"No, you don’t," I said. I drew my Colt Repeater from its shoulder holster. The police officer put his hands in the air immediately, palms out to show they were empty. His colleague started forward, and I raised the gun just a little.
"Stay where you are, Les, and don’t be a fool!" said the other officer.
"Remember your training!"
"It could be a replica," said Les, staying back but still scowling at me.
I aimed casually at the squad car, and the Colt shot out all four of the tyres. The small crowd of drivers by the cones cried out in shock and alarm. People aren’t used to guns in England, which on the whole I approve of. I gestured for both police officers to remove the cones from the road, and they did so slowly and reluctantly. I kept a careful eye on them, making sure they stuck together so I could cover both of them with the Colt. I had no intention of shooting anyone, but they didn’t need to know that. The crowd of drivers was starting to get restive. I needed to get under way before one of them decided he was a hero type and did something stupid. Innocent bystanders can be a real pain in the arse sometimes. I backed away and slid behind the wheel of the Hirondel. I was breaking the first rule of the field agent; I was being noticed. So, when in doubt, confuse the issue.
"Tell your decadent government that the Tasmanian Separatist Alliance is on the move!" I announced grandly. "The oppressor will be forced to bow down before our superior dogma! All dolphins shall be freed, and no more penguins will be forced to smoke cigarettes!"
Which should give them something to think about. By the time they’d picked the bones out of that and wasted even more time trying to track down a terrorist group (and a license plate) that didn’t actually exist, I should have had plenty of time to go to ground. I was going to have to lose the Hirondel. It had become too visible, too noticeable. I gunned the engine, annoyed, and roared past the police officers, the crowd of drivers, and the long queue of waiting vehicles. I had to get to London, and fast. Some people leaned out of their car windows to try to photograph me with their mobile phones. I smiled obliging at them, secure in the knowledge that my torc hid me from all forms of surveillance, scientific and magical. How else could field agents like me operate in a world where someone is always watching you?
I left the queue behind and quickly disappeared into side roads and bypasses. I had a secret hideout on the outskirts of London, one of several I maintained for emergencies. The one I was thinking of was nothing special, just a rented garage in a perfectly respectable residential area. But it had everything I needed to go underground. To become invisible. I always kept my hideouts up-to-date and stocked with useful items for those rare but inevitable occasions when my cover was blown and I had to disappear in a hurry. I could go into any of my boltholes as one man and come out as someone entirely different, complete with totally new look and ID. The family didn’t know about these places. They knew nothing about the way I operated. They’d never wanted to know.
I reached the outskirts of London without incident, though I sat tense and hunched behind the wheel most of the way, in anticipation of a challenge or an attack that never actually materialised. The battered and bullet-holed Hirondel drew many stares, but no one said or did anything. This was England, after all. I headed into the respected residential area, and my very respectable neighbours watched openmouthed as I brought the car to a halt before my rented garage. I nodded and smiled to one and all, and they quickly looked the other way. I’d ruined my reputation here, but it didn’t matter. I’d never be coming back. I opened the garage door with a palm print, a retina scan, and a muttered Word, and then drove the Hirondel inside. I got out and sealed the door behind me, and only then finally allowed myself to relax.
I spent a good ten minutes just sitting on the bonnet, hugging myself tightly, too worn out even to move. I was tired, bone-deep tired, and weary of spirit. So much had happened in such a short time, and nearly all of it bad. But in the end I forced myself up and onto my feet again. I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of a rest, or even a good brood. My family would already have people out looking for me. Clever people, talented people. Dangerous people. I was the enemy now, and I had good reason to know how the Droods treat their enemies.
