“That must be nice,” Albert comments, snapping out his fingers. “Long as you don’t get arthritis.”
“As to his location, we now know that Adam took a number of flights in the week preceding the Catastrophe, assumedly to complete his preparations and we suspect that those flights followed a pattern by which we can trace his eventual destination…”
“Hold on.” Albert frowns. “If we don’t know where he is now, what good’s the rest of it? What goods the travel stuff I’ve sorted out?”
“Ah.” The Minister pinches her nose. “It is a fair question. I had understood from Mr. Pole that we now knew the man’s location.”
I smile. “And that is something I can help you with.”
All eyes on me, a slight frown on Jane’s delightfully aged face. “If you would be so kind, Mr. Albrecht…”
Ghostly fanfares, my most impressive voice, deep and resonant.
“Moscow.”
And with that poor dear Jane opens her mouth, manages a single syllable that sounds much like the letter ‘O’, goes rigid for a second, and with the muscular fluidity of the newly dead her head smacks on to the table with a thump as she falls.
39
To Moscow
“Holy Christ.” Albert leaps forward and grabs the papers in front of the Minister clearing the table with a sweep of his hand.
The Minister is dead white, her eyes wide as she stares at Jane’s dead body.
“That wasn’t me!” I assure them, hands raised. “I…”
“We know chum.” Albert checks the woman’s pulse. “Nope. Gone.” He steps back. “Shit.”
“Did you feel anything? Either of you?” Minister Hannegan has regained her composure. It took one deep breath and she was back in the game. Most impressive.
“Nothing.” Albert shakes his head.
“Vampire?”
Nothing. And when I reach out my senses to poor Jane there is nothing too. “Interesting. This rather like what I saw with the eastern witches when I was collecting the inestimable Emmet.”
More snapped glances. Oh, they think I didn’t see that do they? How stupid do they think I am. “But of course you knew about the witches, and you knew that the young lady there…” young in my terms, not theirs. She was most likely in the last third of her life. “Was going to die the moment she knew enough to find our dear departed Secretary.”
“Yeah. Well.” Albert’s face twitches, a frisson of regret. “I was supposed to stop that happening. Maybe if I’d been…”
“I doubt you could have done anything Albert. It seems to be instantaneous. There’s no build up to detect and no surge to block. It’s like the man suddenly notices you and you’re gone.”
Why is nothing I’m saying surprising recently? I used to be quite the fount of knowledge, people asked my opinions on many matters of the deepest import, in point of fact these very people indicated they would value my views.
“We knew the general trigger. Not the specifics. We’ve lost a couple of dozen people over the time that there’s been an open investigation into him.” The Minister is matter of fact over this. She’s as hard hearted as she looks.
It’s not just a mirror of the old United Kingdom, or England, it’s a dark shadow that’s made it through horrors and learnt a little too much in the process. And outside of a few of the outliers it is as cold and bloody as the world in which it resides.
“Can you check how Mr. Pole has done?” The Minister asks Albert. “And get the collaters to note the information that Jane had to hand. Knowledge he is Moscow seems to be at least one of the main triggers.”
Albert nods, and leaves. Hannegan turns to me. “And that’s why I need you. You know everything that she knew and you are no more and no less dead than you were before. I will be honest with you… Albrecht.”
“Oh. Please do.”
She picks up the folder and hands it to me. “The reports suggest that you are interested in recovering the old world. I am not interested in that. The Institute, our science people, say that if that happened the world would be unlikely to survive the adjustment back. Your friends did a very good job of adapting the plants and animals to current conditions. And we’re adjusted ourselves. I’m not sure that a change to the old world would help the Union greatly, pace to old stick in the muds like Pole and the rest of his Calais people.”
“Ah.” I do not like this woman. I admire her, I do not like her.
“However I cannot have something that can arrange something as devastating as the Catastrophe out in the wild and out of control. The same goes for you, Albrecht. And you cannot cause instant death to anyone who acquires a specific set of soon to be widely available knowledge.” She barks out a laugh. “If this works how I think this works then all it would take is for him to take over our network for a moment and we would be back to the start of this. Dead bodies everywhere and nothing to rebuild with bar a few of our tougher agents.”
“So. You’re going to let me try and remove the threat and if I happen to repair the damage…”
“Which you won’t.”
“Then you’ll live with the consequences?”
“Yes. A choice between an endless threat we cannot counter, and a small chance that a man whose history is littered with failures can do something super human. And we have a route to Moscow too…”
The door to the Minister’s inner sanctum opens and Albert steps in. “He’s still up, Stevens too, as are this fella’s team.”
I growl, a primal reaction to the implications of what she has said. “I hope you did not just do what I think you just did, Minister?”
