by Eoin Colfer
“No, Riley,” said Garrick. “Though you were a step closer this time.” He lifted the cup on the left, revealing a shining coin beneath. “I gave your eyes the slip on the second-to-last switch with a tap of my nail on the center cup. Misdirection, you see? I sent you toward what was not there.”
I understand, thought Riley, wishing that somehow he could use misdirection to escape from Garrick.
Someday, I will send you somewhere that I have never been. And then I will give you the slip for good.
Chevie woke up with plasti-cuffs around her ankles and wrists securing her to the toilet. Her head throbbed with dull pain, and drops of blood plinked into a pool between her feet from the tip of her nose.
She was about to unleash a string of swear words when she noticed Riley in the bath, cuffed to the safety rail.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, the sentence’s final t stabbing her brain on its way out.
Waldo! That moron. I will shave him while he sleeps for this!
“No, miss,” said Riley. “Though that lightning rod knocked the stuffing out of me. These cuffs have me baffled. They are slimmer than a shoelace, but I can’t even get a stretch on ’em.”
Riley talked a little more about the cuffs and their fantastic strength, but Chevie zoned him out. What she needed was a moment or two of quiet time so her mind could settle down a bit after the Tasering Waldo had surprised her with.
I wasn’t expecting that. And how was it possible that Felix Smart had put out a Be On the Lookout for me on the network when he never made it back from the past?
Unless he did come back and holds me responsible for all the mayhem?
It didn’t sound likely or plausible.
Orange was with the hazmat team. He knows I didn’t kill them.
Riley was saying something. His tone was insistent, urgent even.
Chevie blinked the stars from her vision. “What? What is it, kid?”
“Your nose is bleeding, miss. Snort it up and hawk the lot out in one go. That’s the best thing for it.”
Snort it up and hawk it out.
Chevie did as she was told, spitting a ball of blood into the sink, and was surprised to find that the bleeding stopped immediately, though the snorting did make her head hurt a little more.
“Did Waldo shock you?”
“He did,” said Riley. “That electric pistol of his had me dancing the dotard’s jig on the floor. I woke just before you.”
“We need to get out of here, kid. You opened your cuffs back in Bedford Square. You got any more magic tricks down your sock?”
Riley glared at his own tethered wrists as though he could free them with mind power. “Not one, miss. How do you open a set of bracelets that don’t have no locks?”
You don’t was the answer to that question.
Chevie followed the logic of her train of thought, ignoring the waves of pain.
“Okay. We’re secured but safe. Waldo has the wrong end of the stick, but the cavalry are on the way, and we can clear things up when they get here. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. So long as we’re in this room, we stay alive.”
Riley frowned. “So this being trussed up like market fowl is a good thing?”
“In a way, yes.”
“No offense, miss, but maybe you being a female has clouded your judgment. If we dangle here for much longer, Garrick will slit our throats and watch us bleed. He won’t even need to mop up after me, for heaven’s sake, seeing as I am already in the tub.”
Chevie glanced sharply at the boy, surprised that he would make a joke, even a gruesome one, at such a time, but then she saw the fear in the boy’s eyes.
The poor guy lives with terror on a daily basis, she realized.
From the suite came the distinctive clatter of armed men entering a room. Chevie heard footsteps padding across the carpet and the oily clicks of pistols’ safety catches being engaged. Muted orders were issued, and Chevie imagined agents taking up positions at entrances and other possible breach points.
“Hey,” she called. “Hey, you guys. In here.” Seconds later an agent appeared at the bathroom door, dressed in the FBI’s version of Casual Male, which had been thirty years out of date when they thought of it twenty years ago. Tan chinos, blue Windbreaker, button-down shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. This guy might as well have had FBI written on his back in big yellow letters, which, in fact, he did have if you ripped away the Velcroed patch. The agent could not suppress a smile when he saw Chevie on the toilet. He drew a switchblade from his pocket and pressed the catch, releasing the blade, as if he were about to cut the plasti-cuffs, then retracted the blade with a touch of the button and pocketed the weapon.
