing that he’d given me the slightly better looking one for my errand, particularly as it’s designed so that the silver flash-drive section sticks out of the bear’s bottom. "This one’s for whoever he’s decided to give it to," he pulls out the red one and Ella takes it over his shoulder. He scratches at a pockmark on his cheek absentmindedly, a gesture he’s probably done several times by the looks of the scars on his face, and spins around to look at us.

  "Whatever happens, the red one doesn’t go back to him. And nothing is traced back to me," Marvin says to us. We both nod emphatically. I’ve got no reason to grass on him and neither does Ella, so I don't see any problem with keeping that particular promise. I don’t know why anyone would be worried about a geeky normal helping out a bunch of Augurs really, but then I think about myself. It’s no different to what I’m doing when you look at it. Fighting a fight that anyone would say isn’t really mine but so obviously is. Ultimately, we’re not fighting for Augurs against Normals, but for fundamental human rights. That feels a little deep, even for me, but it gives me an appreciation for Marvin who is evidently doing just the same: doing what people may think is wrong, but for all the right reasons.

  "One last thing," he says as he gestures to the door, a signal I take to mean that he wants us to go, "don’t trust anyone. Really. Not even each other." Ella and I nod with something less than enthusiasm and he goes back to the business of unlocking every bolt and passcode until we’re finally out. Without even a grunt by way of goodbye, the door shuts behind us and we hear everything sliding back into place with a sense of finality.

  CHAPTER 11

  "Well," Ella says, inhaling a deep breath of fresh air, "that went off surprisingly without a hitch."

  "Don’t speak too soon," I say, eyeing a police car that has come around the corner. We try to look inconspicuous, her hand in mine in deep conversation like a couple that have nothing to hide. The car cruises by without incident, but it doesn’t stop me from exhaling when it’s out of sight, and I realise I’ve been clutching the teddy bear USB drive in my fist tightly. The last thing we need at this point is to draw any unwanted attention, and if Marvin is the kind of guy I think he is then he might have already been on a few of the ‘most wanted’ lists for some cyber crime or another. If he supplied the data to the Duke in the first place, then no doubt he ended up in a few databases that he shouldn’t have.

  "Hey, Earth to Curtis," Ella says, squeezing my other hand.

  "Sorry, just wondering how he managed to get the data in the first place," I say, nodding at my pocket.

  "I can make a calculated guess," she says, looking equally unhappy about it. "No time to worry about that now. It’s show time," she says as we walk back to the underground station. I feel like I’ve spent more of the past few days on the Tube than I have in the past few years. At least there’s something constantly homely and familiar about the London transport system, and as we gently sway back and forward on our way to our next station I feel grateful for the anonymity that living in the city can bring. No one else on our crowded train cares who we are, where we’re going or what we’ve done. They’re just trying to get to one place or another, usually reading something, texting or sleeping.

  Our next stop is High Street Kensington, and after two changes we decide to grab some lunch just outside the busy station. I welcome the feeling of food in my stomach, even if it’s just a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

  "Where are you going to go while I make the drop?" I ask, trying to sound cool. I have to admit, saying ‘make the drop’ alone adds some kind of credibility to what I’m doing.

  "What do you mean, silly? I’l
l be keeping a very close eye on you," she says, taking a mouthful of her own sandwich.

  "But the Duke said—"

  "I know what he said, Curtis, but you don’t think for a second I’m going to let you out of my sight, do you?"

  "Well, I admit that I’ll feel better if I know you’re nearby. But I don’t want anyone to catch a glimpse of you in case anything goes wrong."

  "No problem. We’ll find a good spot that I can spy on you from, but don’t say things like that —nothing is going to go wrong," she gives me a smile, and that simple gesture alone makes me believe her totally. We finish our late lunch and wander in the direction of the newspaper offices which are located down a side street next to one of the large department stores. It looks like over the years all the bigger stores have been split up into smaller units, and lucky for us there’s a cafe that almost looks directly into the main reception where I’ll have to wait. I watch her go in, grab a magazine from the news rack and order herself a tea, positioning her body so that she can look over the top of the page without seeming suspicious.

