Shadow Knight's Mate (18 page)

Jack had guessed right. The man suddenly began talking in German, offering Jack some kind of explanation. Unfortunately Jack's German was very sketchy. He caught the words for “family,” “debt,” and some kind of threat. This man obviously needed a soulmate. He hadn't had someone to tell his story to in a long while. Jack tried to look attentive, but what he was really watching was his lookalike's gun hand slowly lowering. Jack took a deep breath.

Then he shouted one of the few German words he knew,
“Achtung!”
meaning, he hoped,
Warning!
There was a sound at the door and his lookalike spun. The policeman had also heard Jack's shout, and any kind of cry sounded like a warning to him. There was a quick exchange of gunfire.

And Jack jumped out the window, shattering it, ducking just enough not to bang his head against the crosspiece. The glass was old and thin and broke easily, hardly slowing him at all. But his foot caught on the windowsill, he tipped over as he went out, and fell heavily on the fire escape outside, first onto his shin, then his shoulder. He continued rolling, bumping, reaching, trying to stop his fall but continuing to get away.

Finally, near the bottom of the metal steps he caught the rail
and brought himself up short. Taking a quick breath, he stood up. Above him, the gunfire had stopped, which wasn't good, because it meant either his lookalike or the police officer could concentrate on Jack now. He ran, or rather limped, to the bottom of the fire escape then back under it deeper into the alley, away from the street.

A few seconds later, the man with Jack's face also half-fell out of the upstairs window. Bleeding, he slid down the fire escape by hanging onto the railing. He was gasping into a phone as he walked around the corner onto the street, away from his stopped truck and the police car. Within half a block a black Volkswagen pulled to the curb beside him. A door opened in the back and he stumbled into it. There was time to talk as the car moved briskly but at legal speed away from the scene of the crime. The car seemed to be safely away, several miles and minutes later, when there was another gunshot from within it. The body of Jack's lookalike was pushed out, into the gutter, and the black Volkswagen sped away.

Jack made his way back to the coffee shop where he'd been earlier. He was walking better by the time he knocked on its service door in the alley. There was a long pause. Jack felt himself observed. Then the door opened and the waiter from earlier stuck his head out, looked both ways down the alley, and pulled Jack inside, closing the door firmly behind him. A finger to his lips, the waiter pulled Jack along a short hallway, then into a pantry. He closed the door, there was a flash and a flare, and the waiter lit a very small candle. In its flickers, he and Jack looked ghostly in the confined space, as if they were holding a seance.

“I don't usually get such quick return business,” the waiter said. “I didn't realize my coffee was that good.”

And he grabbed Jack in a bear hug. Jack winced but hugged back. When they stepped apart the waiter had a broad grin, Jack an ironic one.

“You scared me just walking in like that earlier,” the waiter said. He had plump cheeks, very black hair and now, unlike earlier,
merry eyes. “It was good to see you, but
mon dieu,
you startled me. Silence, exile, cunning. Have you forgotten?”

He was reciting James Joyce's advice to writers as if it were the creed of a secret cult, which in a way was true. “I remember. I'm just not very good at cunning. Anyway, that's why I stopped at every table on my way out, in case anyone was watching me. Which I don't think they were. They were waiting outside. Man it's good to see you, Stevie.”

The waiter laughed and brushed a tear from his eye. He had always been very sentimental. “No one's called me that for—I don't know. Seen any of the old crowd lately, Jack?”

“Not yet. But I'm going to need you all. Did you understand what I was saying?”

Stevie grinned. “Oh, it was subtle, but I think I puzzled it out. You want a couple of riots, then to bust open the conspiracy. Not as easy as you make it sound, Jack. And a little premature, wouldn't you say?”

“It's horribly premature. It's an abortion. But I don't have any choice, with the peace summit coming up so soon. And you know we're under attack?”

“Of course. When stealth planes cross America—.”

“I don't mean that ‘we,' Stevie, I mean us. The Circle. Have our communications broken down so badly you haven't—”

“Yes, Jack, I know. You think I've gotten slow in my old age? I've been following what we were taught, Jack. In a crisis like this, go to ground. Work your contacts. Avoid each other.”

