Em shook his head. “Never.” He’d always wanted to visit New York, but he didn’t suppose there’d be much time for sightseeing.
“Don’t worry,” Victor told him in that reassuring tone he used just before he dropped one of his bomb-shells. “I’ll make all the bookings and have someone meet you.”
For a beat Em said nothing. What Victor just said hadn’t really made sense to him. Then it did. “Aren’t you going too?” he asked.
“Yes, of course, but we have to travel separately.”
“Why?” Em demanded.
“Security,” Victor said. “I’ll meet up with you in New York.”
* * *
“You can’t wear those socks,” Victor told him sternly. They were in a menswear shop, where Victor was allowing him to choose new traveling clothes.
Em stared down at the socks in his hand. So far as he could see, they looked the soul of sobriety. “Why not?”
“Nobody in America will take you seriously if you wear black socks,” Victor said.
Eventually Em found himself in a check-in queue at Heathrow Airport, a single suitcase by his side, and his ticket, passport, and forged visa clutched in one sweaty hand. His heart was thumping like a jackhammer. He wished he had Victor with him. He wished Charlotte were free. He wished the Knights would leave him alone. He wished he had a proper visa. At the rate the line was moving, he calculated that he had perhaps seven minutes before he reached the check-in clerk. That was when his phony visa would be discovered. That was when it would all go wrong.
Except it didn’t. The clerk barely glanced at his passport, processed his ticket on the computer, then handed him back his documents with a brief smile.
The customs officer in New York proved a lot scarier.
The customs officer in New York was a burly black woman who didn’t know how to smile. She was wearing a blue uniform and, to Em’s discomfort, a sidearm. She glared at him as he approached, scowled as he reached her desk, and growled “Papers” when he attempted a grin.
Em watched her nervously as she examined his documentation.
“Purpose of visit?” she snapped.
To rescue my friend from the clutches of the world’s most powerful secret society. “Holiday,” Em said, following the instructions Victor had given him in London. “To see your beautiful country.”
“Vacation?” asked the woman, frowning. She somehow managed to convey disbelief and disapproval of the word holiday both at the same time.
“Yes,” Em nodded. Then repeated “Vacation” just to be on the safe side. He hoped this wasn’t going to take too long. His nerves were stretched to the breaking point, and he was beginning to need a restroom.
“Where’s your visa?” the woman demanded.
Em’s mouth suddenly went dry. He fought down an urge to bite his lips. “Brit—” He coughed to clear his throat and began again. “I’m a British citizen.”
“So?”
“We don’t need visas.”
“That so?” The woman stared at him for a moment, then flicked open his passport. “Edward Michael Goverton. That your name?”
For the first time he noticed the name tag balanced on her ample bosom. Her name was Hilda Bolden. He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And this is your own passport?”
Em felt a moment of total panic. Why was she asking about his passport? He swallowed. “Yes.”
She glanced from him to his picture and back again, then said, “One moment.” There was a weird-looking box attached to her computer on the desktop, and she pushed the open passport into a slot in the front. A green light came on, and the box hummed briefly. Hilda Bolden leaned forward to check something on the monitor. “One moment,” she said again. She picked up the telephone and murmured something he couldn’t catch. Then she cradled the instrument, favored him with one of her most ferocious glares, and said, “This passport is forged. Come with me, please, Mr. Goverton.”
Em thought of making a break for it, taking to his heels and running for his life past the customs desks and through the airport concourse into the busy streets of New York. But he knew he would never manage more than fifty yards before Security had him pinned to the floor. With his insides churning, he followed her through a door marked PRIVATE and down a corridor into a windowless room furnished only with a desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet. To his horror, Hilda Bolden locked the door behind them.
“Well, Em,” she said, “time to give up this little charade, don’t you think?”
Em hadn’t thought he could feel any more frightened, yet somehow he managed it. But despite his fear, a question burst through. “How did you know my name?” She couldn’t know he was called Em. The only name on his passport was Edward Michael.
