"That's not for me to say, Arthur. Your destiny would determine that."
"But my destiny is what I decide it is."
The old man hesitated. "I'm afraid not," he said. "That is... Well, it might not be as easy as you think to live as Arthur Blessing."
"Why wouldn't it?"
Taliesin exhaled noisily. "It's rather difficult to explain. That is, actually, it's nothing to do with..." His face reddened. "Oh, dash it all, Highness, Arthur Blessing doesn't exist!"
Arthur blanched. "What?" He tried to laugh, but the attempt was unsuccessful.
"Don't you see, you are King Arthur. Then or now, that is who you are, and all that you arc. You came here to finish out that life, that destiny. And whatever you might do, that destiny would catch up with you."
"Are you saying I can never live a normal life, no matter what I do?" The boy looked stricken.
"Come now, you're acting as if you'd come down with the plague!" Taliesin said cheerfully. "It took a lot of magic to get you here, you know."
"Then undo it," Arthur demanded.
"Now see here. You're hardly mature enough to make a decision of his magnitude—"
"I said undo it!" Arthur shouted. "I want my life, my own life, whether you think it's worthwhile or not. Now undo whatever spell you put on me and Hal and the rest of them!"
A terrible silence stretched between them like a chasm. "I can't," the old man said at last. "That magic can't be undone. Centuries have passed. The lives of all the knights have been suspended. And Hal..."
Arthur stood up.
"Oh, do try to understand," Taliesin said, putting his arm on the boy's shoulder. Arthur shrugged it off.
"It'll all be fine, you'll see...."
Arthur turned to face him, his eyes filling with tears and rage. "I always knew there was something wrong with me," he whispered hoarsely. "Something not quite normal. I thought I was just crazy. But this . . ." He backed away, stumbling.
"Arthur—"
"Get away from me!" He turned and ran down the mountain, tripping over loose rock, skinning his legs as he bolted away from the nightmare truth of his existence.
"Don't be a fool!" Taliesin called after him. "You have an opportunity never before granted to anyone! You can pick up your life where you left off, don't you see? You can live again!"
But the boy was not listening. He was running, still believing that he could run away.
The old man sighed. Humans, even kings, always had to learn things the hard way.
Chapter Sixteen
THE ARAB AND THE MORON
St. Francis Hospital, Rapid City, South Dakota
The two FBI agents passed the object between them over Hal, who was sitting up in bed. "Object" was the word they had decided to use to describe the thing Hal had called them in for, the thing he had picked up near the spot where the cream-colored Cadillac had stopped.
It had been flung out of the car during the sixty seconds or so when everything had seemed to happen at once: Gawain's spear had hit the crazy biker on the shoulder, sending him spinning out of control until he struck the side of the Cadillac at almost the same time Lugh's fifteen-inch mace tore a hole through the automobile's roof.
What had occurred then, which no one saw, was that the mace had smashed open the locked case in the Cadillac's back seat. When Pinto hit the car, the now-opened case bounced upward toward the point of impact while the object—a small metal thing weighing less than two ounces and shaped vaguely like the midsection of a miniature trumpet—was propelled out the window at approximately the same moment that Pinto was being propelled in.
To anyone else, including the local police, the object would have been something of no concern, but Hal knew better. For one thing, it was made of extremely lightweight metal, with no rough edges, meaning that it had been worked and polished by hand. For another, it was made of a single piece. No welds. A die had been specially made to produce it. From those two facts, Hal was ready to deduce that there were very few of these objects around. Maybe only one.
"What do you think? Titanium?" One of the agents held the faintly key-shaped object up to the light.
"Something like that," Hal said. "Ben'll be able to tell you, if he's still in the lab."
The agent smiled. "Oh, he's still there, all right. They'd let the director go before him."
Ben was the man in charge of the FBI laboratories. He had been working in the lab since before Hal came in as a new recruit. Hal had been gone for more than ten years now. The agent who had been called into the hospital to talk to Hal had worked briefly with him long ago.
