“Very well.”
“Thank you for meeting me,” Michelle said as Sobek settled into the armchair in her suite. He stank of tobacco and now she was beginning to find it comforting. A sure sign she needed to go home. “I’ll make this brief because we don’t have a lot of time.”
“Why is it you Americans are always in such a hurry?” he asked, his eyes slowly closing as he settled farther into his chair. They opened again, just as slowly.
“This has nothing to do with how American I am. There was an attempt on Ra’s life yesterday.”
Sobek bolted upright in his seat. “Is he alive?”
“He’s fine now, but he’s decided it is time for him to leave and find somewhere where he’ll be safer.”
“So he’s going to the Moon.” It wasn’t a question.
“No. He has other plans.”
“How do you hide an ace with that kind of power? Is he going to the Committee? Is that why you’re really here? You don’t need him! We need him!”
“Jesus, Sobek, settle down,” she said. The drama from the day before had made her more tired than she realized. “We’re making arrangements for him to have a private life where no one knows who he is. And no one is going to know where he is, either.”
“Except for you,” he snapped.
“Maybe. We haven’t worked out those details yet. Suffice it to say that he just wants to fade into the night, never to be heard from again.”
“Then who is going to protect us?”
“No one,” she replied. This was the part she had dreaded. “You have three options, only one of which I would take myself. First, stay here. You’ll likely be overrun by the Caliphate once they realize Ra’s gone. Right now, we’re having a large ceremony featuring Ra so no one thinks they’ve managed to kill him. We’re hoping it’ll buy us some time.”
Sobek shook a cigarette out of a crumpled packet, then lit it. “And what are my other wonderful options?”
“You know what they are,” she replied. “Go to the Moon or to Las Vegas. Or I suppose you could go to Jokertown, or any place where jokers are welcome. The point is, you get out of here while the getting is good.”
Sobek scratched his snout while blowing smoke out of his mouth. “Once we start leaving, the Caliphate will pounce.”
Michelle let a bubble capture the smoke from his cigarette. The bluish haze floated prettily in its iridescent shell. She went to the door and opened it, letting the bubble float into the hall. As she shut the door, she let it pop. “I’ve made arrangements for that, but you’ll have to act fast. In two days Dutton will have arranged a way out of Old Egypt for the Living Gods and jokers that’s fast and safe.”
“And how is that?”
“I can’t say.” She continued catching his smoke with her bubbles. They hovered at the ceiling. “I trust Dutton. And I hope you can trust me. For old time’s sake.”
“And my job is to get the jokers to agree to leave.”
“Simply put, yes.”
“You do realize that if I don’t get them to go, they’ll likely die.”
“Yes. Do you think I like this? You’re not safe here anymore. You only had the illusion of safety while Ra was here. Anyone can die. It was foolish to think you could remain this way forever.”
Sobek stubbed his cigarette out. There was a moment when Michelle thought he might actually bite her out of frustration, but instead he said, “Most people live their lives in a foolish way. I know Anubis is ready to leave, as are Nut and Geb. Tawaret might be difficult, but she’s old and tired. Having the responsibility of leading us has weighed heavily on her shoulders. I doubt she’ll be difficult to convince. Hathor and Horus I don’t know about, they were quiet at the meeting. And what about the other jokers? How am I supposed to handle that?”
“You must have a way to contact them.”
“Not all, but yes. We have private social media groups. I can put out a blast. This doesn’t give people much time to settle their affairs.”
“How about none, but we must do it fast. Once the Caliphate knows Ra is gone, none of you are safe.”
It was breezy and cold in the First Court. The days may have been mild this time of year, but the nights were chilly. Adesina had wrapped her wings around herself. Dutton had a cashmere scarf tied around his neck and sported a heavy coat.
The First and Second Court were crowded with jokers of all sorts, among which the Living Gods were but a handful. Most were sitting on the ground with suitcases next to them and many had pets as well.
“What’s taking so long?” Michelle asked Dutton.
“Patience is a virtue, Miss Pond,” he replied.
