Faust Amongst Equals Tom Holt

by Faust Amongst Equals (lit)

  aristocratic country houses and the hunting lodges of minor royalty, it would only be reasonable to expect him to have taken something; and he hadn't.

  Or rather he had. And that was something of a bitch, because it was the one thing she would really rather not have parted with, given that it was genuinely irreplaceable. A framed portrait, early sixteenth century.

  She made sure that the intruder had gone, and then sat down on all that was mortal of the bed and had a good swear. While she was doing this (and doing it ever so well) a thought struck her like a Mack truck and she froze in mid-oath.

  If they'd come here just to steal his picture ...

  Why would they want to steal his picture?

  And who the hell were they, anyway?

  From the epicentre of the mess she extracted a suitcase, a few changes of clothing and a big, heavy, silver candlestick. Then she left the flat and caught a taxi.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HAVING concluded his interview with Lucky George, Sitting Bull had a wash, brushed his teeth and put on his body.

  For someone who'd been dead for over a century, his wardrobe was extensive and reasonably fashionable; a credit to his good taste and the lucky fact that he could put on a lot of noble savage/oppressed ethnic minority chic without actually trying. He selected one of his favourite outfits - the Mexican/ Chicano adolescent streetfighter with designer scars and matching paranoid psychosis - and took the elevator down to his grave.

  Not so much a grave; more a sort of pied-a-terre. It was perhaps the only grave in the entire United States that had remote-control operated hydraulic car-port doors.

  Down at the Silver Dollar on Whitier Boulevard, heart of the barrio, is one of the best places to pick up anything that's new on the street in downtown LA; at least, that's what they say in the brochure for 'the Los Angeles package tour offered by Mob 18-30, the holiday company specialising in tours for militant activists. When Sitting Bull wandered in and ordered a beer, the place was empty except for two old men playing dominoes and the brewery rep. And a strangely obscure figure, sitting on a bar stool by the juke-box drinking a pineapple juice.

  'Hiya, Jack,' said Sitting Bull. `How's it going?'

  `I got a cold,' replied Don Juan, heavily. `Too bad. You want to play some pool?'

  They strolled over to the pool table, and Don Juan racked

  up.

  `How's business?' Sitting Bull asked, chalking his cue and examining it for straightness. Don Juan shrugged.

  `Not so good,' he replied, `not so bad. Still, I think maybe I did wrong to change my career direction. As a philanderer I was good. This I don't do so well.'

  Sitting Bull tossed a coin and called heads, accurately. `Maybe,' he said. `Then again, maybe not. The way I see it, Jack, informing is good, steady work. Philandering, you're only ever as good as your last job.' He drew back his arm and shot the white against the pack with a satisfying crack. Nothing went down. `Is there much about right now?'

  `Pretty quiet, Bull, pretty quiet.' Don Juan crouched down over the table, examining the lie of the cue ball. `You know how it is. All the guys are out of town right now. Nobody who's anybody sticks around this dumb century for June these days.' He executed a tiny, stabbing movement that sent the white ball spiralling across the cloth like a vertiginous comet. 'Things'll pick up again in July, probably. I'm okay,' he added, straightening up and noting the position of the balls with approval. `I had a good May, so I'm not complaining.'

  `Anything special?'

  Don Juan nodded. `I turned in the captain of the Marie Celeste,' he said. `There's some guys in the insurance business in London who want to see him real bad, you know?' He chuckled without humour. `This time I have the feeling he's going to disappear completely. Your shot.'

  Sitting Bull examined the table, calculating angles of incidence and refraction. He liked his new lifestyle (deathstyle, whatever). It was lower profile, but it was worth it simply for not having to shave every day. The hair and the fingernails were a nuisance, of course, but you can't have everything.

  `I heard,' he said, perhaps trying a little too hard to sound as if he was just making conversation, `that there's something really big going down in your line right now.'

  `Maybe.'

  Sitting Bull addressed the cue ball, made the shot and chalked his cue. `Yeah,' he said. 'I heard Lucky George is back on the street.'

  `That's interesting.'

  `I heard,' Sitting Bull continued, sizing up the chances of cannoning off the back cushion to bring the cue ball back for the seven, `that there's a nice long price waiting for anyone with good information.'