She smiled for the first time. “Victor told me.”
Chapter 36
“You’re . . . ? You’re with . . . ?” Em spluttered.
“Section 7? Right in one. Give that boy a fat cigar. Why the surprise?”
Em blinked. “I suppose I— I mean, I thought Section was— I mean, this is America, so I thought—”
There was a knock on the door. “That’ll be Victor, I expect,” Hilda said. As she unlocked the door, she said to Em over her shoulder, “The Knights of Themis are an international organization. Section 7 has to be international as well in order to fight them. Originally we were set up as a joint project between America and Britain, but now we’re in every country in the world. Every one that matters anyway.” She swung the door open, and Victor stepped in. He was wearing a very sharp suit.
“You made it then?” he said to Em.
“What’s going on, Victor?” Em asked. He was furious that Victor hadn’t warned him about what would happen when he reached the States. His experience with Hilda had rattled him. Even now that he knew she was on his side, she still seemed scary.
Victor said, “This place has been swept for bugs, so we can speak freely; but don’t take that for granted once we leave here. Clear on that, Em?”
“Clear on that, Victor,” Em confirmed tiredly.
“Hilda’s introduced herself, I presume? She’s one of Section 7’s best international field operatives and our initial liaison in America. She’s the one who arranged to have our friends followed when they landed in New York. I’ll let her tell you.”
Hilda picked up the story without a moment’s hesitation. “Victor called as soon as he got the news about your friend. Just in time, as it turned out—the flight was circling, waiting clearance to land. I had Air Traffic Control delay them a bit until we could put surveillance in place; and sure enough, when the plane came down, we were able to identify two Themis operatives—”
“One was your old friend Stefan Kardos,” Victor interrupted softly.
“—traveling under assumed names. They had a young girl with them I assumed was Charlotte.”
“Was she all right?” Em asked at once. “Do you think she was hurt?”
“Frankly, I think she was drugged. She wasn’t making any fuss about going with them.”
“What did you do? Did you arrest them?”
Hilda parked her ample behind on the corner of the desk. “Section 7 doesn’t have powers of arrest—it would have to have been a snatch operation, and we didn’t want to risk a run-in with the airport authorities . . . or show our hand. Besides which, we wanted to be sure they had time to interrogate her—”
“You wanted to what?” Em exploded.
Hilda frowned in surprise. “Victor’s orders,” she said, as if that explained something. “We wanted to know what questions they would ask her, and they wouldn’t have a chance to interrogate her on the plane. Girl didn’t seem to have been harmed, so we decided just to put a tail on them until further instructions from Victor.”
Em looked at her for a moment as the information sank in, then asked cautiously, “Does that mean you know where they went?”
Hilda nodded. “Yes. Midtown apartment the Knights use as a safe house.�
�
Em turned from Hilda to Victor. “Can’t we do something to rescue her?”
“Ahead of you,” Victor told him. He opened the door behind him, and Charlotte walked in.
Chapter 37
The Michelangelo had leanings toward red leather and thick carpets. “Posh place,” Em remarked. He was experiencing emotions that had nothing to do with the hotel. They’d started with a flooding of relief when he had seen Charlotte at the airport, the intensity of which almost frightened him. Now, looking at her across the table in the suite Victor had arranged for, he was becoming aware of an undercurrent of disappointment. It took him time to work out where it was coming from. Somewhere in his most secret heart he had wanted to be part of her rescue—heck, he’d wanted to be the hero who rescued her himself. To fly all the way to America only to discover the deed had already been done was . . . well, stupidly disappointing.
“Good coffee.” Victor shrugged in response to Em’s remark about the hotel.
Em was looking at Charlotte. “What happened?”
“They grabbed me while I was waiting for a taxi,” Charlotte said. “I didn’t know one of them, but the other was the man we saw in France, the one with the gun—”
“Stefan Kardos,” Victor put in.
