The Genie and the Engineer 3: Ravages of War (29 page)

Theodore Roosevelt Island

Potomac River

Saturday, 11:59 a.m. EDT

July

T
heodore
Roosevelt Island, previously known as Mason’s Island, was a 88.5 acre island in
the middle of the Potomac River, less than two miles to the northwest of the
Lincoln Memorial. The island was currently administered by the National Park
Service and contained a 5 meter tall statue of the 26th President of the United
States along with miles of trails and small creeks, in honor of Roosevelt’s
conservation ideals. There was a large white concrete plaza in front of the
statue with wide sweeping walkways leading into the interior of the island. The
park was renowned for its birdlife and wide variety of plant-life that could be
seen from the nature trails.

The island could only be reached by a foot bridge from the
west bank of the Potomac River. Due to its relative isolation and the fact that
it could only be reached on foot, the Roosevelt Memorial was one of the least
visited memorials in the Washington D.C. area.

Paul was reasonably certain that was why Clarke had picked
it as the meeting site.

Daneel 1’s portal dropped him into the center of the plaza
at exactly 11:59:55 a.m. EDT. Paul stood patiently waiting. A couple of middle
aged women visitors noticed him, but they turned and walked away.

A portal opened in front of Paul, sweeping him up and away.

He saw a brief glimpse of a city sidewalk, then an empty
warehouse, followed by a large wooden dock extending out into a mirror-smooth
bay of a bright blue lake, then an empty grass clearing in a forest, a hot
rocky parched desert and finally a large cinder block room with a dirt floor
and two bare electric lights dangling from beams in an open framed attic space.

In front of him stood a dozen Oni and two wizards. Paul
recognized the first one from photos he’d seen as Mahdi Hassan Shirazi, a
wizard from the Middle East. The other one was a dignified man in casual
American clothing and wearing a gold Rolex watch. Paul assumed that this person
was none other than Oliver Jacob Clarke himself. Behind the two
Errabêlu
wizards, Paul saw a large black object, the size of a storage trunk, but it
glowed with an eerie iridescence. Ah, a very large talisman! So this was how
they created a talisman as potent as Paul’s own! They super-sized them! His
Great Aunt Dana’s whiskers, the thing must weigh several tons!

The wizard Shirazi took three quick steps toward Paul and
back-handed him solidly in the face. Paul collapsed to the ground.

“I should kill you right now!” the evil wizard hissed
angrily.

“Patience, my friend,” Clarke said, in a noble and calm
manner. “All in good time.” He nodded at two of the Oni. “Search him carefully.
Give me his talisman.”

Paul propped himself up on one elbow. “I don’t have a
talisman with me.”

The Oni searched him anyway, checking his shirt and pants
pockets, patting down his legs, waist, back and chest. And they weren’t very
gentle about it either.

Finished, they yanked him roughly to his feet. One of them
reached out and snapped a solid silver-colored band of metal around Paul’s
right wrist. Paul held the item closer for a visual inspection. The band was
engraved with a highly elaborate set of scrollwork.

Clarke casually studied his prisoner from where he stood.
“The devil incarnate, so it would seem.”

“What is this?” Paul asked, holding out his wrist.

Clarke waved an indifferent hand. “Oh, that? It’s a
disrupter. As long as you wear that manacle, it will disrupt your ability to
cast any spells, even internal ones. But you are here to answer my…
our
questions, Mr. Armstead. Your presence here is only one of our demands. Where
are the wizards you have captured?”

“I released them,” Paul calmly answered. “As you demanded.”

Shirazi grabbed Paul by his shirt, jerking him closer and
back-handing him. “Liar! If you had released them, we would be hearing from at
least some of them by now!”

The blow from Shirazi was enough to daze Paul and it took a
few seconds for him to clear his head enough to speak.

“We drugged all of them with anesthetics,” Paul replied, watching
two images of Shirazi spinning crazily. “Enough to keep them asleep for 12 to
24 hours.”

“Why on Earth did you do that?” Clarke asked, puzzled.

“To buy time, of course,” Paul stated forthrightly.

Clarke’s eyes narrowed. “Time for what?”

“To extend my life,” Paul admitted. “I know that you plan to
kill me. Every second I can extend my life, I will.”

