Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  “What-what are you doing?” Darren turned in his seat, a bewildered look on his face.

  “Tate just needs Callum. As of Monday, I don’t even work for them anymore.” Cassie slung her backpack on her back and tugged the large duffel out of the rear compartment. Callum handed Meg his backpack.

  “You don’t want what’s in it?” she said.

  He patted his coat pocket to indicate that he had everything he needed. “I’ll call you as soon as I know more and we have a plan.”

  Five seconds later, the three women stood together on the sidewalk, the light turned green, and Darren and Callum drove away. Cassie and Anna each grasped a handle of the duffel bag and hung it between them.

  “I don’t like being separated from Callum,” Cassie said, “but this is for the best. Unless Mark told him, or Darren did, Director Tate doesn’t even know that you guys are here. Better to keep it that way as long as possible in case someone remembers why MI-5 cared about you in the first place.” She started across the street.

  Meg and Anna belatedly followed, with Anna trotting a few steps to catch up since she was attached to the handle of the bag.

  “Are we worried about someone following us?” Meg said.

  “You can’t understand the kind of bureaucracy a government is until you’ve worked for them. We’re hoping that the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing,” Cassie said.

  “What about the Americans?” Meg said. “By my count, we may have three different agencies after us.”

  “How do you figure that?” Anna said, looking back at her mother.

  But Cassie knew what Meg meant. “The CIA used to care about you. That’s one. It may be that the Dunland Group-turned-CMI still does. An agent from Homeland Security was in the Consul-General’s office before we boarded that plane in Oakland. There may be others.”

  “Would Homeland Security have revealed all to the CIA in the last eight hours?” Anna said.

  Cassie laughed. “Not unless inter-agency cooperation has improved enormously in the last three days. Anyway—” she surveyed the street corner, “—it looks to me like we’re alone.” She started walking down the street they’d reached. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”

  “Inside where?” Meg said.

  “Ah.” Cassie grinned at her. “This is where the fun begins.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Anna said.

  Cassie didn’t answer—just shot Anna another mischievous grin, heading into a deserted pedestrian shopping mall with cobbled streets. All the buildings were at least a hundred years old, three or four stories tall, with a shop at street level and apartments and offices on the upper floors. They passed a Subway and a Burger King. America had made big inroads into Wales since Meg was last here.

  Cassie led Meg and Anna to an alcove with a key code by the door. She punched in some numbers, and the door unlocked.

  “Callum and I planned ahead,” Cassie said. “All intelligence agencies have safe houses, and this is ours.”

  “The Project’s?” Meg said.

  Cassie glanced at her. “No. Ours.”

  They hurried down a narrow hallway, taking several lefts and rights, before exiting that building into an enclosed courtyard. Then they went through an archway, up several flights of steps to another long corridor, and finally stopped at a wooden door made of solid oak with another keypad beside it. This one also required Cassie to press some buttons before it opened, and then she stuck her face up to it.

  “Retina scan,” she said.

  The door lock clicked, and they entered.

  “Oh, wow.” Anna dropped the duffel bag to the floor.

  “Thanks.” Cassie shut and bolted the door.

  The apartment was a corner one, spacious and full of light, with hardwood floors, ceramic counters, and lots of polished chrome gleaming from the spotless open-plan kitchen.

  “This is incredible!” Meg said. “How did you afford—” She stopped, deciding it was crass to ask about money.

  “We didn’t,” Cassie said, answering the question anyway. “I don’t know if Callum ever told you, but his father worked for the U.S. State Department and was a bit of a spy himself, though he would never say how much. This apartment belonged to him. He bought it off the record and off the books through a shell corporation back in the 1960s.”

  “How fortunate that he set this up in Cardiff,” Meg said.

