They flew on, the tension building on the bridge.
“Shields and radar cloak raised,” Daneel 1 informed them.
“Thanks, Daneel,” Capie replied.
“At current velocity, five minutes to the coastline,” Daneel 1 formally added. “Mount Logan is seven minutes beyond that.”
Paul nodded but did not reply. What sort of reception was awaiting them on Earth? He thought he knew, but it was mostly just guess work.
First, they would build an extensive set of underground caverns inside Mount Logan. Then they were going to go looking for trouble, starting at the Errabêlu facility in Transylvania.
After that, they were going to start hitting the capital cities of the world.
“Coastline in sight,” Daneel 1 reported. And yes, there on the view screen, Paul could see a small strip of white on the horizon and the haze of large mountains well beyond that.
They sped onward, crossing the beach, going feet dry over the Alaskan coast.
SIXTEEN
The Saint Elias Mountains, Canada
Mount Logan
Monday, 8:54 a.m. PDT
May
The view outside the balcony windows was absolutely stunning. In some ways, it reminded Paul of the view from the Ice Castle in the Disney movie Frozen.
There were ice and snow covered mountains in all directions, as well as mountain valleys and ravines. The countryside was undeniably rugged and hostile, yet it was also beautiful.
And, for a change, the wind wasn’t howling its siren song.
Capie stood beside him, staring out the window too.
“Mesmerizing, isn’t it?” she asked.
He nodded and smiled at her. “Yes. I’m glad you talked me into putting our bedroom up here, above ground.” He paused for a moment. “But enough sight-seeing, for now at least. Daneel 1 is waiting on us downstairs and it’s time to get to work.”
Holding hands, they walked over to the elevator shaft and stepped in, their magic dropping them slowly several stories before emerging on the seventh level down.
Here, their new facilities, hollowed out of the solid granite rock of the side of Mount Logan, consisted of a number of offices and conference rooms. Capie and Paul occupied adjoining offices just down the hall from the shaft.
But they walked past those offices, going all the way to the end of the hall to the largest conference room on the seventh floor.
A small group of Scotties awaited on their arrival. Daneel 1 held the ‘chair’ at the other end of the long wooden table. He was flanked by Selma 1 (from the TV series Time Trax) on Daneel’s right and Norby 1 (from the Janet Asimov robot series) on his left.
“Hi, Dad,” Daneel 1 said. “Have a seat. We’ll have an update here in just a couple of minutes.”
Paul pulled out a chair for Capie and then seated himself, making himself as comfortable as he could.
The previous few days had been busy ones. Not only had the bulk of the 50,000 Scotties carved out the Mount Logan facility and provided it with furnishings and PCs, but specialty teams of Scotties had already made the first Errabêlu raid. At 3 a.m. local time, a thousand Scotties had en-globed the Transylvania castle on Mount Izvorul Călimanului, completely isolating and sealing the castle off from the outside world. Then the Scotties had moved in, rendering everyone in the castle unconscious and taking them prisoner.
Paul had been a bit surprised at the haul. Back in the Mount Izvorul Călimanului Castle, when Hamadi had held Capie prisoner there, the castle was virtually deserted. But this time there had been half a dozen wizards on station and nearly a hundred Oni.
No one was sure yet what that meant. It was one of the many questions that an interrogation team of Scotties were asking the prisoners. Or rather, asking the avatars of the prisoners.
In addition to the good news that the raid had been successfully completed, Daneel 1 had also reported the discovery of written records of the Errabêlu society from a clerk’s office in the castle, the records apparently containing the names of all the society’s members.
After the raid, the Scotties had gone to the trouble to remove all evidence of their attack, including repairs of some minor damages to the castle structure. When they pulled out, there was nothing to suggest that anything at all unusual had occurred there. In a day or so, when other members of Errabêlu became suspicious of the silence emanating from the castle and investigated, they would find nothing. Instead, it would simply appear that the wizards and Oni there had wandered off someplace, perhaps going out for pizza or Chinese takeout.
Paul and Capie were interested in the intelligence gathered from both the prisoners and the records that had been found. If anything had been learned that might impact future operations, they wanted to know.
Daneel 1 (his cube sitting on the tabletop, the image of his head on top of the cube), cleared his throat. “I’m getting a feed from Rosie 408. You were right, Dad. The number of wizards and Oni at the castle were because of beefed up security. A direct result of the disappearance of Hamadi and six Oni. Oh, and the damage Daneel 1 and Hamadi did to the southeast tower too. Errabêlu linked the incident to you but they apparently didn’t get any info from Hamadi between the time he took Mom prisoner and the time we took him.”
“That’s a relief,” Capie noted with a sigh.
“According to Tejas Rathore, one of the male wizards we captured in the raid, Errabêlu has been involved in an arms buildup the last three months. Rathore doesn’t know the details, but apparently they have added thousands of new Oni to their ranks and have upgraded their talismans as well.”
Paul pursed his lips. “That is not welcome news.”
“And, according to all of the wizards, there are rumors that at least two wizards of Errabêlu are fabricating super-talismans as well.”
The room was silent as everyone absorbed and pondered this disquieting revelation.