“I’m all out of virtue at the moment.”
Suddenly, a portal opened and a short, plump woman with curly red hair stepped through. She started walking toward them and when she got closer, Michelle could see the pinkish scars on her face. And Michelle really knew that face.
“Mollie?” She pointed at the woman and turned toward Dutton. “She’s supposed to be in prison! How did you get her out? Really, you’ve broken I don’t know how many laws here, Dutton. Also, she did some serious damage to my girlfriend when we were in Kazakhstan.”
Mollie hung her head. “I’m so sorry, Michelle,” she said softly. “I really am. Theodorus is helping me. He’s helping me make things right.”
“That’s pretty much impossible, you know that, right? Things happened to all of us in Talas, but you just kept on going even after you were out of the zone. Not to mention what you did before … before you were ever in the zone.”
“I feel as if we’re missing something here,” Bastet said. Drake nodded. Both looked deeply uncomfortable.
“That is Mollie Steunenberg,” Michelle said, anger making her face ugly for the moment. “But you can call her Tesseract. She … ah … folds space. Super crazy. Meet Drake and Bastet.”
Mollie looked as if she wanted nothing more than the floor to open and swallow her whole. Michelle thought that would be a perfectly delightful thing.
“You’re being a tad harsh on the girl, aren’t you?” Dutton asked. Michelle gave him the coldest smile she could, and he actually took a step back. “What matters here is she is the solution to our problem. She’s been helping Theodorus, and he’s agreed to let Mollie get the jokers out of Old Egypt.”
“I see. So she’s our transportation to the Moon, I guess.”
“Not to the Moon just yet. We get the jokers and the Living Gods to one of Theodorus’s islands. Then we prepare them for the Moon trip. After that, we’ll sort out who wants to go where, but clearly, we need to go now.”
Michelle heard a high-pitched whistling.
Before she could react, a bomb went off in the midst of the First Court. Screams and panicked cries went up from the jokers. Through the smoke, Michelle saw the broken bodies of Geb and Nut. The violet-skinned joker was missing his head.
“Oh, shit,” she said. There had been no jet noise, and the area affected was small. Drone? she thought. “Mollie!” she shouted, running toward the blasted area. “Get that portal open. Now!”
Tesseract spread her hands and a portal shimmered open. Beyond the gate Michelle could see a well-manicured lawn leading to what appeared to be a hotel. Standing next to the portal was a row of jokers wearing khaki-colored uniforms.
“Come on! You don’t have time to wait.” Jokers started running for Mollie’s portal. They got jammed up, and she widened it for them. Michelle let a barrage of bubbles spew upward, knowing that the drone could be anywhere, and unless it ran into one of her bubbles, it could continue to bomb them.
And then it didn’t matter because Drake opened his arms and they were immediately covered by a heat shield. It spread out, protecting both the First and Second Courts. The stampede to the portal slowed. The jokers hustled through the portal silently, sparing only the briefest glances at Drake. He was wearing his Ra apparel and saving them for the last time, but he was also the reason they were fleeing. More
than one of them gave him a murderous look.
The shield stayed up, a beacon in the darkness, until the last joker stepped through the portal.
“You ready?” Mollie asked. There were bruise-colored circles under her eyes and she looked like a junkie coming down hard off a binge.
The portal opened and Michelle saw her own living room. Adesina immediately stepped through, flopping down on the sofa with a happy sigh.
“You next,” Michelle told Drake. He stepped through without sparing a glance backward. She suspected he wasn’t going to miss Old Egypt at all.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” Bastet asked Michelle. “I may have disgusting habits.”
“You’re not going to live with me,” Michelle replied. “This is a nice long visit while we get you settled somewhere. I’m just not sure what we’re going to do with Drake.”
“Jesus Christ, go!” Mollie snapped. Her eyes were suddenly wild and her body was shaking.
“Shit.” Michelle pulled Bastet through the portal, which snapped shut immediately. She’d seen Mollie with that look in her eye before.
