Red Knight Falling (16 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

Beyond the open door waited a cozy den, its walls lined with bookshelves from the polished hardwood floors to the vaulted ceiling. The owner didn’t collect books, though: he collected
note
books. Thousands upon thousands of them, filling every shelf and open nook, unlabeled and identical.

A fire crackled in a stone hearth, casting a warm pumpkin-orange glow across a writing desk. The man seated behind it rose to greet us. He was tall, his skin dusty dark, his eyes gleaming amber. He wore his wiry silver hair in a ponytail and had a long but carefully trimmed beard. He dressed like a gentleman from a Jane Austen novel, with a black waistcoat and a silk cravat around his neck.

“You’ve done well for yourselves,” he said. “It’s exceedingly rare for anyone to find me unless I desire to be found.”

Our host wasn’t human; I knew that much. Problem was, that’s all I knew. My senses were dizzy, battered, and as I called to my power, all I could trace were tangled skeins of magic. The elements in the air twisted, kinked like a knotted ball of yarn.

“You know us,” Jessie said, “but we don’t know you. How about an introduction?”

He smiled and spread a hand. “Of course. Some call me al-Farsi, and some call me Management. It’s my honor to operate this establishment, though normally I prefer to speak through an intermediary who acts as my voice in public life.”

“An intermediary,” I said. “Like our man Lawrence? Or the assassin you sent to kill Dr. Huerta and take his place?”

“Your Agent Lawrence was a victim of his own greed,” al-Farsi said with an indifferent shrug. “He ran up certain debts in my establishment, debts owed to some extremely unpleasant individuals. I offered him a lifeline, and he took it gladly. I don’t blackmail my informants: I extricate them from their misery and allow them to show their gratitude through loyal service.”

“And Huerta?” I asked.

“I dispatched an operative to retrieve the tablet, it’s true. Told him to use any means necessary. I didn’t expect that to extend to murder, but . . . I suppose he felt it necessary.”

A chubby white-and-beige cat sat contentedly on the edge of the writing desk, its face turned toward the fire. It let out a rumbling purr as al-Farsi stroked its fur.

“Why did you want it?” Jessie asked.

“Because everyone
else
wanted it, of course. There are at least four clandestine organizations, including yours, vying for that artifact. I intended to auction it off. Not for the money, but for the information I could glean in the process. You see, I haven’t identified all the players in this little drama, and that vexes me.”

He patted the cat gently, then pushed away from the desk, strolling across the den and taking in the crowded bookshelves with a grand sweep of his arm.

“There is one coin of value in our world, Agents, and one measure of power: information.”

“You’re an intelligence broker,” Jessie said.

“More like an intelligence collector, who must occasionally and reluctantly share his secrets—with a most select list of clientele—in exchange for the funds to keep his operations running. Every good dragon needs a hoard. This is mine. I founded the Bast Club because it puts me at the nerve center of the North American occult underground.”

He cupped his hands together, whispering a tangled, sibilant string of words I couldn’t quite make out. When he pulled his palms apart, a soap bubble hovered between them. The bubble’s skin showed a glimpse of the action downstairs—Amy Xun trading one of her pewter amulets for an envelope stuffed with rumpled twenties.

“I rarely leave this floor, but then again, I don’t need to. Nothing happens on these grounds without my knowledge and my permission.”

He clapped his hands, popping the bubble.

“You had Agent Lawrence in your pocket,” Jessie said, “and you’ve been spying on us since Oregon. That means you know who we are. And you know what we do.”

He sounded almost bored, stifling a yawn behind his hand as he spoke. “Ah, yes, Vigilant Lock. Here to save the day. I hate to break it to you, Agents, but you’re far from the most formidable competitors in this little drama. If anything, you’re a guppy swimming among sharks. A curious guppy, though. A certain patron has offered me a handsome sum of money for my Vigilant files. Safe houses, operative names and photographs, all anyone would need to burn you down. I don’t know
everything
about you people, not yet, but I certainly know enough.”

“Who?” I took a step toward him, hoping I sounded more threatening than I felt. Shadows squirmed across the bookshelves all around us, unbound by the hearth fire.

“I couldn’t say, even if I wished to. I have an unbreakable principle: I never discuss my clients. Their privacy is sacrosanct.”

