Guardians of Time (26 page)

“I’m not seeing that. It shouldn’t be a
problem on our end,” David said. “What about you guys?”

“Give us a minute,” Callum said, his eyes
narrowed at the crowd and the security at either end of the narrow
street. “We may have to go back the way we came.”

“Fortunately, all the portcullises have been
removed from the gatehouses,” Math said. “We’ll find a way
out.”

They wended their way through the lines of
people waiting to enter through the front gate. The corner of the
square was only a few yards away. Sawhorses blocked the street, as
they had from the beginning, but only a single man stood guard. He
was swathed from head to foot in all-weather gear, and from what
Anna could see of his face, he was David’s age or younger.

“Did you give Tate the what-for about the
clinic yet?” Anna said.

“I did,” Callum said. “He claims only to
have been doing his due diligence. I decided, under the
circumstances, that any more recriminations on my part would be
unproductive.”

“Huh,” Anna said. “I don’t trust him.”

“If we get what we need from him and get
back to the Middle Ages in one piece, it won’t matter, Anna,” David
said.

Callum picked up the pace, loping down the
sidewalk on the north side of the street, headed away from the
castle entrance. As they approached the barriers, he reached into
his breast pocket. The guard on duty lowered the walkie-talkie he’d
been speaking into, tension in every line of his body, but then
Callum pulled out his MI-5 badge. He left it open long enough for
the guard to get a good look at it.

“Sir.” The policeman stiffened to
attention.

“As you were.” Callum gestured to the
others. “They’re with me.”

Anna gave the policeman her most sincere
smile. “The line is too long.”

“American, eh?” the guard said.

“Yup,” Anna said, throwing in another
Americanism for good measure.

With another nod at Callum, the guard waved
them through the barrier. Callum slipped the badge back into his
breast pocket. Anna had heard him speaking to Cassie earlier about
how they wanted to keep a low profile and not wave their badges
around if they didn’t have to, but desperate times called for
desperate measures.

“We’re through the barrier, David,” Callum
said. “I chose to show my badge.”

“Tate knows we’re here, so I don’t think it
matters,” David said. “I’m hoping Tate has warned the rank and file
by now to be on the lookout for Lee.”

“He told me he would,” Callum said.

“The guard barely blinked at us,” Anna
said.

“Lee is an Irishman with an Irish accent,”
Callum said. “Clearly not you.”

“Could be me or Mark,” Math said. “He didn’t
even ask.”

“You were with an MI-5 agent,” Callum said.
“He wouldn’t see it as his place to ask.”

Anna looked over her shoulder as a man ran
up to the first guard and began talking and gesticulating, showing
the sense of urgency they were hoping for.

“We’re circling around the water side of the
castle because it turned out we couldn’t get to the square from the
east or the south,” David said. “The guard may have let you
through, but it looks to me as if Tate is, in fact, moving quickly
to tighten security. Too little too late if you ask me, but I hope
I’m wrong.”

“You’re not going to be able to get here
from there either, David,” Anna said. “We’ve just come through
there. They’re ramping up the security even more on that side.”

Callum looked down at his phone, where a
text message had just appeared. “Tate says they’ve called out the
canine unit to inspect the castle and the city, but they won’t be
here for at least an hour.”

“What’s the canine unit?” Math said.

“Dogs,” Darren said. “They’ve been trained
to sniff out bombs.”

“It may be the only way to find Lee and his
friend,” Callum said.

“Again, too little too late,” David
said.

“Lee could be moving up his time table too,”
Anna said. “I couldn’t swear that he didn’t see me when he looked
back, though his eyes didn’t pause as they swept over me.”

Math put a hand on her shoulder. “He would
never expect you to be here today. In that wooly hat and coat, you
look nothing like you do at home.”

“I borrowed this coat from Cassie’s aunt. I
was wearing it when he first met me,” Anna said.

Math frowned. “I’d forgotten that.”

“What is he doing in the meantime to secure
the castle?” David said. “Honestly, Tate ought to let you, me, and
Darren in, Callum. We know what to look for. What do you bet the
bombs are in the toilets?”

