Gamble's attitude was similar to the others in the small branch, and to everyone else in British Intelligence. The government most fervently did not believe in magic. They felt there had to be a mundane explanation for anything that happened. Even that which was completely inexplicable was told off as having a cause that they were not yet able to ascertain, just that it wasn't and never could be magic. Well, they were wrong.
Elizabeth often wondered what Mike and the others would say if she told them that she knew poltergeists and visitations and, indeed, magic, were real. An admission like that would tag her as a genuine loony, and she'd lose the credibility she had established painstakingly over the last six years. Salaries in the public sector were by no means generous. She needed to stay on the promotable track in these budget-conscious days. So she laughed when the others laughed, and made disparaging comments about the trippers who mooned around Stonehenge and Britain's other mystic sites. All of them had their government-issue wands, bells, and censers, and an officially sanctioned grimoire full of exorcisms, invocations, and exhortations that everyone used but considered to be a huge joke. The spells didn't work for most of them. Any actual effect was put off to coincidence.
If the official word was that these things did not really exist, it was fine with her. Some day the opportunity might come along that would prove to the scoffers once and indisputably for all that magic was real. The best way to do that would be to find some real magic and bring it to her superiors' attention. But her superiors, like the rest of the world, did not really want her to find any. It was much more comfortable to keep the department going on speculation, hope and fear.
She hoped sincerely that the Irish singer was not really mutilating herself, or being attacked by another person whom she was shielding. In order to justify OOPSI's actions—and budget—Elizabeth needed to produce results of some kind, but on that point the department was torn. To uncover magic would justify their funding forever, but they were not prepared to handle the publicity attendant on proving that magic existed. It was a conundrum. Elizabeth wanted to succeed in her mission. She half-hoped she could offer up a magical result, so that there would be less scepticism around the office, opening the door so that one day she could come out of the broom closet, so to speak, as a genuine practitioner. She suspected that her q.v. in the office files included mention of her grandmother and female ancestresses stretching back to the Ice Age, but nothing official had ever been said to her about it. The others were mostly here because they were fans of speculative fiction or wanted a cushy government position that didn't require much work except to visit suspected sites and look knowing.
In the meantime, she was on her way to her very first international assignment. Though it was only logical to use a woman to protect a woman closely, giving her the job still meant that the brass believed in her ability to do the job. She was very proud.
Proud and astonished, when, instead of the usual antique, miniature Peugeot minicab, the car that pulled up to carry her to Heathrow was a long, black limousine, the kind used to convey senior officials to white tie dinners at Buckingham Palace. The driver, an older man in a peaked cap, leaped out to open the door for her. Feeling like royalty, albeit royalty in a hurry, she jumped into the back seat. As the car pulled away, Elizabeth got a glimpse of her co-workers gazing enviously down from the office windows. This piece of luck boded well for her mission.
“Just five minutes, miss, or you'll be late for the arriving flight,” the driver said as he double-parked at the kerb outside of her flat. Elizabeth hopped out the door.
“I'll hurry,” she said, giving the limousine door a pat as she closed it. It was so nice to be given a bit of luxury. She glanced up and down the street. No sign of the courier as yet. It would probably be some spotty youth wearing a Day-Glo tabard and mounted on a motorbike who could negotiate the traffic faster than her car. No doubt he'd be waiting when she came down.
Although she had always regretted not being able to have a cat in the apartment, this time she was grateful. Now she had no need to call a friend or relative to come and feed it, unable to explain how long she'd be gone. At last, Elizabeth experienced the excitement she'd always pictured when she first joined the service. She was the agent in charge of a high profile international case! She was still quite breathless over the suddenness of it all.
Elizabeth ran upstairs, mentally sorting out her wardrobe. She had no idea what kind of clothing she'd need in New Orleans, a place whose name she recognized, but had no actual knowledge of. She had a vague idea that it was hot there. That would be a welcome change from the chilly London spring where it had yet to rise above 15 degrees Celsius.