I peeled off my bloodstained jacket and shirt, to check my shoulder wound. The first aid blob had almost dried up, a shrivelled and puckered thing that only just covered the wound. I peeled it carefully away and found the hole was now sealed behind a new knot of scar tissue. The blob had used up its pseudolife to heal and repair me, and now it was just a lump of undifferentiated protoplasm. I dropped it on the floor and said the right Word, and it dissolved into a greasy stain on the bare concrete. First rule of an agent: leave no evidence behind. Useful things, those blobs. I’d have felt easier if I’d had a few more, but if you’re going to start wishing for things…I flexed my shoulder cautiously. It was stiff, and it still ached dully, but it seemed sound enough. My hands drifted up to touch the golden collar around my throat. My armour was no longer invulnerable. The protection and security I had taken so casually all my life had been stripped away from me, all in a moment. I wondered if I’d ever feel safe and confident again.
I sat down before the computer in the corner, fired it up, and pulled together a list of addresses and general locations of various old enemies who might know something about what was happening. Some of them might agree to help me, for the right consideration. Or intimidation. There’s never any shortage of bad guys in and around London, but only a select few would have access to the kind of information I was after. And most of them were very powerful people, often with good reason to kill me on sight, once I revealed who I was. I worked on the list, crossing out a name here and there where the risk was just too great, and finally ended up with a dozen possibles. I printed out the revised list, shut down the computer, and then just sat there for a while, gathering my courage. Even with my armour operating at full strength, these were still very dangerous people. Daniel walking into the lions’ den had nothing on what I was going to have to do.
But I had to get moving. My very respectable neighbours were bound to have called the police by now. So I called a certain notorious taxi firm on my mobile phone; anonymous black cabs whose drivers would take anyone anywhere and never ask awkward questions. You learn how to find firms like that, in my game. They were reliable but expensive, and I realised for the first time that money was going to be a problem. The family would have put a stop on all my credit by now and flagged my name everywhere else. All I had was the cash in my wallet. Fortunately, I’ve always been paranoid, and I think ahead. A small metal safe at the back of the garage held half a dozen fake IDs and ten thousand pounds in used notes. Enough to keep me going for a while.
I changed into a new set of clothes. They smelled a bit musty from hanging in the garage for so long, but they were nicely anonymous. So typical and average, in fact, that any witnesses would be hard-pressed to find anything specific about them to describe. I piled my old bloodstained clothes on the floor, and then broke an acid capsule over them. Shame. I’d really liked that jacket. One more stain on the floor.
I looked sadly at the Hirondel. I could never drive that marvellous old car again. It had become too visible, too remembered; and I couldn’t let such a car, with all the Armourer’s additions, fall into mundane hands. I smiled grimly. Even after all that had happened, I was still protecting family security. Saying good-bye to the Hirondel was like leaving an old friend, or a faithful steed, but it had to be done. I patted the discoloured bonnet once, and then said the Words that would trigger the car’s auto-destruct. Nothing so blunt and capricious as an explosion, of course; just a controlled elemental incendiary that would leave nothing useful behind and scour the garage clean of all evidence. Police forensics could work their fingers to the bone and still find nothing they could trace back to me.
I’m paranoid, I think ahead, and I’m very thorough.
I left the garage, locking the door behind me, and sure enough
the taxi with no name was already there waiting for me. I walked over to it and got in, and never once looked back. It’s an important part of a field agent’s job: to be able to walk away from anyone or anything at a moment’s notice and never look back.
The taxi took me back into London proper and dropped me off at the first Underground Tube station we came to. I rode up and down on the trains, switching from one line to another at random, until I was sure no one was following me. There was no way my family, or anyone else, could have tracked me down so quickly, but I needed to be sure. I got off at Oxford Street and went up and out into the open air. It was early evening now, and crowds of people surged up and down the street, in the course of their everyday lives, as though this was just another day. No one paid me any attention. That at least was normal, and reassuring.
