Tales From the Black Chamber (24 page)

A hostile silence descended upon the room, Wilhelmina and Mike glaring at each other, Joe staring pointedly at the floor.

“This is why we need a clear chain of command, John,” said Claire.

“Good God, Claire, why don't we hash out
all
the stalemated arguments that the Chamber's had over the years? Anyone want to discuss again whether what we did to that meth head in trying to find little Madison what's-her-name in that haunted-house case was justifiable? Crap. Let's focus, people. Wilhelmina, objection noted, as always. Mike, you're in?”

“Yes. And my family life is pri—”

“Got it, Mike,” John said testily. “Joe?”

“Steve, you want me there in case there's any complicated alarms that you can't take out?”

“Couldn't hurt. And we know these guys play for keeps, so having another gun is always good. John?”

“Sure,” the Historian nodded.

“Rafe?”

“Sure. Who wants to live forever? Oh, incidentally, I was flipping through the Torah the other night and I found two more instances of something called ‘the destroyer' or ‘the destroying angel.' The first was about the thing that killed the firstborn of the Egyptians, and the second about something that killed seventy thousand Israelites when David had displeased God. So we got that goin' for us.”

“Claire?”

Claire took a deep breath. “Yeah, what the hell. Back on the horse.”

“Lily?”

“Pass.”

“Wilhelmina?”

“I'm a homebody, Steve.”

“Okay. Anne, you want to skip this one until you're a little better oriented?”

“No. I want to go. This guy tried to kill me and blew up my office.”

“Okay, fine,” Steve said. “I want you all down on the range for at least an hour after work. I'm going to give you all a refresher course—and a crash course for you, Anne—on some guns a little heavier than your pistols. These guys were packing serious weapons, so everyone's got to get up to speed and fast so we're not outgunned. I can probably have transport ready by late tonight or early tomorrow.”

“Let's go tomorrow,” said Mike. “If he's doing something tonight, we're going to miss it anyway. And we can all sleep in our beds.”

“I second that,” said Claire. “I'm going to have to draw up all sorts of fake papers for us. I'll probably be here most of the night anyway.”

Steve turned to John. “I think you should stay with Lily and Wilhelmina under Rule 14.”

“Okay,” shrugged John.

“What's that?” asked Anne.

“We have to keep enough people out of harm's way to ensure that we can rebuild the unit, if the worst comes to pass.”

“Oh,” said Anne.

“Anything else?” asked John.

“You sure we shouldn't get a rush translation of more of the Voynich Manuscript?” asked Anne.

“Killing's not the worst thing curiosity can do to the cat,” said John with a distinct note of sadness in his voice.

That afternoon and evening, Anne got a short course in commando etiquette. Steve ran her through the equipment, hand signals, and some of the tactics they used. She took to it naturally and even had fun, thinking it was exactly the sort of game she would have liked to have played with her all-boy mob of cousins in the high mountains of New Mexico. Then, inevitably, the realization that this was potentially a life-and-death matter would leach all enjoyment from it. Oddly, she found the lessons harder to learn when she was deadly earnest; having fun, they seemed to stick a little better in her muscle memory.

Firing a submachine gun might have been the easiest to learn, as she was a good shot to begin with. Getting used to the fully automatic weapon's rate of fire was a little tricky but came quickly to her. The gun, a .45-caliber Heckler & Koch UMP, Steve explained, fired very smoothly and had fairly little recoil. After not very long, Steve declared her adequate in all departments and strongly suggested she go back to the safe house and sleep as much as she could. Not being able to think of a single helpful thing to do, she agreed.

On her way out through the main office, John called out to her from his office, where he was hand-transcribing a printed report into one of the large bound volumes of the Chamber's History.

“Hey, Anne. You done with Steve?”

“Yes, I was just going to take a cab back to Kensington.”

“Stop off and have a nice dinner on the way. Can you sit down for a second?”

“Sure.”

“I appreciate your wanting to go along, but you know you don't have to, right?”

“I understand. I would like to see this through, though.”

“Okay. Well, I want to tell you a couple things that I really should have gotten out of the way right when you were hired on, but I haven't had a chance to.”

“Okay.”

“Um, let me ask you a question. Do you have a will?”

“No. I probably should, though, right?”

“Yeah, what I'm saying is, I may not have informed you of just how dangerous this can be.”

“Don't worry. Claire has been more than emphatic.”

“Oh, yeah. That was an awful thing.”

“What happened?”

“Well, about five years ago we had an incident with, well—people thought there was a werewolf loose in northern Nevada. They were more or less right. Claire was the lead investigator and took Steve, Mike's predecessor and Rafe's predecessor to check it out. She and Steve came back. It was bad.”

“So why is she going out now?”

“Well, I think she knows that, in general, the more people go, the lower the odds of any one individual getting killed. So she's doing it out of a sense of duty to the rest of us, being willing to take the bullet, so to speak. Although this is the first time in a while bullets are definitely in play. It's why Steve's running the show. Okay, well, if you're aware that, to be honest, you may not come back from this trip, I don't really have anything else to add. Go have a nice dinner, call your parents and tell them that you love them, take a nice bath, and get some sleep.”