  `Could be.'

  `Wish I could get me a piece of that,' said Sitting Bull to the cue ball. `Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't take it with you.'

  He watched the cue ball drift down the baize, clip the lip of the middle pocket and run with a clatter into the remains of the pack. Too much goddamn left hand side. Don Juan clicked his tongue sympathetically and sank four balls in quick succession.

  `You got anything, then?' he asked.

  `Who, me?' Sitting Bull drank some beer. `I was just interested, that's all. Just in case I did hear anything, that's all.'

  `I wouldn't bother,' Don Juan replied. `The latest is, they've called off all agents, what with the trouble and everything. Pity about that,' he added sideways. `If you had got anything, I mean.'

  He took his shot, but misjudged it by about an eighth of an inch. The ball quivered in the jaws of the pocket and stayed put.

  `Hey,' Sitting Bull said. `Just as well I don't, or I'd be disappointed.' He walked round the table a few times, remembering some very good advice he'd received from the

  Great Sky Spirit, way back in the old days. Never shoot pool with a spic, the Great Sky Spirit had said, or at least not for money. `What would the trouble be, Jack?'

  `A lot of very heavy things, Bull,' Don Juan replied, stroking his chin. `Well, maybe not heavy. More making the administration look a complete asshole without actually breaking anything. Neat touch the man's got, you've got to hand it to him.' He looked up, his eyes catching Sitting Bull's attention like, say, a sawn-off shotgun placed two inches from one's nose. `I like Lucky George, Bull,' he said. `A really regular guy.'

  `Absolutely.'

  `Got me out of a jam more than once. I hope he makes it all the way.'

  `Yeah, me too.'

  `That's good.' Don Juan bent his back and cleared the rest of the table in successive shots. `You know, maybe I am in the wrong business, Bull. Maybe I should try your line, huh?'

  `What, being dead?'

  Don Juan shrugged. `It's a living,' he said. `And you don't have to sell nobody down the river, either. I feel bad about it sometimes, Bull, I really do. Basically I'm a very sensitive person.'

  `Me too. I was misunderstood.'

  'You want another game?'

  `Thanks, but I've gotta move.' He put his cue back in the rack. `It's been good seeing you, Jack.'

  `Yeah, you too.' Don Juan smiled thinly. `And remember,' he added, `if you do get to hear anything about Lucky George, nobody wants to know, right? You got that, Bull?'

  `I got that, Jack. Be seeing you.'

  After Sitting Bull had left the Silver Dollar, Don Juan sat for a while, staring at the dregs of his pineapple juice and ignoring the obvious glances of the barmaid. It's a wonderful thing, being retired.

  Some time later, he got up and went over to the payphone.

  A trapdoor opened, and four shadowy forms emerged.

  So shadowy were they that the driver of the car didn't see them till too late. It would have been a nasty accident if the shadowy form actually hit by the car hadn't simply dematerialised.

  `Brilliant,' muttered the leading shadowy form under his breath, as the three survivors paused in a shop doorway to regroup. `What bloody genius put the hatch in the middle of a main road?'

  They looked back at the scene of the tragedy, which was faintly illuminated by the ed
ge of a streetlamp's penumbra.

  `Stone me,' growled the Number Two form. `It's a perishing manhole cover. How cheapskate can you get?'

  `I thought I could thmell thomething while we were coming up.'

  The leader shrugged. `Ours not to reason why,' he said, with a certain deficiency of conviction. `Right, here's what we do. We slip in, we ransack the place, we slip out again, we go home. All clear?'

  `Yes.'

  'Yeth.'

  Try as he might, the leader couldn't help but find Number Three's speech impediment tiresome in the extreme. Sheer bias on his part, he knew; spectral warriors are considered fit for active service if they pass a number of physical and mental tests, painstakingly designed after extensive research to ascertain whether the subject is up to the demanding tasks likely to be encountered by Hell's commandos in the field. None of these tasks involved the correct pronunciation of sibilants, and quite right, too. Nevertheless ...

  `Okay,' the leader sighed. `Synchronise your watches, people. Now...'

