Band of Gypsys (33 page)

‘Are they no’ replicas?’

‘Nope, the real thing. As is the Van Dyck over there, and the Delacroix: both hung in here because they are yellow. And people are allowed to
smoke
all over them. Crazy, isn’t it.’

The two women bent closer. ‘I don’t actually like Klimt,’ confided Fiorinda, absentmindedly lifting the fabric to examine a detail. She dropped it again, grabbing Sovra in pretended alarm. ‘Oops, what a crime. I’ll get us thrown out. I’m such a klutz about the ornaments in this treasure house.’

‘A troubled man,’ agreed Sovra. ‘Maybe no too open in his sexuality,’ she added severely, and calmly transferred a slip of glittering crystal, that had just been pressed onto her bare arm, to a place of greater safety:

eks, not fade away
.

George had smuggled the chip into Rick’s Place, early in July. It held the whole instruction set for hacking into Wallingham, plus the barmy army battle plan for the May raid. It had never left the Drawing Room, as there was a good chance it wouldn’t have got through the punitive search and scan the Triumvirate suffered when they were taken back to their rooms. The Klimt hangings were cleaned by ultrasound twice a year, the next date still months away: so they’d been a smart hiding place, keep it simple, always the best.

The Scots would be scanned, but approved guests didn’t get taken apart, and the chip was very small, and practically inert.

This I can do for you, my prince, thought Fiorinda. You have to tear your heart out, but you don’t have to hand it over personally. Now we find out. Maybe she’ll take that straight to Lady Anne… She wondered how it felt to be Sovra, and what would make someone sign up to be a secret agent, hey, you’re a fine musician, be shot for sixpence, it’ll do nothing for your career—

Sovra may have been thinking on the same lines. ‘Are they no’ afraid you three’ll take advantage, mixing freely with all sorts of chancers in here?’

‘The Drawing Room is comprehensively wired,’ said Fiorinda, ‘and protected by ritual magic. And they trust us. What could happen? Even Greg Mursal knows Ax Preston would never betray his country.’

England and Scotland looked at each other with reserved respect. A hell of a bungee jump, sister. And you. Good luck. And you. They returned to the table, because Ax had begun to play. He’d brought down his famous cherry-red Gibson, for the first time in the history of Rick’s Place. He gave them a blistering solo set, a blast of pure and hard electric, nothing green or organic about it. He didn’t give a fuck how they reacted: but the crowd was wowed, smitten, ecstatic. The dip in popularity Ax had suffered, those weeks when his star had faltered, were forgotten. As long as he was locked up in Wallingham, he could do no wrong.

‘That was
way cool
!’ gasped one of his courtiers, at the end of the recital: pronouncing the ancient jargon with gusto. ‘You are
such
a pro, Sir!’

‘Yeah,’ said Ax, meeting Fiorinda’s eyes across the smoky dark and the lights, and getting the a-okay. It’s done. ‘That’s me. A real old pro.’

Phil and Sovra’s tour was over. Their last visit to Rick’s Place was the last night they spent in England. The reivers, who’d slipped over the border by ones and twos—augmented discreetly through the summer, as the agents became certain they would close the deal, stayed behind: gone to earth, with their smuggled arms. The operation was handled so there was no marked discrepancy in numbers in the tour party, coming and going: but border control wasn’t tight, for approved festival traffic. Safely delivered in Edinburgh, George’s chip was deciphered, evaluated and passed on to the commanders of the raid, who moved south to join their troops.

Ax and Fiorinda obeyed the White Box’s instructions, and dosed their bodhisattva with diamorphine until he refused it; wanting to stay clear and be with them. He often insisted he was fine, but at night he would cling to them, shaken by fits of deep, helpless trembling. Fiorinda thought that one day he’d tell her what had been going on in his mind, and it would be nightmares featuring Jack Vries as an appalling father, a merciless god. When a tame medic arrived they drove him off: openly angry, outraged and shocked.

Lady Anne felt that Jack Vries’ apology was insupportably delayed, and dreaded the moment when she’d have to approve a renewed interrogation. Since she did not believe in the Neurobomb agenda, she contemplated poison, to get rid of the unlucky third once and for all. But it would be difficult. The Lord and Lady refused to allow the servants near Mr Pender, and would give him no medicine except of their own providing.

They’d thought of poison. They were living on Rick’s Place bar snacks.

