The Third Magic (9 page)

Perhaps that was his higher self giving up. Or perhaps that is just the way of the gods. Because it was during this lowest of moments that Galahad—who was now a New Yorker in his mid-thirties named Hal Woczniak, ex-federal agent, part-time automobile mechanic, and career alcoholic—met a child with red hair and a soul that he recognized, after sixteen hundred years of searching, as that of his master.

To make things easier, the boy's name was Arthur.

Galahad—Hal, now—slipped back into his role as Arthur's champion so easily he hardly knew it was happening. There was a boy who needed help... and then the unfolding of the extraordinary events surrounding the boy... and then a dream, or what seemed like a dream, in which Hal realized exactly who he was.

It was here, in this dream-that-was-not-a-dream that the knights first appeared to him, in the castle of Camelot as it had been when they had all served as soldiers under Arthur the King. Because their souls and consciousnesses were still bound up in Merlin's spell somewhere in the fog of the Summer Country, all that appeared to Hal in his vision were the outer shells of the knights, the gossamer remnants of their physical selves. They were ghosts, without words or laughter. But slowly, in fits and starts as Hal grew close again to Arthur, the knights also reappeared in the flesh.

This was the Merlin's great spell, the Second Magic, that made it possible for the great King to return to the world of men as he had been, surrounded by good men and true, so that his vision would have a chance to succeed.

But there was a difference. The knights, returned now to blood-pounding, lusty life, were not at all the same as Hal. They were pristine, plucked straight from death to wait in the mists of Avalon for their leader's return like fragile Christmas ornaments packed away in tissue-filled crates. Hal was in a different, new body, the latest in a long string of used-up selves, wearier than he had once been of the delights life had to offer, not so eager anymore to fall again into the fray.

He had, in short, become a sort of father to all of them, and the task was tiresome. Though he would never permit himself to admit it, there were times when his ancient soul wished it could return to the days of the Round Table, when the world was young for him and adventure lay thick as perfume in the air.

It was this thought that was flitting through the synapses of his brain when Hal Woczniak came to on the sidewalk outside the Full Throttle Saloon, with Launcelot bending over him in concern.

"Hello, Da," he said, though he would forget having said it as soon as he fully regained consciousness.

Launcelot smiled.

Then Hal turned his head to see a man walking past. Hal had not seen the man before; he had become aware of Pinto's presence through another sense.

He had smelled the blood on him.

THE COFFEEHOUSE GANG

Pierre, South Dakota

D
espite extreme security measures
, Titus Wolfe breezed through the airport without a hitch, just as he had passed smoothly through customs at JFK. He was an ideal passenger, tidy, quiet, courteous to his fellow travelers, charming to the staff.

The first class hostess had placed a matchbook from the hotel where she would be staying on his dinner tray. Inside the cover she had written her name.

Titus smiled as he tossed it into the waste can. He never carried any extraneous papers on him.

The incident was not uncommon. Women found Titus, with his sharp good looks and elegant British accent, irresistible. Everything about him was "just enough"—he was thin without being gaunt, muscular enough to look good naked, but without the narcissistic overdevelopment of a bodybuilder, and his face had features that were both interesting and pleasant—clear blue eyes, a chiseled nose, soft blond hair that, when struck by light, shone with a trace of silver at the temples—yet he was not by any means "pretty." These qualities, along with his cultured speech and impeccable wardrobe, made Titus Wolfe appear to be the epitome of the perfect British aristocrat.

He was not.

He was, in fact, one of the most wanted criminals in the world.

To call Titus a terrorist would be an oversimplification: Terrorists generally work either for themselves, from a demented sense of amusement or justice, or for a cause. Titus's job description fit neither category. At the moment, he was a mercenary jack-of-all-trades working in the interests of Libya, but his loyalties would shift with his next paycheck.

Near the men's room at the airport, he opened a locker with a key he had carried with him from Tripoli. The locker contained a molded plastic suitcase that perfectly matched the small carry-on with its innocuous contents which he had brought on the plane.

