“You were right, Cassie,” David said. “We should have run.”
“I wouldn’t have minded if I’d been wrong.” Cassie looked down at the water. If push came to shove, it could offer an uncomfortable way out.
“Don’t.” David caught her hand at the wrist. “We’ll get through this.” Then he raised his voice to project forward. “It’s okay, Callum.”
“It isn’t,” Callum said.
Cassie patted Callum on the back to indicate her support and encouragement.
David reached past her to nudge him too. “We can do as they say for now. Their response isn’t totally unexpected, given what happened with my mom and dad last winter.”
“But it is unwarranted.” Callum finally stepped towards Natasha, looming over her so that he blocked the sun and she stood in his shadow.
Callum meant to intimidate Natasha, and she wilted under his gaze, glancing down at her feet for a moment. Then Driscoll cleared his throat, and Natasha straightened her shoulders. “We mean you no harm, Callum.”
“You might not,” Callum said, “but forgive me if I have reason to believe, given the army you brought with you, that others do.”
Driscoll cleared his throat again. “If you could simply come this way—” He gestured towards a large black SUV parked next to the van the riot team had come in, “—all will be well. You’ll see.”
Callum let out a sharp breath. “Damn it, Driscoll—”
Driscoll kept a half-smile on his face, not responding to Callum’s anger. Callum cursed under his breath again and then reached behind him to take Cassie’s hand. He tugged her forward. “This is my wife, Cassie. Cassie, I’d like you to meet Natasha Clark and John Driscoll, my colleagues from the Security Service.”
Cassie stuck out her free hand, opting to be polite, though she couldn’t say she really meant it. “It’s nice to meet you.”
To her credit, Natasha didn’t hesitate and clasped Cassie’s hand in a strong shake. “Lovely to meet you too. I’m sorry about all this.”
“I’m sure you’re just doing your job,” Cassie said.
Callum sent Cassie a sharp look, but she plastered a smile on her face. Then David stuck out his hand to Natasha, who hadn’t even looked at him yet. It appeared to Cassie to be a snub, which was odd since David was the reason they were all here in the first place. “I’m David.”
“I know.” Natasha shook his hand too. She looked like she was going to say something more, but then she bit her lip and kept it back. Too many people weren’t saying what they were thinking for Cassie’s comfort. That had been a normal state of affairs growing up in her family, but Cassie had become good at reading the nonverbal cues they used. These English people were much harder to gauge.
David, for his part, kept on going. “I understand that you are at least partially acquainted with my mother, Meg?” He said this with an almost-feral smile, which Natasha didn’t seem to appreciate since she just jerked her head in a nod.
Callum barked a laugh.
Cassie appreciated David’s cynicism, but for her part, she couldn’t even marshal a partial smile. A sick pit had formed in her stomach. During the five years she’d lived in Scotland, she’d thought about little else but returning to the modern world, but this wasn’t going at all like she’d dreamed it might. When she met Callum, she’d told him that she wasn’t resigned to staying in the Middle Ages. The urgency had waned since then, however, and she hadn’t wanted to come here today.
Nor had David. Natasha had shaken his hand politely enough, but she seemed oblivious to how important a person he really was. In the course of the last fifteen minutes, Cassie had come to understand better why David had been determined to return to the Middle Ages as soon as he could when he’d come here the last time, and why he was more than a little annoyed to have their journey to Ireland interrupted. He’d had a plan, and now that plan was going to be continuing without him. Or more likely, it was going to fail.
David couldn’t stay in the twenty-first century. He had a family and a job to do. Unfortunately, these British secret agents had the look of people who might have the ability to stop him from doing it.
Few walks had ever seemed as long as the one from the dock to the SUV. They weren’t physically constrained, but agents penned them in and had closed off all the exits. Callum’s teeth were clenched together, and he had a grim set to his face that Cassie hadn’t seen since they were in Scotland and he’d had to convince a hall full of Scottish noblemen to listen to his plan for their future. She could practically see the gears churning in his mind, trying to figure out a way to turn what was happening to their advantage. Cassie couldn’t see it herself.
