Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (9 page)

September, 2017

David

D
avid had seen the
way the wind was blowing as soon as that van of military police
showed up, so he wouldn’t have said that having the agents separate
him from Cassie and Callum was unexpected. It was unfortunate. Even
worse than the abruptness of his incarceration was the fact that
nobody so far had asked him any questions or spoken to him beyond a
few direct orders. They’d walked him from the garage to an
elevator, descended two floors until he was in the bowels of MI-5
headquarters (or what he had to assume were their headquarters at
Cardiff, given that he couldn’t ask Callum where they were), and
into an interrogation room.

That it was an interrogation room he had no
doubt. It was painted vanilla white on the ceiling, floor, and
walls, with one wall taken up by a grayed out, ten-by-five foot
picture window that mirrored his reflection back at him. David
assumed it was one-way glass without bothering to put his nose
right up to it to see if he could see anything of the room on the
other side of the wall. That would be too humiliating.

After Natasha removed his handcuffs and
hood, he unhooked his wool cloak from around his neck and hung it
over a chair. The wool had mostly dried in the warmth of the car,
but he felt his toes squishing a bit inside his boots. He hadn’t
slept in his armor, so he hadn’t been wearing it when the storm
came. It would have been a bear to remove by himself, and he
strongly suspected his captors wouldn’t have been of any help. It
would be nice to get it back once they were done examining it. It
fit him perfectly.

The agents had already taken his sword from
him, along with his three knives (one from his right boot, one from
up his left sleeve, and a third from his waist), and patted him
down looking for anything else he could use as a weapon. David
wondered if Callum had received the same treatment; David knew
about the gun, of course. As far as David knew, Callum had left the
cog with it still in its holster at the small of his back. He made
a note not to mention Callum’s use of it in Scotland to MI-5.

Once Natasha left him alone, a quick twist
of the door handle proved that it didn’t twist at all, and a single
pace around the room showed David that he wasn’t going to kick his
way out of this cell either. Where was young Thomas Hartley when he
needed him? David faced away from the one-way glass. It felt
awkward to know that others whom he couldn’t see were watching
him.

“So. David Lloyd. Or did you want to go by
something else?”

He turned around at the sound of Natasha’s
voice. She had pushed open the door to the room, already speaking
before she was halfway through it, with a file open flat in her
hands.

“‘Lloyd’ was my last name before I found out
the identity of my true father,” he said.

Natasha dropped the manila folder on the
table that took up a good portion of the center of the room, pulled
out the chair closest to her, and gestured that David should sit in
the chair opposite. Unlike the walls, the table was black, finished
with a utilitarian lacquer, and the chair was blue plastic with
metal legs. It rocked under David’s weight as he sat in it. He
appreciated the chance to rest without having to show Natasha how
much he needed it. The initial adrenaline rush of their arrival in
the twenty-first century had passed, leaving him a little shaken.
His sore throat and achiness hadn’t seemed like something he could
pay attention to in the middle of a storm in the Irish Sea, but now
he had to admit that his throat was exploding out his ears.

“And what is your name now?” Natasha
said.

David smiled. “David Arthur Llywelyn
Pendragon, King of England.”

Natasha stared at him, open-mouthed.
“Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

David brows came together as he looked back
at her, surprised at her surprise. Did she really not believe him?
She had to have known his origins, since she’d spoken with his
Uncle Ted. But then he remembered that he’d become the King of
England after his mom and dad had returned to the Middle Ages from
their brief sojourn in the twenty-first century last November.
Before his crowning, David had been ‘merely’ the Prince of
Wales.

“Callum, Cassie, and I decided that we
wouldn’t lie to you about where we’ve been and what we’ve been
doing,” David said. “By telling you the truth and nothing but, our
stories will be the same, and you won’t be able to trip me up in
lies, which I don’t tell well anyway.”

Natasha leaned back in her chair, tapping at
her lip with one finger and studying David. “Tell me why you think
you’re the King of England.”