In the suitcase were the components of a cluster bomb designed to blow up a nuclear silo at the F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. If successful, the result would be the destruction of much of the American interior, including the centers of grain production and cattle.

It would be a difficult assignment, Titus knew. Difficult, and probably lengthy. Since the World Trade Center incident, men in his profession had been forced to work much more slowly and carefully than they had in the past. There was no longer any room for error, and the old days of shooting one's way out of a difficult situation were over.

If there were to be one slip, one question, one misstep, the operation would be suspended. He would hide, then wait for a better time. It was not unusual these days for Titus to spend weeks on a single assignment, even if that was nothing more than a simple assassination.

This one could take months. In time, he would complete his work, but it was to everyone's benefit—including his employers, who now paid more than double what they had before the latter half of the year 2001—that Titus remain uncaptured and alive.

T
itus rarely thought about
the consequences of his work anymore. His goal was to do the job, get out alive, and collect his pay. It made no difference to him that his work always resulted in loss of life, and often in war. He no longer cared if he believed in the ideas of those he served. It made utterly no difference to him anymore if what he did was considered heroic or evil. That, he had learned, was simply a matter of whose side one was on. Titus himself no longer belonged to any side.

It had not always been so.

There had been a time when he would have contemplated the destruction of a hated global power like the United States with lusty relish. In his youth, he had spent many a drunken night denouncing the corrupt governments of the West with the circle of intellectual freethinkers he had found at university. They were righteous idealists then, those shining young men who risked their freedom—and in most cases, their lives—by talking treason in London's dark places.

They called themselves the Coffeehouse Gang. There was little enough coffee, to be sure, but it had sounded better than the truth, which was that they were drunk most of the time.

It had seemed like one long party, from his school days through the early years working for British intelligence. He had felt so clever then, wriggling into the service under the tutelage of a Soviet mole!

There had been others like him, young agents working as doubles from the very beginning. Since they had all met as university students, most members of the Coffeehouse Gang were disaffected aristocrats experiencing the thrill of what they believed to be independence, striking out in shame against their own backgrounds of privilege. Only Titus had felt the harsh inequality of England's unofficial but undeniable caste system at first hand.

Reared in a coal mining village in Yorkshire, he had turned at an early age against the British government and its indifference to the poor. First, he watched his father die coughing blood from his blackened lungs at the age of thirty-four. Then the mine was closed, leaving not even the filthy work that had killed him available to his children. In desperation, Titus, his mother, and her seven other children who had managed to live through infancy moved to the city of Leeds where, until her death, his mother worked in a factory making rubber tires.

By that time, Titus was in his last year at school. He had managed to remain an excellent student despite his difficulties at home. At his mother's death, when the rest of the children were shipped off to various orphanages and foster homes, he stunned the authorities overseeing his case by getting accepted to Cambridge on full scholarship.

That he would even apply to such a place was a shock. He ought to work, the social services woman told him. Then he could put a little something by, take care of his brothers and sisters.

But he had not listened to her. He went instead to the university, got a job in the dining hall for living expenses, and then got a second job in a pub in the civilian sector. He made no attempt to fit in with his "betters"—his elite classmates with their public school backgrounds whom he occasionally overheard imitating his countrified speech— but concentrated instead on his studies. He tried not to think about his brothers and sisters growing up in institutions while he himself, though ragged, made his home inside the ancient and hallowed walls of this bastion of the English upper class.

As it turned out, he never saw the other members of his family again.

H
e might have, of
course, if things had gone differently for him. Titus had had a vague idea of helping them all as he made a career for himself in law or business or whatever avenue might open to him. He knew too little about the world outside his own small and impoverished experience to have a clear vision of what he wanted. He only knew what he didn't want, and that was to go to an early grave the way his parents had, with nothing to show for their miserable lives except sooty lungs, empty pockets, and an unspoken curse for the government in their broken hearts.