  For some reason my palms are sweaty as I walk through the revolving door and into the main lobby. It’s modern but slightly shabby, like it was designed with the future in mind but actually decorated in the nineties. There are two uncomfortable looking armchairs, all metal and grey leather. The walls are black marble and the floor is cream marble, with a few potted plants dotted about the place. On the left wall there hangs a huge montage of various headlines from the past century, on the right is a wide half-desk that comes up to my chest. A disinterested receptionist is on the phone, typing at her computer and chewing gum simultaneously. Her eyes flick up from her screen for a second, and she nods briefly to signify that she’s seen me.

  "…I understand, Mr. Barker, but you’re just going to have to send an email. No, I’m sorry, he’s not available to speak to on the phone. I understand you don’t know how to use a computer, but I’m afraid that’s not really my— okay, yes, a letter will do the trick. To the regular address, yes. I’ll make sure he sees it, Mr. Barker. Okay, thank you, take care, goodbye." She finally hangs up and looks up at me whilst still typing on her computer.

  "How can I help?" she asks without sounding like she actually wants to help at all.

  "Er, I’m supposed to see Mr. Avers here?"

  "I’m not sure if he’s in the building, but I’ll try his desk for you. Do you have an appointment?”

  Do I? Somehow the Duke failed to mention it if I did, and so I take a wild guess.

  “Yes, he’s expecting me,” I try to lie smoothly, forcing myself not to run my hand through my hair.

  Avers, of course, has no idea who I am, and the thought occurs to me that he’ll easily turn me away if I tell them my real name.

  The receptionist picks up the handset and seems to get through.

  “Matthew? Your afternoon appointment is here,” she says, tapping her pen impatiently on her desk. She listens to something and glances up at me, covering the mouthpiece and whispering, “Edward Clarence, right?”

  I try to hide my surprise by nodding eagerly. Why does Edward have an appointment to see Avers? And, more importantly, how the hell am I going to pull off being a white, blonde noble-born bastard?

  If she’s suspicious in any way, she doesn’t show it.

  “Great, I’ll send him up,” she says, sounding as bored as possible as she replaces the receiver in its cradle.

  "Sign the log please," she says to me without further explanation. A crude visitor’s log lays open on the counter and I fill it in and sign it as E. Clarence to keep the charade going, but she doesn’t even look at it. "Into the lift, third floor, third right, Mr. Clarence," she says, pointing to the end of the lobby. I thank her and follow her instructions, stepping out of the lift onto the third floor and finding myself in a long corridor with grey carpets and magnolia walls. If no expense was spared on the lobby, it certainly was here. I walk past each one slowly, examining the names. Why did Edward have an appointment with a reporter? Was he supposed to be doing this dirty work for the Duke rather than me? My thoughts are a jumble and I try to reconcile them before I put on the biggest charade of my life.

  There are seven doors leading off from the corridor, three on each side and one at the end, but I do as I’m told and knock on the third. A voice tells me to come in and I find the small space occupied mostly by papers, files and coffee cups. There’s a decent sized computer on the desk and a thin black man sitting behind it. He stands up to greet me and I shake his hand, already liking his warm greeting a million times over Marvin’s cold one earlier.

  "Nice to meet you, Mr. Clarence. Please, have a seat," he gestures to a solitary visitor’s chair that faces his desk. He walks around me to close the door, but not before checking the corridor to see if there was anyone behind me.

  "I must say, I was surprised to hear that you decided to visit me in person," he says, assuming, I suppose, that I am indeed Edward Clarence.

  "Oh, I’m sorry—" I begin to say, but then I catch myself. Visit him in person? How else was this supposed to go down? I don’t look anything like him. For starters I’m half West-Indian and Edward comes from a pure line of British ancestry. I guess in the winter months you could say I just look like a tanned white person, but even that’s stretching it a bit.

