“Back to your house,” Torbert said. “We need to see who escaped.”
“Pretty much everyone who went into the restaurant, I think,” I said. “I didn’t see any of the men who met with you when I passed through the parking lot. The question is, did you have only one informant?”
The other PCU agent was introduced as Tom Edwards. He appeared to be older than Karen, but younger than Dave, and I didn’t detect any magic in him. As we rode, he told us that Kilpatrick hung back when the group escaped out the back door, then followed with his gun drawn. He declared them all under arrest for treason. That was when his world collapsed under two hundred pounds of jaguar.
“I didn’t see any of the other men run toward the cars,” Isabella said.
“We did gain some very valuable information from the meeting,” Torbert told us. “Two of the men I invited are with the Secret Service, and we have the travel plans for Bronski and Adair on Thursday. I’m not sure we have the manpower to do anything about them, though.”
Isabella chuckled.
“We have to be careful,” I said. “We need Adair alive and healthy.”
“And we need Bronski dead,” Miika said. “We don’t know what kind of spells he used on Attorney General Adair. As long as Bronski’s alive, we have to worry about latent spells that could be triggered by Goddess knows what.”
I completely agreed with that. Bronski may not have been a strong mage, but he was a very clever and unscrupulous one.
By morning, all but one of the government agents at the meeting had contacted Torbert. And as crazy and loud as the battle had been, not a breath of it was heard on TV or the internet news. Isabella found several accounts of it on social media, however, including a fifteen-minute video taken from the second floor of a house about half a block from the restaurant. We all clustered around.
“Holy…” Karen breathed. The video showed Miika casually tossing fireballs and blocking bullets as though he was playing a game. Isabella seemed to materialize from the air, landing on the roof of an SUV, tearing the driver’s door off its hinges, and then diving inside. I was thankful there wasn’t any sound. She sprang out of the vehicle after a couple of minutes, but none of the men inside ever emerged.
The fight lasted only about five minutes, then Miika suddenly vanished. Isabella leaped from the parking lot to the top of a car, then to the top of the building, and never reappeared. The rest of the video showed the aftermath with the stunned FBI agents stumbling around.
“So, what’s our next step?” I asked. “We have today and tomorrow to try and find Aleksi Nieminen. Dave, do you think Bronski is smart enough to be doing all this on his own, or is Nieminen keeping him on a tight leash and pulling his strings?”
It was Karen who answered. “Clever? Yes. Smart? Not really, and definitely not a strategic thinker. If you tell him to go to Baltimore, and that there are obstacles in the way, he’ll figure it out. But if you asked him whether he should target Baltimore or Richmond, he’d be stumped.”
“What are you thinking?” Torbert asked me.
“Can any of your technology listen in on Bronski’s phone calls? We need to find out where he is and keep an eye on him. Use him to try and find Nieminen.” I turned my eyes toward Miika. “Then when Bronski and Adair leave town, we ambush them and take out Bronski? At that point, we have to hope that Adair understands what’s happened, and that it matters.”
Torbert nodded. “That makes sense. But if we don’t find Nieminen, the risk is still there.”
“It would make things more difficult for Nieminen to take control of the country, but the chaos, the fear, the leadership vacuum would still be there,” Isabella said. “Saving Adair is only important for turning things around. If the President and his advisors continue down the path they’re on, it won’t matter that we’ve saved their asses.”
“We have to try,” I said. I gestured at the screen. “That will look like a picnic if the government thinks they can take on the paranormal community. Nieminen is a fool. Human mages might have been atop the food chain when we were all hidden, but starting a mage war is completely insane.”
“I agree,” Miika said. “He has no idea what he’s getting into, and the power from a blood-magic fetish will just unify white mages against him.”
“You’ve seen mage wars?” Isabella asked.
Miika and I both nodded. “Elves are rather arrogant,” Miika said. “The thirst for power is very strong in some people.”
Chapter 25
The group decided that Dave and Karen needed to stay at the house because they were too recognizable. Too many of the people hunting us knew them personally. Miika and I could disguise ourselves by donning a glamour, so we would be the ones going out and trying to gather information and track down Nieminen.
Edwards went to work like he normally did on Tuesday mornings. He rigged his cell phone to send an alarm to Torbert if he was arrested. If he could get close to Bronski, the plan was for him to plant a tracking chip on the new PCU chief.
I wasn’t entirely comfortable depending on technology, but I didn’t have even the small laboratory at my cottage. I mentioned that to Miika and Karen, and after some discussion, we decided to try and get me into my Georgetown townhouse.
We took a car I hadn’t ridden in yet—a flashy red two-seat sports car. With a laugh, Miika said the best way to be inconspicuous was to be conspicuous. He donned a glamour of a man past middle age, half bald with white hair. My glamour was a blonde with large breasts in her mid-twenties. He dropped me off in the shopping district on M Street.
I wandered through a couple of shops, changing my glamour first to a woman ten years older, then later I added another ten years and fifty pounds, with far more conservative clothing. I couldn’t detect anyone watching me while I walked the five blocks to my house.