  `I make it nine forty-three.'

  `Nine thorty-thickth.'

  `No, you're wrong there, Vern. I checked with the speaking clock before we left, and-'

  `Now,' repeated the leader, `according to the street map, we're in Silver Street, so King's College should be...'

  `Your watch mutht be thatht. Hey, thkip...'

  The leader turned slowly round. `Yes?'

  `What do you make the time, thkip? Only my watch theth-'

  `Yes, but I checked it before...'

  The leader winced. `It doesn't matter,' he said. `Just synchronise them, okay?'

  'Yeth, but thkip, mine theth nine thorty-thickth and hith theth-'

  `Yeah, skip. What does yours say?'

  With a gesture of suffering fools, the leader looked at his wrist, only to see the sleeve of a black pullover and nothing else. Dammit, he'd forgotten his watch.

  `Nine forty-five,' he said. `Now, can we please get on with it?'

  The brief: break into King's College, Cambridge and comb the archives to see if there was anything there which might shed some light on where Christopher Marlowe, sixteenthcentury dramatist and graduate of said college, had got his information from. It was, the leader decided, absolutely typical of the bloody stupid, pointless ...

  `Shit,' observed Number Two, looking up at the gatehouse. `It's like a damn fortress. How are we supposed to get into that?'

  `Through the door,' replied the leader, mercilessly. `They

  haven't locked up for the night yet.'

  `Oh. Right.'

  `That's the whole idea. We go in, we hide till everyone's

  gone to bed, we frisk the place and bugger off. Now, when

  you've quite finished...'

  `Hey thkip, that'th pretty neat thinking.'

  `Thanks, Vernon. Come on, follow me.'

  Hiding till nightfall in a Cambridge college during termtime is easier said than done. Particularly if you're distinctively dressed in black trousers and pullover, black balaclava and black face-paint. Acting natural and inconspicuous takes just that bit more effort than usual. Stanislavski could have managed it, but not first time out.

  'Thuck thith for a game of tholdierth,' observed Number Three eventually, after they'd been politely requested to leave the boiler room for the third time. `I thought you thaid-'

  `Well I didn't,' the leader replied. `Just count yourselves lucky this is a university. Here, the weird is commonplace, so we should be okay. Let's go and have a drink in the bar.'

  `Have they got a bar, skip?'

  `They'd bloody well better have.'

  They did. Huddled in a corner of the junior Common Room over three pints of Abbot Ale, just under the dartboard, they looked totally inconspicuous.

  `Real bummer, Howard getting run other like that,' observed Number Three, wiping froth from the mouthhole of his balaclava.

  `Yes.,

  'You'd have thought they'd have warned uth.' `Yes.'

  'Maketh you thick, thometimeth.'

  `You are already, Vernon.'

  `What, thick?'

  `Yes.'

  Number Three considered. `No I'm not,' he replied, puzzled. `I had a headache thith morning, but...'

  The leader cleared his throat with a semblance of authority, before the whole bloody thing degenerated into farce. `According to the plan,' he said, `the library is up the stairs on our left as we came in, keeping the hall doorway to our right. Got that?'

  `Sure thing, skip.' Number Two finished the last of the salted peanuts. `What is it we're looking for, exactly?'

  `A lead,' replied his commanding officer, with wasted irony.

  `What thort of a lead?'

  `Any sort of a lead.'

  `Only,' Number Three continued, 'there'th a lead coming out of the back of thith computer game thing, if that'th any help. It goeth right acroth the wall and back into the-' r

  `A clue. Something to go on. A material fact.'

  `What sort of a material fact, skip?'

  One of the minor tragedies about being a spectral warrior is the fact that, being inhuman, they can't settle down and have children. Just now, the leader felt, he had an inkling of what he was missing.

  `All right,' he said. `Listen carefully. There's this bloke called George Faustus, right?'

  `You mean Lucky George.'

  `You got it. Now, shortly after he was arrested - very shortly, in fact, this nerd of a playwright called Christopher Marlowe wrote a play all about him. Lots of details in it that he couldn't possibly have known unless he was privy to some pretty restricted stuff. Marlowe was a student here at the time. The idea is, perhaps there's some papers or diaries of his lying about here somewhere which might put us in the right direction. Understood?'