“They injected me with something, and the next thing I knew, I was on a plane. It was all sort of confused until I was in a room being questioned—”
“We’ve debriefed her on that,” Victor put in again. “Absolute confirmation we’re dealing with the Knights, absolute confirmation they’re worried sick about what your father discovered.”
“Talking of which,” Charlotte said, “Victor says you’re still not sure where to find the proof of what he did discover?”
“We still haven’t cracked the whole message,” Em said gloomily.
“Maybe I can help with that,” Charlotte said. “Can I take another look?”
Minutes later they were poring over the notebook. “We got stuck on this three one point two eight seven business,” Em reminded her. “That didn’t seem to make any sense in any code.”
“My guess would be map coordinates: latitude and longitude,” Charlotte said without a moment’s hesitation.
Em and Victor looked at each other. Then they both looked at Charlotte. Could it have been that obvious? Could they both have been that stupid?
“What made you think of map coordinates?” Victor frowned.
Charlotte shrugged. “I don’t know. There were maps lying about in the house where they took me, and I was thinking about map reading for some reason when the drugs wore off. I suppose they were in my head.”
“Why didn’t he write them as numbers if they’re map coordinates?” Em asked cautiously.
Charlotte shrugged. “Not all that many numbers in a Harry Potter story I’d imagine. He had to spell them out.”
Dumb question, Em thought. But it didn’t stop him from asking another one: “What are they the coordinates of?”
Charlotte gave him that long-suffering look of hers. The one that asked why she had to do all the brain work. “You’ll have to check that out on a map.”
“I’ll get the hotel to send one up.” Victor moved toward the phone. “But if he stole the documents from the Bederbeck Foundation, my guess is he would have tried to get them safely hidden as quickly as possible, especially if there was any possibility that he would fall under suspicion. He must have known what he was up against by that stage. So, now that we’re thinking map coordinates, my guess would be the location has to be somewhere quite close to the foundation itself.”
“Where’s the foundation located?” Em asked. For some reason, he thought it might be back in London. He hoped it wouldn’t be somewhere in the North or, heaven forbid, even Scotland. He didn’t have much stomach for another lengthy trip after the flight back.
“Arizona,” Victor told him tersely.
The hotel supplied one of the largest maps of North America Em had ever seen. Victor pored over it while Charlotte watched him and Em watched Charlotte, although he tried very hard not to make it obvious.
“They’re in the Sonoran,” Victor announced eventually. “Striking distance of the Bederbeck Foundation. Just as I thought.”
“What’s the Sonoran?” Em asked.
“The Sonoran Desert,” Victor told him. “Bit of a wilderness. If he hid the documents out there, nobody would find them without instructions. Sort of place where you could die trying.”
Lucky we have directions then, Em thought. Maybe his dad really had been like Indiana Jones. Just a little.
“Is that where we’re going next?” Charlotte asked Victor brightly. “To the Sonoran to find the proof Em’s father hid?”
“We aren’t going anywhere, young lady.” Victor frowned. “I’ll go ahead to set things up, but you’ve been through a traumatic experience—”
Charlotte, who’d clearly guessed what was coming and didn’t like it, said quickly, “I wasn’t at all upset, not really. I mean—”
“—and the only place you’re going is home. We’ve told your father you’re safe, and he is flying over to collect you.”
“Yes, but Dad—”
“I may have given him the impression that you were rescued by the FBI, and I’d be obliged if you continue to let him think that. But even if you tell him differently, you won’t make it stick. The FBI is prepared to back up Section’s story.”
Charlotte actually pouted, rather prettily, Em thought. “But I want to go with you to find the proof. This isn’t fair—you didn’t even know it was map coordinates until I suggested it.” The pout changed to a winning smile. “Come on, Victor, you know how helpful I’ve been. You know how helpful I can be.”