“Excuse me?” David said. “Why I
think
I’m the King of England?” He hadn’t intended to be combative from
the start, but his hackles had risen right out of the gate at being
accused, essentially, of being deluded. “That sounds like you’re
trying to psychoanalyze me.”

Natasha pressed her lips together and then
said, “Perhaps I should start again. Please tell me what you’ve
been doing since that December day when you disappeared from
Pennsylvania in your aunt’s minivan and dropped off the official
record.”

David nodded, placated somewhat by the
little victory but telling himself not to be sucked in by her
capitulation. She was probably the ‘good cop’. She’d try to put him
at his ease and get him to reveal pieces of himself he might rather
not have discussed. Still, as he’d said, if he didn’t lie, they
would gain nothing but the truth. It wasn’t as if he’d done
anything illegal. “I assume you’ve heard most of my story already
from my Uncle Ted.”

“I didn’t know about the King of England
part,” Natasha said. “It would help to hear it from you from the
beginning.”

David canted his head, studying her. “If
you’re the good cop, could I have a hamburger and fries or maybe
fish and chips before we begin? I haven’t eaten since 1289, and my
story is going to take a while.”

David thought he detected a twitch of a
smile on Natasha’s lips.
Good
. Callum had spoken to David of
his life in Cardiff, mentioning Natasha specifically. Callum and
she had been friends of a sort. She had implied to Callum on the
docks that the show of force wasn’t her idea, and perhaps his
incarceration wasn’t either.

“I might be the bad cop,” Natasha said.

David dipped his head as if she were a
visiting ruler, and he was sitting on his throne. “I have no
intention of underestimating you.”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” she
said. “This could simply be the calm before the storm.”

David couldn’t tell if she was joking, so he
decided to play it straight. “True. But I live in the Middle Ages.
How afraid do you think I’m going to be of what you might do to me?
I’ve killed men with a sword.” David dropped his voice slightly,
not so much feigning regret (which he did feel), as playing it up
for her benefit. “Too many men.”

Natasha paused for a beat and again, he
could tell that he’d surprised her. “I’ll see what I can do.” She
stood and left the room.

David sat in the chair for another minute,
waiting for her to return to tell him that the food was on its way.
When she didn’t come back right away, he got to his feet and began
circling the room, trying not to think of himself as a lion in a
cage. Almost worse than being penned in was that this interrogation
routine was wasting his time. If he had two days in the
twenty-first century, he had a lot to do and not much time to do it
in. He needed access to a computer and a phone.

The thought of a phone brought him up short,
and he stopped his pacing. The first people he needed to call were
his Uncle Ted and Aunt Gwen. For all that Uncle Ted had cooperated
with MI-5 last November when David’s mom and dad had come to the
twenty-first century, David assumed he’d done it out of naiveté,
not maliciousness. After all, Uncle Ted had aided and abetted Mom
by getting her duffel bag from her room and leaving her the key to
his rental car. For the rest, if they stuck him in a room like this
one, Ted may have felt he had no choice but to cooperate. David had
been brought here in a hood and handcuffs like he was a terrorist.
Maybe they’d done the same to Uncle Ted.

The image of what Ted (and his parents) had
gone through last year suddenly gave David a very different
perspective on Callum. MI-5 was his agency. Interrogations were
something he ordered and took part in. While the transition from
high school freshman to Prince of Wales hadn’t exactly been easy
for David, he could see why the transition from agent to medieval
man would have been even more difficult for Callum. He’d gone from
being the head of his MI-5 section to being baggage, with no job,
no authority, and unable to communicate with anyone but David’s
family. It was pretty much the reverse of what was happening to
David now.

On the other hand, Callum had proved himself
to be a reasonable person. Chances were, Natasha was too. David
walked to within a foot of the one-way glass, put his hands on his
hips, and said, “I believe I’m entitled to a phone call.”

His statement didn’t elicit a response—from
Natasha or anyone else.