Miika had driven past the house twice, passing in front, turning down the side street, then coming back the same way several minutes later. He called and told me he hadn’t seen anyone who looked as though they were watching the house.
I walked past, trying to see anything that looked out of place, feeling for magic of any kind. Turning the corner, I walked into a shadow and blurred my image as I backed against the wall. Practically holding my breath, I waited for about twenty minutes. No one came to see where I had gone, and I didn’t see anyone else on the street. In a single motion, I vaulted over the wall into my back courtyard.
My wards were undisturbed, though some trace residuals told me that at least one magic user had tried to get in. Once I was in the house, I called Miika, and he left to drive by the nursery and see what kind of force Bronski had set to watching us there. We hoped that no one knew we had left, or that all of us had left, but I doubted the people watching were that stupid.
I spent two hours in my lab, creating some magical trackers and a scrying stone keyed to Nieminen’s blood. I also created something that I hoped might help locate the statue. I had no idea whether it would work, but figured it was worth a try. I used my own blood in the spell, something that skirted the edges of what the Goddess permitted.
Pocketing all my work, I crept out of the rooftop hatch and crossed roofs until I reached a tree between two buildings and climbed down. Miika picked me up, and we went back to his place.
Edwards called just before noon and told Torbert that another of the men who escaped the restaurant managed to stick a tracker on Bronski’s suit coat. Edwards transmitted the tracker’s address, and we input it to an app on my and Miika’s cell phones.
We drove downtown and left the car in a parking garage. The tracking app showed that Bronski was at the Department of Justice, near the National Mall, which made sense. That’s where Adair’s office was. I checked the GPS on my phone to make sure I knew where we were going. That map triggered a thought, so I checked a couple of other things.
“Miika, if you draw a circle eighteen hundred and twenty-four yards from the Department of Justice, it includes both the Capitol an
d the White House, not to mention most of the main government buildings.”
“So?”
“That was the diameter of that crater out in Arlington. And not only the White House,” I continued, “it would reach the river. We’ll have a national lake instead of a National Mall.”
He looked over my shoulder at my phone. “That has to be where Aleksi plans to hold his ritual.”
“That’s my guess. The only good thing about it is that demons hate water, so we might not have the same problems afterward as we did in Arlington.”
He snorted a laugh. “Trying to see the silver lining?”
I shrugged. “If it wasn’t for a blood mage trying to take over the world, doing away with that weird, dysfunctional government has its appeal.”
“You do have a point. So, how do we get into this Department of Justice?”
Using the same kinds of glamour to conceal our identities as we used before, we found the building and walked all the way around it. The tracking app consistently told us that Bronski was in the building.
“Or at least the tracking chip is,” Miika said.
I called Torbert.
“How do you get into DOJ?” he repeated my question back to me. “You don’t, at least right now. Security there is as tight as the Capitol or the White House. There is a café inside, but I’m not sure it’s open to the public.”
I heard Karen’s voice in the background, and Torbert said, “Hang on a minute.”
Karen took the phone and said, “There is a secret system of tunnels under the city that connect the White House with the Capitol and a number of other places. Security is tight, but there’s one access point you might be able to sneak into.”
She went on to tell me about an entrance to the secret complex through a hotel near the White House.
“Okay, where in the hotel do we go?”
“Well, I’ve never been there,” she said. “I just know it’s there. We’ll have to find it.”
“No problem,” Miika said when I hung up. “We just look for the nasty-looking men with automatic rifles standing next to a door that says, ‘no admittance’.”
I pulled the piece of lapis lazuli I had spelled out of my pocket. “I don’t feel the statue, and this scrying stone I spelled to search out Nieminen isn’t reacting either. I don’t think it would do us much good to try and use the hidden tunnels right now.”
Miika shook his head. “I agree with you. My understanding, though, is this is only a place of work. Bronski and Adair should be leaving sometime. Shall we simply wait for them?”
That sounded good to me.
While I watched the building, or more accurately, watched the app on my phone, Miika hiked down the street to a food truck and brought back some takeout. Even after seventy years in Earth’s realm, the unhealthy nature of a Polish sausage with sauerkraut and brown mustard on white bread made me cringe a little, but it tasted so good. We sat on a bus stop bench and ate while we waited. It was a huge building, and occasionally the app showed Bronski moving around inside, so I assumed it was working.
At about four o’clock Miika said, “He’s moving.”
I looked down at my phone and saw the dot that symbolized Bronski moving from the middle of the building to the edge of the diagram symbolizing the building. We jumped up and hurried around the building. A limousine pulled up to the curb in front of one of the doors.
“Go get the car,” I said. “I’ll follow them.” I looked around and no one was paying attention to us. I changed my glamour to that of a jogger. Miika took off in the direction of the parking garage and I waited.
Bronski and Adair came out of the building and got in the limo. I knew it couldn’t go very fast in downtown traffic, so I followed them, sprinting when I needed to, but conscious that I needed to run slow enough not to attract attention.
