Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (25 page)

Anna unbuckled and came over to Meg with her
arms out. “We never talk about it, you know.”

Meg hugged her back. “What don’t we talk
about?”

“
About that time.” She
released Meg and returned to her squashy airplane seat. Meg had
never flown in such a comfortable plane. The seats were leather,
roomy, and soft, and arranged more in talking groups than in
rows.

Meg sat facing backwards with Anna across
from her and Cassie to one side. Callum had sat beside Cassie for
the few minutes it had taken to lift off, but as soon as he had
given Meg permission to call her sister, he’d pulled out his own
phone. He was talking on it now while pacing the aisle, which ran
beside the left windows for the full length of the plane. Private
planes were definitely the way to go.

“
That’s probably because
it’s a time I generally pretend didn’t happen,” Meg
said.

“
We talk about what
happened to David and me all the time but never what it was like
for you, other than that you missed us,” Anna said.

Meg rubbed her forehead with two fingers.
“When we get home, I will give you the blow-by-blow, as much as I
can remember. I promise.” She held up the phone again.

“This airplane has what amounts to a
mini-cell tower. It will communicate with cell towers on the
ground.”

Cassie nodded. “It operates on a frequency
that doesn’t interfere with terrestrial cell phone use or the
airplane’s avionics.”

Meg shot Cassie a grin, impressed with her
excellent techno-speak.

Anna looked from Cassie to Meg. “They can do
that?”

“
Guess so.” Meg put the
phone to her ear, again with her heart in her throat. When she’d
last phoned her sister, Elisa’s kids had been sick with chicken
pox, and none of them had been able to see Meg. At the time, she’d
felt like Elisa hadn’t wanted to see her either, but having nursed
her own twins through a bout of chicken pox two months ago, Meg
could better understand how truly rotten they had all felt.
Certainly it had turned out for the best that Elisa hadn’t tried to
fly across the Atlantic with Ted. MI-5 had begun its pursuit of
them within a few minutes of Ted’s arrival at
Aberystwyth.

And now here Meg was again, reaching out to
her sister while in the process of fleeing the country without a
chance to see her. Just a few minutes to talk to her on the
phone.

“
Hello?” A deep voice, one
Meg didn’t recognize, answered after two rings.

Meg was momentarily stumped, thinking she’d
dialed the wrong number or perhaps her sister’s number had changed,
but decided to carry on. “Is Elisa there?”

“
Sure, just a second.” The
voice went away and, belatedly, Meg realized that it had belonged
to Christopher, her nephew, who was now seventeen years
old.

“
Hello?” Elisa
said.

Meg let out a short breath. “Hi Elisa. It’s
Meg.”

“
Oh dear God,” she
said.

“
I named my daughter after
you.” Meg didn’t know where those words had come from, but all of a
sudden out of all that had happened since Meg had spoken with Elisa
last it seemed like the most important thing to tell
her.

“
Th-th-thanks—” Elisa
stuttered a bit more, starting sentences and stopping them while
Meg fought tears and couldn’t speak at all. Then Elisa said, “Where
are you?”

Meg swallowed hard, fighting for control.
Anna, who’d been watching her steadily, moved to her mother again,
this time crouching in front of her. Anna held out her hand for the
phone, and Meg gave it to her.

“
Hi, Aunt Elisa. This is
Anna.”

“
You’re there too!” Elisa
spoke so loudly Meg could hear her even without putting the phone
on speaker.

“
Yup,” Anna said. “Just
give Mom a second. She’s going to come back on.”

Meg breathed deeply, looking up at the
ceiling and wiping the tears from her cheeks with her fingers. Anna
was still talking, exchanging more pleasantries about her kids and
Elisa’s, but still watching Meg’s face as she spoke.

Then Meg nodded, and Anna gave the phone
back to her. “Hi Elisa. We’re in an airplane, flying across the
United States.”

“
Are you coming to see us?”
Elisa said.

“
We can’t.” Tears
threatened again, and Meg struggled to hold them in. “I’m sorry,
but we can’t. I’m a little surprised that you don’t have Homeland
Security beating down your door already.”