“I told Tate about that too,” Callum said.
“He appeared to take me seriously, but I also know that he believes
in his own methods and doesn’t see how Lee could have circumvented
them. He’s focusing on protecting the prince, which is fine as far
as it goes—”

“—but he doesn’t really believe Lee could
have set bombs in the toilets without being detected,” David said.
“Great.”

“With Lee, you really need to think outside
the box,” Anna said.

“As we discovered to our loss.” David
released a breath that came out a hiss through the phone’s
receiver. “Wait where you are, guys. We’re coming.”

David

A
s it turned out,
David should have listened to Anna. Though he, Abraham, Darren, and
Dad were able to circle around the castle to the west, once they
reached the north side past the sea wall, a line of barricades
blocked their way into either the city or the square beyond, even
though Anna’s group had just passed through there. Their only
choice was to go back, which would look suspicious, given the
number of security men on guard staring straight at them, or stand
in the line of people waiting to get into the castle.

They joined the line.

“This should be interesting,” Dad said.

“Darren can get you out of this with his
badge,” Callum said into David’s ear.

“No.” David said. “This is what I wanted to
do in the first place, and I’m not going to look a gift horse in
the mouth.” David felt a bit like Harry Potter on the day he drank
the lucky serum. The whole of the last twenty-four hours had
conspired to bring him to this point; he was meant to enter the
castle, right here, right now.

“David.” Mom’s voice held a warning, and
David could picture her in the van with Cassie and Rachel, all
three of them with their eyes narrowed, openly opposing what he was
about to do. “I don’t like you going in there. Once you get inside,
you may be stuck there all day, and Callum is going to have to come
get you.”

“Lee could be in there, and none of Tate’s
men knows what he looks like,” David said. “They need us whether or
not they know it.”

“Remember too,” Abraham said. “I’m
supposed
to be here. We’ll be all right.”

Even if it wasn’t true, David was grateful
for the support. Rachel’s dad wore an old-fashioned fedora hat,
currently covered in snow, and looked as confident and polished as
he sounded.

“I agree. This is good,” Dad said.

“We can check the toilets for bombs,” David
said. “Knowing that it has been done will make me feel a lot better
about leaving Lee in Tate’s hands.”

Callum gave a low growl. “Abraham’s
invitation is for him alone, and Darren is the only one with a
badge. They may not let David and Llywelyn inside.”

“In which case, we’ll know this was the
wrong choice,” David said.

“The line is moving pretty quickly,” Dad
said. “They’re letting people in.”

“Llywelyn—” Mom’s voice echoed resignedly
through the receiver in David’s ear. “Take care of one
another.”

“David and I have always had each other’s
backs,” Dad said. “This time will be no different.”

They were only a few feet from the entrance.
Men stood at the gate with dogs, though from what Tate had said,
they weren’t here to sniff out bombs. Then he saw why the line was
moving so fast: anyone with a backpack or bag larger than a very
basic purse was being turned away and shunted through another set
of barricades into the square.

The tourists weren’t being allowed to come
back once they’d ditched their bags either, and David wondered if
they should have known they couldn’t bring in backpacks, or if it
was a new rule based on the information Callum had given Tate about
Lee. But even David, the non-MI-5 agent, could see that leaving so
many tourists to their own devices on Christmas Day in Caernarfon
created a security nightmare, which might be exactly what Lee was
counting on.

“You’re going to kill yourself if you can’t
learn to be more detached,” Abraham said to David from a pace
behind him.

“What?” David said, turning in surprise to
look at him.

“I’ve seen many young doctors burn out
because they can’t separate themselves from their
responsibilities,” Abraham said. “You need to learn this too if
you’re going to survive.”

“I’ve told you the same thing, son,” Dad
said.