“Humph,” Clarke grunted, in reluctant deference. “I can see
where you might do that. Although the end result will be the same. Still, the
desire to continue life, even when one knows he is doomed, can be remarkably
persistent. However, you haven’t answered Shirazi’s other question. Where are
the wizards we demanded you release? Or would you prefer to see Lancaster,
California become a blackened crater?”

Paul reached up to his shirt pocket and extracted the folded
piece of paper.

“This will tell you how to find Hamadi and Yuan Wu,” he
explained to them.

“What is this?” Clarke asked, accepting and unfolding the
paper with a puzzled frown. “‘This is your first clue, don’t be lax. Go to
Hollywood Boulevard and look for the (blank)?’”

Shirazi back-handed Paul a third time, again hard enough to
knock him off his feet. For a few seconds, Paul lay on the floor and hovered at
the edge of unconsciousness, experiencing tunnel vision and a roaring in his
ears.

He heard the other men’s voices, but could not make sense of
the words.

Strong arms grabbed him and pulled him to his feet again,
holding him upright.

“I think you may have hit him a little too hard,” Clarke’s voice
finally pierced through the fog in Paul’s brain. “Mr. Armstead? Mr. Armstead?”

“It sal wright,” Paul muttered, as vision slowly and
incompletely returned. He tried to cast a small spell internally, to help clear
the effects of the latest blow but nothing happened. With a start he realized
that Clarke had not been kidding about the effect of the disrupter on his
wrist.

“Whatss ta quesston agin?” he asked, blinking his eyes.

“Not so hard next time,” Clarke said, apparently to Shirazi.
“We still need some information from him.” A pause. “What does this paper
mean?”

“Skav…Scavenger hunt,” Paul said carefully, focusing through
the pain to pronounce the words correctly. “It’s a clue. Hollywood. California.
Rhymes with lax. Wax! Look in the wax museum. Find Wu…Hamadi. New clue.”

Shirazi leaned back to smack Paul again but Clarke held up a
hand.

“Mr. Armstead, that will take time, chasing each one down.
Why don’t you simply tell us where they all are?”

Paul shrugged. “Don’t know. Scotties picked the locations. Morgues,
window shop displays, funeral homes, wax museums, hospitals, crash dummies…wherever
bodies are found.” He chuckled. “Don’t forget
Mythbusters
M5 Studios.”

“This will take time to check out,” Clarke pointed out to
Shirazi. “Obviously what he intends. Although the reason why is still unclear
to me. However, take a dozen Oni and a couple of other wizards. Be careful of
any traps. See if Hamadi and Yuan are in the wax museum.”

Scowling, Shirazi opened a portal and left.

“Now, Mr. Armstead, let’s go somewhere we can be more
comfortable,” Clarke said, with an evil grin.

Ω

Paul was taken to a large country estate, bordering on a
river someplace. He couldn’t pin it down any further than that. And he had no
idea what happened to Clarke, who, like Shirazi, also disappeared through a
portal.

Four Oni took him to a large metal shed out behind a house.
From the oil stains on the concrete floor, Paul had the impression that at one
time it was used as an auto repair shop.

The Oni tied his arms up over his head with a stout manila
rope and hung him from the main overhead beam. If Paul stretched a little, he
could barely support his weight on tip-toe. It was quite clever, as tortures
go.

Then he was left to his own devices, no doubt to make him
more responsive after the pain became bad enough. And since he was still
wearing the disrupter manacle on his wrist, he was unable to cast a spell to
reduce that pain. Without a doubt, this must have been Clarke’s intention all
along.

Two Oni were left in the building to guard him.

Paul concentrated on clenching his jaw, activating the
implanted transceiver, switching it on.

“CQ…CQ…CQ…CQ…,” Paul said softly, hoping his words were loud
enough to reach the transceiver but not loud enough to attract the attention of
the Oni.

There was a burst of static and he heard a weak voice through
the device.

“Triangulating now,” it said. “North America, east coast.”

Another burst of static and this time, a cleaner stronger
signal.

“Repeat your transmission, Dad,” one of the Daneels said.

“‘The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three
elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest,’” Paul whispered
painfully as he quoted G-Kar of
Babylon 5
.

“Very good, Dad. This is Daneel 1. We have you located. You
are in a rather ritzy neighborhood in Maryland, on the bank of the West River.
Status report, please.”