Jessie raised her pistol, aiming right between his eyes.

“How about now?” she asked.

The shadows twitched. I watched them coalesce. Rising from the walls like bas-reliefs in midnight black, serpents pooling around our feet.

“Agent Temple,” I said softly, “lower your weapon. Very slowly.”

Al-Farsi smiled.

“One bullet and one lit match will plug our information leak just fine,” she told him. “Or you can cooperate. Your call.”

“Jessie,”
I said, getting her attention. I nodded upward.

A tarantula clung to the vaulted ceiling, directly over our heads. A tarantula the size of a car. Shadow bristles wavered along its spectral back, its mandibles clicking hungrily. Faceted eyes the color of polished amethyst stared down at us—too many eyes—as the creature waited for its master’s command.

Jessie lowered her gun. The shadow serpents at our feet receded like waves, squirming back to the walls.

“Now, then,” al-Farsi said, “I do hope we can speak reasonably.”

“Do you even understand what you’ve done?” I said. “Because of you, we lost the tablet. Do you know what’s going to happen when that
thing
comes back from outer space and the Red Knight isn’t in orbit to ward it off?”

He took a deep breath and turned his back on us, strolling over to his desk. The cat purred under his gentle hand.

“I have a somewhat better idea than you do, I’m sad to say. I never meant to put anyone in danger; the auction would have been quick, efficient, and over before the entity returned. Alas, the tablet is now in the hands of one who, I assure you, has no intention of letting it go.”

“Give us a name,” I said.

Al-Farsi shrugged. “He is, unfortunately, a client of mine.”

“So give us a name anyway,” Jessie told him. “We could be talking about the fate of the entire
planet
. That’s a little bigger than your business scruples.”

“A principle written in sand is worth less than sand. I must regretfully decline.”

I thought fast, searching for a loophole, a crack in his iron wall.

“What about the other organizations, the other groups trying to get the tablet? Would
they
know who this person is? Could they tell us?”

He held up a finger. “One of them, one person in particular would, yes. And in fact, her goals are perfectly aligned with your own. She is also, unfortunately, a client.”

“Screw the shadow monsters,” Jessie muttered. “I’m shooting him anyway.”

“Wait, wait.” I held up a hand and chewed my bottom lip. “Wait, so this other client, she can tell us who has the tablet? And she wants to put it back in orbit, too?”

“Correct,” al-Farsi said, “but I cannot say more than—”

“You don’t need to,” I said. “Get her on the phone. Tell her we’re on her side, we’re here to help, and we want to meet. If she gives
permission
for you to tell us where to find her, we get what we want, and you haven’t broken your rule.”

He gave a tiny, amused chuckle. “An elegant solution. But . . . there is one condition, before I do.”

“Name it,” I said.

“Your guarantee that I will be free of further harassment. I can’t have you people raiding my listening posts, stalking my informants, and coming into my home with guns. Let tonight be the end of that foolishness. The price for my assistance is that you—and by
you
, I mean all of Vigilant Lock—leave me in peace.”

“Dr. Huerta and two plainclothes officers were murdered by your operative, on your orders,” I said, “and you want us to let you walk away.”

“Yes.” He nodded affably.

“Give us a minute?”

He gestured to the hallway. We stepped outside. The doors to the den silently swung shut behind us, leaving us alone. I had little hope of real privacy, considering he’d already demonstrated how he could spy on the action downstairs with a literal wave of his hand, but it would have to do.

“We can’t do this,” I told Jessie. “That man—whatever the hell he is—is a murderer. Huerta would still be alive if he hadn’t sent his operative in to steal the tablet.”

Jessie balled up her fists and shook her head. “You think I like it? He’s got us over a barrel, Harmony. I don’t want to let him walk, either, but what’s the alternative? We
have
to get that tablet back into orbit, and we don’t even know how much time we have left.”

“So we sanction him. Right here, right now, go back in there with guns blazing, and find the answers in his notebooks.”

“You mean his
twenty thousand
or so notebooks that all look identical? And come on: you just said it yourself, we don’t even know what this guy
is
. You sure guns will work? And for that matter, how about his pets? You got the witch juice to go toe to toe with a giant tarantula made out of living shadows? If you say yes, you’d better be damn sure, because that’s
both
our asses on the line.”