"So, you doing all right?" the agent asked awkwardly. It was common knowledge, Hal supposed, that he'd burned out like a rocket in the FBI and turned into every agent's worst nightmare: a drunk with no connections.
"Yeah, I've been okay," Hal said. In fact, those bad times had only gone on for a year or two. Then he had found Arthur Blessing.
But he could never tell this man who used to be his peer what had happened. Oh, well, yes, while I was busy drinking myself to death, I ran into this kid who is the reincarnation of King Arthur, and everyone was trying to kill him because he had the Holy Grail with him, see, only now that's not a problem because the Grail's buried in a well in upstate New York, and the Knights of the Round Table have come back from the dead to look after him.
Oh, yes. That would go over big.
"Say, didn't we see something like this once?"
"At JFK," Hal said, remembering. And then he knew: "It's a detonator," he said.
"Christ, yes. The bomb in the engine of the 747. It was one of the Arab's jobs."
Hal shrugged. "Never proven." The Arab only meant one Arab, the most famous Arab in the world to anyone involved in counter-terrorism.
"Never caught, you mean," the younger agent said, loosening up in the presence of the two veterans. "And now he's in the States."
"Oh?"
The other agent gave his partner a look indicating that he had said too much in front of a civilian.
"So what's around here that anyone would want?" Hal asked. No one answered him. "Except for the nuclear silos at Warren," he remembered.
The older FBI agent took out his cell phone and dialed. "Bingo," he said, gesturing with two fingers for the detonator.
Hal handed it over. "The only problem with that theory is that the Arab wasn't on the field where I found that thing," he said. "No one was, except for my guys and that crazy trigger-happy cracker."
"And the witness," the younger agent said.
Hal tried to bring up the image of the man in the cream-colored Cadillac. Blond, handsome, thin-faced, expensive clothes. "The witness," he repeated slowly.
The older agent punched in the number he was calling again. "Goddamned switchboard," he muttered. "Hey, what was that guy's name, you remember?" he called out. "The Arab."
"Bayat," Hal said. "Hassam Bayat."
"An undisclosed number of Special Forces troops poured into Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, earlier today. Although the Air Force would not comment on the operation, several sources have speculated that the ultra-top security site has been targeted for destruction by international terrorist Hassam Bayat, who orchestrated last year's bombings in downtown London...."
They found the detonator, Titus thought, feeling sick. When he had first discovered that it was missing, he had hoped that the small metal object would go unnoticed in a litter-filled campsite. But the Yanks, despite their continued blundering over the fictitious Hassam Bayat, got lucky.
Now the mission would be delayed by several months, and there was nothing for Titus to do except get out of the country before the Feds traced him through the detonator.
He got up off the motel room bed with a groan and limped to the dresser on which he had placed his valise. Inside was a bottle of scotch—the one luxury he afforded himself while working, and for which he was now most grateful.
He poured himself a glass. It hurt to swallow, but the effect was w
orth it.
Pinto was running a shower in the bathroom. The stall would look like a pig had been slaughtered in it when he was done, Wolfe thought with a sigh.
It had not been difficult to convince Pinto that Titus himself was a fugitive from the law, and would therefore stay away from the police. He had made up a story about killing his wife somewhere in southern California. Pinto, in return, had boasted about the murder of the four physicians in Sturgis, a disgusting-sounding affair that would doubtless result in Pinto's execution.
Pinto was a common lout; he couldn't be trusted to do anything more than get caught. It had just been a matter of sheer misfortune that Titus had even encountered the creature in the first place.
Now, two cars and a hundred miles later, they had settled into a fleabag motel to clean themselves up. Titus had some spare clothing, so he would be able to throw away the bloody things he'd been wearing at the accident. Pinto, naturally, had nothing besides the shirt on his back, which was now in the shower with him.
Titus threw down a second scotch with irritation. Nothing had gone right. Absolutely nothing.