She sorted through the built-in closets in her tiny, well-lit bedroom. Very little of her everyday wardrobe was suitable for high temperatures, and she didn't think that the colorful bandanna skirts and halter tops she wore on Costa del Sol holidays would be appropriate for an MI-5 field agent on the job. Still, on a high-profile assignment like this she could surely cadge a clothing allowance out of the accounting department, the better to fit in with the locals. In the end, she stuffed her suitcase full of clean knickers and all the protective spell impedimenta that would fit. Always pack your own underwear, Elizabeth told herself virtuously. She stripped off her dress, and put on her most wrinkle-resistant suit, a very upper-class skirt and blazer of a cream-colored fabric that looked like linen but wore like iron. That was the way she must appear to those she encountered: neat and approachable, but inwardly tough. There, she thought, pleased at her reflection. Ready for anything.
With a last backward look at the photograph of her grandmother, who'd taught her everything she knew about the unseen world, she locked up her flat.
The limo driver hooted his horn when he saw her coming.
“Hurry up, miss!” he shouted.
“Did the courier come?” she asked.
“Not a sight of 'im,” the man said, pinching out the cigarette he was smoking. He got out of the car and opened her door for her. “Stuck 'alfway between here and Marble Arch, I'll bet. 'E'll catch up. Come on, 'op in.”
“Just one minute more,” Elizabeth pleaded. She made for the bare bit of garden between two forlorn London trees that stood before the building.
Undoubtedly the limo driver had thought her quite mad standing there barefoot in the patch of earth with her arms to the sky, but she couldn't take the trip entirely unprepared. Ignoring him, she concentrated on reaching her mental roots deep into the earth and far up into the sky, making herself a conduit to gather together the two halves of energy that made up Earth power. It took a moment to ground and center herself. The familiar, warm tingle rushed along her limbs, feeling like the terror and pleasure of a steep roller coaster ride where they collided in the middle of her belly. Elizabeth took a deep breath as she joined the two elements together. She wound it into a skein of power deep within her that she could unreel at will.
Unlike the driver, her neighbors were accustomed to seeing Miss Mayfield in the garden patch recharging her magical batteries. While she stood there, feeling mystic, the power of nature flowing into her body from the earth and sky, one of the little old ladies who lived next door tottered by with her arthritic Pekinese.
“Good afternoon, Miss Mayfield!”
Elizabeth replied without letting go of the strands of energy. “Good morning, Mrs. Endicott. Lovely weather, isn't it?”
“Oh, it might be a little warmer, mightn't it, dear? Off somewhere?”
“An assignment. Official business.”
“Ah,” the old woman said, pulling her dog away from sniffing Elizabeth's ankles. “Have a nice time, dear.”
“Thank you.”
Mrs. E. tottered away. Thanking heaven for the native British tolerance for eccentricity, Elizabeth finished up storing as much Earth energy as she could take on a brief “charge,” and sealed it into herself with a few more words to prevent any from dissipating unnecessarily. She'd need it to ground herself. It wouldn't do at all to f
ind the “batteries” empty if she was forced to do any magic-working on the fly. With a smile at the driver's puzzled expression, she gathered up her small suitcase and purse, and climbed into the rear seat of the car. Now she was ready for anything.
Her triumphant mood didn't last long. She was prepared, but prepared for what? She didn't have a clear idea of what she had to protect Fionna Kenmare from. The courier remained conspicuously absent while they drove the rest of the way to Heathrow. Elizabeth kept turning around in her seat to look behind her. No motorcycle. No official car. Her heart sank.
Traffic was horrible as usual. Three miles before the turnoff for the airline terminal, the limousine slowed to a creep, then a halt. Elizabeth looked around frantically for any signs of movement.
“Afternoon rush hour,” the driver said, sympathetically. “It'll get you every time.”
Elizabeth looked at her watch. Forty-five minutes to go before the Irish flight arrived. Perhaps she could hurry things up just a little bit. She generally balked at using magic for personal gain, but this was in service to OOPSI, wasn't it? Rationalizations a specialty, she thought wryly, trying to recall if there was an appropriate cantrip in the office grimoire. No, of course not. Flushing poltergeists out of cottages, yes. Bringing up secret writing, naturally. Opening up traffic jams, of course not.
