When I finished, he leaned back in his seat.
“Yes, you definitely left some bodies scattered about. But that only accounts for about a third of those found this morning. The gendarmes are going crazy.”
I tried counting. “You mean they found over fifty bodies? Ones you think were killed by telepaths?”
“Fifty-seven,” Brian said. “Some, like Lorenzo, are explainable. Most were either burnouts, like those you and Myrna killed, or they died by fire, electrocution, suffocation or crushing. Some were found with rather significant damage to buildings around them.”
“Sounds like a battle,” I said.
“A running battle. If you plot the bodies, they make a trail across the city. But most of it happened in different quarters than where you were.”
“My route was from the Latin Quarter west to the Military Academy, then northeast to Montmartre.”
“We think there were at least two other battles. The smaller one was southwest, near the Eiffel Tower. The larger one was east, stretching from Hotel de Villes out to Vincennes.”
“Vincennes was where Lorenzo met me to prepare me to infiltrate the Palais.”
Mum spoke up. “Vincennes is where Medici has its Paris headquarters. A lot of mid-level employees of all the Clans live out that way.”
“What does O’Donnell have to say?” I asked.
Brian pursed his mouth. “They aren’t saying much. ‘Ongoing operations’ is the reason they’re giving for being so close-mouthed. But as far as we can determine, no O’Donnell casualties were found.”
Mum nodded. “The victors are able to carry their dead and wounded away.”
“Brian,” I said, “there’s a mole in O’Donnell headquarters in London. Her real name is Miranda, but I don’t know the name she’s using. I only have a vague idea what she looks like. The man whose mind I was in was dying. But I'm sure she’s the reason for the attacks on me in London. I think she’s also the one who tipped off Lorenzo di Medici about me. It would appear she’s someone very close to Nigel Richardson.”
He pondered that for a while. “Well, they aren’t telling us anything, I guess we shouldn’t tell them anything. Thanks for letting me know.”
~~~
I slept through the rest of the day and almost the whole night. When I ventured out of the room that Mum and I shared at the O’Byrne office building, I found Edwin asleep in a chair in the hall. He opened his eyes as I opened the door.
“I can’t shake you off no matter how hard I try, can I?” I said with a smile.
He regarded me with a dour expression. “You can’t imagine how much trouble I’m in. You’re the damnedest hard lass to follow I’ve ever seen. Peter ripped me a new one when you slipped out of London.”
I laughed and leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “How’s Davin?”
“He’s healing up, but still can’t use the arm right. He wanted to come with me, but I asked Peter to order him back to Dublin. Where are you off to at this time of the morning?”
“I’m hungry.”
“The dining room is open all night,” he said, standing up.
“I can find it.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight. For all I know, you’ll eat and keep going.”
“Edwin, I’ve told you that I don’t need backup. I work alone.”
“Working well, isn’t it?”
Frustrated, I said, “If you’d been with me last night ...”
“Two nights ago. You slept almost eighteen hours.”
“Okay, two nights ago. If you’d been with me, we’d both probably be dead. I can’t protect you the way I can protect myself.”
He gave me an exasperated look. “Listen, RB, you’re not the only one with Gifts. I’m twice your age and have been a Protector my entire adult life.”
I used Telekinesis to lift him off the ground. I turned him upside down, then rotated him back to his feet and released him. Then I did a fast series of flips and twists, never touching the floor, moving all the way down the hall. I landed with my feet on the ceiling. I couldn’t have run the distance as fast.
“Lifting and manipulating a person is difficult,” I said when he walked toward me. “I can do all kinds of things with my own body. I can lift a lorry or manipulate a lock. But I really can’t do anything with you any faster or more complicated than what I just did. And it was tiring. The other night, I would have had to either leave you behind, or stay with you to fight it out. And we would have been badly outnumbered.”
“You can’t take on the whole world by yourself,” he said.