“You have, and I’m trying,” David said,
resigned to having the conversation, even under these
circumstances
.
“Years ago Mom talked to me about living more
lightly, and I do mean to, but being King of England doesn’t make
that easy.” He stopped talking as he saw in his mind’s eye the
enormous list of things he had to do and worry about each day. No
wonder every American president, regardless of what party he
belonged to or how poorly he managed the job, went gray within the
first four years of office.

“I can only imagine what your life is like,”
Abraham said. “I don’t suppose there’s much in the way of self-help
books in the Middle Ages?”

David laughed. “It’s called the Bible, but
sometimes it’s a little short on specifics.”

“Is it?” Abraham said. “I quote you the
words of a different King David:
The Lord is my light
and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
That, to me, is the path
to detachment.”

“
I remain confident of this: I will
see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the
living
,” David quoted back. “I know another Jewish doctor
you’re going to get along with really well. You can both harass me
while trading verses from the Old Testament.”

That got a laugh from Abraham, which carried
them to the front of the line and made them seem innocuous—just
four friends out for the once-in-a-lifetime experience of seeing
the Prince of Wales. The irony of that was not lost on David.

The guards took them one at a time,
directing each in turn to open their coats to show they had no
weapons of any kind. Earlier, after a hurried conference with
Callum, Darren had left his gun in the van for Cassie, who didn’t
have one. David wasn’t even wearing a knife. He’d left his medieval
gear in a bag in the van, ready to put on for the return journey.
He was looking forward to showing up at home dressed right instead
of in inappropriate modern clothing.

The guards waved them into the castle one at
a time, David entering last. “You didn’t show him your invitation,”
he said to Abraham once he reached the spot where he, Darren, and
Dad were waiting.

“He didn’t ask for it, and if I had done so,
my name would have been recorded. So far, Tate doesn’t know I’m
here, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t keep it that way,” Abraham
said.

“That’s why I didn’t show my badge,” Darren
said. “I don’t want Tate to know we distrust his security or we
don’t think he’s doing a good enough job.”

As they passed the gift shop, which was
doing a thriving trade in water bottles and Welsh cakes, David
reconnected to the conference call. “We’re in.”

Cassie came on the line at the same moment.
“I have the supplies, Callum. Tate came through for us. It’s a
go.”

“Good,” Callum said.

As David listened, he followed the other
tourists through the inner bailey of the castle. A pavilion had
been set up on the west end, near the bathrooms, and despite the
continued snowfall, castle officials were herding people onto the
various wall-walks, of which there were many.

Caernarfon Castle, like many of Edward’s
castles, had corridors inside the stone curtain wall. Back in the
Middle Ages, rooms, if they were small, had been built in the walls
themselves or were meant to be accessed through doorways that led
to the courtyard. By the twenty-first century, however, all of the
buildings that would have existed back in 1284 were gone, destroyed
by time. Many would have been built in wood in the first place,
which never lasted.

“Where are you now, Anna?” David said.

The companions entered the first doorway
straight ahead, which took them into a long corridor heading east.
It was good to be out of the snow, and David wondered if the Prince
of Wales was really going deliver his speech in the middle of what
was shaping up to be a blizzard. Probably that was what the
pavilion was for.

“I’m still with Math, Callum, and Mark, near
the NatWest bank on the opposite side of the square from the
castle,” Anna said, though the deeper they walked within the walls,
the more broken up her voice became. “There are hundreds of people
in the square, with more coming every second. Some of the shop
owners have even opened their stores.”

“How un-English of them,” David said.

“Probably most of them aren’t English,”
Darren said.

“Many tourists were turned away at the
entrance to the castle, and they have nowhere to go,” Anna
said.

David had been very aware of the cameras
above the entrance that had been trained on his face as he entered
the castle. But, as Callum had assured them back on the bus when
they’d first arrived, the guards hadn’t asked for ID, not even for
such an event as this, and David could see why they didn’t
bother—if someone was up to no good, he’d have a fake ID anyway, so
there was no point in wasting the guards’ time. The cameras were a
much better preventive measure, since they could be linked to
facial recognition software. If Lee had gone so far as to undergo
plastic surgery to change his features, he deserved to win.