But Victor was buying none of it. “Too late for that. Your father will be landing soon.” He gave a very small smile of his own. “Besides, I’m going to have enough problems keeping one kid out of trouble.”
That would be me, Em thought. But he didn’t really mind being called a kid. At least it meant Victor was taking him along.
Chapter 38
Em had only the most fleeting impression of Phoenix before catching a connecting flight to Tucson. He had only a fleeting impression of Tucson as well, which was a pity, since he’d been into Country and Western in the days when he had time to listen to music and it was featured in many of his favorite songs. But he doubted he’d have appreciated it much anyway. He was unused to flying and by now had entered an unreal state of gray exhaustion that was almost worse than jet lag.
Somebody met him at the Tucson airport with the mention of Victor’s name. From that point, his trip took on an increasingly surreal aspect. He was bundled onto an aircraft that surprised him by taking off straight up until he realized it was a helicopter. Although he’d never been in a helicopter before, he actually fell asleep until a hand shaking his shoulder dragged him reluctantly back to consciousness.
“Time to get out, Em,” a voice said in his ear. So he got out and walked across the tarmac, vaguely aware that somebody had an arm around his shoulders, holding him crouched so he wouldn’t be decapitated by whirling blades.
There was a large car waiting with deep, comfortable backseats. All this, the chopper and the car, was laid on by Section 7. Must have been. Victor seemed to be able to arrange anything over here. Who was he anyway? This sort of stuff was way beyond a simple field agent surely. Or was it? Em was still wondering when he fell asleep again. He dreamed that somebody helped him check into a hotel where the room was air conditioned, the sheets were cool and clean, and the mattress was welcoming. Then the dream turned to a velvet darkness.
Em woke to sunlight, wondering where he was. It had the feel of a hotel room. There was an oversize television at the bottom of the bed, and he could see a bathroom through an open door. He found his watch on the bedside table and discovered it was almost noon. As he completed the long swim into consciousness, he saw an envelope beside the watch. His name was written in a flamboyant, ope
n hand he recognized at once. He tore open the envelope. The single sheet of paper inside lacked any letterhead. The message read:
Welcome to Arizona! I’ve arranged a place for us, but you looked so shattered when you arrived I thought it best to let you sleep over in town before bringing you out.
I’ll collect you at the motel at 3 pm tomorrow. (Or today, I suppose, since you’ll be reading this in the morning.) Any problems, call the local number listed at the bottom of this sheet. Anything you need, call reception at the motel and charge it to the account of Harlan Benson (name I’m using here).
Yours sincerely,
V.
Em pulled himself out of bed and headed for the bathroom. His body still felt like lead, but his head was mercifully clear. There was no bath, of course—Welcome to America!—but the shower controls looked like they belonged at Cape Canaveral.
By the time he emerged from the shower he was feeling not just human, but lively and hungry. He lifted the phone and dialed reception. “This is going to sound silly, but where exactly am I?”
“Easy Rider Motel, sir,” a male voice told him as if guests got confused every hour of the day.
Em said, “I was also wondering about the name of the town.”
“Nogales, sir. The town’s called Nogales. Only around here folks think it’s a city.”
Em finally got to the point. “Is there somewhere I can eat? Like breakfast?”
“Motel has a fine restaurant, sir. Just follow the signs when you come out of your cabin. I can recommend the flapjacks.”
The motel restaurant was functional and clean. The waitress looked Spanish but didn’t have the accent. “Hi, honey, you on your own?”
Em nodded. “Think so.”
“You must be Harlan Benson’s boy. He told me to take good care of you.”
Em remembered in time what Victor had decided to call himself and suppressed the blank look. “Thank you.”
“My name’s Donna. Harlan’s a doctor—right?”
So Victor had passed himself off as a doctor for reasons best known to himself. Em nodded. “That’s right.” He was surprised how easily the lie came. He was getting used to thinking like a secret agent.
The Secret Prophecy Page 18
