Mercy's Chase

by Jess Lourey

  Gaea had come through.

  No private events had been scheduled in the Robing Room during the twenty years of Rosalind Franklin’s adult life. It was either open to the public or closed for the single day a year the queen required it. In addition, the Robing Room frescoes had remained untouched since their creation, the only exception being in 1956, when the room was closed off so the frescoes could be sprayed with a clear sealant to protect them from the vagaries of time.

  If there was a clue to be discovered, it was on the surface, sprayed over the top of the painting by a skilled chemist and X-ray

  crystallographer, one familiar with the two-dimensional patterns expanded through the science of fiber diffraction.

  Salem stripped the paper from the black crayon, the waxy smell taking her back to kindergarten. She lay it across the upper left corner the long way and rubbed. The method was commonly used on gravestones to lift images. Charcoal or a disc of rubbing wax were the standard media, but she worked with what she had.

  The image began appearing almost immediately.

  Charlie hollered triumphantly. “Salem Wiley, you are a genius.”

  She applied enough force to pick up the delicate fiber pattern Franklin had sprayed over the top but not so much that she would damage it. The upper left quadrant of the paper revealed a rudimentary drawing of a woman, her right hand upraised in supplication, and then her face, emerging like ancient ghosts from a mist. The upper right quadrant revealed a mirror image of that woman, her left hand upraised. The women’s identical heads were framed by the blunt headdress and kohl eyes reminiscent of Egyptian tomb art.

  The crayon was growing hot from the rubbing. “Can I have another, please?”

  Charlie stripped the paper off a royal blue crayon and handed it to her.

  She stretched her fingers, working out a cramp from holding the black one so tight. She started rubbing the lower left quadrant from the bottom edge, working her way upward. The woman’s foot appeared first, flat and pointed to the left. The right foot was the same, but a shape was curling behind it.

  Salem brought the crayon upward, rubbing, the smell of warm wax comforting. The woman wore a simple shift, the shape near her feet curling behind her form. Her left hand was outstretched toward something. Salem stayed on the image, expanding it from the center and out.

  “It’s a dragon,” Charlie said, his voice tight. “The women are holding hands through the middle of a dragon’s head.”

  Salem kept rubbing, though she knew he was right. Mostly. The Egyptian aesthetic had thrown her off, but otherwise, the image was as she’d expected, a Neolithic message sent through time from a people who had no written language.

  It was a pictographic map.

  Charlie understandably thought the giant, snaking creature between the two women was a dragon, their hands piercing its eyes and meeting at the orb of its brain, its giant mouth drawn down in pain.

  But it was no dragon.

  The vulnerable tightness of hope squeezed Salem’s throat and chest. Rosalind Franklin had known all along where women’s ideas and inventions had been hidden. The Order or archeologists had sniffed too near this final map, originally hidden under the Flower Rock, so she’d moved it—or this fresco-sprayed replica of it—three stops out, from Brodgar to the Gloup, the Gloup to St. Brigid’s, and St. Brigid’s to here.

  The map didn’t show a dragon, a mythical beast that would have been unfamiliar to the Neolithic people. It showed an eel.

  Salem knew where the treasure was hidden.

  “I have to get this to the Order.” She peeled off the tape and began rolling up the map.

  “What?” Charlie’s voice was sharp. “Get what to them?”

  She would not tell him. If she did, he might try to talk her out of it, or report the location to their superiors, whose actions may cost Mercy her life. Salem stepped gingerly down from the chair. “I need to go to the Tea Room. Alone.”

  He looked ready to argue but swallowed it. “You have the coordinates?”

  Salem glanced at the box on the table. She didn’t want to open it again.

  “I’ll send you a photo.” He walked briskly to the box and clicked a picture of the paper on top. Her phone buzzed three seconds later. “For the record, I don’t like sending you alone, but I understand why it needs to be that way.”

  Her eyes filled. They’d been through a lot. Once she returned to Minnesota, she could process it all, come up with the correct response. She had nothing now. She tucked her chin and walked toward the door.

  “Not that one,” Charlie said, laying his hand on her shoulder and steering toward the rear exit. “By the sounds of it, there’s something unpleasant happening out front. We need to get you out the back. And fast. You have less than an hour to reach the room, and the traffic will be awful. You have money?”

  “God, no.”

  He yanked his wallet out of his back pocket at the same time he opened the door. The hall was relatively clear, only a thin stream of workers using the back area. Charlie handed her a wad of bills. “Follow me.”

  Heads down, they walked against the flow. It was mostly caterers and maintenance staff in the back hallway, but the snatches of conversation Salem caught proved Charlie right. Something had happened in Parliament. Someone was hurt.

  Dead.

  It couldn’t be Agent Stone, could it?

  Charlie kept them both moving, no time for questions. He flashed his identification at the guards watching the west rear Parliament exit, and they opened the door briskly. A cab was waiting outside.

  “I needn’t tell you how to turn coordinates into an address,” Charlie said, cupping her open window with his good hand after he closed the door behind her. His boyish face was churning with barely contained emotion. He leaned forward. Salem thought he was going to hug her, but he stopped himself.