They spoke to each other with stitched-up mouths, the days passed, they went down to Rick’s Place again. China’s adventures in Central Asia eclipsed the run up to the US election: which held no interest, it was such a sure thing for Fred. A group of rogue neurophysicists in Argentina had been caught trying to build an ‘A’ team, and arrested. A colossal, Stalinist, Russian engineering project, last ditch defence (according to the Russian Feds) against the ‘global-warming ice-age’, had been abandoned, devastated by extreme weather. They heard nothing more about a public announcement that Mr Preston was not a werewolf: that deal seemed to be on hold.

They knew nothing, except that Phil and Sovra seemed to have got away with it, since there’d been no immediate repercussions. Then a couple of stragglers from the Scottish tour turned up at the club on Friday, and passed the message: it’s on.

The raiders hit the Wallingham perimeter around midnight of the seventeenth of September, their arrival by road buried in the traffic spike when the nightclub closed. They were in a strange land, and they’d never attacked a fortress before. But Ax and Sage did plug-and-play battle orders, designed to survive hippie guerrilla idiocy or inspiration: they didn’t know any other way. The first phase of the operation went smoothly. Wallingham’s security software had of course been reviewed after the May debacle, but the codes had been reset not replaced, so change didn’t go very deep. The very expensive package that generated frequently changed, randomised passwords throughout the systems, had not been ditched. The ‘Rick’s Place’ traffic spike was the last genuine information Wallingham’s defenders, human or machine, ever saw.

The perimeter was secure in half an hour. The attack on the house itself began about one thirty am. Entry (all doors and windows were physically locked and barred, as well as being systemically alarmed), was effected through a scullery window; which was simply forced. The indoor troops were getting reports and visuals that looked and sounded perfectly convincing, and showed only a quiet night. They had no idea they had no alarm system, or that the perimeter was lost. They didn’t know anything was wrong, until the Scots were all over them.

The prisoners in the red room were almost as poorly informed as the garrison. Their shutters had been locked as usual, and the outer door of the suite secured, when the servants left after dinner. Their suite was so deep inside the house they would hardly have heard a rocket attack on the distant façade. They wouldn’t know when the power was cut off, (which should have happened early on): their corridor had never been on the Wallingham House private renewables grid. Ax and Fiorinda sat on the bed, watching the lamplit room from a cave of curtains; holding Sage’s hands while he lay on his back and kept his head still. His eyes were much better, but still heavily bandaged most of the time. They made conversation, the real words silenced.

‘It’s chilly tonight,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Don’t you feel that the season turned this week, like a leaf? Like a waterwheel, tipping over into autumn?’

‘You “feel” that cos you know it’s close on equinox, my brat.’

‘What does an equinox do? Is it registered by our brains?’

‘Yeah, whether you know it or not. It makes you happy, slightly.’

‘It’s
always
cold in here,’ complained Ax. ‘I’m dreading the winter.’

Endless corridors, endless galleries, endless vast public rooms. The word had been
around
midnight
, but Ax didn’t know if that meant kick off or the perimeter taken. If midnight was the perimeter they should be inside by now. How long before they locate us? It’s good that we can’t get out of the suite, he told himself. We’d be fools to be out there, don’t want to commit prematurely. If they fail we’re innocent, we knew nothing.

Fat chance of getting away with that—

He listened: searching the silence until he thought he could hear the guards breathing outside the barred door of the suite. Calculating, approximating as best he could. This part of the May plan had never been executed, there’d been no need for it. The ground floor window that is only directly visible to camera eyes, no sight lines. Get basement and ground floor locked down, leave a party to mop up. A couple of men to run a firecheck on the non-combatant servants in their quarters, and keep them quiet while the main force sweeps up and inward. Clear up as you go, and you should never have to engage with major numbers—

You don’t know where we are, that wasn’t on the plan, you’ll have to work it out.
Don’t
head for the show-off rooms the Preston family occupied.

It’s a fortress, what does that tell you, trainspotters?

Make for the central keep.

find out if we can fly—

Ax’s imaginary Scots were still on the ground floor when there was a muffled thunder of boots outside. They got off the bed, Sage too, nerves thrilling, is it fight or flight? A mass of armed men, must have been twenty of them, burst into the royal bedchamber. Oh, fuck. Never-seen-action fatigues. Not the rescue party.