She flinches. Albert raises a hand, “Hold it chummer, needed doing…”
I feel a cold rage burn in my chest, roughly where my heart would beat. They were testing more than Jane. There were more of those folders. They were seeing if my friends would suffer this awful fate when they revealed what they knew…
I could take down Albert. I don’t need magic to kill him, I am strong and he is slow. The Minister is likely to have wards, but if she uses them then Albert cannot block my magic and I will shred them both before either can raise a hand.
A second ticks by on Albert’s watch. An old wind up model. Where did he get it I wonder?
The moment passes.
What is necessary is necessary.
“Everyone made it through bar poor Jane?”
Albert is still wary. He saw my indecision. “Yeah. Ah, best guess is that your witches… the cat’s channelling someone called Clem at the moment - she thinks we don’t know - have been kept out of the loop. Last gift of old Grams. God knows how she kept it all secret. As to Pole? Man’s rock tough. Seems there’s an element of resistance if you have the right wards, the Golem doesn’t seem to be effected-“
“He wouldn’t be.” I state. This is a fact.
“And the rest of the Moscow team is only briefed up to what the Minister here knows. Me? I know the lot but you know how I work.”
“We need to close this issue off. Are we in agreement that you will do that Mr. Albrecht.” The Minister is looking at me with those cold reptile eyes.
“Yes. No interference. And I assume the travel is part of the package?”
“It is.” She points at Albert. “Albert has learnt a very interesting trick in the time he’s been away.”
“That I have, that I have.” The grubby agent nods vigorous agreement.
There’s a rumble of thunder from above us. Apposite. “Something to do with the clouds I’m assuming?”
“Everything to do with the clouds,” Albert confirms with a grin. “But let’s get the team together and I’ll tell you a story.”
“I am all ears.” I stand. “Pointy ones at that.”
The others join us, and Albert is as good as his word.
40
Epilogue
“How are you feeling Nan?”
The old witch is sitting up in her bed, propped up with cushions and a cold towel wrapped around he
r head. Hemlock is burring and padding at the patchwork quilt which covers her. It was sewn by some of the older children when they heard she was poorly, and Nan is awfully pleased with it.
Hemlock’s affection is conditional. There is sunbeam near the wooden headboard which he is trying to sneak his way towards under cover of apparent love-bombing.
Cheeky cat.
“Bit peeky, to be honest with you Clemmy.” Nan reaches out for the cup of tea Clem has brought. “That Vampire packs a nasty punch when he’s angry, doesn’t he just?”
Clem smiles. It had been touch and go there in the immediate aftermath of the Coven’s attempt to protect young Ariadne. Thankfully the full strength of the coven had absorbed much of the Vampire’s strike and Nan’s natural ebullience had absorbed the rest. Two days later and she was nearly back to her old self.
“Didn’t just come to see if I was feeling good though did you Clemmy?”
“Won’t buy that and bringing you the tea?”
“Not likely.” Nan snorts. “You look like you’ve got something to say.” Her eyes narrow. “Have that ‘French’ look going on there, Clemmy. Sneaky like…”
“I do.” Clem reaches into her satchel and pulls out the book of crossword puzzles. It’s taken quite a while but she has finally broken the back of the last few problems. All bar one.
“Oh not that again.” A huge groan from Nan and a mew from Hemlock as she rearranges the covers, leaving him back in his starting position, holding on with bare claws and bad attitude.
“I think I know what Grams used the crosswords for.”
“Boring irritating one upsmanship against poor innocent witches who could have been doing more important things?”
Clem shakes her head. “No, Nan. Grams lessons always had a point. She was the least malicious witch I’ve ever met.”
“Oh she was was she? Do tell.” Nan very obviously starts looking around for a biscuit tin to imply her disinterest.
“She was keeping a log, Nan.”
“Of what? Newspaper rejections?”
“An investigation from before the Catastrophe. She was trying to stop it when she died. And she knew who did it.”
Nan sits up straight and Clem grins inwardly. A Cheshire Cat grin.
“Now you have my attention, Clemmy. Need to tell me everything you know. Never understood why she’d keep it so bloody secret. We could have helped!”
“Lets find out together!” Clem lays out the crossword book and her book of notes. “There’s one last one I need your help with. I think it’s geography and you travelled a lot before.”
“Six across, ‘a gaudy river flows past golden domes in the greater of Rome’s second part.” Nan taps her finger on her cup with a ceramic ting. “Oh. I do know this one! It’s…”
About the Author
Jack Holloway is a pen name for a historian, lawyer and sometimes writer who loves him some genre chopping post-apocalyptic hope spot novels.
Things he likes include unreliable narrators, messy timestream plots and shades of gray. Things he doesn't like are limited to hyphens, and people trash talking romance novels, as they're a great form of literature.
Ironically he never includes any romance in any of his own writing.
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Follow the series at https://authorholloway.com and Jack’s ramblings on Twitter @authorholloway
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