  “Take care of her,” he ordered the cabbie before stepping back.

  “Salem!” It was a scream from the crowd being herded away from the rear of Parliament.

  Salem craned her head out to see who was shouting for her.

  Her heart jumped into her mouth. It was Bel, steering her wheelchair toward the cab, held back by guards. Salem reached for the door handle. It was instinct. Her higher brain shocked her awake before she pulled the door open, though. She didn’t have time to talk to Bel. She had to save Mercy.

  Salem fell back into her seat as the Black Cab pulled away.

  54

  Washington, DC

  Speaker of the House Vit Linder reclined in his squeaky leather chair in his too-small Longworth House Office Building. He hadn’t been offered an upgrade when he’d been elected Speaker. Subsequently, the office did not reflect his importance.

  That would soon be rectified.

  Can’t beat the Oval Office for lighting.

  In the meanwhile, his current headquarters were the perfect place to receive the news of the death of the president or the vice president. He guessed Clancy would only kill one, but he wasn’t sure. In the end, it wouldn’t matter. Either Clancy followed orders and made Vit president, or he told on Vit and the Order marked him as stupid. Either scenario worked for Vit.

  People always underestimated him.

  Always.

  Not for much longer, not once he was President of the United States of America.

  If Hayes went down, Cambridge would be sworn in. Cambridge and Vit were different parties, opposite world view. Cambridge would never name him Veep; he would nominate someone else, and that someone else would need to be approved by a Senate and House both led by the opposition party, both in Vit’s control. They would stall, as commanded. The same would happen, more or less, if Cambridge was the one killed.

  With the sand loosened beneath democracy, it’d be easy to convince the Order to assassinate the survivor of today’s assassination, all
owing Linder to walk into office, hands clean.

  He’d be the president within a year.

  His life would finally have meaning.

  He heard the footsteps padding down the hall toward him, their beat urgent. He’d purposely not watched the news. He wore the exact correct face. He’d played it perfectly, strategized, gotten his pawns into place.

  Just like a game of checkers, he congratulated himself.

  55

  Tower Bridge, London

  “This is it.”

  Salem looked at the museum of oddities the driver was indicating. “That?”

  He tapped his GPS, into which he’d typed the coordinates rather than have her search a street address. “I don’t think so. I think it’s that door between the museum and the Indian restaurant.”

  “Thanks.” She paid and tipped him and stepped out, clutching her phone, the roll of butcher paper tucked under her arm. The streets were busy, but nothing compared to the chaos surrounding Parliament. Her heart hitched up her chest. She must live long enough to rescue Mercy. The awareness was out-of-body. She felt like she was watching from above, directing a Salem puppet.

  She walked toward the door.

  Mercy might be inside. Salem hoped she could hold her, nuzzle her sweet-soft hair, tell her everything was going to be okay even though it was a lie. Her only bargaining chip was the thin hope that the Order would not recognize the significance of the image of two women and the eel. With their main codebreaker, the Grimalkin, down, they might need her to lead them to the final treasure. She’d figure out how to free Mercy in that time, even if she had to push the child out of a moving vehicle to save her.

  The door creaked open as she raised her hand to knock.

  She stepped into a dark hallway. A single table broke the flow, a vase of plastic roses set on top of it. She walked past, engaging the flashlight on her phone to light her steps. Dishes clanked in the restaurant next door. The air smelled like curry and dust. Two closed doors branched off the end of the hallway, one going each direction.

  They were identical, both with old brass knobs and peeling yellow paint.

  She didn’t know which one to take and so chose right. Her hand gripped the cool knob.

  “Don’t!”

  She turned. It was Charlie, coming through the door she’d entered.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He walked toward her, his face wrecked with worry. “I can’t let you do this, Salem. It’s a trap. The Order has no reason to give you the girl. Not right now. MI5 thinks you’re expendable if it gets them something concrete on the Order. I don’t.”

  A vise squeezed Salem’s head. “You can’t do this. It’s not up to you. I have to save Mercy.”

  His face dissolved into tears, unsettling her. But she had too much forward momentum. She pulled open the door. A brick wall was on the other side. She pushed on it, the solid rough surface scraping her palms.

  She turned to the other door and opened it.

  Another brick wall.

  Now Charlie was weeping. Salem stepped toward him, almost reached him, when she realized it wasn’t tears but laughter, a breathy pinch of horrible dry wicked humor. Charlie darted to the side, grabbed a plastic rose, and held it toward Salem.

  “Smell it.”

  She recoiled.

  “You can’t,” he said. “It’s fake. My idea. Nice touch, yeah? Bet you wish you had trusted the flowers, like Mrs. Molony told you.”

  All Salem could hear was the single knock of her heartbeat.

  Thump.

  Charlie bent forward as if to tie his shoes, but began licking his arm instead. Like a cat.

  Thump.

  With the back of his hand, he rubbed over his ears, tufting out his hair. He smiled up at her and meowed, bringing his cat and mouse game full circle.

  Thump.

