Wolf in Shadow-eARC (32 page)

Marlowe was too good an artist to answer his own question but left it for every man to consider for himself. Predestination or free will? Jameson looked fondly at Karla. How much free will did she have? She seemed to choose, to show free will, but she was eternally bound in a love geas to him. Theologians might argue that she had no more soul than a cruise missile, so free will, sin, and redemption were theoretical concepts in her case.

But what about Jameson, how much free will did he have? His class and talents predestined his life: public school, Cambridge, an indifferent degree, sports blues, Sandhurst, the Guards, combat tours, and finally, The Commission. Had he chosen this life, or had it chosen him? Faust ended up ripped to pieces by a daemon and his soul consigned to Hell. Jameson was not sure he believed in Hell, other than the one we all lived in, but he believed in daemons. By God, he believed in daemons. It was all too likely that he would end his life, like Faust, on a daemon’s claws.

The arrival of Shternberg’s helicopter snapped him out of it. The little corporate toy flew down the Thames and circled the empty shell of Battersea Power Station, disappearing for a moment in the rising sun. It flared, pitching up its nose, and settled slowly onto the circular helipad in the empty coal yard. Shternberg was out and running to the waiting Bentley while the rotors still turned.

“
Sweet Karla, make me immortal with a kiss
,” Jameson said, taking a startled Karla in his arms and carrying out the act with passion. He was delighted to have something to do other than watch an empty concrete pad. He dropped her and started the Jag’s engine.

Shternberg’s chauffeur closed the door for his boss and doubled around the car to the driver’s seat. He moved off while still clipping on his seatbelt. Jameson swung in behind the Bentley, making no attempt to be discreet. After all, the whole idea was to make Shternberg sweat a little.

Randolph’s attempt to use the Inland Revenue had been an utter failure. He had been blocked. MI6 apparently had Shternberg under their protection for reasons unknown. Randolph surmised that he was seen as an information asset, but MI6 weren’t telling, so The Commission moved to Plan B.

The cars crossed Battersea Bridge and turned east along the embankment. Jameson used the power of the Jag to hold like superglue to the Bentley. He ran a red light, sliding through the junction in a blare of horns from outraged motorists on green. Shternberg looked back out of the rear window. Jameson winked at him and semi-quoted.

“
Sweet Karla, make me immortal with a kiss.

“Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!—

“Come, Karla, come, give me my soul again.

“Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,

“And all is dross that is not Karla.
”

“Oh, Marlowe,” Karla said, dismissively.

“Dr. Faustus,” Jameson said.

“It’s Helen, not Karla.”

“I was improvising,” Jameson said. “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Troy.”

“Illium, not Troy.”

“You’ve been reading my books again.”

“No, I remember seeing the play. Marlowe invited me. Now there was a devious sod. The secret service chopped him after Walsingham died.”

Jameson gave Karla a sideways glance. At that moment, the traffic ground to a halt and he had to slam on the car’s brakes to avoid mating with the Bentley in front. A Mercedes van pulled alongside. The slob at the wheel flicked ash out of the open window. He could look down into the Jaguar from his vantage point. He put his head out of the van to drink in Karla, who was dressed in her working clothes of tight-fitting black leather jacket and trousers.

Van-man said something to his mate, who also slid across for a leer. Karla was always conscious of attention, so she turned to look at them. Van-man made an obscene gesture, indicating what he would like to do to her. Karla smiled at him, showing her teeth, indicating what she would like to do to him. He turned white and rolled up the window. The traffic started to move and van-man stalled the engine. His vehicle was soon lost behind in a sea of maneuvering cars and blasting horns.

Rhian returned to work at the Swan. As she had feared, it was not the same. Gary was polite enough, but the wolf hung between them like a steel bulkhead. Gary stayed mostly in the office when she was working. She told herself that it was because of his injuries, but she knew she was lying. Taking a deep breath, she decided to take the mountain to Mohammed. She stuck her head around the office door. Gary sat at his desk, adding up figures on a calculator.

“Gary,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder.

He looked up at her and flinched, pulling away so her hand dropped free.

“Oh, Rhian, what did you want?”