  Number Two considered the proposition, and clearly found it counter-intuitive. `Hey,' he said, `that was years ago. Unless they're really, you know, untidy...'

  `My couthin Thimon'th very untidy. He keepth all hith old electrithity billth and gath billth and water billth and-'

  `Not for over four hundred years he doesn't, I bet.'

  'That'th becauth he'th only thirty-thickth. Give him a chanthe.'

  `No, listen,' interrupted the leader, slightly desperate. 'Marlowe's a great playwright. When you're a great playwright,

  they keep all your letters and papers and things. It's called research.'

  'My couthin Thimon'th not a playwright.' `Vernon.'

  `Meth?'

  `Shut up.'

  At twenty to twelve, the bar steward turned them out and they wandered about in the night air for a while, waiting for the college to go to sleep. At half past one, they crept noiselessly, or relatively noiselessly, to the library door, and the leader fumbled for his skeleton key.

  `Keith.'

  `Yes, skip?'

  `Whose turn was it to bring the key?'

  `Yours, skip.'

  `Kick the door in, Keith.'

  `Okay, skip.'

  It was, they realised, a big library. Big as in huge. There were, as Number Three perceptively remarked, books everywhere.

  `All right,' the leader said, raising his voice to a whimper. `Let's make a start, anyway. Those shelves over there.'

  They hadn't been at it for more than an hour, scrabbling aimlessly by the light of small dark torches, when all the lights suddenly went on. They turned, to see a small, bald man in a dressing gown bearing down on them.

  `Thki '

  P•

  'What is it now?'

  `Can we do the thilent killing, thkip? It'th my turn to do the thilent killing, and you promithed.'

  `It's not really appropriate right now, Vern. Next time, I give you my word.' The leader then straightened his back, smiled and said, `Can I help you?'

  The bald man stopped in his tracks for a moment. `Who the hell are you?' he asked.

  The leader thought quickly. 'Interloan,' he replied. `We got here late, your librarian's gone home for the night, we're in a bit of a hurry, s
o...'

  The words dribbled away like a test-tube of water into the Gobi desert. The bald man shook his head.

  `I know who you are all right,' he said.

  `Oh.' The leader frowned. `I don't want to sound facetious, but you don't seem terribly frightened, in that case.'

  The bald man snorted. `Frightened?' he replied. 'Frightened of you? Don't make me laugh. It'd take more than a cackhanded attempt at academic espionage to frighten me.'

  The leader felt a nudge at his elbow. 'What'th academic ethpio-?'

  `Well,' the bald man went on, `you can jolly well think again, because it's not here. I suppose that rat Amesbury sent you, didn't he?'

  Why not? `That's about it,' the leader said.. `Mind, we're only obeying ord-'

  `Appalling! Going about trying to steal another man's research papers and you call yourselves scholars! Where's your ethics?'

  `Hang on, I know that. It'th the one between Kent and Thutholk, ithn't it?'

  The bald man blinked twice. `What?'

  'Ethekth.'

  Just for once, the leader was glad he had Vernon along. Someone capable of saying something so completely disconcerting at a time like this was worth his weight in gold. He decided to press home the advantage.

  `Right,' he said. It was his favourite word. Positive without meaning anything. `That's enough out of you, Grandad. You tell us where it is, or it'll be the worse for you.'

  `I beg your pardon?'

  `He thaid ...'

  Time to get moderately heavy, the leader decided. From

  behind his back he produced a heavy black metal object that glinted unpleasantly in the fluorescent light of the library. It was, in fact, the remote control for opening the trapdoor, and likely to break or come loose if you so much as breathed on it, but not enough people knew that for it to be a problem. `Show me where it is or you'll get it, understand?'

  There was a pause, just long enough to set the leader wondering what he was going to do when the old man said What are you pointing that remote control key at me for? Then he started to back away. About bloody time too.

  `You won't get away with this.'

  `That's our business. Come on, move.'

  Slowly, and with deadly hatred written all over him, the bald man opened a cupboard and produced a folder. `I'll make you pay for this,' he said.