Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (26 page)

“
Just as well now,” Cassie
said, keeping her voice low. “Callum has more contacts throughout
the intelligence services than he had before. The staff
believe
, you see, even if
the Prime Minister doesn’t.”

Meg put a hand on Anna’s leg. She’d been
entirely silent since they’d left the plane and hadn’t talked much
while they were on it. “How are you doing?”

“
I haven’t been to Cardiff
since you took me here after David was born. I have no memory of
that trip at all.”

“
Sometimes I wonder if I
shouldn’t have found a way to live and work in Wales,” Meg said.
“Though work visas for historians are kind of thin on the
ground.”

“
It’s okay, Mom,” Anna
said. “Hindsight is 20-20. You taught David Welsh at
least.”

Meg had tried to teach Anna too, of course,
but they’d been at odds for much of her teenage years, and Anna
hadn’t been interested. Although Meg had never said as much to her,
the year and a half they’d been separated—with Anna and David in
the Middle Ages and Meg in the modern world—had been good for their
relationship. Anna had learned her mother’s secrets and figured out
that Meg was human and could make mistakes. By the time they saw
each other again, Anna had grown up enough, and missed her mother
enough, not to task her with her failings and to forgive her for
them.

After another ten minutes of driving, Meg
could see the lights of Cardiff ahead of them. The SUV crossed
several bridges, and then Cardiff Castle rose on the left,
surrounded by a high wall. The SUV stopped at a traffic light. It
always felt absurd to sit at a light when there were no other cars
in the vicinity. Callum looked back at Cassie, nodded, and pressed
a button on the door beside him. Her door unlocked, and Cassie
reached across Meg to poke Anna. “Come on, ladies, let’s go.”

“
What-what are you doing?”
Darren turned in his seat, a bewildered look on his
face.

“
Tate just needs Callum. As
of Monday, I don’t even work for them anymore.” Cassie slung her
backpack on her back and tugged the large duffel out of the rear
compartment. Callum handed Meg his backpack.

“
You don’t want what’s in
it?” she said.

He patted his coat pocket to indicate that
he had everything he needed. “I’ll call you as soon as I know more
and we have a plan.”

Five seconds later, the three women stood
together on the sidewalk, the light turned green, and Darren and
Callum drove away. Cassie and Anna each grasped a handle of the
duffel bag and hung it between them.

“
I don’t like being
separated from Callum,” Cassie said, “but this is for the best.
Unless Mark told him, or Darren did, Director Tate doesn’t even
know that you guys are here. Better to keep it that way as long as
possible in case someone remembers why MI-5 cared about you in the
first place.” She started across the street.

Meg and Anna belatedly followed, with Anna
trotting a few steps to catch up since she was attached to the
handle of the bag.

“
Are we worried about
someone following us?” Meg said.

“
You can’t understand the
kind of bureaucracy a government is until you’ve worked for them.
We’re hoping that the right hand doesn’t know what the left is
doing,” Cassie said.

“
What about the Americans?”
Meg said. “By my count, we may have three different agencies after
us.”

“
How do you figure that?”
Anna said, looking back at her mother.

But Cassie knew what Meg meant. “The CIA
used to care about you. That’s one. It may be that the Dunland
Group-turned-CMI still does. An agent from Homeland Security was in
the Consul-General’s office before we boarded that plane in
Oakland. There may be others.”

“
Would Homeland Security
have revealed all to the CIA in the last eight hours?” Anna
said.

Cassie laughed. “Not unless inter-agency
cooperation has improved enormously in the last three days.
Anyway—” she surveyed the street corner, “—it looks to me like
we’re alone.” She started walking down the street they’d reached.
“Come on. Let’s get inside.”

“
Inside where?” Meg
said.

“
Ah.” Cassie grinned at
her. “This is where the fun begins.”

“
What’s that supposed to
mean?” Anna said.