First, there was the detonator. Even if it were still in his possession, the bomb it was designed to explode would be impossible to assemble, since the other components had been rendered useless after being bludgeoned by a mace.
A mace, he thought with wonder. Who were those lunatics? Pinto swore he had never seen them before today.
"But one of them smelled like a cop," he had insisted.
The dolt. When asked if the fellow's smell was what had prompted Pinto to start a knife fight against a gang of twelve, he had only shrugged and shown his horrendous teeth.
Titus had wanted to pull them out of the man's head, one by one. If it weren't for Wolfe's injury, he'd have gotten rid of Pinto hours ago. The very thought of sharing a bathroom, even a bloody and temporary one, with such a cretin was enough to make him retch.
One of them smelled like a cop. Titus couldn't get Pinto's words out of his mind.
Was it possible that those fools on motorcycles were agents of some sort who had been waiting for him?
Of course not, he decided. Think about their weapons. Swords, spears, pikes, for God's sake! It had been like walking into a Shakespearean play. No, they couldn't have known anything. Literally. Titus had, he concluded, simply had the misfortune to encounter some sort of club for extremely stupid men.
By now, the authorities had probably found the car and determined that its driver had been killed and dumped somewhere. A search of the Cadillac's provenance would reveal that its owner, a merchant of surfing equipment, had vanished from Venice Beach, California, two months before. The discovery of the car would render that case closed and Titus a free man.
But then, someone had found the detonator. That changed everything. But Titus did not pursue the idea. There was no point in worrying unnecessarily, particularly since he was on his way out of the U.S.
He had given himself two avenues of escape. There was a car waiting for him in northern Montana in which he could cross over the Canadian border, if he wanted to leave now.
That option was out. If the Feds were sending troops in to Cheyenne, they would be watching the northern border.
The second escape route was much more complicated, and involved traveling across the United States, as well as three weeks of waiting. This was the backup plan Titus had devised in case things got sticky.
Well, it seemed they had.
The boat named Sea Legs would be docked at a pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey, at the end of the month. Richard Edgington would sail Titus to Panama on it. A roundabout route, but fairly safe, particularly since the mission at Warren had not even been attempted.
He would go by train to New York, then pass the time at a good hotel, perhaps the Pierre. It was small enough to be intimate, but lacked nothing. Even with the wound on his neck, he would be able to spend an enjoyable ten days.
At that moment, a photograph of a police sketch flashed on the television. Titus gasped as he recognized his own face.
"Police are looking for two men in connection with an episode of mayhem on the highways near Sturgis, South Dakota," the announcer said.
Only then did Titus notice that there was another face on the screen besides his own. He had no idea who it was.
Then he heard a low chuckling. It was Pinto, naked and dripping from his shower. "Them police drawings ain't never no good," he chortled.
"The one of me seems to bear a likeness," Titus said bitterly.
Pinto nodded. "Yep, now you mention it. Guess sometimes they hit it right." He looked over at the Englishman and laughed.
"Both men were wounded in the scuffle. One has an injured hand. The other sustained a wound to the neck," the announcer went on.
Titus touched the heavy gauze bandage beneath his chin.
"They think you was in on it," Pinto drawled, his eyes crinkled in amusement.
No mention was made of the fact that Titus had merely been driving by during the incident.
"Anyone spotting either of these men is urged to contact the FBI." A phone number flashed across the screen.
"Didn't I say the one was a cop?" Pinto gloated.
The FBI," Titus whispered. The lunatics with the swords had been agents, after all. And they had remembered his face well enough to put together an accurate composite.
"Which one was the cop?" Titus asked, abstracted.
"The one on the ground. Shot him through the belly," Pinto said.
"He'd be in hospital, then."
Pinto looked up, frowning for a moment until he understood. "Yeah," he said, grinning. "Easy pickings."
Titus examined his face in a mirror. He would have to do something about his appearance, and quickly. Some hair color, a beard, perhaps. A pair of drugstore glasses. He would need someone to obtain those things for him. And drive him.