“At ease, Savano. Don’t get up.” Chevie scowled. She knew this guy from back home. His name was Duff, and he had been tight with Cord Vallicose, her favorite instructor from Quantico. Vallicose had seen potential in his young student and taken Chevie under his wing.
“Hilarious, Duff. You won’t be laughing so hard when I get out of here and rearrange your hairdo.”
Duff scowled back, obviously proud of his perfect do. “Can it, Savano. You and your little mystery buddy are in serious trouble. I’m hearing talk that our hazmat boys are MIA. The AD is on his way down from a meeting in Scotland, so until he gets here, keep your trap shut.”
Chevie swallowed her anger; she’d have words with this guy when this was all over. “Okay, Agent. I realize you’re doing your job, and I would probably do the same thing myself if I was in your nineteen-fifties shoes, though possibly with a little more empathy and less jargon. But we have a scared boy here, and with good reason. There’s a pretty impressive guy on our tail, who probably took out the entire hazmat team with a musket.”
Duff sighed like this crazy talk made him sad. “Yep, the BOLO said you were delusional. London does that to a person. Can’t get a decent pizza in the entire city.” He snapped his fingers. “Hey, you know who I should tell about this?” Chevie stiffened. “Don’t you dare!”
Duff pulled a phone from his pocket and made a big deal of focusing the camera. “No, no really. Cord needs to know about this. He said you were his finest student. This is gonna break his heart.”
Duff snapped a couple of shots of Chevie cuffed to the toilet and texted it across the Atlantic to Cord Vallicose.
“Take this seriously, Duff!” said Chevie, struggling to keep her voice down. She knew this guy; the moment she shouted at him he would simply walk away and slam the door. “People are dying, and it’s not over yet. Take your weapon off safety, tell your guys to look sharp.”
Duff seemed on the point of taking her seriously when a text jingled through on his phone. He consulted the screen and smiled broadly.
“It’s from Cord. You should read this—he’s devastated.” And with a nasty chuckle Duff backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Albert Garrick arrived at the Garden Hotel seconds after the London team, and could do little but scowl in frustration as he watched them hurry through the entrance. Six agents in Windbreakers, blending in about as effectively as a half dozen penguins would in the chic lobby.
Garrick cursed them for fools, then treated himself to a coffee from a nearby café while he adjusted his plans. His BOLO had yielded an almost immediate callback from Agent Waldo Gunn, and Garrick had hoped to reach the safe house before the inevitable band of heavy-handed federal overkillers. Except in this case it was not overkill. An entire garrison of agents would not be enough to keep him from Riley and the Timekey.
Had Garrick succeeded in reaching the scene before the away team, he could simply have taken what he wanted and disposed of Waldo Gunn; but with six armed agents keeping watch, improvised violence could not be relied upon. The odds were still in Garrick’s favor, but Riley had skill in the martial arts, having been taught by a master, and Garrick had no desire to be felled by a lucky strike from a child.
For a moment he allowed himself to be mildly distracted by the changes that had
overhauled Monmouth Street since what he had begun to think of as his day. Even though Smart’s memories had prepared him for the bright, shiny wonders of the present, it was quite another thing to spy them first hand.
In his day Monmouth Street had been mainly penny digs, and by this time of night it would be lined with residents taking great amusement from the japes of juvenile beggars trying to pry coin from the theater crowds. Now, there were no beggars on the street and barely an Englishman to be seen, though if Smart’s memory served him correctly, they let anyone call themselves British these days.
I might have something to say about that, thought Garrick. When I am king.
He was, of course, joking. He had no desire to be king. The prime minister held the real power.
Garrick finished the really rather excellent coffee, thanked the waiter, then strolled across the street to the Garden Hotel.
Inside the safe suite, Waldo Gunn was not happy. This place was blown, and he knew it. After nearly a decade of caretaking this wonderful location, with more than two hundred at-risk subjects sheltered, the FBI away team had rolled up in their black SUVs and marched mob-handed into his discreet haven. Discreet no more.