I had done some research attempting to educate myself about the U.S. government—how it worked, and who the key players were. Adair was a wealthy lawyer who became a politician, then he was appointed Attorney General. He owned a house in a wealthy enclave not too far from my place in Georgetown. Miika caught up with us as the limo turned onto Massachusetts Avenue, and I jumped in.
“I think they’re headed to Adair’s house in Kalorama,” I said.
“Maybe we can take them there.”
“I don’t know. There’s a car ahead of them and one behind, with four men in each. I assume they’re guarding him.”
It turned out that I was right. The limo and the other two cars pulled into a gated driveway, and the gate closed.
But as soon as we turned onto that street, a unique stench of blood magic mixed with demon essence assaulted me and I gagged. It was far more powerful than what I had sensed at either Weber’s home or laboratory. I pulled out the scrying stone, and found it was unnaturally warm.
“It’s here,” I said.
Miika turned toward me. “What’s here?”
“The statue. The jaguar statue. Can’t you sense it?”
He shook his head. “You seem to always know when magic is around, and what kind of magic it is. You asked if I am a battle mage, but most Elves would never associate that with a halfling.”
I thought about it. I had always been able to identify magic, both its type and strength. Identifying Bronski as a mage and Karen as a witch was automatic, even though she was stronger than he was.
“I guess so,” I answered him as I pulled out my phone and called Isabella. When she answered, I said, “We found the statue and Aleksi Nieminen.”
We left Isabella with a pair of binoculars in Rock Creek Park where she could watch Adair’s house. Miika and I stopped by a market and picked up food, then went back to the Chevy Chase house where I took a shower and cooked dinner. After we ate, Miika delivered a large, uncooked roast to Isabella, who planned to spend the night in the park.
That evening, Torbert briefed us on what to expect.
“Usually, the President takes a helicopter to Camp David,” Torbert said, “but my sources say that Adair is going to drive. He evidently doesn’t like to fly.” He showed us a picture of a car on Isabella’s laptop. “Does this look like the car they were using?”
We nodded. What I knew about limousines could be stuffed in an acorn.
“That is one of the most heavily armored and protected vehicles in the world,” Torbert said. “In addition to ballistic armoring and special glass six inches thick, it has a sealed cabin with an independent air supply, infrared smoke-screen and oil-slick deployment capabilities, and tear gas dispensers. I don’t know what kind of magic you plan to use, but cracking that car is going to be difficult. It’s basically a rolling fortress. The escort vehicles are specially armored SUVs, so they aren’t easy to attack either.”
Thursday morning, Isabella reported that Bronski and Adair once again set out in the limo. When I checked the app on my phone, I discovered they weren’t on a route toward downtown, but rather heading north on Massachusetts Avenue.
Miika and I jumped in the sports car and managed to tuck in behind Adair’s motorcade as it took the beltway to the I-270 ramp toward Frederick. In addition to the armored limo carrying Adair and Bronski, there were two SUVs ahead, and three behind. Where the road was wider, one of the trailing SUVs pulled alongside the limo.
I pointed out a helicopter flying above the convoy. “That helicopter may be a problem. They’ll be able to see anything we do,” Miika said.
I called Torbert and told him what we had seen. “They are evidently going up to Camp David today,” I told Torbert. “Isabella said that Nieminen wasn’t with them when they left. Can you supply some backup for her? You need to track him when he leaves Adair’s house.”
“You do realize,” Torbert said, “if Nieminen decides to use the statue from where he is, he’ll not only take out the richest power brokers in Washington, but half of the foreign embassies in town. And your friend Isabella is right at ground zero.”
“Are you always so cheerful in th
e morning?” I asked.
“It’s my job to try and anticipate disasters.”
“What I can’t figure out,” I said, “is how that thing in Arlington happened without taking Nieminen and the statue along with the rest of Pentagon City.”
“Well, let me know if you do figure it out,” Torbert responded. “Every time I think about that, I get a headache.”
We followed Adair’s limo to Fredrick, Maryland, and then onto the road to Catoctin Mountain Park, where Camp David was located. At that point, I was pretty sure Bronski wouldn’t deviate from the plan I’d overheard at the White House.
I told Miika, “Torbert says we won’t be able to get within miles of Camp David due to their security. The GPS on my phone won’t even show a route to Camp David.”
“So, what do you want me to do?”
“Pass them. Let’s get ahead of them and find a good spot for an ambush.”
He grinned. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
I did expect him to find a reasonable place to pass, not do it on a corner, whipping the sports car back into the right lane seconds before we splattered on the grill of a truck. I spent the next twenty minutes debating with myself whether I wanted a policeman to stop us for speeding.
Shortly after entering the park, Miika braked hard for a corner that turned out to be sharper than he anticipated.
“Pull over,” I shouted, waving my hands. “Pull over.”
He finally did. “What?”
“Find a good place to hide the car. That corner was perfect.”
That got me a raised eyebrow, then he puckered his lips, looked at me kind of sideways, and said, “Yes, you’re probably right.”
I jumped out and trotted back the way we’d come, while he went in search of a hiding place for the car. A glance at the tracking app on my phone showed Bronski a little less than ten minutes behind us.
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