Shadow Knight's Mate

by Jay Brandon

  “Where are we?” Arden asked.

  “Gaza, if that pilot knew what he was doing, and I think he did. The West Bank.”

  “And who are those?” Because now Arden too noticed the armed convoy approaching them at a speed that seemed angry.

  “Israeli troops, I think. Or maybe the Palestinian Authority. Either way, I don’t think we can pass, do you?”

  CHAPTER 8

  “Something’s happening in Salzburg,” Professor Horace Trimble said over the phone from New York.

  “Yes, I believe I read something about that,” Craig Mortenson said drily. The front pages of every newspaper in the world had been consumed with two things in the past few days: reprises of the attack on America story, and speculation as to whether the peace summit, over a year in the planning, would still be held, now that the American President had announced that America would no longer be involved in world affairs.

  “I mean,” Trimble said snippily, “there’s something going on behind the scenes. I’m going over to investigate.”

  “You’re going over personally?” Craig, sitting in the Circle’s western headquarters listening to Trimble over speaker phone, glanced at Alicia. She gave him a raised eyebrow in turn. “Don’t you have any contacts—?”

  “Of course I do,” the professor snapped. “But I want face-to-face contact. Someone over there’s been lying to me and everyone else on the planet, and I want to know who it is.”

  The Circle so far had made almost no headway in discovering who was responsible for the mysterious plane attacks. They knew from monitoring intelligence sources that the CIA and FBI didn’t have a clue either. Nor could they get to the National Security Advisor; those attempts had cost them more in lost personnel than they had suffered throughout the Cold War. Instead they had now been bending all their efforts to make sure that the President still attended the summit. They hoped that somehow this would reengage him in world events. They had influential connections with the president from several directions, and had been using all of them. Even the president’s mother had called him to tell him he should go to Salzburg. They were pretty sure they had won that battle.

  But now Trimble was saying there was something else wrong. “What have you found out?” Janice Gentry said to the speakerphone.

  “Distressingly little,” answered the professor. “I believe, though, it has something to do with our old friend Jack’s appearances in recent times. He was up to something when he went to that flat in London. I’m not sure what, but I’m going over there to find out. I’m afraid our beloved Chair may have made a mistake in letting young Mr. Driscoll out of our sights. But maybe I can rectify the situation.”

  Craig Mortenson caught every eye around him, and found nothing but shades of apprehension. “Don’t rectify anything that can’t be un-rectified unless you get approval from us,” he said. That was as precise as he could get, but Trimble was a subtle man. He would understand.

  “I shall do no more than what is absolutely necessary,” Trimble sniffed, obviously offended. “Now I have to run. My flight is boarding.”

  The small group pictured the tall, thin, extremely dignified professor of applied mathematics actually running down an airport concourse and knew he had been speaking figuratively. Alicia Mortenson called his name, but the line had gone dead.

  Alicia looked at her husband. “You’re right,” he said, and stood up. “Janice, you’re in charge until the Chair gets back.”

  “Where are you two going?” Professor Gentry asked in surprise, and Alicia Mortenson looked surprised at her surprise. “Virginia, of course.” Consciously or not, her voice had slipped into a soft southern accent. Her husband nodded as if the question had been silly, and the two walked quickly out of the room. Janice Gentry sat at the console, looked around the small remaining group to see if anyone else had understood that exchange, and saw that she didn’t have to feel stupid, because no one else had.

  “And where the hell is Gladys?” she asked grumpily.

  Gladys Leaphorn lay in bed. She had the temperature turned down low and lay under blankets in deepest slumber, like a child in a crib or a mystic in a trance. At headquarters she’d realized that she was making bad decisions or worse, being unable to decide at all. She had neglected her subconscious. She could get by for days without sleep if necessary, as she’d been proving, but her imagination suffered. Like most artists, she did some of her best work while unconscious. Her mind roamed from her earthbound body and sometimes returned with insights she could never have achieved awake.