  Cassie smirked. “He had safe houses in London and Paris too. And somewhere in Bulgaria, of all places. It’s a good thing the corporation pays the taxes, because they’re ridiculous.” She stopped, grinning at the stunned looks on her friends’ faces, and then added, “In case you hadn’t realized, Callum is from what you might call ‘old money’ on both sides of his family. When David made him Earl of Shrewsbury, he wasn’t the first lord in the family tree.”

  Anna laughed and, for the first time since they’d left Rhuddlan, it sounded genuine. “That explains a lot. He probably has more right to the throne of England than David does.”

  “Being an American, I pumped him for any memories of hanging with nobility growing up, but he’s pretty close-mouthed about the whole thing,” Cassie said. “I can tell you that Callum’s mother is descended from James Stewart, who happens to be Callum’s friend back in the Middle Ages.”

  “James Stewart, the fifth high steward of Scotland?” Meg said.

  “The very same.”

  “I bet he never mentioned it to James,” Meg said.

  Cassie shot Meg another grin. “Callum didn’t know about it then, just that he was related to the Stewarts. After his mother died, he’d boxed up her papers and stuck them in a closet in the London safe house. It was only after we returned that I started going through them, and we discovered she’d done his whole family tree.”

  It may have been a strange conversation to be having while on the run from multiple governments, but Meg thought it explained a few things about Callum. And maybe more than a few things. It could be just the historian in Meg projecting, but he seemed like a person who’d been raised in a family with deep roots—and deep pockets—in the past.

  “You might be wondering why we didn’t take David here to recoup after he was abducted,” Cassie said.

  Anna crouched beside her duffel, unzipped it, and began to lay out its contents. “Actually, at this point I wasn’t going to second guess you.”

  “David was ill. He needed the hospital.” Meg said. “You guys did your best. Nobody doubts it.” She glanced at Cassie, and the look on her face was one of relief.

  “Not even David?” Cassie said.

  Meg looked at her more closely. “Have regrets been eating at you?”

  Cassie nodded and shrugged at the same time. “I’ve tried to ignore them, but I wish we’d made different choices from the start. Then David wouldn’t have almost been killed, and Callum and I wouldn’t have had to spend the last two years here.”

  “If you hadn’t made those choices, you wouldn’t have reconnected with your grandfather. Or been here to help us.” Anna held a potato in each hand and looked up at Cassie. “How long do you think we have until Callum gets back to us?”

  “The poor man should be busy for a while. But we have our cell phones.” Cassie took out hers, waved it, and concluded in a singsong voice, “And nobody can track them.”

  Anna watched her sourly. “You’re awfully cheerful for someone who hasn’t slept since yesterday.”

  “I got some sleep on the bus and plane. Enough to stay awake for a while longer.” She studied Meg and Anna. “I think we need to make a pact.”

  Meg came closer so the three women surrounded the duffel bag Anna had stopped unpacking. “What kind of pact?” Meg said.

  “We’re going back to the Middle Ages, right?” Cassie said.

  “Right,” Anna said, speaking for both her mother and herself.

  “We need to be prepared,” Cassie said. “Last time, it was a disaster from start to finish for Callum and me, thou
gh I’m glad David made it fine. We’re not going to let that happen again. Nobody is going to get left behind.”

  “How can we possibly ensure that?” Anna said. “Sometimes—like when Mom jumped off the balcony at Chepstow, or David got Bronwen to almost wreck her car in Pennsylvania—we can control what happens. But half the time it just happens.”

  “You two have to promise not to leave us, not for any reason, no matter how compelling it feels at the time,” Cassie said. “I’m not saying David didn’t do the right thing two years ago. A bullet wound isn’t something to mess around with. But if you’re going home, we’re coming with you.”

  “You both are really truly sure?” Meg said.

  At Cassie’s fervent nod, Anna added, “Callum too?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You can ask him, but he’s already said he’s sure. We’ll take the risk, and we’re not Marty.”

  “You came the same way as Marty, though,” Meg said.

  “I’m not the same person I was then. Neither is Callum.”