Time for a little impromptu poetry. “Let all cars move to there from here,” Elizabeth said in a low voice, trying out the chant, “open the way to my goal clear.” Not brilliant, but it should do the job of persuading everyone to hurry up just that much more. It was risky, but she could not miss meeting that flight. Repeating her chant, she released a little of her stored-up Earth power, feeling it worm its way forward along the lanes of traffic. It seemed as though it would work when the tiny psychic thread smacked into an overwhelming strong counterforce as firm as concrete that stopped it cold: England itself. Do not interfere with the status quo, the presence said. Nice girls and boys don't make a fuss.
Elizabeth groaned. One couldn't be well-mannered all the time, not with a schedule to keep. The push-push-push of greater London, as unlike the surrounding country as an ambitious nephew was from a staid great-aunt, lay behind her to the east. She appealed to it for assistance. All she wanted to do was get where she was going without inciting road rage or using up her carefully hoarded store of power.
Whether England relented or London succeeded, traffic began to break up. The taxi joined the lane of cars rolling towards Terminal One.
To her dismay, no messenger was waiting for her there. She whipped out her small cell telephone and punched in the office number, all the while looking for a chartreuse tabard.
“This is Agent Mayfield,” she said, turning her back on a young businessman in a very expensive suit who kept giving her interested glances, and raised his eyebrows when he overheard her identify herself. “The courier didn't meet me at my flat, and I still don't see him anywhere.”
“Sorry, love,” the receptionist said, her voice tinny on the line. “His bike broke down, so he's on the Tube. We just heard from him. He's stuck at Acton Park. He'll meet you in time to brief you at the ticket desk for the American flight. Mr. Ringwall says you're to meet the subject from flight 334 from Dublin. You'll be able to board the U.S. flight at the same time as her party, and you'll sit beside the subject until you arrive in New Orleans. You're not to let her out of your sight under any circs. Read me back, love?”
“Not in a secure location,” Mayfield muttered back tersely, peering back over her shoulder at the businessman, who was leaning as close as he could but trying to look as if he wasn't.
“I'll take it as read, dear,” the receptionist's voice quacked in her ear. “Good luck.”
* * *
Don't let her out of your sight, the big boys said. Well, they hadn't taken luxury travel perquisites into account. Elizabeth ran along the endless corridors, and into the satellite gates in Terminal One just in time to see the famous green suede-cut, surrounded by a dense shell of fans and reporters, emerge from the jetway at gate 87, and sweep down the narrow corridor. The rest of her group, Green Fire, emerged one by one, and the crowd erupted into a frenzy. Elizabeth tagged helplessly along all the way to Terminal Three, determined to stay as close as she could. She couldn't draw nearer without actually using some of the unarmed combat training that she had been required to learn for her job, and she wasn't perfectly convinced some of the fans didn't know martial arts, too. They looked a tough lot.
As soon as Fionna Kenmare and her party reached the American ticket desk they were ushered through check-in and baggage inspection by a member of the airline staff. Elizabeth had no choice at that moment but to abandon her vigil, because she had to find the information desk and pick up her ticket.
Only two people were in the queue at the desk, but they looked to be there for the next decade: an old lady with a very low voice who had some trouble with her luggage, and a large American man with a shockingly loud voice whose luggage had been scratched by the baggage handlers. As soon as a new clerk appeared from the tiny room behind the desk Elizabeth waved him over, showing her ID card in her cupped hand. The man's eyes lighted with recognition, and glanced from side to side. Neither the woofer nor the tweeter paid any attention.
“Yes, madam, we've been expecting you,” the clerk said, very quietly. He reached under the desk for an envelope, and offered her a clipboard with a document from Central Accounting to sign. It had been faxed only moments before. Talk about cutting things close.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said briskly. She opened the envelope to double-check the flight details. “Just a moment,” she said, putting out a hand to stop the desk clerk from walking away. “This is for Economy Class.”