This was the first time she’d been to modern Wales; she’d never left her half of the planet before she time-traveled to Scotland on Meg’s coattails. Other than the fact that both she and Natasha spoke English—or a variant of it—she couldn’t see how they could have anything in common or how she was going to be of any help to Callum in navigating the next few hours. This was far worse than when she’d ridden with Callum to Stirling Castle and been overwhelmed by the expectations of the Scottish noblemen. The feeling of helplessness grew stronger with every minute that passed.
When they reached the SUV, Natasha opened the rear door and gestured that they should get in. Cassie glanced at Callum, not willing to do anything Natasha said without his approval, but he jerked his head in a nod. With every fiber of her being screaming at her not to get in the car, Cassie ducked inside and scooted over so Callum could sit next to her. He didn’t follow her immediately, though, instead stopping with one foot in the car and the other still on the ground.
“Natasha.” He said the agent’s name not as a question, but as a command, like a mother might bark at a child she’d caught doing something wrong. “Where are they taking David?”
“It’s fine, Callum,” Natasha said.
Cassie leaned forward and peered through the window at Natasha, who stood on the other side of the car door. One of the riot troopers stood next to Callum. From their stance and the way they were preventing Callum from backing out of the car door, it obviously wasn’t fine. Natasha was lying, and from the determined set to her jaw, she wasn’t going to back down about it either.
“David!” Callum pushed at the doorframe, and it was only then that Cassie saw what had disconcerted him: the agents had herded David toward a second SUV, one Cassie hadn’t noticed before because it was parked on the other side of the bigger van.
“I’m just following protocol,” Natasha said, “which I’m surprised you don’t remember.”
“If this is protocol, why haven’t you separated me from Cassie?” Callum said.
“I will if you don’t get in the vehicle right now,” Natasha said. “We’re taking you to be debriefed. That is all.”
Callum stared at her for a count of ten. Cassie honestly didn’t know if his glare was a precursor to fighting, or if he was going to capitulate. He clearly didn’t want to give in. His hand twitched towards the small of his back where his gun was holstered underneath his tunic, but then he let it fall. While it was better than a sword, one gun wasn’t going to get any of them very far against the hail of bullets Natasha’s men could direct at them. Finally, Callum nodded and got in the SUV. At the same moment, the agent in charge of David put a hand on top of his head so he wouldn’t bang it as he ducked inside the rear seat of his SUV. Then all the doors slammed closed.
For a moment, Cassie and Callum were alone inside the vehicle. One agent still stood outside Callum’s door, while a second held the driver’s side door handle. Both were listening to Natasha and didn’t get in the vehicle immediately.
“I shouldn’t have called them,” Callum said. “I miscalculated.”
“David said the same, but he was right, too, that by the time the cutter was approaching the cog, it was too late to do anything else,” Cassie said. “Since we have no passports, the coastguard officer would have held us somewhere. Once t
hey discovered who you were, we would have ended up with MI-5 anyway.”
Callum put a hand on Cassie’s knee. “Thank you for not being angry.”
“Anger is pretty much the last emotion I’m feeling,” Cassie said. “Despair, maybe.”
“I thought I’d have some measure of control.” Callum curled his hands into fists for perhaps the eighth time in the last twenty minutes. “I didn’t think Natasha would send the news of our arrival up the chain of command so quickly. I was naïve.”
“Possibly she had no choice. She seems very by-the-book,” Cassie said.
“She is. I should have taken that into consideration.” Then Callum shrugged. “Admittedly, you’re right about the lack of choice. The scientists would have recorded the flash of our entry into this world, whether or not we phoned anyone afterwards. They could have sent out the news within ten seconds. That coastguard cutter got to us quite fast. I neglected to ask why they responded so quickly, and for all that Timmons looked twice when I held up my badge, he was more uncertain than surprised, like he expected more resistance than we gave him.”