Bastet pulled an envelope out of her backpack and passed it to Drake. He opened it and read the contents.
“Hi there,” he said happily as he held out his hand to Michelle. “I’m Aiden Moore. That’s me.”
Within That House Secure
XI
MATHILDE HAD TO ADMIT, after three months on the run, that Theodorus made an excellent international fugitive. Theodorus fled in style.
When Malachi and Clifford Bell had finally convinced Theodorus that if he was not going to submit to subpoenas then the only alternatives were either going into open and armed rebellion against the government of the United States or fleeing the country, Theodorus had first made a comment about Charleston having a history of the former.
“Look how that worked out,” Malachi had said.
The obvious place to go was the Moon, but Theodorus had other plans.
“Well, then, the bases. The launch facilities,” insisted Cliff. “Keep moving from one to the other. Most of those properties are in nations without strong extradition treaties, and many of them are outright extraterritorial. SCARE won’t send agents to an island where the only government is, well, you.”
Again, Theodorus demurred. “Soon,” he said, “we will be leaving for a new world. I think it’s time I saw some of this one before that.”
And so, with a small group of his closest associates, Theodorus embarked on what the unstable ace Mollie Steunenberg called his “Farewell Tour.” Mathilde supposed that Mollie, with her power to open portals to, well, just about anywhere, was the pilot. The nine-foot-tall joker Troll was recruited to act as security. Malachi served, as he had for decades, as purser and general factotum.
Mathilde herself, to her annoyance, was the tour director.
“The Eiffel Tower looks exactly like a picture of the Eiffel Tower,” Mathilde said. “You don’t need to see it in person, it’s too big a risk. Despite President Towers’s comments in the press, France remains one of America’s closest allies and my countrymen are not as progressive about jokers as they like to claim. Remember what we heard about their anti-terrorist squads attacking the joker community in the Catacombs? As soon as Mollie opens a gate and you glide out onto the Parc du Champ de Mars, security forces will swarm all over us.”
Theodorus sipped his piña colada through a long straw. The floorboards creaked beneath his weight. The five of them were the only patrons of a bar built onto a reef in Parottee Bay, perhaps a kilometer off Jamaica’s southern coast. Mollie had brought in the usual advance team that morning, and they had spread around the usual prodigious number of American dollars.
“Visiting our friends in the Catacombs is a good idea, too,” Theodorus said. Then asked, “Why go to the Parc du Champ de Mars?”
Mathilde said, “Because that’s where le tour is.”
“I don’t want to just see it, Mathilde. I want to stand on top of it. Mollie, could you open a gate onto the upper observation deck of the Eiffel Tower? And one in the Parisian Catacombs?”
Mollie Steunenberg was eating fresh grilled fish out of an aluminum foil wrapper with her bare hands. She acted like she hadn’t heard Theodorus’s question.
And maybe she hadn’t, thought Mathilde. The woman was an enigma. She kept to herself, mostly, or at least as much as she could considering the little group’s odd circumstances. She often muttered under her breath, and usually refused to be drawn into conversation. She answered as few questions as she could. She ventured no opinions unless badgered.
She was also the only one of them who had gone swimming off the reef. This despite the monitoring collar she wore around her ankle. Mathilde supposed that Mollie imagined the collar to be waterproof, which, technically, it was, as it was little more than a plastic box full of random wires and metallic bric-a-brac. Mathilde had built it herself at the little workbench she maintained in her office at Witherspoon Aerospace, built it to Malachi’s specifications, which were purely visual.
The real collar, the one the federal authorities had designed to monitor and control Mollie’s movements and use of her ace power, was now worn by the shape-shifting joker impersonator who had secretly taken her place at a hidden government facility in the American Southwest.
“Mollie,” said Troll. He was stretched out on the plank floor, several empty beer cans beside him. His voice was a deep bass, and past experience showed that Mollie at least noticed when he spoke, even if she didn’t pay attention.
Wonder of wonders, this time she did. “Good fish,” she said.
“Mr. Witherspoon asked you a question,” said Troll.