“I am following the instructions to the letter, madam,” the clerk said, looking hurt. He showed her the place on the document where “3rd” had been checked off, instead of “1st.”
“But, this is wrong! I need to be in First Class.”
“I'll be happy to alter it if I receive further instructions from the head office,” the young man said hopefully, sounding exactly like a junior agent in a 007 picture, which is undoubtedly what he hoped. Elizabeth was in no mood to coddle him. She gave him a wan smile from the teeth out, and hurried to check in. She could not leave Kenmare alone for long. She'd have to phone from the other side of the barrier.
With the greatest of good fortune, Kenmare's party was still in the ticket hall. Elizabeth joined the mass of fans and photographers milling slowly toward the departure gate.
They sauntered, in no kind of hurry, through the express passport control, and down the hall toward the VIP lounge, still accompanied by those fans who were actually holding travel tickets. Now was the time Elizabeth must catch her and identify herself, before something else happened. She snatched up her purse from the rollers as it exited the X-ray machine, and ran toward the lounge. Just as she got there, the door was slammed firmly in Elizabeth's face. Fionna's fans, disappointed, scattered into the Duty-Free shopping area, leaving Elizabeth standing alone in front of the door.
Airport security was admirably tight, but she ought to be in line-of-sight contact with her subject. She knocked on the burgundy wood door.
Her quiet conversation at the desk inside the club did nothing except to create a feeling of smugness among the staff. They weren't about to let a lowly Economy passenger into the sacred confines even to forestall a death threat. If Elizabeth had official credentials to back up her claim, they might consider allowing her to remain in the corridor. Because of the security order keeping information concerning the mission to “need to know,” Elizabeth knew she wasn't permitted to show her MI-5 badge, so she was forced to retreat out into the Duty-Free area, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. She found a point where she got a decent signal on her telephone yet could still see the door, and made her third call to HQ.
“Sorry, Mayfield,” Ringwall said, ruefully. “Economy measures all round, you know. I'll
try to get Accounting to alter that for you before you board, but you know what they're like. They absolutely choked at the thought of four thousand pounds for one agent's transportation. Do your best. Don't let the woman out of your sight.”
“She's already out of my sight, sir,” Elizabeth said, desperately. “She's inside the first-class lounge, and they won't let me in with an economy-fare ticket.”
“Dammit, do what you can,” Ringwall said. “You're an Intelligence agent. Be resourceful.”
“Yes, sir,” Elizabeth said, with deep resignation. “I still haven't seen the courier yet, sir.”
“He'll be there. Probably meet you at the gate. Best of British luck, and keep us posted.”
Elizabeth hung up the phone. Well, if she couldn't get in, she must monitor all those coming and going from the club, and hope the courier would arrive with her credentials so she could go inside before things went bad. She took up a position across the pedway in a bookshop with a good view of the door of the lounge. At all costs she must look like an ordinary tourist, interested in ordinary tourist things.
The magazine racks were protected by a dense wall of fellow passengers, all intent on the rows of glossy color covers. She located the fan magazines, and started to look for Fionna Kenmare's name, deciding that she would read up on her charge, and steal a march on the tardy courier. Evidently, the woman was more famous than Elizabeth realized. Articles about her appeared in every single one of the magazines. Elizabeth chose five magazines with the highest ratio of words to pictures, hoping that they would contain some actual information instead of pure public relations hype.
A couple of huge men stood up from the floor where they had been kneeling in front of the computer magazines, blocking her view, and began to discuss hard drives and RAM. Elizabeth all but dove over them to reestablish sight of the burgundy door. They gave her a hard glance, and she had to show an intense interest in the rack of crossword puzzle books to throw off any hint of suspicion. She liked puzzles, but there'd be little time for such amusements on the plane, not with an eight-hour babysitting job to get through, and a weeklong protection assignment at the other end of the flight. She chose three anyhow, and moved on to the next rack nearer the door.
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