  So she had left good people in charge, come home, put on her favorite pajamas, and gone to bed. And it worked. The next morning, after six hours’ sleep, her eyelids snapped open and she smiled grimly. She knew what she had to do. Jack Driscoll was key. Gladys needed to get in touch with her granddaughter right away, and wondered where she was. For just a moment, still under the influence of her dreams-filled sleep, she imagined she could reach out with her mind and touch Arden’s.

  But it was in that moment that Gladys Leaphorn realized something else.

  Someone was in her house.

  She climbed out of bed, groaning like an old woman, doing an excellent impression of one. Stealth was no use now. She wouldn’t be able to slip past the people in her house. She had a good idea of who they were.

  So instead she got out of bed, put on a robe sloppily, and shuffled in slippers out to her small living room. A man and woman waited there, wearing matching dark suits, tight mouths, and expressionless eyes. Grim as the situation was, Gladys almost grinned. Because the man’s hair was slightly mussed and there was an indentation on the woman’s sleeve she felt sure had been caused by a hand. These two stony-faced agents had been kissing while waiting for her to wake up. Gladys wondered how she could use that to her advantage.

  “Mrs. Leaphorn,” the woman said, not asking a question. “We need you to come with us.”

  Gladys Leaphorn didn’t move. She was eighty-seven years old, and on the best day of her life she couldn’t have outrun either of these two for three steps. Nor had she ever been any good with guns, and she knew these two would be. She recognized their types, if not these particular two. “Identification?” she asked.

  Both immediately held out flip wallets. Yes, she’d been right: United States Secret Service. That meant nothing. They could be here on official orders or they could be under the control of someone who had infiltrated the government better than the Circle had. Or they could be rogues. It didn’t matter. They had her.

  She looked at the woman, at her sleeve, and her lips, then her eyes, and had the satisfaction after a moment or seeing her begin to blush. “I’ll be right with you,” Gladys said, and shuffled back toward her bedroom.

  The woman went with her.

  Jack kept saying one sentence in Hebrew, and it didn’t seem to be working worth a damn. The Israeli soldiers had them face down in the sand within five seconds of reaching them, and Jack’s protestation won them as much respect as if he’d been announcing he was the leader of a neo-Nazi movement. Arden tried her own more subtle methods of insinuation, which didn’t require speech at all, and she thought she was getting through to a couple of the men, but unfortunately half the soldiers were women, and they just glared at Arden and handcuffed her hands behind her back. She whimpered at that, again drawing some sympathy, but only from the half of the troops with whom she’d already succeeded.

  She had enough Hebrew to understand, she thought, that Jack was telling them he had some information. But the soldiers didn’t seem to care. They had Jack and Arden stowed in the back of an armored personnel carrier—American-made, Arden noted wryly—and were taking them away at top speed without anyone’s ever acknowledging that Jack could speak their language at all. Maybe he was getting it wrong, in fact. “What’s he saying?” Arden asked in English, but that didn’t work either.

  The small convoy roared down the beach. Within minutes it stopped, and Jack and Arden were shoved out the back
of the carrier. They found themselves in the center of a small military compound. Jack and Arden were marched up to a small tent. Arden, slightly in the rear, noted that the soldiers had completely immobilized Jack’s arms with some kind of restraint with a bar that kept his elbows apart while handcuffs held his hands close together. Did they think he was some kind of X-Man, who could smash them all if he got free? The complicated restraint was kind of flattering in a way, and Arden felt slightly insulted that they’d only handcuffed her.

  Then they were both shoved inside the tent. The soldiers didn’t follow. A woman looked up at them from a small field desk. The woman was not very tall, and she was thin in a wiry, energetic way. Her skin was several shades darker than Arden’s, with spots of color on her cheeks and surprising green eyes. Her dark brown hair was thick but cut short. Overall she had a boyish but sexy look, as well as an air of authority.