He said the last with a significant glance at Jack, who obviously hadn't learned this lesson. That “old age” remark of Stevie's might have been funny, too, in another context. He and Jack were the same age, mid-twenties. They'd been classmates at Bruton Academy.

“Yeah, well,” Jack said ruefully. “Sometimes only old friends will do.” And he and Stevie said together: “This is one of those times.” They laughed. For a moment, there in the confines of the pantry, in the candlelight, it was as if they were back in school, pulling some midnight prank.

Esteban Vincenzo Romani Vosovitch—is name was a map of Europe. Stevie was Portugese but had grown up in America, spoke Spanish rather than Portugese when he wasn't speaking English, and in America had affected a Puerto Rican accent sometimes just to be more confusing, even though he had never been south of the Mason-Dixon line in the western hemisphere. He had been recruited into the Circle at nearly as early an age as Jack. Stevie was good at making friends, Jack at alienating them, so their talents had meshed well. Stevie had respect for authority, too, a virtue that Jack had spent their school years trying to change, with only limited success.

After graduation Stevie had returned to Europe for college but he and Jack had stayed in touch. Stevie was one of the few people Jack trusted completely and one of the very few who knew about Jack's recent activities.

“Did anyone come in after I left?” Jack asked. “Or leave right after I did?”

Stevie shook his head. “I heard the alarm going off after that at the building across the street, but I didn't know if that was because of you and I didn't think I could help by running over there and getting arrested. But I got rid of my customers as quickly as I could—I had the singer start singing pop hits of the eighties—and stayed near the back door. I had a feeling you might find your way back here. So you think this business is connected with the peace summit?”

“I don't know.”

Stevie took Jack's shoulders again, looking at him fondly. Then he frowned. “Were you really in London recently?”

Jack nodded. As quickly as that, there were tears in his eyes. He could hardly stand to hear the sound of the word.

Stevie's grip on his shoulders tightened. “Find anything?”

Jack shrugged. “I don't know. I mean yes, I found something, but I don't know what it means. She kept—not a diary, but notes. Like clues to herself. Or maybe they would have been clues to me once she'd told me more, but she never got the chance. Stevie—I think she was part of it.”

Stevie's eyes widened. His hands fell to his sides. “Are you sure?”

Jack shook his head. “I'm not sure of anything. But she certainly knew about it. Stevie, I think maybe that's why—why she took up with me. I think maybe she was trying to recruit me.”

Stevie shook his head, his eyes gone fierce. “Madeline loved you, Jack. I saw it. I saw her look at you. Touch you. Nobody can fake love around me, Jack.”

One tear escaped Jack's eye and ran down his cheek. When he started to speak he choked up and had to start over. “Even— Maybe that would be a reason to recruit me.”

Stevie looked speculative as he worked through the emotional logic. Madeline had loved Jack. She had been part of a large plan. She must have been very devoted to it. If so, how could she not bring her two passions together?

“Unless she wasn't part of the conspiracy,” he finally said. “Unless she was infiltrating it. Then she might have been afraid to bring you in. Or didn't think you were ready yet. But she didn't have time to—” His voice stopped as his eyes widened. “Oh, my God, Jack, does this mean she didn't die of cancer?”

Jack couldn't answer. Both because he couldn't speak and because he didn't know the answer.

The two old friends talked for another few minutes, while the candle burned low and began guttering. Their own shadows flew around the pantry shelves as Stevie finally asked, “Is this all connected, Jack? The conspiracy we were investigating and the attack on your country and the—someone being out to destroy the Circle?”

Just as the candle flared and went out, the waiter looked into his friend's face and saw that Jack didn't know the answer.

A few minutes later Jack was again walking the dark streets of Prague, having declined Stevie's offer of a ride. This time he was much more wary, though, so he heard the car approaching before it was upon him. Jack turned and saw something small and black and European—he was not a car person—speeding toward
him. Jack already knew the hiding places around him, he had been picking out new ones every few steps, and thought maybe he could pull the same dodge again, jump through a shop window after the car's occupants shot it out. But he was weary and aching and didn't know how far he could get this time. He felt like an idiot as his death hurtled toward him.