His gaze rested reluctantly on Pinto, who lit a cigarette. Titus hated smoking.
"How is your hand?" he asked.
"Fine," Pinto answered. He had taped the knife wound. A pair of thin gloves would cover it. Not that anyone would recognize his face from the poor police sketch, anyway.
Titus rested his head in his hands. He had never had to rely on anyone before. And now, in his hour of need, fate had sent as his partner the most stupid, barbarous, unstable human being he had ever met.
Chapter Seventeen
THE SUMMER COUNTRY
It was known to the ancient Celts as the doorway to the dwelling place of the gods, the Summer Country, with its endless flowering meadows and streams running with clear water.
Most entered the Summer Country through death. It was the place where the soul journeyed after it was freed from the constraints of the body. But there have always been those who knew how to get there without dying.
"Innocent! Innocent!" the old man called. He was awash in clouds, which he swatted away to reveal a green hillside dotted with shining white rock. He stumbled over one, stubbing his toe. "Damn!" he shouted. With a handkerchief, he blotted perspiration off his forehead. That was the trouble with keeping one's body. It persisted in doing living things like sweating and hurting. "Innocent!"
Shhh.
"What?" Taliesin looked around. He didn't see anyone. And then, far off, nearly at the crest of the hill, he spotted a large she-wolf.
"Innocent!" he shouted, breaking into a pitiful, loping run.
Calm yourself, little bard. I'll come to you.
The wolf sauntered down the hill. When she reached him, her fur was decorated with snowdrops as white as her sightless eyes.
How do I look? she asked. Which is to say, Taliesin divined what the wolf was thinking. There was no sound.
"Er... Very festive," he answered. "I hope I'm not disturbing you, Innocent, but—"
Not at all. She sat down on her haunches. Would you rather I were human?
"Oh, I don't... Well, actually, yes. That would be rather nicer." He sat on a smooth ro
ck and rubbed his toe. When he looked up, the Innocent had transformed into a wraithlike old woman with wispy white hair festooned with flowers.
"Oh. Oh, my." Taliesin smiled. She had looked just so when she was his teacher and he a young bard learning the magic of the druids. "Thank you," he said.
"And how is the great Merlin?" she asked, patting his knee.
He blushed. Taliesin was able to accept accolades for his power from anyone else. But with the Innocent, he still felt like a foolish boy dressing in his father's clothes. "I'm well," he said.
"The knights?"
"The usual," he said with equanimity.
"Ah." She smiled. "Tell me, then, little bard, what brings you here."
"Well…" He looked into her eyes. They were milk-white. As far as he knew, the Innocent had always been blind. In death, of course, she could have chosen to have eyesight, but she remained blind even here, in the Summer Country.
And why not, Taliesin thought. She saw everything anyway. Even now she was looking through him, not through her comforting, blank eyes, but through a thousand other avenues, through the very pores of her skin, it seemed to him.
"It's Arthur."
"Of course."
"He's... Well, it's difficult to put into words."
"Meaning it bruises your ego to say the plain truth."
"No, that's not..." He felt himself flushing and sputtering. "Oh, hang it all, he's run away!" He wrung his hands. "It's his age, I suppose. You know that in areas of the Far East, all teenagers are considered to be demented. Beloved but insane. Makes life easier for the families, no doubt..."
"Do stop babbling, Taliesin."
Downhearted, he forced his hands to be still. "I was explaining that he was nearly ready to begin—"
"Begin what?" the Innocent asked.
"Why ... Whatever his destiny demands," Taliesin said. “His work.”
"You mean cutting ribbons, opening factories, that sort of kingly thing? And that only if some existing monarch is willing to turn over a throne to the boy—"
"No," he said, astonished by his teacher's obtuseness. "He is King Arthur, the once and future King, cut down in his prime but destined to return to live out his glorious reign." He leaned forward as he spoke, enunciating each word clearly, as if it had been written in stone.
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