‘You’re to come with us!’ yelled the foremost guy, red and blue flashes on his sleeves and shoulders: an officer in Wallingham’s private army. ‘Come on! Now!’ He was wildly brandishing an assault rifle, lost to all respect.

Ax set the barrel of the gun aside (it had been jabbing at Fiorinda). ‘Come with you? Why? It’s the middle of the night. What’s going on?’

‘There’s a helicopter waiting, Mr Preston,’ cried a second, calmer man with officer’s flashes. ‘On the roof of the great library. You have to come quickly Sir, Ma’am,’ He looked at Sage, and flinched away from the Zen Self champion’s bandaged blindness. ‘And Mr Pender.’

‘But…but wouldn’t we be safer staying in here?’ said Fiorinda doubtfully. ‘If there’s some kind of trouble?’

I could do it, thought Ax. The guy who just called me
Mr Preston
, not that sickening
Your Majesty,
he could be turned. I could grab the wavering rifle from Mr Weak Link there, turn this around. All it takes is boldness. But what then? What then…? He stared at Fiorinda, rushing on disaster, telling her we are fucked, I won’t kill and they’ll call my bluff. I can’t do it.

Fiorinda stared back, grey eyes like stones in the dim light.

‘Just wait a moment,’ said Ax. ‘I asked you to tell me what’s going on. Is the house on fire, is this a drill? Has war been declared?’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Sage, unhurriedly. ‘What the fuck’s up?’

Both officers were very disconcerted to be addressed by blind Sage. They glanced at each other, breathing hard, and quickly eyes front again.

‘There’s been a disturbance,’ cried Mr Nice. ‘A… Possibly a break in.’

‘You don’t need to know!’ shouted Frantic Guy, rifle flapping again. ‘It’s not for you to know. You just
come with us
, right now!’

Their men were in a tight pack, looking nervously around the room.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Ax. ‘We hear you. Give us a few moments to pack.’

Everything they meant to carry was already assembled by the bed. He headed for the armoire, took down a suitcase and began to fill it with clothes they never wanted to see again: with an appearance of haste but no hurry. Fiorinda, whatever you’re going to do, do it. Oh shit,
my babe
, magic drives people mad, and you’ve already been to that hell once. How can I ever escape from doing violence? How cold it is over here. He wanted to tell her no! Don’t do it to yourself, we’ll find another way… When he realised that his throat had closed, his mouth was dry. He was in the grip of an overwhelming dread, coming at him from the ghost’s favourite territory.

The Haunting Of The Red Bedchamber had served its purpose when they’d heard it mentioned by the servants—since they happened to know that Sage and Fiorinda’d made the fucking thing up. Their friend the ghost had confirmed that the bedroom was bugged; and was a good psychological tool. The ghost was always listening. Told ourselves there were no cameras or mics inside the bedcurtains but never dared believe it. Fucking sickening. So there’s no ghost, there never was a ghost, but his hands had begun to shake. Something invisible, animal and repellent watched him, creeping closer. He kept shovelling clothes, slow make it look fast,
this is not a small thing
, this is too much babe, don’t know if I can stand up and get back to you…

Mr Frantic shouted incoherently, rushed over and grabbed Ax by the shoulder. Ax turned, slow make it look fast: raising an eyebrow.

One of the men in the pack wailed aloud. They were backed up on each other like sheep, up against the wall by the fireplace. Mr Nice, lightish skinned, round in the face, was a sick shade of grey. He yelled at his partner. ‘You don’t touch Ax! You don’t lay your hands on
Ax
!’

But he was backing up himself, and so was Mr Frantic. What did they see? It had them penned: an invisible black sheepdog. Ax stumbled to his feet, dread like a tugging wave. Fiorinda was staring at the invisible black dog too, and Sage’s bandaged eyes were fixed on the same spot. Ax crossed the room, they scooped their bags, their treasures, the First Aid: bolted through the suite, slammed the outer door and crashed the bars into their sockets.

The night guards must be in the red room with the others. The corridor was empty and dim: lit by infrequent ATP lamps in wall brackets. Somewhere, not far away, there was a considerable firefight going on.

‘My God,’ gasped Ax. ‘That was strong medicine, Fiorinda.’

‘Fuck!’ breathed Sage. ‘It was real, there was a real ghost! Hahaha!’