“Nothing, Gary,” she said dully. “You just answered my question. I’ll work my shift and then leave. No need for any unpleasantness or embarrassment. You can send my last paycheck to Frankie.”

“Service,” said a querulous voice from the bar.

Rhian grabbed the chance to leave the office. “Coming, Willie.”

She poured Willie the Dog’s half pint of ordinary while blinking back tears. She thought she had found a home here, but somehow it never worked out for her. It would be easy to blame the wolf, but this was the pattern of her life. She burned out her welcome wherever she went.

The pub door opened with a ding of the bell and a group of students walked in. One of them waited at the bar while she took Willie’s money.

“Rhian, could I have a word?” Gary asked from behind her. “In private, if you please.”

“Sure,” Rhian replied.

“Hey, I’m waiting to be served,” complained the student.

“So wait, your mother had to and life’s a bitch,” Gary said.

Rhian blinked; rudeness to a customer was most unlike Gary. She followed him into the office, where he handed her a tissue.

“You’re crying.”

“Hay fever,” she replied. “I’m allergic to something.”

“Yes, a stupid, selfish, gutless boss,” Gary said. He put his arms around her. “All the management training courses I’ve been on, and that’s quite a few, insist that hugging young women staff guarantees a trip to the Industrial Tribunal. I’m going to live dangerously and do it anyway.”

Rhian burst into more tears.

“Um, I was trying to be nice,” Gary said in alarm, releasing her.

“You are,” she replied. She hugged him hard, causing Gary to wince. “Sorry, ribs still tender?”

“A bit,” Gary replied. “You’re stronger than you look. I suppose that’s the, ah . . .”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Gary laughed, a little forced, but Rhian was pleased he made the effort. She wiped her eyes and went out to serve the student. She took the order and poured the drink, but he hesitated after paying, staring at her.

“Is there anything else?” Rhian asked.

He straightened with a visible effort.

“Yes, there is. Don’t hang around when your shift ends. I’m taking you clubbing and I don’t like to be kept waiting,” the student said.

“What?”

“I, er, don’t like to be kept waiting,” repeated the student, taking a step backwards.

“Of all the arrogant . . .” Rhian ran out of words.

A tubby blond with brown eyebrows at the students’ table gave a peal of laughter.

“What that girl needs is some firm handling,” she said, lowering her voice an octave to imitate a man. “You’ll see she’ll respond to a real man who shows her who’s boss.”

The other students sniggered and Rhian’s would-be escort flushed.

“I think you’d better sit down,” Rhian said, her voice dangerously calm.

“Good advice, son,” Gary stuck his head around the office door. “The last suitor to try the ole cave-man act with our Rhian is still in intensive care having his arm reattached.”

Everyone laughed, including Rhian. She didn’t care for the joke, but she was delighted that the old Gary was back. She still had a place.

He joined her at the bar.

“The pot in the bet to take you out must be getting pretty substantial,” Gary said.

“How did you know about that?” Rhian asked.

“I’m the landlord. I know about everything that goes on in my pub,” he replied.

Jameson parked the Jaguar in a clearing amongst the woodland that ran around the periphery of Shternberg’s country estate. Karla’s eyes glowed metallic green in the dark. Her body cycles peaked naturally in the early hours of the morning.

The estate was surrounded by a high wall so Karla made a stirrup with her hands and boosted Jameson up. A thin wire ran along the top, held clear of the brickwork by insulated hoops. He clipped a cable to the wire and connected it to his phone.

“Why am I waiting?” Karla asked. “Can’t you get a move on?”

“Hang on a sec,” Jameson replied. “I just have to take out the security system.”

“Meanwhile, I’ll just stand here, shall I, holding you up?”

“If you don’t mind,” Jameson replied, politely.

He keyed the analysis program on the phone. It looked like an ordinary Android device from the outside but had a number of unusual features, including a security analysis and defeat package. Your average burglar would have happily paid a year in the nick to own one. Eventually the wait symbol stopped flashing and a green icon showed the mobile had the systems sussed. Jameson unclipped it and cut the wire. He hovered for a second, but there were no flashing lights or bells.