  She realized what had been nagging her on the plane ride from Dublin to Heathrow. Back at St. Brigid’s, Charlie hadn’t seemed surprised or worried to see Jason, only irritated. It wasn’t Alafair who had made her uneasy. Alafair, who hadn’t trusted Charlie from the moment she’d laid eyes on him. It was Charlie.

  Thump.

  He stood between her and the door.

  The Grimalkin stood between her and the door.

  “You shot Lucan, you fucker.”

  He darted to his feet and grabbed the phone out of her hand. “Killed him, too, with any luck. My car is out front. I presume you won’t tell me what the map means until you see the girl, so off we go.”

  Bile burned the back of Salem’s throat. “You have the FBI on your side?”

  “Only a few. Only when I need them.” He pushed her outdoors, his too-hot hand holding the back of her neck to steer her.

  “Jesus, you cut off your own finger.”

  “I like to embody my roles.”

  She was struck by a final, shameful understanding, something she should have put together earlier. Back at the Gloup, Charlie had said Bode’s throat had been slit when Charlie looked back toward the hole, but that Bode had been facedown when Charlie came to. He couldn’t have known how Bode had died unless he’d witnessed it.

  Or done it.

  Agent Len Curson held the door open. Salem glared at the turncoat. He held her stare, coolly, leading her toward a car. A suit Salem didn’t recognize sat behind the wheel. The Grimalkin tossed Salem’s phone into a trash bin and then forced her into the car. He and then Curson followed, one sitting on each side of her in the backseat.

  “Probably no small talk, right?” Charlie said. “It’s been exhausting listening to your every little thought the past four days, by the way, fulfilling your fix-it fantasies by telling you about my parents, hearing you whine about Bel. Blah blah blah. Bloody hell, you should have called her. She would have told you it wasn’t your fault Mercy was taken. She would have helped you crack the code.”

  Salem couldn’t stay on top of the quicksand that had become her life. Her brain was flying, but it wasn’t moving fast enough. She was going under.

  Mercy.

  “Where is she?”

  Charlie ducked his head and pointed. “Up there.”

  She followed his finger. Tower Bridge, close, far too close. Salem’s panic began a high keen. She dulled it, swallowed it, buried it. “You were working with someone else.”

  “Jason. Useless, except when it comes to disguise. You know him. Or your mother does. And can we talk about your mother? What a piece of work. She’d fuck up a saint, that one.”

  The Heel Stone. The Eel Stone. The Heel Stone. The Eel Stone. Salem sang the words inside her head, biting down on them when they grew too slippery.

  “Is your name really Charlie?”

  He nodded, his smile even. “Charles Arthur Thackeray. My mother was a spy for the Underground. Father, too, just like I said. Cost them both their lives, and for what? Shite.”

  They pulled up to a Tower Bridge side door. Agent Curson exited first, running around to open Charlie’s door, then escorting Salem inside the Tower Bridge, gripping her arm. He should have known she wouldn’t run, not with Mercy inside.

  Charlie led them to an elevator. Curson entered first with Salem. Charlie followed. As the elevator shot up, Salem’s stomach dropped.

  “That’s right,” he said. “You’re a bit of an agoraphobe, though you seemed to do just fine on our little road trip. You’re not going to like what you see up here. The whole world, no protection, spread out as far as your eyes can see.”

  Salem’s tiny world grew smaller. “What is Mercy?”

  Charlie’s eyes stopped their crazy spin and focused. “She’s the one-pad cipher. As was her mother before her, and her mother before that, so on down the line to the inception of the Underground. It’s nothing to do with her blood, at least not in a way measurable by current technolog
y.”

  DNA. Genetic instructions as code.

  “I see your brain working. If you could solve that one, the Order would certainly love you, yes they would. But no one can break it, not with the knowledge we have now. If we crack a few more trains, however, it should be easy peasy. All glory to the Grimalkin.” He giggled.

  The elevator door slid open to an opulent room the size of a hotel lobby.

  Mercy sat in the center, huddled on a blue velvet couch. A familiar-looking man sat near her. She wore corduroys and a Disney princess

  t-shirt. Her head was bandaged over her left ear. She seemed smaller than she had days ago, her expression haunted, her focus on some spot on the floor even though a coloring book and crayons rested next to her.

  Salem cried out.

  The child glanced up. A heartbreak of emotions played across her face—hope, suspicion, terror, love. She leapt off the sofa and into Salem’s arms, shivering, her frame slight, clinging so tightly to Salem that she stole her breath.

  Salem held her like her life depended on it, weeping with grief and joy. The connection she felt embracing the child overwhelmed her. She’d never felt such pure love, or horror. Mercy was a part of her, she knew that now, but there was something shriveled and stunned about the child, a vital part of her spirit broken. The men had stolen something from her, something precious. Salem didn’t know if they could get it back, and that realization crushed her.

  “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” she murmured repeatedly, choking on the words.

  The familiar man rose from the couch. Salem realized where she knew him from. He’d been Stone’s partner last year, following her and Bel as they’d tried to save Hayes. He’d had a different nose then, but he was the same man, a dead ringer for Ed Harris.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  Charlie walked to the window and looked down. “You’ve caused quite a stir, haven’t you, Clancy?”