  “Mr. Driscoll,” she snapped. “I heard about your recent exploit in France.” She stood up and spread her hands, speaking as much with them as with her voice. “So, you come to my hemisphere and you don’t even call a person?”

  And she ran over and hugged Jack.

  With his arms awkwardly restrained he couldn’t hug back, but Jack put his head down against the woman’s neck and shoulder and closed his eyes. For a moment the two almost blended together. It was embarrassing to watch, which didn’t keep Arden from staring open-mouthed.

  The woman stepped back. Jack said, “I didn’t have time that trip. I knew I’d be coming back soon. And here I am. Uh, Rachel—”

  He turned around to display his restrained arms to her. Rachel frowned as if at a small puzzle.

  “Ouch,” she said sympathetically. “They tell me those things really hurt.”

  “They tell you correctly.”

  “What can we do about this?”

  “Are you saying you don’t have the key?”

  “I don’t have the key.”

  “Then could you please melt them with your laser vision? And be careful because I’d like to use my hands again some day. Like you do when you talk.”

  She gave him a small wicked smile, then walked over to Arden, made a twirling motion with her hand, and Arden turned around. A moment later her handcuffs came off.

  “You said you didn’t have a key,” Jack said accusingly.

  “Sue me,” Rachel said. She held out her hand and said her name to Arden.

  “Arden Spindler.”

  “Ah. I’ve heard of you. And how was the Chair when you left her?”

  “You can imagine.”

  “I can, actually,” Rachel said. The two women continued to look at each other. Rachel was a few years older, Jack’s age. Arden was taller and heavier, Rachel a woman compressed to essentials. She looked dangerously thin, and to Arden as if she’d lost weight recently. Rachel reached out and squeezed Arden’s arm in a kindly way and their introduction was done.

  Rachel returned to Jack. She stood close in front of him, almost nose to nose, since he was a little hunched over, as if the harness kept him from standing upright. After a moment he said, “I didn’t call because I knew I wanted to see you face to face.”

  All seriousness, Rachel said, “It’s that bad?”

  “It’s that bad.”

  Without taking her eyes off Jack, Rachel said, “Ms. Spindler? There is a captain outside named Ari. Tell him, please, that I need the key to this contraption.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Arden slipped out the tent flap. She hadn’t asked how she was expected to get the key if Ari didn’t want to give it to her, and Rachel hadn’t bothered to give further instructions. When she and Jack were alone in the tent, Rachel shook her head. “Jackie, Jackie.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Your girl friend’s very pretty. A little young for you, isn’t she?”

  “She’s not my girl friend. Not remotely. I don’t trust her an inch.” Then he seemed to hear for the first time something else she’d said. “Rachel? Aren’t we young?”

  She smiled wistfully. “I think so. We’re both shy of thirty. I personally am in great shape. I don’t think you’ve reached your physical peak yet. Thing is, I thought we were grown when we were fifteen, so maybe our perspective’s kind of skewed.”

  Jack nodded ruefully. Arden returned through the tent flap, looking unruffled and holding up a key ring. Without a word she went behind Jack and used two keys to free him. Arden took the harness, apparently studying it closely while Jack rubbed his wrists.

  “How are we going to explain this?” Rachel said. “I don’t want to tell my people here that you and I have some past connection.”

  “I conned you with some story and then overpowered you,” Jack suggested.

  “Be serious.” Rachel paced for a moment. “You two were just lost—”

  “Arriving here by jet helicopter? Yeah, we were actually on our way to the honeymoon suite at—”

  “Yeah. Well, you could be the—”

  “I’m tired of that one. How about if you sent—?”

  Rachel shook her head. “I don’t need any outside help. I’m kind of—” She shrugged. “—respected here.”

  “Yeah. I’m surprised to see you taking such a high profile position, Rache.”