The first name on my list was the Chelsea Lovers. Very secretive, and very hard to find. They changed their location every twenty-four hours, and with good reason. The Chelsea Lovers were hated and feared, worshipped and adored, petitioned and despised. And the only way to find them was to read the cards. So I walked casually down Oxford Street till I reached the rows of public phone kiosks, and I checked out the display of tart cards plastering the interiors. Tart cards are business cards left in the kiosks by prostitutes advertising their services. Sometimes there’s a photo (which you can be sure will bear little or no resemblance to the real woman); more often a piece of suggestive art accompanied by a brief jaunty message and a phone number.
The cards have a long history, dating back to Victorian times, and down the years have developed a language all of their own. A girl who boasts an excellent knowledge of Greek, for example, will not possess actual academic qualifications; though a visit to her would almost certainly be an education in itself. But underneath all the euphemisms and double entendres there is another, more secret language, for those who can read it. A wholly different message, to be read in the placement of certain words and letters, telling you how to find the current locations for darker and more dangerous pleasures. I worked out that day’s message and phoned the indicated number, and a voice at the other end, which might have been male or female, both or neither, gave me an address just beyond Covent Garden and told me to ask for the Kit Kat Club. Nice to know someone still had a sense of humour.
The place wasn’t hard to find. From the outside it looked like just another building, behind a bland anonymous front. No advertising, no clues. Either you knew exactly what the place was, or you had no business being there. I studied the exterior thoughtfully, while people passed me by, unknowing. The Kit Kat Club wasn’t the sort of place you rushed into. You needed to gird your spiritual loins first.
The Chelsea Lovers were a group marriage of assorted mystical head cases, dedicated to the darker areas of tantric sex magic, channelled through cutting-edge computer technology. They organised orgies that ran twenty-four hours a day, with participants constantly coming and going. With the kind of mystical power they were capable of generating, they could have picked up the whole of London and spun it around a few times before dropping it again. Only they never did, because…well, apparently because they were concerned with something far more important. What that might be, no one knew for sure, and most were afraid to ask. The Chelsea Lovers had links to every necrotech, psycho fetish, and ceremonial sex club in the city, and were famous for knowing things no one else knew, or would want to. They supported themselves by practicing entrapment and blackmail on significant people: celebrities, politicians, and the like.
Which was why the Chelsea Lovers had good reason to want Edwin Drood dead. A year or so back the family had sent me in to destroy the Chelsea Lovers’ main computers, and all their files, after they’d made the mistake of trying to pressure someone sheltering under the family’s protection. So I’d armoured up, forced my way in, and taken out their computers with a tailored logic bomb fired from one of the Armourer’s special guns. The computers melted down so fast there was nothing left but a puddle of silicon on the floor.
They never saw my real face; only the golden mask. So they had no reason to suspect Shaman Bond. Except, of course, that the Chelsea Lovers were suspicious of everyone, and quite rightly too. They worried people.
I went up to the perfectly ordinary front door and knocked politely. A concealed sliding panel opened, and a pair of scowling eyes studied me silently. I gave them the password I’d received on the phone, and that was enough to gain me entry. The sliding panel slammed shut, and the door opened just enough to let me in. I had to turn sideways to squeeze through, and the door was immediately locked behind me.
The security man leaned over me. He was big as a wardrobe, with muscles on his muscles. I could tell this because he was entirely naked, apart from enough steel piercings in painful places to make him a danger to be near during thunderstorms. He wanted me to take my clothes off too (house rules), or at the very least submit to a thorough frisking. I gave him my best hard look, and he decided to pass the question upward. I told him I was here to see the founding quartet, and he raised a pierced eyebrow. I gave him their actual names, which impressed him, and after nodding slowly for a moment, he lumbered off to find them.