And, though Waldo was slightly miffed that his own cushy posting was jeopardized, his main worry was professional.
I don’t even know for certain who the bad guy is, he thought. Agent Orange makes strong claims against Agent Savano, but nothing in her file suggests such a violent nature. There was that infamous incident in Los Angeles, but in my opinion she acted heroically and lives were saved.
So now she’s a mass murderer? It didn’t make sense. Everything was topsy-turvy today. Instead of protecting fugitives, he was detaining suspects. Even more irritating was the sight of those clodhopping agents tramping all over his beautiful Italian rugs, and now they were even trying on jackets from the closet.
If one of them even looks at the Zegna suit, I will shoot him myself, vowed Waldo.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he called to a lanky agent sprawled on the sofa. “Take your shoes off the furniture. That’s a Carl Hansen!”
Waldo’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and it was the dedicated buzz that meant the message was on a coded channel and therefore official business. He checked the screen and saw the text was from Agent Orange. Short and sweet: Coming up.
Great, thought Waldo, twisting his gray beard to a point. Another fly in our overcrowded ointment.
The doorbell to the suite chimed, and half a dozen agents instantly threw various combat shapes, training their weapons on every flickering shadow.
“At ease, storm troopers,” said Waldo drily, crossing the small lobby to the intercom. “It’s one of our own.”
Waldo Gunn knew that he would probably choose to retire when this post went belly up. There was no way he could integrate with an office full of gun monkeys after twenty years of culture at Covent Garden.
The intercom screen showed a single figure outside the door.
Waldo pressed the talk button. “Identification, please.”
The man glared at the camera, as though reaching into his pocket was an inconvenience he didn’t have time for, then sighed and pulled out his badge, flipping it close to the lens.
It was Agent Orange, all right. Not a great photograph, but definitely the same man.
Maybe so, thought Waldo. But the FBI doesn’t operate on mugshots in our own facilities anymore. Why would we, when we have biometrics?
“Thumb on the scanner, please,” he ordered curtly.
“Really?” said the man with Agent Orange’s FBI badge and card. “I’m in a hurry here. Don’t want to be stuck in the cold just because some bucket of bolts can’t read my digit.”
“Thumb on the scanner, if you please,” insisted Waldo, not bothering to argue. If Orange was in a hurry, he should simply press the glass and be done with it.
“You’re the boss for now,” said Orange, and he placed his right thumb on the scanner bar, which took about five seconds longer than usual before matching the print to the one on file.
“See?” said Waldo. “That wasn’t so difficult. It’s just protocol.”
Waldo opened the door and shivered as a chill wrapped itself around his legs.
Must be a window open, he thought. I could have sworn I closed them all.
“The legendary Agent Waldo Gunn,” said Agent Orange, extending a hand. “Protector of lost sheep.”
“Legendary in certain circles,” said Waldo. He shook the offered hand and thought involuntarily, I don’t trust this man’s hand.
Waldo could not help glancing down. He noticed that Orange’s fingers were slim as a girl’s and the nails were as long.
Why the instinctive dislike? wondered Waldo, and then he remembered one of his mother’s various long-winded sayings: Never trust a man with long nails, unless he’s a guitar picker. A long-nailed man has never done a day’s work in his life, not honest work at any rate.
Orange relinquished Waldo’s hand and stared over his shoulder into the suite.
“Quite a gathering you have here, Waldo,” he said, his Scottish accent making the sentence five seconds longer than it would usually be.
That accent would drive me crazy, thought Waldo. It could take all day to finish a conversation.
“What can I do for you, Agent Orange?”
Orange’s smile was wide and thin. “Isn’t it obvious? I need you to release the suspects into my custody.”
Waldo bristled at the idea, which was so outlandish that he initially thought Orange was joking. “Your custody? That’s hardly procedure. These are suspects in an investigation. You are not an investigator.”