“Edwin, I don’t have a deep need to win. I just need to bring one girl home. That’s all.” I kept telling myself that. I had to. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to walk away from girls like the one at the Palais. I hoped that O’Donnell had captured her, and would be able to return her to her family.
~~~
We spent the following couple of days searching Paris. Brian provided thirty Protectors to help, and they set up search grids, moving from one grid to another as they came up empty. Then I got a call on my mobile from Nigel Richardson.
“Nigel?”
“Hello, RB. We got a line on the girl you’re looking for. Where are you?”
“I’m in Paris, why?”
“Then you’re close. Someone using an Irish passport for Myrna Kavanagh bought a train ticket from Paris to Stuttgart. I’m sorry, but my sources aren’t instantaneous. The train left about an hour ago.”
“How good are your sources?”
“We’ve hacked into the transportation system’s computers. Why?”
“Can you check if an Irish passport in the name of Brendan O’Driscoll has been used for a ticket?”
“Sure. It will take me a few minutes.”
“Thanks, Nigel. Call me back, okay?”
I hung up and went in search of a computer. Maps on my phone were too small, and I wanted a better view of the region. It turned out there were three main routes from Paris to Munich. One of them goes through Stuttgart. As long as I was online, I booked a ticket on a direct train to Munich. Grabbing my bag, I ran out of the O’Byrne offices and headed for the metro.
Nigel was as good as his word. I’d no sooner found a seat on the metro than my mobile rang again.
“RB? Yes, Brendan O’Driscoll bought a ticket on the same train as Myrna. She’s traveling with an Irish MP?”
“So it seems. He was running an operation in Dublin, selling girls to Gordon.”
“And with Gordon gone ...”
“I think they’re headed for Munich. Nigel, do me a favor. Have you told anyone about this? About calling me?”
“No, I haven’t. I saw the name on a report that came through and called you right away. Why?”
“Please don’t tell anyone. Seriously. I think there’s a mole in your office. Unless you told Lorenzo di Medici that I was looking for Myrna in Paris.”
“Medici? That son of a bitch? I wouldn’t tell him a damned thing. He’s von Ebersberg’s mole in Interpol.”
“Not any more. He’s dead. But he told me that you told him to contact me and help me. He had enough information about the time I spent at O’Donnell’s offices in London to make it believable.”
“Really? How interesting. Thank you. And no, I don’t believe we’ve spoken since you were in London last. Wonder where you’ve got yourself off to. Damned flighty woman.” He chuckled. “Good hunting, and be careful.”
“Thanks, Nigel.”
I made the train to Munich with fifteen minutes to spare. According to the timetable, I’d get into Munich about four hours after they did. That was okay. I knew where they were going.
~~~
Chapter 19
With a six-hour train trip ahead of me, I contacted Grandmum. I’d read the dossier on Siegfried von Ebersberg that Nigel Richardson had given me in London. But my Grandmum had been collecting gossip on the Clans for over a hundred and fifty years, and I figured she could give me a bett
er idea as to what I was walking into.
*Bronwyn,* I sent. *Do you have some time?*
*I do. How are you Rhiannon?*
*I’m fine. What can you tell me about Siegfried von Ebersberg?*
*A very nasty man. You’re not involved in something that includes him, are you?*
*I’m afraid so. I’m on my way to Munich. I’d appreciate any insights you might be able to give me.*
Siegfried had been Clan Chief for over a hundred years. He’d made a fortune during the U.S. Prohibition period, running alcohol and women into the States. Like Lord Gordon, he was an early supporter of Adolf Hitler, seeing the Nazis as a front for instituting a telepathic hegemony. As the Nazis grew in power, several other Clans were brought into the conspiracy. The famous speech Hitler gave at Nuremburg was such a hit because more than fifty telepaths, using Empathic Projection, aided its delivery.
Germany’s defeat was a setback, but the Eastern European Clans were ready. They moved to take over the new governments and the Marshall Plan. In the chaos after the war, they easily slipped into the vacuum of power.