“
Are you in trouble again?”
Elisa said.

“
I guess so. It seems so,”
Meg said, “though it’s hard to understand why.”

“
Hard for me too, though
after what Ted went through in Wales, I suppose we should have
expected it.” Elisa had turned matter-of-fact, and it helped Meg to
get her emotions under control. “Where are you flying from and
to?”

“
We ended up in Oregon,”
Meg said and gave her sister a brief rundown of the last
twenty-four hours. She felt, under the circumstances, she owed
Elisa at least that, and she didn’t want her sister to be surprised
if the government showed up and was playing with a different deck
of cards than she was.

At the end of Meg’s little speech, Callum,
who’d finished his conversation, made a ‘give it to me’ motion with
his fingers, and Meg handed the phone to him.

“
Elisa, this is Callum.
We’ll be leaving U.S. airspace within the hour, so I’m less worried
about Homeland Security than I was.” He paused, listened, and then
said, “No, I don’t think they’ll send fighter jets after us. This
is a diplomatic flight. If the American government wants to make
trouble, they’ll do it once we’re on the ground in Wales.” Then he
listened some more. “Yes, they will discover Meg and Anna were
here. That might not happen today, but it will definitely happen in
the next few days.” More listening and then, “You are free to tell
them whatever you need to.” He’d been pacing around the small space
but finally sat down beside Meg, leaned close with the phone
between them, and turned up the sound.

“
Are you sure?” Elisa’s
voice bellowed out of the speaker, and Callum hastily turned the
volume down once more.

“
Yes,” Callum said. “I’m
going to give you back to Meg.”

Meg took the phone but didn’t put it to her
ear right away. “Is it really okay just to talk?”

“
Go ahead.” Callum smiled.
“You may not get another chance for a long time, and you might as
well use up your minutes.”

Tears pricked Meg’s eyes yet again, but she
returned to the line. Unlike three years ago, Elisa sounded
confident about her own life and happy to hear about Meg’s. They
talked for an hour, and when Meg finally hung up, the tears were
back, but this time she was crying because she was happy.

It was six in the morning, U.K. time, when
the plane touched down at Cardiff airport. Naturally, it was
raining.

Meg peered out the rain-spattered window.
“What’s in store for us today, Callum?”

“
I hope you’re not thinking
about the last time we were in modern Wales together,” Callum
said.

Meg glanced at him, hoping he wasn’t
offended. He’d changed into a suit, tie, and trench coat—the
uniform of an MI-5 agent—which George had arranged to leave on the
plane for him. The women were still in their two-day-old jeans,
t-shirts and sweaters, and winter coats. It wasn’t as if Meg hadn’t
ever worn the same underclothes multiple days before washing, but
as the Queen of Wales, she didn’t often have to.

“
I don’t blame you for
being worried.” Callum leaned over Cassie’s shoulder, looking at
the scene before them. A single SUV waited on the soaked tarmac.
“I’m hoping that’s Jones.”

“
And if it
isn’t?”

He pressed his lips together.

“
Are we getting to avoid
customs here too?” Anna said.

“
You have the red
passport,” Cassie said, “and Callum is still the director of the
Project, for a few more days anyway. Given the explosion at Signals
yesterday, you two are small potatoes.”

“
For today, arresting the
organization behind the bombing has to be the primary concern of
the Security Service to the exclusion of everything else,” Callum
said.

Meg nodded. While she didn’t know anyone
involved, she could feel Callum’s sense of loss. She wouldn’t have
wished what had happened on anyone, even if it meant that they were
flying (quite literally) under the radar.

The airplane door opened, and the four
companions filed down the steps to the waiting SUV. As it turned
out, Mark wasn’t there to greet them, but Callum cordially lifted a
hand to the man who was. Of a more lithe build than Callum, and
with skin that bespoke some African ancestry, he stood ramrod
straight and wore his suit and trench coat like a uniform, just as
Callum did. He also held a truly enormous umbrella. As they
approached, he moved it so that it covered all of them.