Cassie didn’t answer—just shot Anna another
mischievous grin, heading into a deserted pedestrian shopping mall
with cobbled streets. All the buildings were at least a hundred
years old, three or four stories tall, with a shop at street level
and apartments and offices on the upper floors. They passed a
Subway and a Burger King. America had made big inroads into Wales
since Meg was last here.

Cassie led Meg and Anna to an alcove with a
key code by the door. She punched in some numbers, and the door
unlocked.

“
Callum and I planned
ahead,” Cassie said. “All intelligence agencies have safe houses,
and this is ours.”

“
The Project’s?” Meg
said.

Cassie glanced at her. “No. Ours.”

They hurried down a narrow hallway, taking
several lefts and rights, before exiting that building into an
enclosed courtyard. Then they went through an archway, up several
flights of steps to another long corridor, and finally stopped at a
wooden door made of solid oak with another keypad beside it. This
one also required Cassie to press some buttons before it opened,
and then she stuck her face up to it.

“
Retina scan,” she
said.

The door lock clicked, and they entered.

“
Oh, wow.” Anna dropped the
duffel bag to the floor.

“
Thanks.” Cassie shut and
bolted the door.

The apartment was a corner one, spacious and
full of light, with hardwood floors, ceramic counters, and lots of
polished chrome gleaming from the spotless open-plan kitchen.

“
This is incredible!” Meg
said. “How did you afford—” She stopped, deciding it was crass to
ask about money.

“
We didn’t,” Cassie said,
answering the question anyway. “I don’t know if Callum ever told
you, but his father worked for the U.S. State Department and was a
bit of a spy himself, though he would never say how much. This
apartment belonged to him. He bought it off the record and off the
books through a shell corporation back in the 1960s.”

“
How fortunate that he set
this up in Cardiff,” Meg said.

Cassie smirked. “He had safe houses in
London and Paris too. And somewhere in Bulgaria, of all places.
It’s a good thing the corporation pays the taxes, because they’re
ridiculous.” She stopped, grinning at the stunned looks on her
friends’ faces, and then added, “In case you hadn’t realized,
Callum is from what you might call ‘old money’ on both sides of his
family. When David made him Earl of Shrewsbury, he wasn’t the first
lord in the family tree.”

Anna laughed and, for the first time since
they’d left Rhuddlan, it sounded genuine. “That explains a lot. He
probably has more right to the throne of England than David
does.”

“
Being an American, I
pumped him for any memories of hanging with nobility growing up,
but he’s pretty close-mouthed about the whole thing,” Cassie said.
“I can tell you that Callum’s mother is descended from James
Stewart, who happens to be Callum’s friend back in the Middle
Ages.”

“
James Stewart, the fifth
high steward of Scotland?” Meg said.

“
The very same.”

“
I bet he never mentioned
it to James,” Meg said.

Cassie shot Meg another grin. “Callum didn’t
know about it then, just that he was related to the Stewarts. After
his mother died, he’d boxed up her papers and stuck them in a
closet in the London safe house. It was only after we returned that
I started going through them, and we discovered she’d done his
whole family tree.”

It may have been a strange conversation to
be having while on the run from multiple governments, but Meg
thought it explained a few things about Callum. And maybe more than
a few things. It could be just the historian in Meg projecting, but
he seemed like a person who’d been raised in a family with deep
roots—and deep pockets—in the past.

“
You might be wondering why
we didn’t take David here to recoup after he was abducted,” Cassie
said.

Anna crouched beside her duffel, unzipped
it, and began to lay out its contents. “Actually, at this point I
wasn’t going to second guess you.”

“
David was ill. He needed
the hospital.” Meg said. “You guys did your best. Nobody doubts
it.” She glanced at Cassie, and the look on her face was one of
relief.

“
Not even David?” Cassie
said.

Meg looked at her more closely. “Have
regrets been eating at you?”

Cassie nodded and shrugged at the same time.
“I’ve tried to ignore them, but I wish we’d made different choices
from the start. Then David wouldn’t have almost been killed, and
Callum and I wouldn’t have had to spend the last two years
here.”