O’Donnell, with the other Irish Clans and their allies, moved to block that effort. What followed was the Silent War, which ended in a stalemate.
Siegfried’s prospects improved with the fall of the Soviet Union and its client states. A flood of beautiful women from Russia and other Eastern European countries provided him with an easy source of new women. Bronwyn estimated his net wealth had grown by several hundred percent since 1991.
*Why the sudden interest in trafficking succubi?* I wondered. *It seems to be new.*
*Rhiannon, genetic manipulation is relatively new, is it not? I’ve heard rumors that the Chinese, and possibly the Russians, are trying to do genetic engineering. Succubus genes would be at a premium. It’s more than sex trafficking. If he were to capture you, he would have a market due to your Rare Gift.*
She meant Telekinesis. There are four so-called Rare Gifts. I have one of them. Some people think the Succubus Gift should be considered in the same category.
*I’ll be careful. Thanks for the insight.*
*Rhi, those accounts of Lorenzo di Medici ...*
*Yes?*
*What should I do with them?*
He had millions in those secret accounts, probably earned from the pain and suffering of thousands of women. It was money Lorenzo didn’t have a use for anymore.
*Split it four ways. You, me, Mum, and an anonymous donation to some organization that fights trafficking,* I said.
*I’ll set up an account for you at your grandfather’s bank,* she sent. *It’s too bad you can’t claim a charitable contribution on your taxes.* She broke the connection.
And just like that, I was a millionaire. All I had to do was survive to enjoy it.
~~~
I rented a car at the train station and bought a detailed map. I hadn’t been in Munich in ten years, and then I’d been more interested in beer and boys than memorizing the city. It took me a while to match the memories I’d lifted from Brockington to the map, tracing the route he had taken to reach von Ebersberg’s estate. I didn’t have an address, so the GPS on my mobile wasn’t of much use.
It turned out to be fairly complicated and confusing, but three hours later, I drove by a walled estate that matched Brockington’s memories. Using a light touch to scan the area beyond the wall, I found Myrna’s mental signature. I drove back into the nearest town and had dinner while I waited for the sun to go down.
I parked the car about a mile from the estate and walked in, covered in an air shield and constantly scanning for other telepaths. As far as I could estimate, the twelve-foot wall was several miles long and completely encircled the place. Starting at the gate, and staying a couple of hundred yards from the wall, it took me two hours of walking to find a guard who was sloppy with his shields.
I cautiously snaked my way into his mind. I could have broken him down and captured him, but he wasn’t alone, and I didn’t want to take the chance of tipping anyone to my presence.
I spent an hour quietly sorting through his mind. The wall had pressure sensors, razor wire, and motion sensors that triggered spotlights. The guards had dogs. The good news was that the distance between guards increased as I got farther from the front gate. The bad news was that there were over two hundred guards, a third of them on duty at any given time.
He had knowledge of the grounds and the security procedures. His knowledge of the mansion itself was far more limited. He’d never been in some areas of the building, though I was able to lift a schematic of the floor plan from his mind.
I continued along the wall until I came to an area that was heavily wooded. There weren’t any motion sensors there due to the problem of birds, squirrels, and other wildlife. Carefully approaching the wall, I prepared myself for battle. Using Telekinesis, I rose up until I could see over the wall.
I couldn’t see anything but trees. Reaching out to a large tree, I pulled myself to it. I held my breath as I passed over the wall, but nothing seemed to happen. I wondered if there were pressure sensors on the ground, since I weighed a bit more than a squirrel.
Moving from tree to tree was time consuming and uncomfortable. I’d never tried to do anything like that before. I finally drifted to the ground when I neared the edge of the forest. I could see lights from the mansion in the distance. The nearest guard was about four hundred yards from me. Taking a deep breath, I started toward the house, taking advantage of any cover I could find.