“Even though I think we should have resisted,” Cassie said, “being the object of a manhunt throughout Wales while we tried to get to Chepstow’s balcony wouldn’t have been fun.”
Callum laughed. “I suspect they won’t be accommodating if I ask to take you there. Half of them were with me the last time.”
Cassie laughed too, which was a nice change from anxiety. Then she sobered. “Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
Callum looked over at her, a flash of a smile still on his lips, before he focused again on his surroundings. “We can’t fight this many men. There’s a reason swords went out of fashion, you know, and so far nobody’s patted me down to look for the gun.”
“So we play along?” Cassie said.
“That was David’s plan, and that’s what we’ll do,” Callum said, “up until the point we decide otherwise.” Callum held her hand in his, absently rubbing the back with his thumb until Cassie made him stop.
Callum moved a few inches closer to her. Sometimes when Cassie was struggling with something in her head, she didn’t want to be touched, but she was grateful to know he was here. Cassie’s heart kept beating hard as the driver and the man who’d met them at the pier—Callum’s colleague, Driscoll—got into the SUV. A minute later, they pulled out of the parking lot and started driving through the streets of Cardiff. Callum appeared to settle into a state of semi-alertness to wait for something to happen. Their doors had locked automatically, and she didn’t try to unlock one. With David riding in the car ahead of them, out of earshot and out of reach, there wasn’t any point.
Driscoll had shot a quick look at Callum when he’d entered the SUV, but then faced resolutely forward. He held himself stiff, clearly under pressure, but since Callum didn’t say anything, Cassie didn’t either. She’d lived alone in the woods for many years and had felt comfortable with silence even before then. Hunting with her grandfather, she’d learned to still herself to listen to the forest. This was a city, however, and was so typically modern that she could have been in any country in the world. There wasn’t anything about it, other than an occasional street sign in Welsh, that told her she was in Cardiff.
She studied the streets and buildings with intensity, trying to memorize where they were going. Callum would know all that already, of course, but she needed to face the fact that they might separate her from him, as they had David, and she might have to figure some of this stuff out on her own. She needed a lot more information about who these people were and what they wanted before she could even formulate the right questions to ask. Until then, she would do her best to help Callum, or at the very least, not get in his way.
She half hoped they’d end up in an underground bunker like in Torchwood, but after twenty minutes, they pulled up in front of a nondescript office building, gray, with five floors of windows above a lobby and a massive antenna array on the roof. For a minute, they waited in the street at the entrance to the building, double-parked, and then they took a sharp left and rolled down a long ramp into an underground garage.
“Is this where you worked?” Cassie said.
“Yes.” Callum sat straighter in the seat. He’d had to adjust his sword to an awkward angle in order to sit next to her, since modern SUVs weren’t designed to accommodate medieval weaponry. Like Cassie’s, his linen shirt and wool cloak were still damp from the sea. The humidity was steaming up her window, since the driver had turned on the heat.
“If they keep us separated for long,” Callum said, “I’m going to be very unhappy.”
Cassie was already unhappy. The van with the riot squad had pulled into a space ahead of them. Beyond it, the SUV into which they’d put David parked across three spaces. Nothing happened for a few seconds, and then the doors opened. One of the agents hauled David out. He was wearing handcuffs and had a bag over his head.
“Callum!” Cassie surged forward in her seat and then sat back, having forgotten that she was still seatbelted in.
“I see him.” Callum ground his teeth.
“What could they be charging him with?” she said.
Nobody in their vehicle gave any sign of getting out. Driscoll was completely focused on the computer tablet in his lap and hadn’t looked up. All Cassie and Callum could do was sit, watching Natasha march David across the garage, heading towards the elevators.
“They don’t necessarily have to be charging him with anything,” Callum said. “Since 9/11, there’s been some leeway in the timeline for arrests. Especially considering his lack of papers and the way we came here, I’m sure they could easily trump something up having to do with terrorism.”