“Oh,” said Mollie. “Oh, sure. Sure, whatever.”
Malachi, who was wearing one of his best suits despite the surroundings, rolled his eyes.
“Did you hear what the question was, Mollie?” Mathilde asked.
Mollie shrugged. “Did it have something to do with opening a gate someplace?”
Mathilde nodded. “Yes, it did.”
Mollie said, “Then sure. Sure, whatever.”
So they went to Paris, and stood atop the Eiffel Tower, high above the City of Lights. Then they went into the Catacombs, deep below it.
And they went to Cambodia and saw Angkor Wat. They went to China, where they walked along an unobserved section of the Great Wall under a full moon. Mollie transported them to the Indian city of Agra to see the Taj Mahal, where Theodorus nearly caused a riot when he unexpectedly struck out on his own, saying later that he wanted to see if the sacred Yamuna River was as polluted as he had read. Troll took to keeping a closer eye on his employer from then on, and managed to prevent Theodorus from disappearing into the depths of Krubera Cave in the Western Caucasus Mountains.
New Zealand and Kenya and Chile and Mozambique and a dozen island chains spread across three great oceans. The Gobi Desert. The Canadian Rockies.
They followed Theodorus’s curiosity. Were there really dozens of privately held libraries full of ancient manuscripts surviving in Timbuktu? Off to Mali (where nobody would talk to them about libraries or anything else). Was the Tsheringma herbal tea served in Thimphu as refreshing and reviving as he had read? Off to Bhutan (it was pretty good tea, Mathilde thought).
They moved so quickly, and so often, that the only indication they had that they were being pursued was via messages from Clifford Bell about U.S. government activities and world press reports. Well, that was almost the only indication they had. Malachi, as ever, had his own sources of information, which he, as ever, kept to himself. This was, ultimately, a good thing, because Theodorus would often overlook Cliff’s warnings that there were SCARE agents closing in, but whenever Malachi cleared his throat in one particular way, and raised his eyebrow a particular height, Theodorus would decide it was time to move on.
Always with their secrets, Mathilde would think at those times. But she was always glad to move on. She didn’t want to go to a prison i
n Duncan Towers’s America any more than any other joker.
This was their life for months and months. Somehow, despite the hectic pace, it was a pretty calm life. Until they went to Kiev in the Ukraine. Until they met Marcus Morgan, the Infamous Black Tongue.
They went there because Theodorus wanted to see a bell tower.
“Seems like we go and see a lot of towers, boss,” said Troll.
“Ah, but Howard,” said Theodorus, using Troll’s actual name, which even Malachi didn’t do, “this tower was designed by Johann Gottfried Schädel nearly three hundred years ago and remains one of the most notable features of the Kiev skyline.” He waved the tablet he was holding in emphasis.
“Yeah, I didn’t remember who designed it, but I knew the bit about the skyline,” said Troll.
Theodorus gave Troll a speculative look.
“Went to Kiev in 1996 on vacation,” said Troll.
“I’ve seen it, too,” said Malachi. “It’s in that monastery. The one with the tunnels.”
“The Kiev Pechersk Lavra,” said Mathilde. “The Monastery of the Caves. Toured it during a trip you sent me on about twelve years ago.”
Mollie was sitting on the floor of the great hall of the Lake Como villa they’d been staying at for just short of a week. She was flipping her way backward through the pages of an Italian language magazine. Without looking up, she said, “Gold dome.”
Theodorus grumbled, “Fine, so you’ve all seen it. I haven’t. And tell me more about these tunnels, those sound interesting.”
“No more caves, boss,” said Troll.
“I don’t think you’d fit into them anyway,” said Mathilde. She didn’t care whether they went to Ukraine or not. By this point, one place seemed as good as any other. She was anxious to get back to work, anxious to hear from Oliver, whom she hadn’t seen in over six weeks, anxious about how things were progressing on the Moon outside her direct supervision. At that exact moment, she was also mildly curious about whether Mollie Steunenberg read Italian, but that was a minor concern.
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