“They’ve been a little rough but not too bad,” Paul quietly lied.
“So far, everything is according to plan. What progress, your end?”

“Warheads found in Jacksonville, Florida; Chicago; Denver;
Los Angeles; and Seattle. Still nothing in South America yet. Sir, that’s 17
warheads so far. As best we can tell, they are all Soviet in design. We don’t
think he can have many more.”

“I agree. Have you run an analysis of their locations inside
those cities?”

“Yes. All weapons were placed near the metropolitan centers,
obviously to do the maximum amount of damage to city structures and cause the
greatest number of deaths,” came Daneel 1’s reply. “We are using that
assumption to cut down on the search times for the remaining cities. Heaven
help us if we are wrong.”

“How much longer, Daneel?” Paul asked.

“About 18 hours, Dad,” he answered. “That’s the best answer
I can give you. Can you hold out that long?”

“I think so. I’ll let you know if anything develops in the
meantime.”

“We will have a team close by, Dad. Just give us the word
and we can be there in seconds.”

“Thanks. Paul, out.”

Now he just had to somehow find the strength to endure the
pain.

Ω

It seemed like eons went by, and rather slowly at that, but
it was probably more like an hour or so.

Then two portals opened up. The first one disgorged Clarke.
The second one Shirazi and the two unconscious forms of Hamadi and Yuan Wu.

Shirazi’s face was filled with fury.

“There’s something wrong with these two!” he screamed at
Clarke, waving at the unconscious forms on the cold concrete.

“What?” Clarke asked, sincerely puzzled. “What are you
talking about?”

“Touch them!” snarled Shirazi “You’ll see!”

Clarke pulled off a leather glove and reached over, touching
Hamadi’s bare arm first, then Yuan’s left hand. After pausing a moment, he rose
and turned back to Paul.

“What did you do to them?” he demanded sternly.

Paul tried to shrug but with his arms tied over his head, he
couldn’t manage it. Besides, his arms hurt too much for him to move them much anyway.
So he flashed a grim smile at his two captors instead. “I took away their
powers.”

“That’s not possible!” screamed Shirazi, furiously.

Paul raised his eyebrows but didn’t argue.

“Let me get this straight,” Clarke said, frowning. “You
somehow took away the magic powers from all the wizards you captured? Is that
correct?”

“Yeah…I mean, yes, that’s right,” Paul verified for him.
“Like them,” he said, with a grin, pointing with his chin at the two
unconscious wizards on the floor.

“They’re both Normies now,” Clarke stated in puzzled amazement.
“You took their powers from them? How?”

Paul smiled secretively, “Just a reverse of the process
where I gained magical powers. Now they aren’t wizards anymore. And they aren’t
rich anymore either. We used bunches and bunches of lawyers and stacks of
paperwork. All the wizards signed over their money and properties to charity
organizations and several churches. All gone…”

Clarke shook his head with a snarl. “You’re quite the liar,
Mr. Armstead.”

Paul slowly shook his head, even though it made him feel
really dizzy. “No-ope, toooootttaallyy true…”

“Can he really do it? Take away a wizard’s power like that?”
Shirazi asked, still not quite accepting the concept that it could be done at
all.

“So it would seem,” Clarke replied grimly. “Quite clever,
actually, if it can really be done.” He glanced again at the two bodies on the
floor. “And apparently it can be done. On the other hand, perhaps, in the long
run, he has done us a favor. Once we learn how this secret works, to make and
unmake wizards, we can create a virtually unlimited supply of potential
replacements. And, at the same time, he has rid us of some wizards that used to
be a great deal of aggravation. I, for one, am not sad to see that Hamadi is
gone. Good riddance, I’ll say.”

Shirazi nodded, but was obviously uncomfortable with the
direction of events. “Yes, I guess so. But there are others that I will miss.”

Clarke shrugged, looking back at him. “If we can find them,
we might give a few of them back their powers. But we’ll work on that later.”

“What should we do about them?” Shirazi asked, nodding at
Yuan and Hamadi.

“They’re Normies now so what does it matter?” Clarke pointed
out dryly. “We can dump them anywhere. But I think the bigger priority right
now is to start pumping Armstead for those secrets he keeps bragging about. If
I still had a truth headband…but I don’t, thanks to last month’s raid on my
house by those metal boxes of his. I hope this twit resists. I would love to
use some persuasion on him when he does.”