  "No need to apologise, I’m excited to hear what you have to tell me about the Magic Circle and the Society, as you said it was called. It’s certainly better to discuss these things face to face rather than over the phone, and far more secure, I’d say," he goes on, oblivious to my hesitation.

  "Yes, of course," I say, not sure where to take the conversation. This meeting evidently wasn’t an errand for the Duke. It was obvious this morning that Edward wasn’t happy with the Magic Circle and was equally pissed at his father, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that he wants someone to publish a story about it. But why would he pick this particular reporter, this particular paper? The same one his father has chosen to expose Carlton Munday for whatever crimes he may be guilty of?

  "Matthew, can I call you Matthew?" I ask, to which he nods and smiles, "I think I have access to some very, very interesting information. The problem is I need to know that if I give it to you you’re going to do what’s needed with it to make it known," I lean forward and lower my voice a little. I push my accent to the limits of how posh I can get it, imitating Edward’s clipped Chelsea-boy inflection.

  "Well, that’s what I’m here for. You know, for years I’ve been wondering if there was more to the Magic Circle than the general public knew, but now that you’ve as good as confirmed it to me, I’m sure that they’re connected to the Society, although I’m still waiting for proof that that particular group exists. Did you bring the list of members you were mentioning?" he asks me excitedly.

  I have to think fast. Edward told him about the existence of the Society, which means that he was going to supply him with a list of names of members to prove it. That includes, no doubt, Ella’s name, as well as Agnes and Jer, which is not good at all.

  "I’m still trying to get my hands on that info, Matthew. But I do have something that might be of even more interest to you," I say, fingering the teddy bear USB stick in my pocket.

  "I hope you are going to deliver on that promise, though, as it would make an amazing story: SECRET AUGUR SOCIETY COLLIDES WITH MAGIC CIRCLE," he says, reading an invisible headline in front of his face and gesticulating dramatically. He seems like a nice guy, but I can see that his primary concern is getting a good story, and somehow I need to turn that to my advantage.

  "Yes, absolutely, of course. But what if I could get you proof that an even bigger conspiracy exists?" I ask, trying to catch his attention. He arches an eyebrow and wakes up his computer, I imagine to open up a document and take notes.

  "What kind of conspiracy?"

  "Well, I’ve come across some information that implicates the Civil Defence Minister in a number of inhumane Augur experiments, amon
gst other things," I say, wracking my brains for something better to say. Of course, I don’t really know what’s on the USB drive, but I’ve gathered bits and pieces from the Duke and Ella which all sounded pretty alarming to me. Maybe something will make this curious reporter bite.

  "You mean Carlton Munday? He’s actually acting Prime Minister now," Matthew says casually, fingers poised above the keyboard waiting for me to say something worth him writing down.

  "What?"

  "Yes, well, with the attack on Downing Street yesterday and both the PM and deputy PM in hospital, he’s acting in their stead right now. Probably not the best time to publish dirt on him, to be honest, what with things so sensitive right now."

  "Oh God," I say, running my hands through my hair nervously. With no other option, I have to revert to the initial plan of dropping the USB drive and leaving it in his hands. "Look, I have information on this stick," I pull it out of my pocket and place it between us on the desk, "I can’t say exactly what it is or where it came from, but I know people who are relying on you to publish it. Can you manage that?"

  Matthew Avers narrows his eyes and studies it for a moment, looking up at me.

  "You’re not Edward Clarence, are you?"

  "No, look, I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of any other name that would make you see me, but you promised a certain person that you would help publish data on Munday and I was given the task to give it to you. I have no idea what it is, honestly I don’t, but I do know that he’s bad news, and if he’s currently holding the reins, that means a lot of trouble for some very good people," I say placatingly.

  "So, who are you really?" he asks, picking up the drive and studying it.

  "I don’t think it’s worth saying. I’m just a completely ordinary guy who got roped into helping because I care what happens to these people," I say sincerely.

  "So, you’re a Normal that fell for an Augur, is that it?" he gets straight to the point. I’m slightly shocked and don’t hide the fact very well.