by E. J. Blaine
“What the hell are you packing, McGraw? A machi…”
Then the huge mass of the Daedalus rose above the trees. Shelby and the other agents looked up, astonished. The ship hung just over the trees, gleaming in the late afternoon sun.
“That’s the Daedalus,” Jack said, trying not to smile. The ducted engines whirred softly. Vanes shifted and the ship slowly spun until she was facing them.
“Holy moly,” Shelby said softly. “Edison’s got his own airship?”
“AEGIS,” said Doc.
After another moment, Shelby looked away and summoned back his air of disdain. Jack realized Shelby wore it like a suit of armor and used it to keep others off balance.
“Message said there were two,” Shelby said. Where’s the other one?”
“Dead,” Jack said. “I’ll show you.”
“So you’re saying I’ve got no suspect to question?”
“You wouldn’t anyway,” said Doc. “Nobody’s ever taken a Silver Star agent alive.”
Shelby sighed. “Okay, one more time. Who?”
“The Astrum Argentum,” Doc said. “The Silver Star. They’re an occult organization led by an English magician named Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s a madman, and the Silver Star is his personal army.”
“I’m sorry,” Shelby said. “Did you say magician?”
“That’s right,” said Doc. “He started out in the Golden Dawn; that’s an occult secret society. But they kicked him out, so he started his own. Its sole mission is to increase Crowley’s power, both worldly and supernatural.”
Shelby looked at them with blank incomprehension. “Maybe you should show me the other one. Becker, you’re with me.”
Jack led them into the trees. Doc, Shelby and another agent—Becker, apparently—followed. “And get a wire off to Albany for those plates,” Shelby shouted to another agent.
“Crowley finds angry, desperate people,” said Jack as he led the way through the woods. “The war left plenty of them around. And they’re easy pickings. He offers them whatever they need most. Sometimes that’s not much at all. He’s got a lot of support in Germany, but he recruits around the world. Soldiers, occultists, engineers. And they’re getting bolder. They’ve always worked from the shadows before. But this is an open assault.”
Shelby sighed. “Okay, so this Crowley is a moon bat with a bunch of moon bat followers, and they all get together and dance around bonfires or whatever they do. Why do you think they’re behind this?”
“Because both the assassins dissolved,” said Jack.
“Dissolved.”
“It’s what happens when one of them is killed,” Doc said. “They just dissolve, in seconds. Nothing’s left but clothing and bones. We think it’s Crowley absorbing their life essence to bolster his own power.”
“Do you people ever listen to yourselves?” said Shelby.
Jack felt his temper starting to rise. “We know what we’re doing, Agent Shelby,” he said. “More than you do. This isn’t a regular murder case, and it’s not bloody…socialists. You’re out of your depth here. You need our help.”
“Uh huh.” Shelby let out a long breath and shook his head. Jack was tempted to just punch him, but that obviously wouldn’t help.
“Up here,” he said instead. “By the fence.”
“All right, keep back,” Shelby said as they broke out of the trees. He looked up at the Daedalus again, then he and Agent Becker approached the remains. Jack and Doc stayed a couple steps back.
“What the hell?” Shelby muttered as he knelt beside the bones. He took a pen from his pocket and gently prodded the grinning skull with its tip. He looked back up at Agent Becker, and Jack could see he was badly shaken. This was obviously well beyond what Shelby was accustomed to.
“Some kind of acid, maybe?” he said quietly. “Those beetles Johnson’s always talking about?”
Becker sniffed the air and shook his head. “No acid,” he said softly. “Flensing…that would take days.” He shook his head again. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Pictures,” Shelby said. Becker took a Kodak Vest Pocket folding camera from a pocket of his overcoat and opened it up. He started shooting photos of the bones and the long black jacket blowing in the wind.
“And not a word of this to anybody,” Shelby said. “I mean it.”
Becker nodded and kept shooting.