I walked through an orchard. In the dark, I couldn’t tell what kind of trees they were. As I got nearer to the house, manicured lawns were interspersed with beautiful gardens. It really was a lovely estate. Bronwyn said one of the wings of the house had been damaged by a bomb during World War II, but otherwise things were basically the same as when the manor house was built in 1823. As with most telepathic holdings, the Allies had walked on by it after the war. The estate had been captured during the Silent War, but the Irish Clans hadn’t attempted to hold it. It wasn’t built for a military defense.
It was almost midnight by the time I neared the house. I crouched under a tree trimmed like a mythical griffin and watched the front entrance. The lights and number of guards discouraged getting any closer. Other people were also out and about. Circling around the house and between some of the outbuildings, I noticed several unguarded doorways. I tried one, but it was locked.
When I finished my tour and came back around to the front, I saw a man come out of the house. The guards sprang to attention as he inspected them, then he moved on. The Protectors in the Irish Clans all wear the same black, unadorned uniforms. Von Ebersberg’s military force, which he called Watchers, used visible rank symbols and officers’ uniforms were different from those of the cannon fodder. This guy was an officer.
He walked away from the manor and I followed him toward some of the outbuildings. When we walked through a rose garden, I hit him with the full force of my mental power, driving through his first two shields in an instant. After that, it got tougher. He fought back, and though I was stronger than he was, it was a battle to break through the rest of his shields and capture his mind.
He was heading home for the night, to a suite of rooms in one of the outbuildings where high-ranking officers lived. The equivalent of a colonel, he was married, his children grown, and his wife was in Berlin visiting her sister. We entered his home through a ground-floor door into the kitchen and took the stairs up to the living area. It was decorated in an expensive and tasteful pre-war European fashion.
I spent the next two hours ransacking his mind. Myrna was in a room on the third floor, and though she had limited access to most of the house, she wasn’t under strict guard. She wasn’t being held in the basement, where most new acquisitions were housed. There were two other facilities for women brought to the estate. One was a brothel in an outbuilding near the Watchers’ barracks, the other was a holding facility of inventory for sale.
He was aware of
Brendan O’Driscoll, who was also in the manor house. O’Driscoll was scheduled to leave the following day. Without Myrna.
While I had a complete layout of the manor house and all the outbuildings, I still didn’t have a good way inside. The problem was that once inside, I’d be instantly recognizable as a stranger. There were about five hundred people living on the estate, and everyone knew each other.
Probing past my immediate concerns, I searched for other useful information. One of the things this officer was deeply concerned about was the offensive O’Donnell was conducting on the Continent. No one knew how far Seamus would go in pursuing his enemies, and all the Clans affiliated with CBW were concerned.
So concerned, in fact, that a high-ranking official was due in from Berlin in two days to discuss the situation with Siegfried. This officer wasn’t privy to those discussions, but he was in charge of ensuring the official’s security and transportation from the Munich airport to the estate.
It was two hours before dawn. I had the choice of hanging out in his rooms all day, or heading out over the wall. I wiped all knowledge of our battle and my presence from his mind. I implanted a couple of compulsions, and created a keyhole in his shields that I could take advantage of in the future.
I took some of his wife’s clothes, a scarf to cover my hair, and a long skirt, which I wore over my pants. I had him walk me out of the front gate. I kissed him goodbye, then walked away. It wasn’t the first time he’d had his mistress visit him when his wife was gone. The guards smirked, but didn’t say anything.
~~~
I drove back to Munich, hit a bankomat, and paid cash to check into a hotel. Before hitting the bed, I contacted Bronwyn and asked her to find out everything she could about the CBW official in Berlin.
*Rhiannon, assuming you’re able to get the girl out, where do you plan to go?* Bronwyn asked.
*I’ve been asking myself the same thing. To Dublin, eventually, but I’m not sure by what route.*
Broken Dolls: An Urban Fantasy (The Telepathic Clans Saga Book 3) Page 16