The car braked to a quick halt, the driver's door opened on the other side of the car, and Arden stepped out, holding his cell phone.

“Next time at least take this, okay?”

She drove at an un-arrestable speed back to their hotel. On the way Jack asked, “How did you find me?”

“From the way you talked about Prague on the plane, I figured you'd go into Lesser Town. When it got late I was afraid you might be in trouble. So I borrowed the desk clerk's car and drove around until I heard an alarm going off. I figured you must be in the vicinity of that, so I kept driving around until I saw a man walking alone without a bulge anywhere on him that might be a cell phone. I figured there could only be one such person in a city this size in the twenty-first century.”

Jack smiled. But Arden saw the dried tear on his cheek and knew it had nothing to do with whatever danger he'd just been though. And his smile was sad. She knew one soft sentence would open him up, but she didn't speak again until they got back to the hotel.

They were standing outside their respective doors, each with a key card in hand. But both stood there for a moment longer.

“Jack?”

He didn't say anything. His head just drooped a little lower.

“We didn't look for your double in London because there wasn't any double, was there? That was you who was there recently.”

His silence admitted the truth.

“Why was Granny so sure you wouldn't have gone to that certain address? Back to it, didn't she say?”

Because no one would believe that Jack would ever again go
near that flat in Chelsea where his youth had died, along with a woman named Madeline. It held too many memories, the kind of memories that turn on you, because they were so lovely that after everything changed they became monstrous. Because he could never again be as happy as he'd been during that brief, brief time with her.

“A—a friend of mine died there.”

His voice was a mumble. Arden went to him, took the key card from his hand, swiped it, and opened the door. Without turning on a light, she led Jack to the bed. She eased him down onto it, and gently removed his shoes. His legs curled up like a child's. Then Arden pulled a chair close to the bed and held his hand.

Jack was in that swirling frame of mind where he was dead-tired but not sleepy, and felt very alert even though he wasn't. He didn't even think about whether this was a good idea. Later he could rationalize telling Arden the story, but right now he just wanted to talk. She sat there without speaking for the next half hour.

“I was twenty-one, doing a post-graduate semester at Oxford. It bored me to death. I'd had too much school already in my life. I jumped ship and went to London. They sent Madeline to bring me back, or at least make sure I wasn't in trouble. By ‘they' I mean the Circle, your granny. I was in that weird stage where I'd been trained within an inch of my life but I didn't know what for. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Madeline found me walking the streets. She was one of us, of course. I'd never met her or heard of her, but I knew she was one of us as soon as I met her.

“For one thing, she didn't introduce herself. She was just standing next to me one afternoon as I was looking into a shop window. The shop sold American goods. I was looking at a baseball glove, I still remember that. Not homesick, exactly, but, I don't know, nostalgic, I guess. She knew what I was feeling even if I didn't. That was her gift. She took me to a cafe and bought me a Coke. Not tea, Coke.” Jack smiled at the memory.

As if Arden had asked a question, he became more specific with details. “Madeline was thirty-five, a clothing designer at that time. You'd know her brand. Before that she'd spent a few years as an investment banker, but got to be too good at it, too well-known, you know, so she'd moved on. She was about to have to stop designing, too, or at least change her name. So we were both at loose ends. We took a little holiday from our lives. She showed me around England. London, Wales, the Isle of Man. And her flat in Chelsea.”

His voice broke down for more than a minute. Arden squeezed his hand.

“That place,” Jack said dreamily. “I'd never seen anything like it, but I felt home. The home that had been waiting for me all my life. I can't even describe it. It was a third floor flat, very airy and white. Lots of windows. From any room you could see treetops, not the city. Like a treehouse. It was very feminine—ruffles on the bed, flowered wallpaper, but comfortable for me, too. It wasn't cluttered, but there were interesting things in every room. Game tables with secret surfaces if you knew what lock to spring. A safe under the fireplace. Puzzle boxes and paintings with hidden pictures in plain view. You didn't have to pay attention to any of it, but if you were bored there was always something to do within reach, or just sitting and looking. Madeline wasn't a games person, but she liked layers. In her designs, in her flat. I can't imagine what she saw in me. I was so one-dimensional.”