Shelby approached Jack and Doc. He didn’t seem to know what to say for a moment. At last, he said, “All right, let’s say I’m prepared to believe your story. Which I’m not, let me be very clear about that. But for the sake of argument, what would the next step be? How do we find these people?”
Jack bit his lip. “We…”
“We don’t know,” Doc said. “They set up clandestine cells for a particular mission. They used to operate out of an airship that let them reach almost anywhere in the world.”
“Used to,” Jack added for emphasis. “Until we blew it up.”
“But we don’t know where they’re based,” said Doc. “We weren’t even certain this was Silver Star until now.”
“Enough,” said Shelby. “Enough. You seem like well-meaning folks, and I’ll admit there’s things going on here that I don’t understand. Maybe your sorcerer and his silver whatever are real. Maybe they’re not. But right now it doesn’t matter. None of this helps me. You can’t tell me how to find them. Even if I do find one, I can’t question him because he’ll just go poof.” Shelby mimed it with his fingertips.
Jack had to admit Shelby had a point. At the moment they didn’t have much to go on.
“I can’t do anything with this. So I’m going to go back to my office now, and I’m going to do what I know how to do. That’s police work. Becker, get that bagged up, and we’re gone. We’re done here, folks. Thanks for your help.”
Jack looked up at the Daedalus and gave Duke a signal. The ship silently receded into the sky, turning as it rose, and headed west toward New Jersey.
As they walked back, Doc gave Jack a sardonic grin. “That went well.”
“At least he’s not still going on about trade unions and poisoned rocks.”
“Still,” Doc said, “I think we’ve worn out our welcome with Agent Shelby.”
Jack drove the Lincoln back toward New York City as the sun settled toward the horizon and the shadows lengthened. They passed small hamlets and scattered marshland in silence.
“He couldn’t speak,” Doc said suddenly a few miles outside Manhasset. “That happened quickly. Voluntary muscle control was compromised within thirty seconds of onset.” Her voice was tight and Jack recognized the detached, clinical turn her words had taken. He reached over and gripped her hand but let her go on.
“Patient was agitated and fearful, in obvious pain. Attempts to speak…failed. Tissue necrosis proceeded with remarkable speed, beginning with the circulatory system, then proceeding to muscle and subcutaneous tissue. Visible symptoms appeared within ninety seconds of exposure. Time from visible onset to death, approximately three and half minutes.”
Jack hated seeing her like this. She’d been badly shaken. And he’d run away to chase the killers and left her there with the dying Ponderby. He hadn’t been there to keep her from seeing what she’d seen. It was settled, Jack decided in that moment. He would stop this. He’d find out what the Silver Star was up to, and he’d put an end to it, no matter what it took.
“All that time,” Doc said. “He must have been in incredible pain. He kept trying to reach his desk. He was reaching for one particular drawer. He was looking at me and trying to speak. I opened the drawer for him, and he just…he just died.”
“What was in the drawer?”
Doc pulled up the side of her blouse to reveal a sheaf of papers curved against her side. “These. I thought it best if we didn’t mention them to Shelby.”
Despite himself, Jack smiled. Even with what she was going through, Doc always kept her head and thought three moves ahead. She was amazing.
It reminded him of something. He pulled the diner menu from his pocket and showed her the scrawled rows of numbers.
“Great minds think alike,” he said. “Let’s go have a talk with Mr. Edison.”
###
Once again it was dark when they reached Edison’s home in West Orange. This time, Edison himself met them at the front door.
“I heard about Ponderby,” he said. “You’d better come through and tell me about it.”
Edison led them through the reception room to the conservatory. It was a long room with a wraparound wall of windows that ended in a rounded prow like a ship’s. It gave an excellent view across the estate’s grounds. Duke, Deadeye, and Rivets were already there. Edison poured them iced tea from a pitcher, and they both told him what they’d seen.
“I guess we’d best take a look at those papers,” Edison said when Doc had finished her report.
He spread the papers out on a table and they all crowded around to look. There were memos and drawings, what looked like chemical equations. Jack recognized the AEGIS classification stamp on several of them. They reminded him of the diner menu, and he took it from his pocket.