I stayed put, by the door. I hadn’t been entirely sure what to expect. I mean, I’ve been around, comes with the job, but the Chelsea Lovers were a whole new area of depravity to me. The entire building had been hollowed out to form one large, open, and cavernous room. The Kit Kat Club was lit by rotating coloured lights, giving the scene a kaleidoscopic, trippy feel. Very fitting for a group whose origins lay in the sixties. Pretty much everywhere I looked there were naked people, or people dressed in the kinds of dramatic fetish gear that makes you look even more naked than naked. Leather and rubber, plastic and liquid latex, collar and chains, spikes and masks and every kind of restraint you’d rather not think about. There were no wallflowers here; everyone was involved with someone or something. They moved smoothly together, all across the huge room, flesh rising and falling, skin sliding over sweaty skin. There were no words, only moans and sighs and the sounds of a language older than civilisation. The faces I could see held a self-absorbed, animal look; all wide eyes and bared teeth.
Men and women everywhere, tangled together on the floor, up the walls, and on the ceiling, and even floating in midair. Sex beat on the air in an overpowering presence, hot and sweaty and pumped full of pheromones. I could smell sweat and perfumes and a whole bunch of psychotropic drugs. I wasn’t worried. My torc would filter them out. Even quiescent around my throat, my armour still protected me.
So much nakedness, so much sex, so much harnessed passion; but I couldn’t say I found it arousing. It was scary. They were working magic here, invoking strange and potent energies produced by people who had willingly driven themselves out of all control, people who would do anything, receive anything, and not give a damn. There was no love here, no tenderness; nothing but indulgence and transgression.
The wide cavernous room seemed much larger than the building should have been able to contain. This was spatial magic, fuelled by the tantric energies. The room expanded to contain the passion within. The walls, floor, and ceiling had taken on a puffy, organic look. All pinks and purples and bloody shades, patterned with long traceries of pulsing veins. The wall nearest me was sweating, as though turned on by the never-ending sex. The Kit Kat Club was alive and part of the proceedings. Where men and women bumped against the floor or walls or ceiling, they sank into the fleshy embrace as though into the arms of another partner.
I shifted my feet uncomfortably, and the floor beneath me gave subtly, as though I were standing on a water bed. People were drifting towards me, reaching out with inquiring hands. There was something in their faces that wasn’t entirely human; or perhaps more than human. Transformed by an emotion or desire so extreme I had no name for it. I was way out of my depth. So of course I put on my most confident face, and even sneered a little, as though I’d seen it all before and hadn’t been impres
sed then. I glared at anyone who came too close, and they turned away immediately, losing interest.
As my eyes adjusted to the flaring lights and colours, I began to recognise faces in the roiling throng: celebrities, footballers, politicians, even a few respectable businessmen from the City that dear prudish Matthew would probably have been horrified to discover in a place like this. I filed the faces away in my memory, for future thought. And perhaps a little blackmail, if money became tight.
The walking wardrobe returned with the four founding members of the Chelsea Lovers. They strolled with almost supernatural grace through the heaving crowds, which opened before them and closed after them without once stopping or even slowing what they were doing. The four founders walked on air, masters of their own space, touching nothing but each other. Their hands wandered constantly over each other’s bare flesh. They sank slowly down to hover before me, and the bouncer went back to his door. The four original Chelsea Lovers: Dave and Annie, Stuart and Lenny. Two men and two women, but far beyond anything so human now; instead they were as alien and other as anything I ever encountered from another dimension. They had to be in their late sixties, but they still had the smooth bodies of twenty-year-olds. Perfect as statues, lean and hungry, burning with unnatural energies, sustained by an endless appetite that had nothing to do with food.
They looked much as they must have done when they first met in Chelsea, back in the swinging sixties, when London swung like a pendulum. Two young couples, then, out on the town and hungry for new experiences. They found something, or it found them, and they were never the same afterwards. They started their first club in a little place just off Carnaby Street, and what they did there shocked even the most hardened souls of the permissive generation. The Chelsea Lovers hadn’t seen daylight since. They moved from location to location, known only to those in the know, travelling the secret subterranean routes beneath the city streets, flitting silently through the shadows of the undertown, with its ancient Roman arches, where all the bad things congregate, for fun and profit. Nothing ever touched the Chelsea Lovers. Even then, they were far too dangerous.
The Man with the Golden Torc sh-1 Page 12