They’d been speaking in medieval Welsh, even though Cassie’s spoken use of it was still pretty poor, but Callum had said the last sentence in English. That distracted Driscoll from his tablet enough to turn around in his seat. “You think that little of us, do you, Callum?”
“You tell me, Driscoll,” Callum said. “Do you see what they’ve done to David?”
Driscoll’s brow furrowed. “What are you—” But then at the look on Callum’s face, he turned to the front in time to see David disappearing into the elevator, his arms locked behind his back and Natasha holding his arm since he couldn’t see anything through the bag. Driscoll sat back in his seat. “Huh.”
Callum leaned forward. “What’s going on, John?”
“I don’t know. But I promise you I will find out.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” Cassie said. “Why don’t we have bags on our heads?”
“My orders were to provide you with necessities and space in a conference room to write your report.” Driscoll looked back at Cassie. “Together.”
Callum pointed at Driscoll’s tablet. “What are they saying about me?”
“Nobody’s saying much of anything yet,” Driscoll said. “You’ve just arrived.”
“They’re saying something,” Callum said. “I caught a glimpse of what you were writing on your tablet. What are they passing my disappearance off as—some sort of PTSD mental break?”
Driscoll grunted. “It’s one option. You were with the Security Service long enough to know how this works.”
“I was,” Callum said. “That’s why I’m asking.”
“Some have wondered if you’re safe on your own, or if you should be moved to a psychiatric facility.”
“I can guess who might have asked that,” Callum said.
Driscoll tsked through his teeth. “He’s not the only one.” He held up his tablet so both Cassie and Callum could see it. It showed a message board with comment after comment appearing and then being superseded by another.
“MI-5’s very own Facebook,” Cassie said.
“And just as useless,” Callum said.
Cassie leaned forward to match Callum. “They ask about Callum’s mental state, while dragging David off for interrogation? How does that make sense? If they
believe David came from the Middle Ages, they have to believe it of Callum too.”
“Humans are quite capable of holding two contradictory viewpoints simultaneously and believing them both,” Driscoll said.
“What about me?” Cassie said.
“I have no information on you, but judging from your accent, you’re American, yes?”
Cassie nodded.
“Then I imagine you will be deported to the United States in due course, unless something can be worked out with your embassy,” Driscoll said.
“Callum and I are married!” Cassie said.
“Where is that recorded, again?” Driscoll said.
Cassie’s mouth dropped open, and she stuttered, “But—”
Callum pulled on the handle to the door beside him; it didn’t open. “Driscoll—”
“Right.” Driscoll opened his door and got out and then opened Callum’s. “I’m not telling you what I think, but what others are saying, Callum. You need to be prepared for questions.”
“I can answer any question,” Callum said, his voice a low growl.
Leaving the driver to park the SUV in the back of the garage, the three of them followed the path David and his captors had taken. Driscoll provided their only escort since all of the men in riot gear, plus Natasha, had gone with David.
Cassie caught Callum’s hand. “They really don’t view us as a threat,” she said in Welsh.
“It seems not,” Callum said.
“What do they think David is, though?” Cassie said. “A nuclear bomb?”
Cassie had to say the last two words in English, since they didn’t exist in medieval Welsh, and Driscoll overheard. “You don’t want to say that out loud. You two need to keep your heads down and your stories straight.”
Callum tightened his grip on Cassie’s hand. “If it’s all right with you, Cassie, I’ll do the talking.”
Cassie nodded, thinking how odd it was that in the Middle Ages she’d fought so hard for her right to be treated like a human being. She’d seen the mistreatment of women—and the assumption that they weren’t as intelligent or as competent as men—as something to be fought against. And yet, her first hour in the twenty-first century had already reduced her to the status of non-person, to be seen and not heard. And this time, it wasn’t men as a class doing the dehumanizing, but a faceless bureaucracy that had decided David was a threat to the British state.
Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) Page 6