  “Okay,” Anna said. “But I think the person you’re really talking to is Mom. Because I’m not sure that I even have the genes for this.”

  “What are you talking about—” Cassie broke off as her phone rang.

  She stared at the screen for a second and then answered. “Hello?”

  Meg couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but Cassie mouthed, “Mark.” She listened for a few seconds before saying into the phone, “Slow down, slow down. What’s going on?”

  Meg leaned close, but then Cassie made a disgusted sound at the back of her throat and put Mark on speakerphone.

  His voice filled the room. “I’m telling you, it’s all gone sideways.”

  “Can your phone be traced?” Cassie said. That wasn’t the response Meg would have made to Mark’s assertion, but given how far they’d come since Rhuddlan, perhaps it was the most important question she could ask.

  “You people are costing me a fortune in tech,” Mark said. “This is my third mobile of the weekend, same as you.”

  “Where’s Callum?” Cassie said.

  “He won’t tell me,” Mark said. “He and Jeffries are on foot, heading your way, but they may not make it that far.”

  Meg peered out the window to the street below. Many more people were moving along it now that the sun was up. As it turned out, Cardiff did wake early, even on a Saturday.

  “He was supposed to be at a meeting at the Office,” Cassie said.

  “He never made it. This was all a ruse.” Regret leaked from every syllable Mark spoke. “Director Tate never wanted Callum’s help with the disaster at Signals. The whole thing was a setup to get you out of the United States and out of the American government’s clutches so Tate could have you here.”

  “Right where you wanted us,” Meg said.

  “Not me! But yes, this is all about you and Anna.” Mark’s laugh was bitter. “When Jeffries rang to say that he and Callum—and only he and Callum—were two minutes out from the Office, Tate’s surprise made Callum suspicious.”

  “How did he get away?” Cassie said. “Why is he still with Darren?”

  “I’ll let him tell you that,” Mark said.

  Meg thought back through everything that had happened in America. “What about your friend George? Was he in on it?”

  Meg could hear Mark’s hesitation when he spoke. “The Consul-General told him to give you every assistance. She didn’t tell him why.”

  “To screw the Americans, that’s why,” Anna said. “And us, I guess.”

  “The minute Callum reaches us, we should just leave,” Meg said. “If some poor guy hadn’t been flying the plane, we could have crashed it into the ocean and been done with all this.”

  “I keep telling you, we can’t return without what David needs,” Anna said. “Not if we can help it.”

  “I’m working on that,” Mark said.

  Meg had forgotten for a moment who they were talking to.

  “That’s why Callum called me first. That’s why I’m also coming to you.”

  “I do not want another chase through the streets of Cardiff,” Cassie said. “Where are we meeting?”

  Anna had already started repacking the duffel. Cassie headed off with the phone tucked to her ear, still talking to Mark. Meg stared out the window, finding her anxiety rising and falling with every breath. The budget cuts to the Project made sense now. The powers-that-be had wanted her family when they were in front of them, but they didn’t want the expense of waiting for them between trips. Callum’s group hadn’t made any headway in duplicating what they could do, so the government had decided to focus on watching for their re-entry and then springing into action. It was just Tate’s bad luck that Meg and Anna had come into this world in such a remote place—and that Cassie’s and Callum’s loyalty to Meg and her family trumped their loyalty to any modern government.

  Cassie returned with the phone put away, carrying two swords and a finely woven mesh bag nearly the size of a backpack. Meg didn’t ask what was in it, and Cassie didn’t explain. With some maneuvering and distorting both ends of the duffel out of shape, she managed to fit all the items inside the larger bag.

  “That’s what you meant by being ready,” Anna said.

  “It’s time to go,” Cassie said. “If there’s anything else you want or need, now’s the time because in an hour we could be gone.”

  That sounded very good to Meg.