“I don’t suppose there were any details reported on those super-talismans,” Capie asked, her face one of disappointment.
“Sorry, no,” Daneel 1 added.
Paul absently stared into space. “Still, the Scotties have done an excellent job. All mission goals were achieved. Daneel 1, are the interrogations completed on our new prisoners?”
“They will be soon,” came the quick reply.
“Assign another company of Scotties to escort them to Azkaban Prison. And let Daryl 71 keep increasing the size of the prison. He can put all the Oni in stasis if he wants to, but I would like the wizards kept available for further questioning.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Ω
Paul and Capie walked hand in hand eastward along the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue, slowly passing the Major General Comte Jean de Rochambeau bronze statue in Lafayette Square and slowly drawing even with the White House across the street.
The time was early, nearly 4 a.m. Despite the hour, there were some lights already on in the executive mansion.
“This is as close as we dare get without the Secret Service becoming nosy,” Capie observed, with a glance over at the President’s residence.
“I’m not sensing any magic in use, are you?” Paul asked.
“No, I’m not. But that doesn’t make me any less nervous. ‘It’s the White House, for crying out loud. You can’t just drive up and ring the bell,’” Capie declared, quoting Julius Levinson from the sci-fi flick Independence Day.
Paul smiled at the appropriateness of the quote. “I’m nervous too. Remember, no portals unless we are spotted. We want to keep the energy signatures as low as possible.”
“Right,” Capie remarked with a smirk. “Just levitation and invisibility spells allowed. Got it.”
With another glance around, Paul waved his arm, invoking one of those aforementioned invisibility spells. Then, moving quickly, the two of them walked over to the iron fence in front of the North Lawn, rising quickly over the top and then settling back down to the grassy turf beyond.
They hurried pas
t the circular drive and levitated up to a second floor window on the southwest corner of the building. There, using Paul’s molecular spell, they passed through the window and into the dressing room for the President of the United States.
The room was pitch dark.
Paul moved without hesitation through the single small door and out into an anteroom. From there, he waved a hand, slowly leveraging open the door into the president’s bedroom.
Even before he’d become a wizard, Paul had a very low opinion of politicians in the country—or of the past century, for that matter. He had been tired of them all. He thought of them, regardless of political party, as mealy-mouthed, spineless, greedy, power-hungry, dirt-bags. They promised anything and everything to get themselves elected but once in power, all they answered to were lobbyists of special-interests who lined the politician’s pockets with money, favors, position, and power.
Many a time Paul had quoted Mark Twain on the subject, telling others “We have the best government that money can buy.” And he meant the sarcasm inherent in every word of that too.
Of course, these days, he knew he had been wrong in his earlier assessment. Now he understood that political figures were merely puppets—willing and otherwise—of the Errabêlu wizards. He therefore adjusted his appraisal of them even lower, accordingly.
Here, in this very room, lay the President of the United States, sound asleep, snoring loud enough to wake the dead.
Capie entered the room right behind Paul, making a face at the racket the president was creating, and shaking her head in amazement. This was a side of the woman that very few ever got to see.
From a north-western state, the former United States Senator was well known for her steel-like personality and her no-nonsense form of governing.
With another wave of his arm, Paul cast another spell, blocking any light or sound from leaving the room. Then a second spell to hold President McCluskie in her state of sleep followed by a third spell to create an avatar of the woman.
The ghostly form of the avatar, wearing decorative pajamas, materialized near the foot of the bed, its face slack and devoid of emotion or interest.
Paul stepped closer to the avatar. “Do you know who I am?” he asked the hologram.
The image of light studied Paul’s face for a moment. “Yes.”
“Who am I?”
“Paul Armstead, a rogue wizard, responsible for murdering several Oni and at least one wizard,” came the reply.
“So, she also knows about Errabêlu too!” observed a not very surprised Capie.
“So it would seem,” Paul quietly surmised. It raised the question of how much the American president knew and how involved she was in the wizard conspiracy. But before he could ask any of those questions, Capie beat him to the punch.
“What do you know of the murder of Christopher Kingsley?” his wife asked, murderous fire in her eyes.
The avatar’s reply was quick enough. “His death was a mistake. Those responsible were unaware of the man’s health issues. They were instructed to hold Kingsley to use as bait to lure his daughter and son-in-law into a trap.”
Paul raised an eyebrow, glancing back over his shoulder at Capie. “So your father did have health issues?”
She squirmed a little under the question. “He might have. If so, he didn’t tell me about it. I admit that he sometimes did keep things from me, to protect me. Still, that doesn’t excuse their murder of him.”
With a sigh, Paul agreed with her. “No, it doesn’t.” Then he returned his attention to the avatar. It was time to gather some pertinent intel. “How many Errabêlu wizards are here in the United States? How many Oni too? What arrangements do you have with them?”
Emotionlessly, the avatar replied. “I know the name of only one wizard here in the United States. Oliver Jacob Clarke, who resides in Georgetown. I have met with the man only a few times. And I have met a hundred or more Oni over the years. My arrangement with the wizard is simple. I meet with an Oni representative at least once a week. They tell me what they want me to do. I do it. In return, they help with financial donations, favorable publicity, good media coverage, congressional support, and with election results.”