But the events in his life took a strange turn then. And, like all major occurrences, this turning point seemed at the time to be nothing of great consequence. It was, in fact, a perfectly ordinary meeting, one of those pseudo-social gatherings at the home of one of his professors. That the don was, and had been for nearly fifteen years, an agent of what was then the Soviet Union, was unknown to Titus. Nevertheless, that fact would color the rest of the young man's life.

The professor's name was Darling. Lucius Darling, née Dubrovny, had probably been one of the most effective moles the Soviets ever produced. He was a born teacher, and his charm and charisma had served his country from the moment he was placed in Cambridge by his masters.

Darling was older than his forged birth certificate indicated. He was already an established agent when he was sent underground to become a recruiter for the cause of world communism among the English intelligentsia. As his career in academia grew, so did his parallel life. By his retirement, Darling had brought more than fifty new agents into his sphere. Fifty British subjects, all devoting their lives to the welfare of their Sovereign's enemy.

Among them was Titus Wolfe.

The meeting in question took place in Darling's home. Darling was an extremely popular professor, whose class on world social structures was one that every underclassman clamored to attend. Those who were accepted—there was a brief interview to determine which of the interested students would be permitted to take the class—enjoyed a certain prestige among the student body. But the greatest honor was to be invited to the don's house, to participate in civilized conversation over tea and scones and the occasional glass of sherry.

Darling picked Titus out of the crowd almost immediately. During a classroom discussion about the condition of the working poor in England, a young nob with distant royal connections had drawled disdainfully that no one suffered from poverty in Britain since the advent of the National Health Service and the dole, paid for by productive citizens bearing the burden of one of the highest tax rates in the world.

Cheeks ablaze, Titus, until then a silent, timid sort of fellow by Darling's assessment, stood up in the middle of class and began shouting a tirade of epithets at his classmate in the rich, archaic brogue of a true Yorkshire peasant. When he was done, he picked up his books and stormed toward the exit.

"No, no, no," Darling said soothingly. "You've won, dear fellow. Everyone in this room, including your hapless if insensitive target, has been startled to attention by the force of your conviction. The next time you speak, whether they agree with you or not, they will listen to you. Don't run away from that, Mr..." He looked vaguely at his roster.

"Wolfe," Titus said.

Darling smiled slowly. "Wolfe. A passionate name. Lean and hungry. Don't leave us, Mr. Wolfe, I beseech you. There are many here who need your presence among them."

The students in the room laughed good-naturedly. The professor had dispelled the tension with a few lighthearted, well-chosen words. Titus sat down.

And Lucius Darling made a mental note to himself:
This one doesn't even have to be turned.

Later that same week, over tea and scones, Darling drew out Titus's simmering hatred of the system which had fostered the great chasm between himself and the other boy in the class (conspicuously uninvited) who had spurred his verbal flash fire.

Then gently, deftly, over the years the professor fanned those flames, surrounded Titus with other, older students who shared his views ideologically if not experientially, tutored him in subtle, palatable ways, saw that he lost his telltale Yorkshire accent, and slowly—very, very slowly— introduced him to the possibility of working for justice from the inside of the system that oppressed it.

He suggested that Titus allow himself to be recruited into Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Darling had done his work so well that when Titus finally learned that he was already deeply involved with the Soviet spy apparatus, he was not only not particularly surprised, but he also did not connect Lucius Darling with his situation at all, convinced instead that it had all been his own idea from the beginning.

Such was Darling's genius.

In Moscow, Darling had been honored in absentia by his peers and superiors in what remained of the KGB. Darling himself never left the United Kingdom. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there seemed to be little reason to return to Mother Russia, particularly since by then he knew absolutely no one in his homeland and had virtually forgotten his native language.

Nevertheless, he still served his distant masters in an area apart from his now benign professorial duties. One of the lesser known facts about the beloved university don, even among those who knew his real calling, was that Darling was a crack shot. He had, in fact, taught Titus the art of marksmanship, once it became clear that the boy would be of greatest use as an active field agent.

And so Titus never knew that one of his teacher's ongoing tasks, a job Darling did not enjoy but performed flawlessly, always with the utmost care and secrecy, was to kill his students.