My shoulders slumped. I was being reckless and I knew it. Grasping at straws, desperate to avoid the reality of the situation.

Getting the information we needed meant denying justice to an innocent man. The person ultimately responsible for Dr. Huerta’s death would walk free and clear, never facing a day of punishment for the murder he’d set in motion. A perfect crime, and I would be an accessory to it.

“Option three,” Jessie said, “we just turn and walk away, right now. Report this whole thing to Vigilant, let Linder decide how to handle al-Farsi, and as for the tablet . . . well, we don’t have any leads, or clues, or much of anything, but maybe . . . maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Sure,
I thought,
entrust the fate of the planet to luck. And when that thing comes screaming down from space, we can just throw up our hands and say, “Well, we tried our best.” And I can feel good because I stood by my principles.

Jessie touched my arm. I met her gaze.

“And you know,” she said, “only one of those options plays. The one where we give al-Farsi a pass on Huerta and those cops. It’s my call, and I’m making it: we’re cutting a deal.”

I knew I was fooling myself.

I was fooling myself just like al-Farsi was fooling himself. He wasn’t a man of ethics, or principles. His rigid rule about his clients? A self-serving sham. He’d defend his principles even to the point of putting the world at risk, but shrug off the death of three innocent men.

And me, I defended my principles, too. Like not letting killers walk free. Like making sure the innocent were avenged. Those were the parts of this job I enjoyed. But it was still a job in the clandestine services, and that meant one thing: at the end of the day, I had to do the most good for the most people, and damn the cost. Whatever it took to finish the mission.

Maybe I’d feel filthy after shaking hands with al-Farsi, and maybe I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror for a while, not without seeing Dr. Huerta’s face. Fine. This wasn’t
about
me. And when it came to my responsibility, my
duty
, principles were strictly a luxury.

“All right,” I told Jessie, “but we’re not giving him a free ride. He needs to
earn
his pass. And I think I know how to make him do it.”

TWENTY-NINE

“Let’s go make a deal,” I told Jessie. She nodded, grim, and pushed open the double doors.

Al-Farsi gazed over from his desk, idly stroking his cat’s fur, waiting to see what we had to say.

“This is what we’re offering,” I told him. “We leave you out of our final report. Nothing goes to our bosses, nobody but us knows you exist. In exchange, you introduce us to your client. And if she doesn’t want to meet—or if she can’t lead us to the tablet—you become fair game and we
will
be coming after you. Second? Quid pro quo. You purge all mention of Vigilant Lock from your records and stop spying on us. That’s the deal, take it or leave it.”

Al-Farsi tilted his head to one side, contemplating.

“I’m amenable to the first part,” he said. “The second, though? Purge my records? The money my buyer is offering notwithstanding, you might as well ask me to pluck out an offending eye. Knowledge is my passion, Agent Black. I’ll cease surveillance—not that I have much of a choice, since you found my little listening device and Agent Lawrence is sadly deceased—but what I’ve learned up to now stays right where it is. To do with as I will.”

I’d half anticipated that. And I’d come up with a solution, just in case.

“Then I’d like to make another proposal,” I told him.

“I’m all ears.”

“Agent Temple and I,” I said, “would like to become your clients.”

He blinked.

“Of course, that would mean that any details pertaining to us and our employers would be held in your
highest
confidence,” I said. “You would never betray a client.”

Al-Farsi smiled. He nodded, slowly, thinking it over.

“Agreed. I will, of course, expect a mutually beneficial relationship. I’ll advise you if I have information that might be useful—along with the associated price—and, should you find something I might like, you can occasionally throw me a tidbit or two of your own.”

I looked to Jessie. “Deal,” she said.

“A pleasure doing business.” Al-Farsi looked to the doors behind us. “If you would like to return to the club floor and enjoy a beverage—on the house, with my compliments, of course—I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve arranged the introduction you seek.”

I paused, on the way to the door. Taking in the endless sea of notebooks all around us.

“One thing we’d be interested in information on,” I told him. “Are you familiar with a black-budget program called Cold Spectrum?”

“I am indeed,” he said, “but discussing it would be a breach of client privilege.”