Capie flinched at the last part. “They change election results?”
“Yes.”
“It figures,” she muttered grumpily.
Paul asked for and was given Clarke’s home address. Then he waved the avatar away.
“Wait a minute!” protested Capie vehemently. “I wanted to tell her what I think of her! I actually voted for her in the last election! What a sell-out! The—”
Paul chucked and held up a hand to stop his wife’s tirade. “Remember, that was an avatar we were speaking to. The real President of the United States won’t remember our little visit because we never really talked to her. So anything you told the avatar would have been wasted effort.”
Capie pouted for a few moments as they worked their way back out through the dressing room and into the outside early morning air. “It wouldn’t have been wasted. It would have made me feel a lot better!” She studied her husband’s profile for a moment. “At least she isn’t a wizard.”
Paul nodded in agreement as they set foot on the grass.
Their night escapade into the White House was merely the latest in a series of similar operations, starting eighteen hours previously with the Prime Ministers of Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, and from there, moving westward with the motion of the Earth’s rotation. In each case, a few Scotties had infiltrated the official residences, creating avatars of key government leaders and questioning them.
The team that had tried to question the General Secretary of North Korea had gotten more than they had bargained for. That individual was not a Normal but a wizard of Errabêlu. The Scotties involved had barely managed to extract themselves without compromising the whole operation. Subsequently, other such teams of Scotties had been more careful.
Working their way west, Paul, Capie, and the Scotties had interviewed thousands of leaders in the world’s governments. Here in the States, while Paul and Capie had taken on the most prominent assignment—that of questioning the president—other teams were interrogating the Speaker of the House, the Congressional majority and minority leaders, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The story that had emerged rather early, and was confirmed over and over again, was that the world’s government leaders were fully aware of the Errabêlu wizards and were totally and openly cooperative with them. After all, the wizards had made it crystal clear what would happen to them and to their families if anyone even thought about not cooperating.
How such a secret known to so many for so long could have been kept from the general public was something of a mystery to Paul. But it had obviously been kept a secret and successfully so.
In the meantime, the Scotties had gathered a ton of intelligence data on the wizards of Errabêlu. The locations of many of their residences were identified, as well as other pertinent information and intelligence. And all without the Scotties tipping their hand to Errabêlu.
Ω
The Situation Room on the subterranean 12th floor of the Mount Logan facility was large enough to hold hundreds of Scotties, providing them with several long tables’ worth of workspace. The room’s four walls held holographic maps of the Earth’s surface. The main map, stretched along the north wall, was of the entire Earth. This was the map that currently held Paul’s and Capie’s attention now as Daneel 1 spoke. On the map, various multi-covered lights blinked and moved, signifying the shifting positions and locations of teams of Scotties. The red stationary lights were the designated targets, each one representing a safe house or residence of a wizard of Errabêlu.
“As you can see, Dad, most of the teams are in their starting positions,” Daneel 1 pointed out. “Ready to move in when you give the word.”
Paul didn’t reply but continued to study the map while thoughtfully
rubbing his chin. There were a lot of teams in place, 112 of them by count, scattered all across the globe, from Washington, D.C. on the west all the way around the globe to Wellington, New Zealand on the east.
“Operation Bushwhack is scheduled to go off at 7 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time,” Capie said. “And it will be, what, 11 a.m. in Wellington?”
The image of Daneel 1’s holographic face above his cube shrugged. “Not ideal, no. In order to maximize our chances for success, we need to trigger Bushwhack simultaneously. And, while it is 7 p.m. Monday night in Washington D.C., it is midnight in London, 1 a.m. Tuesday in Paris, 7 a.m. in Beijing, 8 a.m. in Tokyo, and 9 a.m. in Canberra, Australia. In other words, there really isn’t an ideal moment Earth-wide to catch all the wizards in their homes. No doubt we will miss some of them. But this represents our best opportunity to use surprise on our side and capture most of them, especially the most powerful of the wizards—the ones in the United States, China, and Russia. And if we miss the ones in Wellington and Canberra, then that’s the price we will have to pay.”
“Understood,” Paul said dispassionately, still watching the lights on the map. If he was counting right, the last team had just moved into position.
Daneel 1 apparently noticed the same thing. “Hadaly 240…” (the fictional female robot created by Auguste Villers de l’Isle-Adam) “…reports that her team is at the designated position,” he stated impassively. “They are near the residence of the President of Myanmar. You may remember, Dad, the president there is also an actual wizard, like the General Secretary of North Korea.”
“Is there a problem?” Capie asked.
There was a pause while Daneel 1 relayed the question.
“Hadaly 240 is not sure,” he replied uncertainly. “There’s just something different there, she says. For one thing, she’s seeing a lot more snakes around.”
Paul’s head jerked around in a tight spin. “Snakes? In Naypyidaw at that time of the morning? Send me an image, quick!”
A picture formed on the map in front of them, the image that of a fairly large snake twisted up in some shrubbery. The snakes head was pointed outward, the tongue lashing in and out.
The Genie and the Engineer 3: Ravages of War Page 16