  Anna nodded her agreement. “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  November 2019

  Callum

  Callum clamped down on the string of curses that were running through his mind at his own government’s betrayal. “Whatever impulse prompted you to notify Director Tate that we were close—”

  “He requested that I ring him as you exited the airplane, but his mobile was busy so I left a message and didn’t speak to him directly.” Jeffries shrugged. “It seemed reasonable to try again. Honestly, sir, I didn’t know.”

  At the next traffic light, only a few blocks from where the women had left the SUV, Jeffries had rung up Tate. Cardiff Castle had still been in view to the west, perched on its motte, and they’d just passed City Hall. Because the light had turned green as Director Tate had answered the call, Jeffries had pulled to the side of the road to speak to him. Callum had insisted he put Tate on speakerphone.

  “Sir,” Callum had said. “This is Director Callum.”

  “Callum!” Tate said. “I trust your flight was smooth?”

  “Yes, sir. I apologize for arriving at such an early hour and on the weekend too.”

  “Early to you; late for many of us here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I understand that not only Cassie but several guests accompanied you on your flight,” Tate said.

  At that point, Callum had glanced at Jeffries, who leaned across the gearbox to whisper, “I didn’t tell him. Jones asked me not to.”

  Once Jones had brought in George Spencer to produce Anna’s and Meg’s identification, Callum had accepted that he’d opened his plans to his own government. Callum hadn’t seen a way to counteract that, not if he wanted Anna and Meg safe in Wales; it had seemed like an acceptable risk.

  When Callum didn’t respond, Tate spoke again, “The Consul-General in San Francisco let me know that you had successfully rescued our two time travelers from the Americans. That was good work. I’m looking forward to meeting them.”

  “Of course, sir,” Callum had said. “I’m sure we can arrange that later today.”

  His answer had prompted a pause of several beats from Tate, who’d then said, “They aren’t with you?”

  “No, sir. Not at the moment.”

  Jeffries had then made a slashing motion with one hand across his throat, but Callum hadn’t needed his warning to know that something wasn’t right.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like there’s trouble ahead of us,” Callum said. “An accident, I think. If
you’ll excuse me, Jeffries and I will be along shortly.” Callum closed the connection and moved for the door handle.

  Jeffries opened his door at the same time Callum did.

  “What are you doing?” Callum had said.

  “Coming with you, sir.”

  “You can’t,” Callum said. “It could be your career.”

  “It could be yours too, sir,” he’d said. “Besides, I’m not doing anything wrong—just walking with you to get a cup of coffee.”

  “You should take me in,” Callum said.

  “I’m not going to do that, sir,” he’d said. “And the only way you’re going to stop me from coming with you is to shoot me.”

  Since Callum hadn’t brought his gun with him, that was going to be a little difficult. Callum studied Jeffries for more time than he had to spare and then decided he could tag along, based on nothing more than the few interactions he’d had with him, and the fact that Jones thought well of Jeffries. “Leave the keys and mobile phone in the vehicle. Do you have anything else on you that’s traceable?”

  “No, sir.”

  Callum eyed him. “Did you discuss a plan with Tate in advance in case I scarpered? You’d come with me in hopes I’d lead you to the women?”

  “No, sir.” Jeffries remained calm. “It’s a good plan. Either way I come out on top.”

  “Exactly.” Callum laughed. “No point in going down with the ship.”

  “No, sir,” Jeffries said, and then a worried look came into his dark eyes. “It isn’t right, sir.”

  “What isn’t?” Callum was tempted to ask Jeffries to stop calling him ‘sir’, but since he knew it wouldn’t do any good, he didn’t bother.

  “Any of this.”

  “I’m sure Tate would say it’s just business, to use the American expression.” Callum set off across the street, ignoring horns that honked at him. “Come if you’re coming. I’m calling Jones.” Callum wanted to speak to Cassie too, but she was safe at the flat. Jones needed to get out of the office and get his arse down here with those plans David wanted. Then the four of them could be on their way to the Middle Ages.