“
If you hadn’t made those
choices, you wouldn’t have reconnected with your grandfather. Or
been here to help us.” Anna held a potato in each hand and looked
up at Cassie. “How long do you think we have until Callum gets back
to us?”

“
The poor man should be
busy for a while. But we have our cell phones.” Cassie took out
hers, waved it, and concluded in a singsong voice, “And nobody can
track them.”

Anna watched her sourly. “You’re awfully
cheerful for someone who hasn’t slept since yesterday.”

“
I got some sleep on the
bus and plane. Enough to stay awake for a while longer.” She
studied Meg and Anna. “I think we need to make a pact.”

Meg came closer so the three women
surrounded the duffel bag Anna had stopped unpacking. “What kind of
pact?” Meg said.

“
We’re going back to the
Middle Ages, right?” Cassie said.

“
Right,” Anna said,
speaking for both her mother and herself.

“
We need to be prepared,”
Cassie said. “Last time, it was a disaster from start to finish for
Callum and me, though I’m glad David made it fine. We’re not going
to let that happen again. Nobody is going to get left
behind.”

“
How can we possibly ensure
that?” Anna said. “Sometimes—like when Mom jumped off the balcony
at Chepstow, or David got Bronwen to almost wreck her car in
Pennsylvania—we can control what happens. But half the time it just
happens.”

“
You two have to promise
not to leave us, not for any reason, no matter how compelling it
feels at the time,” Cassie said. “I’m not saying David didn’t do
the right thing two years ago. A bullet wound isn’t something to
mess around with. But if you’re going home, we’re coming with
you.”

“
You both are really truly
sure?” Meg said.

At Cassie’s fervent nod, Anna added, “Callum
too?”

“
Yes,” she said. “You can
ask him, but he’s already said he’s sure. We’ll take the risk, and
we’re not Marty.”

“
You came the same way as
Marty, though,” Meg said.

“
I’m not the same person I
was then. Neither is Callum.”

“
Okay,” Anna said. “But I
think the person you’re really talking to is Mom. Because I’m not
sure that I even have the genes for this.”

“
What are you talking
about—” Cassie broke off as her phone rang.

She stared at the screen for a second and
then answered. “Hello?”

Meg couldn’t hear the other side of the
conversation, but Cassie mouthed, “Mark.” She listened for a few
seconds before saying into the phone, “Slow down, slow down. What’s
going on?”

Meg leaned close, but then Cassie made a
disgusted sound at the back of her throat and put Mark on
speakerphone.

His voice filled the room. “I’m telling you,
it’s all gone sideways.”

“
Can your phone be traced?”
Cassie said. That wasn’t the response Meg would have made to Mark’s
assertion, but given how far they’d come since Rhuddlan, perhaps it
was the most important question she could ask.

“
You people are costing me
a fortune in tech,” Mark said. “This is my third mobile of the
weekend, same as you.”

“
Where’s Callum?” Cassie
said.

“
He won’t tell me,” Mark
said. “He and Jeffries are on foot, heading your way, but they may
not make it that far.”

Meg peered out the window to the street
below. Many more people were moving along it now that the sun was
up. As it turned out, Cardiff did wake early, even on a
Saturday.

“
He was supposed to be at a
meeting at the Office,” Cassie said.

“
He never made it. This was
all a ruse.” Regret leaked from every syllable Mark spoke.
“Director Tate never wanted Callum’s help with the disaster at
Signals. The whole thing was a setup to get you out of the United
States and out of the American government’s clutches so Tate could
have you here.”

“
Right where you wanted
us,” Meg said.

“
Not me! But yes, this is
all about you and Anna.” Mark’s laugh was bitter. “When Jeffries
rang to say that he and Callum—and only he and Callum—were two
minutes out from the Office, Tate’s surprise made Callum
suspicious.”

“
How did he get away?”
Cassie said. “Why is he still with Darren?”