“I will,” said Anne, and did.

The next day, the team assembled at the Black Chamber. Claire handed each member two manila envelopes. “The first set of identification is for the flight. The second is for once we cross the border.”

Anne opened hers. The first set was a set of Central Intelligence Agency identifications in her own name. The second envelope held some Canadian Security Intelligence Service identifications under a false name. Anne held her CSIS ID up to Claire and said, “Again? Christie Sotheby?”

“Come on, you worked in auctions. I'm supposed to resist that? Otherwise, I was thinking of Annabel Lee Bookbinder.”

“Christie it is. So why Canadian intelligence whatever?”

“If we get stopped by Canadian authorities, it should give us enough time to get out and get back here.”

“Okay. Why the CIA?”

“Because we have to get there,” came Steve's deep voice over her shoulder. “And none of us can fly a plane. Fortunately, the CIA has a fair number of well-equipped private jets that they use. And that we can use.”

“How's that possible?” said Anne.

“Easy,” said Claire. “Remember how Joe was telling you that he's got access to all the different computer networks? It's the same sort of thing. We're older than all of the other agencies, and when they were getting set up, we made sure that we were in on it. So I hit a button on my phone, and I'm effectively calling from Langley or FBI headquarters or the White House or wherever. The call routes through their switchboards from a perfectly legitimate extension.”

Steve explained, “I call a non-official-cover front company with a plane from a Langley number, tell them where we need to go, and they take care of the rest without asking any questions.”

“What about billing the costs and so forth?” Anne wondered.

Claire laughed and Steve smiled. “Cost accounting isn't really an issue in the black-ops world.”

Several hours later, the team of six was flying north in comfort on a Gulfstream V jet. Steve had arrived first thing in the morning with their equipment, weapons, and clothing. They took turns changing in the surprisingly spacious head, made sandwiches, and microwaved miniature pizzas. All in all, the mood aboard the plane was very much like kids on a field trip to a hospital—excited, but with an undercurrent of worry about what they might see.

The sun was setting as they crossed the Canadian border. “Okay, folks,” Claire announced, consulting a GPS map of their progress and holding out a black pouch, “switch to CSIS IDs. CIA ones go in here and stay on the plane. The pilot has instructions to destroy them if we don't come back.”

Steve then handed out some thin file folders. “Okay, everyone. Take a good look at these, because I'm collecting them once we hit the ground. First page is a large-scale map. You can see the marked location of the little airstrip we're using. To the southwest is Nicton, and to the southeast through the forest is Wystan House. It's going to be about a two-hour walk through the woods, so I hope you all brought comfortable shoes. It's a full moon tonight and the weather's supposed to be clear, so I don't think we'll need night-vision or infrared equipment, though I'll carry a set in case. Second page is a close-up of the house and grounds, labeled with all the obstacles that Joe could identify. You'll want to remember the various outbuildings' and gates' locations, in case we need to hide or flee.

“We go in through the woods, over the wall, and across the grounds to the house. At that point, we'll pick a likely entry point and go in. What happens next, who knows? If we're lucky, we grab the guy in his sleep and drug him. But if he's doing that late-night black-magic thing, it could be a circus. There are two ways to extract yourself. First, walk back the way you came. It's a ways, but it gives you the least chance of being seen. The airstrip is eight point three miles or thirteen and a third kilometers north by northwest from the front gate of the compound. If you're separated, use the compass you've got. If that's gone, guess with the North Star.

“Worst case, get your street clothes out of your pack, get rid of all your equipment—bury it with the little trowel in the pack if you can—and walk into town. Get a cab out to the airstrip—everyone's got a thousand bucks Canadian in their pack—or flash your CSIS badge at a cop or a cabbie and tell 'em it's critical you reach your flight. Not ideal, especially if there's a mess back at the house, but it'll get you out of the country. We leave an hour before sunrise, no later, so if you're not back by then, you're on your own. Call us at the Chamber and we'll do what we can, but in the meantime, keep a low profile and have a good cover story.”

“I've got one thing to add,” said Mike. “My buddy the D.C. exorcist put me in touch with an exorcist up here, and he's willing to accompany us. He's apparently reasonably fit and not a hundred and fifty years old, so I think we might as well bring him along, unless anyone thinks he'll be more of a burden.”

Steve thought for a second. “Well, we'll take a look at him, and decide then.”

“Fair enough,” Mike said. “Though I want as much divine assistance as I can get.”

“Noted,” said Steve. “Okay, folks. Get yourselves ready, hit the head, whatever you need to do.”

As Anne involuntarily took a deep breath, she noticed everyone else doing so as well.

13

The plane touched down without lights on a cracked and pitted concrete airstrip with tufts of grass scattered through it. It looked like God had dropped an errant slab of pavement into the middle of the Canadian wilderness. The team climbed off the plane clad in tactical ‘ninja' suits, black knapsacks in hand. No one spoke as they milled around for a moment, shouldering the packs and stretching their legs—Claire in impressive, yogic fashion.

A slim man, also clad in black save a mahogany-and-silver pectoral cross, walked purposefully out of the wall of trees around the airstrip towards the plane. Mike went out to meet him, shook his hand, and escorted him back to the group.