  “Couldn’t be helped. They needed a security consultant, and I couldn’t let it be their second choice. Or third. So I had to step forward. Don’t worry, I’ll fade into deep background afterwards. This is very temp. The prime minister is concerned about—”

  “The peace summit? More than he’s usually concerned?”

  “Yes.” Jack looked a question and Rachel shrugged again. “He thinks the attacks on America and your president’s decision to withdraw and everything else that’s happened has been a ruse designed to catch him off guard and lose him an advantage at the summit.” In answer to Jack’s That’s ridiculous expression, she shrugged again. “This is Israel.”

  Jack nodded. He started to ask another question, then noticed Arden still standing there. He told her, “Rachel and I went to school together.”

  “Really. You two’ve met before today?”

  Arden remained deadpan. Rachel smiled at her. She touched Jack’s arm, and her hand lingered there.

  “What have you found out?” she asked then, and Jack gave her a rapid briefing. From Arden’s perspective he didn’t tell her everything, but that may have been because Arden was listening, and it was certainly because Rachel already knew a lot. As the two talked they sort of circled each other, staying close, Rachel’s head bent sometimes as if to ease the flow of Jack’s words into her ear. They brushed against each other like cats. Arden gradually lost her first impression that they were or had been lovers. They were something to each other, though, something that made her even more envious.

  Jack finally said, “I need you to—” and Rachel said, “Already done. It should be three, four days at the most. In case you need to time something.”

  “I don’t know what. I’m kind of at loose ends after this, Rachel.”

  “So you came to me?” She smiled. “Well, let’s start with what we know.”

  Jack remained silent.

  “That’s great,” Rachel said. Then more seriously, she said, “We’ve learned a little more about these planes that attacked your countrymen. Our scientists have been working with yours.” And Rachel had the information. No one asked her how.

  “Planes?” Jack said.

  Rachel nodded. “There were more than one. That’s how they seemed to cover so much ground. More like rockets, really. Very fast but very short range. After they accomplished their purpose they more or less vaporized, which gave the impression of travelling so fast they disappeared.”

  Jack nodded. That helped make sense of what had happened.

  “But that must have cost billions,” Arden burst out. She’d been trying to keep quiet, be invisible, but the comment jumped out of her mouth. The other two looked at her and it was clear they’d already understoo
d that. Arden slipped backward, trying to regain her invisible status.

  “She’s right,” Jack said. “What country would spend that much to have America disengage with the world?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Don’t you think I’ve been puzzling over that question? I can’t think of any.”

  “No private terrorist network has that kind of—”

  “Maybe they were stolen,” Arden said. “Maybe a government was working on them—”

  “Without our knowing about it? Surely at least one of our people would have been involved.”

  “Someone was developing them, Jack, and we didn’t know about it.”

  They continued to discuss the problem in low voices, and Arden understood why Jack had come here. It wasn’t as if he and Rachel were one mind, but two complementary ones. They came from different angles, had different information, different perspectives. They covered speculative ground in minutes that would have taken either of them days separately. One observation led to another. Arden became lost, especially as they mentioned people and events she didn’t know about.

  Jack’s eyes were open wide and he stood back to back with Rachel, leaning back against each other. The small woman was still talking, and Jack was envisioning what she said. “Jack!” she said suddenly, turning around so fast that Jack almost fell. “I can think of one private organization with that kind of money.”

  Jack questioned her silently.

  “Us!” Rachel said. Her voice sounded bright, happy with the thrill of solution, then she gasped.

  Jack was shaking his head. “No,” he mumbled, not in contradiction but in denial. “Why would we do this? Even the rogue faction I suspect…”

  They both stood silent for a few moments. Arden was afraid they’d turn to her next. She practiced innocent expressions. But after a few seconds Rachel and Jack shook their heads at the same time.

  Running down the idea seemed to have refreshed them, though. They looked at each other with glowing eyes. Arden was quite sure they would have kissed at that moment except for two things: her presence and the deferential cough from outside the tent. “Colonel Greene?”