Hauling himself over the wall, he dropped down the other side. Karla vaulted the wall as if clearing a five-barred gate.

“Show off!” Jameson said.

She smiled at him, flashing long needle-pointed teeth.

The drive up to the front of the mansion was brilliantly lit. The rear, where they entered the garden, was in shadow. Rhododendron and other bushes were tastefully arranged to form a semi-wilderness containing winding paths. Jameson avoided these, pushing his way between the bushes. Paths were obvious places to site some sort of detection mechanism.

“This is going to play hell with my clothes,” he said.

“Wassock,” Karla replied succinctly.

She had a nice line in archaic insults, acquired during a very long life. Wassock, pronounced “wazzok,” was an old rural north-country expression for a traditional village idiot. It had a brief resurgence of use among public schoolboys, which is how Jameson knew what it meant.

“I begin to see the advantages of a black leather suit like yours,” Jameson said. “But I suspect that although you look cute in it, I really would resemble a wassock.”

The bushes ended at a cleared grassed area a few meters from the house. Large French windows gave access to the lawn. The room behind was dark and empty. Jameson considered entry through the French windows but rejected the idea. Instead, he chose a small door on the left of the building that was presumably used by the servants. Both the French windows and the kitchen door were protected by security cameras, presumably low-light models.

“That’s what you get for employing bloody amateurs,” Jameson said.

“What?” Karla asked.

“Both the cameras are mounted above the left corners of the doors,” Jameson replied. “Don’t you see? The cameras both point the same way. The left camera covers the right one as well as the door, but is itself vulnerable.”

He moved into the blind spot.

“Dear God, they haven’t even buried the cable in the wall.”

He pointed to where the cable from the camera was clipped to the outside of the brickwork. Dropping on one knee, he pulled out a tuft of grass.

“Give me a lift up.”

“I think you only bring me along to act as a human ladder,” Karla said.

“Certainly not,” Jameson replied. “You aren’t human.”

She shoved him up the wall a little more vigorously than required. Jameson decided not to complain in case he got accidentally dropped. His colleagues thought that Karla had no sense of humor, but they didn’t know her. She had a sense of fun, in the same way that the Emperor Caligula could be a laugh a minute. Like when he was deciding who to toss to the lions.

Jameson carefully smeared mud all over the camera lens. The exposed cable was tempting. Using his phone, he could corrupt the system to show anything from an empty doorway to the BBC News, but that would take time. Sometimes the old ways were the best. When they came to review the tapes, all they would see was a malfunctioning camera.

“Okay, let me down.”

Karla took her hand away and he dropped like a share price. She caught him before he hit the ground, but this was payback time for the ladder crack. She knew how much he disliked her demonstrating her strength on him. He decided to maintain a dignified silence on the matter. She sniggered, showing that she was not fooled at all.

The door lock was a nice new modern digital pad system that offered no protection at all to Jameson’s phone. He had been concerned that Shternberg might have left on the old-fashioned mechanical lock. Now they could be really tricky. A few seconds of digital magic and the door clicked open. He closed the burglar app on the phone and ran the magical field-protection app through its cycle. It detected nothing. Jameson looked at Karla questioningly. In his experience, she was far more reliable than any artificial detector. She shook her head, concurring with the mobile, so he entered.

The inside of the house was in darkness, so Jameson took a pencil torch from his inside pocket and shone it around. He found a scullery with an old-fashioned sink, draining boards, boot racks, and couple of shotguns propped against the wall in the corner. He passed through an inner door, into the kitchen which was a strange mixture of the old and new. An Aga shared space with microwave ovens. Most of the space in the kitchen was taken up by a large wooden table. Traditional kitchen sideboards lined the walls. Rows of stacked plates, pots, and pans filled the shelves.

Jameson pressed on into a corridor and began trying doors at random. He discovered the broom cupboard and a stairway down to the cellar. A quick reconnaissance revealed nothing but Shternberg’s collection of wines. Jameson would not have minded trying one or two. The man had good taste and deep pockets. The next door was more promising. It was locked. He searched through his pockets for his picklock until Karla tapped him on the shoulder and handed it to him.