David stood staring at the mirror,
contemplating what to do if Natasha didn’t come back soon. He’d all
but made up his mind to pretend to have a seizure when the door
opened again, and Natasha came through it with a white sack. The
smell of fried fish rose from it, and David’s mouth watered. Sore
throat or not, he really was hungry.

She raised the sack high to show him that
she’d brought what he’d asked for. Before she could close the door,
he took two steps towards it, trying to see past her into the
hallway. He caught a glimpse of a white corridor stretching for at
least thirty feet with several doors opening off of it. He hadn’t
tried to disguise what he was doing, and she very pointedly handed
him the bag and gestured that he should resume his seat. Then she
closed the door behind her. Another half hour and he was going to
insist on using their bathroom (or ‘loo’, as he reminded himself to
say). He needed to get himself a better look.

Bevyn had told him a long time ago that
soldiers should eat and sleep when they could, so David accepted
the bag of food. “This isn’t drugged, I hope,” he said.

Natasha gave him a withering look. “We
wouldn’t do that.”

“Uh huh. You put a sack on my head.” This
time, instead of sitting in the chair, he perched on the edge of
the table, swinging one leg. “Did that come from you or your
boss?”

Natasha pressed her lips together.

“What’s his name, by the way?”

“Her name, and it’s Director Jane
Cooke.”

David nodded. “I stand corrected.
Ultimately, I’d like to speak with her, but for now, I need to use
your phone, and I need access to a computer, a printer, and a
backpack to hold what I print out.”

As he’d foreseen when he sat on the table,
Natasha had to turn in her seat and look up to talk to him; she
wasn’t the only one who could play power games. “We’ll see about
getting you what you want after you answer my questions.”

“How about, I won’t answer your questions
until you get me what I want,” David said. “Truthfully, I don’t
need to tell you anything, and you can keep me locked up here for
the next two days if you choose. But if I have to stay in the
twenty-first century, I’d like to use the time wisely, and that
doesn’t mean sitting in this room staring at you all the day
long.”

“The sooner you talk, the sooner we’ll let
you go.”

“Is that a fact?” David said. “Why should I
believe you?”

“Because you have no choice,” Natasha
said.

David took out a chip and popped it into his
mouth. He chewed, thinking. “How about an exchange?”

“I’m listening,” Natasha said.

“I tell you something, you give me
something, I tell you something, you give me something. Since you
started with the food, which is good, by the way, so thank you, you
can go next. Ask me a question.”

Natasha shifted in her seat, and David
thought she looked pleased that he’d capitulated so quickly. Of
course, she didn’t know how easy it was for him to talk; he had
nothing to lose, and who didn’t like talking about himself? He’d
led a pretty incredible life these last six years. David was almost
looking forward to telling someone about it and seeing Natasha’s
face as she listened. He didn’t care so much if she believed him.
He was pretty sure she wasn’t prepared for what he was going to ask
for in return either.

“You say you’ve been living in 1289. How did
you arrive back here?”

“Did you note the listing hulk the tug was
hauling behind it as we left the marina?” David said. “We came in
that.”

“So I gathered,” Natasha said. “I mean
how
? The mechanics of it. What was happening to you in the
Middle Ages such that you ended up here?”

“Since last year, a baron named William de
Valence has been causing trouble for me and for England. I was
sailing to Ireland with several hundred men and horses, with the
express purpose of dealing with him once and for all, when we
encountered a storm in the Irish Sea.”

Natasha eyed him and then flipped through a
series of notes in the file folder she’d brought. “I guess I don’t
understand what you’re saying. What does a storm at sea have to do
with you coming to the twenty-first century?”

“Our ship was going down; my life was in
danger. Thus, the time travel,” David said.

Natasha continued to flip through the papers
in the folder. “This—” She looked up at David. “This is new, you
mean? No one in your family has ever traveled to or from the Middle
Ages as the result of a storm at sea.”

“No.” David shrugged, and then asked a
question of his own. “You’re telling me your sensors didn’t pick up
the flash?”