“
Agent Jeffries.” Callum
shook his hand. “Good to see you again.” He turned to Anna and Meg,
waving a hand back and forth. “Anna, Meg, meet Agent Darren
Jeffries of MI-5, formerly of the Project.”

Darren nodded his head. “A pleasure to meet
you.” Then he looked at Callum. “Jones sends his greetings.”

“
I hoped he’d be here,”
Callum said.

“
He couldn’t get away,”
Darren said.

Callum looked warily at Darren, who simply
opened the passenger side door and gestured everyone inside.

“
Should I be concerned?”
Callum said, getting into the front passenger seat.

“
Director Tate knows you’ve
arrived. I am to drive you directly to the Office.”

Callum’s lips twisted.

“
Given the current crisis—”
Darren cleared his throat, “—he told me you would understand the
urgency.”

“
Oh, I understand,” Callum
said.

Meg sat with a certain amount of reluctance
and ended up in the middle seat between Cassie and Anna. Cassie
noted the stiffness in her shoulders and leaned in to her. “It’s
okay. This is going to be okay. The Project is all but shut down.
Nobody should be worrying about you at all.”

“
I hope so,” Meg said. “I’m
tired of running.”

As at Oakland, they’d ended up in an area of
the airport set aside for charters and private planes. Darren had
to drive through a guarded gate to get out of the airport, but he
was waved through with a brief flash of his ID and nothing more. It
was a far cry from the security lines in the public sections of
every airport Meg had been in since 9/11, and she said as much.

“
This is the secure part of
the airport,” Callum said. “You’re with the British government now,
and its agents come and go as they please.”

He wore a self-satisfied smirk. Meg had
known that he’d been frustrated by their journey across Oregon and
California, but now he was back on his own turf. It was exactly how
Llywelyn had felt when he, Goronwy, and Meg had arrived back in the
Middle Ages after fleeing from MI-5. They’d come through the time
vortex in England, which wasn’t exactly home to Llywelyn. Still,
the change in his manner had been palpable. He’d been sure of
himself and his place in the world again.

Darren turned right and headed east. While
Meg had long since grown used to walking and driving on the left,
it was still weird for her to see vehicles constructed with the
steering wheel on the right. In medieval Wales, if a person crossed
paths with another person while walking or riding (or charging into
battle), he always went to the left. The idea was to put your sword
arm between you and the other person.

In addition, a right-handed person held a
horse’s reins in his left hand, so under gentler circumstances,
passing on the left allowed one man to greet another with his right
hand. At some point—and this must have been a strange cultural
shift—three-quarters of the world had started traveling on the
right. Meg didn’t know why.

Since it wasn’t even seven in the morning
and still dark, there was hardly any traffic. When the city center
didn’t appear after a few minutes, Meg leaned forward to speak to
Callum. “Where are we?”

“
The airport is ten miles
from the city center,” Callum said. “This isn’t eastern Oregon.
They didn’t have enough room to build it any closer in.”

He was trying to keep things light, but Meg
was too tense to laugh. She sat back, feeling as helpless as she
had ever felt in her life. And she’d been helpless plenty of times.
She gazed out of the window. After twenty-six hours in the modern
world, she was growing used to it by now: the traffic and the
lights, even the food.

“
Ma’am?” Darren glanced at
Meg in the rearview mirror. “I apologize for my role in what
happened to you at Chepstow. I’m glad to see you well. I hope King
Llywelyn is too.”

“
He is, last I saw him.
Thank you,” Meg said, touched by his concern.

“
I saw you fall,” Darren
said. “You and Director Callum.”

Callum glanced at Darren, his mouth twisting
in a wry smile. “Seeing is believing.”

“
Yes, sir,” Darren
said.

Callum looked out the window. “It was for me
too.”

“
That must have been
something of a shock to see, Darren,” Meg said.

“
Yes, Ma’am,” said Darren.
“Once Director Callum returned, I was happy to work under him on
the Project. I was reassigned back to MI-5 proper two months
ago.”