“Duke, can you make anything of this?”
Duke studied the menu, then raised an eyebrow. Then he plucked the sheet from Jack’s hand and retreated to a chair in the corner.
“I recognize these,” Edison said. “Ponderby was working on a project for us. He was looking for a way to combine hydrogen and helium into a gas mixture for your airship. We hoped the right mixture would reduce the fire danger while keeping most of the lifting properties of the hydrogen. It would let the Daedalus fly higher and farther, while carrying more weight. He was making headway, until this.”
Then he discovered a folded sheet slipped in among the chemical formulas and opened it. It was a simple typed letter without a signature.
“We know you are working on a hybrid lifting gas for AEGIS,” Edison read. “End this project immediately, and cease all cooperation with AEGIS or face your destruction. We have a poison more deadly than any known to your science. There is no place you can hide from us. There is no one we cannot reach. Destroy all work on the hybrid gas or you will suffer unspeakable agony and death. For proof, look to Carter and Wolcott.”
Edison turned and looked at Jack and Doc. “Simon Carter. The Wall Street genius. He was the first victim. No one was meant to know he was the main financial controller for AEGIS. Wolcott developed the hydraulic fluids for high altitude flight.”
“They’re all working with AEGIS, aren’t they?” said Jack. “All the victims.”
“In one way or another, said Edison. “But that’s true of most major industrial concerns in America. In Europe too, for that matter. But this clears up some things. In the last month, AEGIS supporters have started withdrawing funding and canceling contracts. I haven’t been able to get a good explanation until now.”
“The Silver Star’s coming for them,” said Doc. “They’re terrifying them with this poison, or else just killing them outright.”
“They’re attacking AEGIS by hacking at our roots,” said Edison. “We have to fight back. AEGIS won’t fall right away, but we can’t last forever without money and technology.”
“But now we know how to find them,” said Jack. “Those men who pulled out of AEGIS got letters just like Ponderby’s, and it scared them so bad that they knuckled under. But the Silver Star has to keep an eye on them to make sure they keep doing what they’re told. We know who they are. So we stake them out, and sooner or later we spot their operatives.”
Doc nodded. “It could work. Especially if we can talk one of them into fighting back. If one of them doesn’t do as he’s told, that will draw out the Silver Star.”
“We’re going to ask one of these guys to be bait?” said Jack. “That’ll be a tough sell. Especially after they got to Ponderby right in front of us.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Captain,” said Edison. “You did all you could, and you’ve given us an avenue of investigation. But I agree we shouldn’t pressure these men to provoke the Silver Star. They’ve got families to think of. I can’t blame them for doing what they feel they have to do.”
“As it happens, we don’t need to,” Duke announced from his armchair. “I know where they’re going. Jack recognized the look of triumph on his face. “Thought I recognized this,” he said. “German naval code from the war. They tweaked it a bit, but not enough. German High Command knew we’d broken it. But if I had to guess, I’d say that news didn’t make it down to our friends in the Silver Star. It’s this first number that gives it away. The five digit groups are pretty standard, but here the first number’s always a factor of the—”
“That’s great, Duke,” Jack said. “What does it say?”
“Oh, yes.” Duke shot him a momentary glare, then scribbled a few words on the bottom of the sheet. “Team 1,” he read. “Surveillance pattern Schakal—means jackal—surveillance pattern Schakal, T.R. Dorner. Then there’s an address in Manhattan.”
“Dorner,” said Edison. “He's one of ours all right. Corporate attorney, and a darn clever one too. He built a lot of the legal infrastructure. Holding companies, blind trusts, everything we needed to keep AEGIS's inner workings hidden from our enemies. Supposedly ill with some undefined malady that keeps him bedridden. Out of the office. No deputy to handle his affairs with AEGIS.”
“Well, I guess we know why,” said Doc.
“They’re not sure about him,” said Jack. “They’re watching him. So we’ll watch him too. Rotating teams of two.”