Orange seemed saddened by this attitude. “Perhaps not, but I do outrank you, Waldo.”
Suddenly Waldo did not appreciate this man calling him by his first name. “That’s Special Agent Gunn, if you please. And for your information, nobody outranks me in this suite. As officer in charge, I can trump the president himself if I deem it necessary. At any rate, the Assistant Director is on his way, and he has ordered that nobody interfere with the subjects until he arrives.”
“But they killed my entire hazmat team!” objected Orange. “No quarter was given, though it was asked. I was lucky to escape with my life.”
No quarter was given, thought Waldo. Quaint choice of words. “You do seem remarkably alive. And unscathed, too. Where are the bodies?”
Orange coughed into his fist. “That’s delicate and strictly need to know. It’s connected to our operation, which is about fifteen grades above your security clearance. I could tell you, but then . . .”
“You’d have to kill me,” said Waldo, completing the hackneyed phrase.
“And your family,” added Orange, straight-faced.
Waldo’s instinctive dislike of this Scot burned brighter. “There’s no call to be rude. We have a procedure in place here, and that’s the end of it. You may wait in the lounge if you wish, but there will be no contact with the suspects. After all, we only have your word for it that the detainees are guilty of anything.”
Orange’s smile never wavered. “That’s an excellent point. Unfortunately, I am not in a mood to be detained at the moment, and as you pointed out, you outrank me only inside the suite. And I am outside. So I shall partake of another excellent coffee from the establishment across the street and return later when the big-knob bluebottle has joined the party.” Orange stopped suddenly and his eyes brightened as though lit from within. “Can it be?” he cried, his accent suddenly less Scottish. “Why, I swear that it is.”
Waldo was reluctantly intrigued. “What is? It is what?”
Orange gazed past the suite’s custodian into the room itself. “Blow me if I haven’t been here before.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” said Waldo in the most patronizing tone he could muster. “I have a log of every single person who has set foot across this threshold in the past twenty years, and you are not on it.”
Orange was so de
lighted that he actually clapped his hands. “This was years ago, Waldo. Many years ago. If I remember it right, an exceedingly dodgy character answered the landlord’s rap in those days.”
“Fascinating story, really. But if you won’t come in, you must leave. Security and all that.”
Orange doffed his cap, revealing a head of hair that seemed gray or black depending on the incline of his head. “And all that, indeed, Waldo. A quick coffee bath for the ivories, and I shall return. Watch for me, won’t you?”
Neither man offered his hand upon parting, but Waldo Gunn flicked through different camera views on the security screen so that he could watch Orange all the way to Monmouth Street.
“I will watch for you, Agent Orange,” he said between his teeth. “You give your ivories their coffee bath, and I will watch for you like a hawk.”
Waldo placed a hand on his round stomach, the result of too many fried Cumberland sausages and late night hot chocolates with Chantilly swirls.
What is that feeling? he wondered, trying to match an emotion to the acid churning in his belly.
Waldo Gunn realized that, for the first time in twenty years, he did not feel safe in his own fortress.
Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. Orange is a disconcerting character, that is all. He’s not dangerous.
But Waldo Gunn’s subconscious was trying to tell him something, and the portly agent really should have listened.
• • •
Garrick ignored the coffee shop and virtually skipped down the Garden’s service alley, still hardly crediting his good fortune at having previously cracked this establishment.
He found that he could roll through his memory like a moving-picture show and find each frame as clear as reality, smells and all.
He remembered this house well. In his day, a flourishing bootmaker’s shop had stood on the ground floor, with a brass plate in the window claiming Charles Dickens himself as a patron, which was difficult to contest as by then the great novelist had been dead for nigh on a decade.
Above the bootmaker’s lived the dodgy character with a curious name. Billtong . . . no . . . Billtoe, that was it. George Billtoe had passed a sheaf of homemade pound notes in Barnet Horse Fair and incurred the wrath of a certain gang, who did not appreciate their turf being poached without ask nor license. The gang’s wrath was embodied in the form of Albert Garrick.