“How long?” Deadeye asked.
“As long as it takes.”
Chapter 5
Right after he dove off the roof, it occurred to Jack that his plan was actually extremely risky, and that the direct consequences to him if it did fail would be quite severe. There was something of a pattern in that, he realized in a sudden flash of insight as he plunged through the night air. It went a long way toward explaining the unusual path his life had taken. Then he slammed into the wall, grabbed the drain pipe with both hands, and clung to it for dear life. Well, sure it was risky, he thought, but it worked. And if he kept getting away with things like this, how was he ever going to learn any better?
The roof, the drain pipe, and the wall all belonged to T.R. Dorner. The crew had been watching his Manhattan townhouse for more than a week, waiting for the Silver Star’s watchers to appear. Jack had taken a position on the roof, while Doc hid in the shadows of the alley behind the house. It had been a long and boring vigil, but tonight the waiting had finally paid off.
A little after midnight, two men had come up the alley and stopped behind the darkened house. One of them carried a compressed air gun that fired a grappling hook up to the roof as a cable played out behind it. The other wore some kind of boxy pack strapped to his chest. They clipped the cable onto the pack, and with a whine of springs and gears, the man was lifted off the ground and pulled up the wall.
That was when Doc broke from the shadows and charged. The one still on the ground took off, and Doc followed. But the other one had committed himself, Jack realized. He was dangling helplessly from the roof while the device on his chest hauled him up past the first floor windows. Jack’s instincts recognized a rare chance to take the man alive. With a little luck, he might be able to stop him from using whatever suicide gimmick Silver Star operatives used—assuming he could get to him before he reached the roof. And that was about as far as Jack had thought it through before he jumped.
The man had been watching his companion flee down the alley, but he looked up in surprise as Jack slammed into the drain pipe. Jack had hoped his momentum would tear the drainpipe free, but it didn’t. Jack eyeballed the rising Silver Star agent, judged the angle, and kicked hard against the brick. The pipe ripped away from the wall and carried him downward. The Silver Star agent fumbled for a pistol at his belt but had just gotten it free when Jack collided with him. The gun flew free and clattered d
own to the alley below. The agent’s pack groaned under the added weight, but it held, and Jack hung onto the Silver Star man for dear life as they were both carried up toward the roof.
###
Doc sprinted down the alley and around the corner. The Silver Star assassin was a dark figure dashing down the street ahead of her, his long coat flapping behind him like a cape. He was making for the darkness and cover of Central Park, a couple blocks away. She kept pace with him.
He dashed across Central Park West, full of traffic even this late at night, and sprang around the hood of a taxi that barely avoided crushing him. The cabby slammed on his brakes and shouted an obscenity after him as Doc flew past behind the taxi. Then she was across the sidewalk and running down the path toward the reservoir. She heard her quarry’s footsteps ahead of her and made out his shape in the dark as she rounded a curve. She was gaining on him, and she knew he could hear her coming up behind him.
At the crossing of West Drive, the agent stopped in the pool of light beneath a street lamp and whirled on her. Doc saw a knife blade gleaming in his hand.
She threw herself to the side as the blade flashed past and barely missed her. Doc drew her own knife from a scabbard inside her jacket and went into a fighting stance. They circled each other for a moment in the circle of light, both breathing hard. The agent feinted, then thrust for her heart, but Doc sidestepped and slashed his forearm. She felt the blade slice through his overcoat and shirt, and then the resistance of metal parting flesh. He cried out and jerked his wounded arm away.
Then he surprised her with a left hook. The punch connected with her temple, and she stumbled to one side. As she was recovering her balance, the agent dashed off the path and disappeared into the darkness.
###
Jack took another punch to the face as the whining gears hauled them over the edge of the roof. The Silver Star agent had fought furiously to dislodge him, but Jack had no intention of plummeting five stories to the sidewalk. Now they both instinctively clawed their way toward the relative safety of the roof. As they tumbled over the riser, Jack got tangled in the cable and fell on his back.