“So . . . Cold Spectrum still exists? The program is still active?”

His only response was a tight-lipped smile, and the chime of the elevator at the end of the hallway.

We found empty stools at the end of the bar. Pressed shoulder to shoulder, lost in the swirl of conversation and the strains of a string quartet, I stared at my reflection in the mirror behind the lined-up bottles. I’d ordered a club soda with lime. Jessie, a longneck bottle of Samuel Adams. I almost said something about drinking on duty. Then I took a look around the room, remembered we were surrounded by deviants, half-blood demons, and killers—like the one we’d just let walk—and the rules didn’t seem quite so important. Jessie was right. We did what we had to do for the mission. I still wished we could have found a better way.

“I know,” she said, staring across the bar and talking to my reflection. “It sucks. You don’t have to like it.”

“I’ve recruited criminals as confidential informants before.
Minor
crimes. Like Earl Gresham, that meth-head cambion back in Michigan.
That
I can overlook, for the greater good.”

“It’s a matter of scale,” she said, sipping her beer. “Earl helped us catch a kidnapper. That balances, nice and easy. Little harm, big save. Right now, depending what that thing in space is capable of, we might be playing for
all
the marbles. With those stakes, as far as I’m concerned, this still balances.”

“I’m glad it’s easy for you,” I said, sighing.

“I’m glad it’s not easy for you.”

I swiveled on my stool, turning from her reflection to the real woman.

“Meaning?”

“Just what it sounds like,” Jessie said. “Y’know, sometimes we get to be the good guys. And it’s great. It’s fun; it feels good . . . but sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we have to get elbow-deep in blood and filth and do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

“Jessie, I—”

She held up a hand. “Hear me out. Saying, ‘We do what we have to do’ might be true, but that doesn’t mean it comes for free. We’re still accountable. And there’s still a human cost. Or there should be. Harmony, do you know why Linder picked me to lead this team, even though April has more field experience and more education than I do?”

I shrugged. “I figured it was the wheelchair. She’s brilliant, but she’s a little limited in the field.”

“Please.” Jessie rolled her eyes. “She could manage this whole team from a cell phone three states away, and you know it. A leader has to
lead
: anybody with the right training can do the boots-on-the-ground work.”

“So why’d he pick you, then?”

“Because I don’t hesitate.” Jessie tossed back a swig from the bottle. “And thinking about the human cost, for me, is something that takes genuine effort. It’s not part of my mental process. Harmony, I was raised by a serial killer. I was eleven years old and helping him lure in victims, because that’s what I was taught to do. One time? On my thirteenth birthday? He made me hold the knife. I’m not the kid I was back then, but don’t you dare think I was
never
her. What I’m saying is, I’m nobody’s goddamn moral compass.”

“I didn’t ask you to be.”

“But I
am
asking
you
to be,” she said. “You care about people. You try to do the right thing, even when it costs you. You believe in big ideas, like honor and compassion and justice. Even when it makes you look like a damn fool.”

I sipped my club soda. “Thanks for that.”

“No problem.” She clinked her bottle against my glass. “So, yeah, I’m glad this isn’t easy for you. And I hope it hurts. I hope every single time you have to compromise your morals to get the job done, it stings like hell and drags your heart through a goddamn sewer and makes you miserable. And then I hope you tell me all about it. Because I want to know what it feels like, to hurt like that. I
need
to know what it feels like, because that’s the knowledge that’ll keep me from turning from a hunter into the kind of things we hunt.”

We fell into a companionable silence, waiting for al-Farsi’s reply.

A hostess in a corset, flowing skirts, and big brass buttons, looking like a steampunk saloon girl, spun past us with a tray in her hands. Without a word and without missing a step, she set an envelope down between us and faded back into the crowds.

“Showtime,” Jessie said, scooping up the envelope and tearing it open with a blunt fingernail. The slip of paper inside had passed through a vintage mechanical typewriter.

Los Angeles. California Science Center. Tomorrow morning, 10:05 a.m., Humans in Space Exhibit. Wear a splash of red.

Jessie sighed. “Great, that’s only two thousand miles away. Looks like we’re sleeping on the plane again.”

“I’m getting used to it,” I said. “Besides, the sooner the better. No telling how much time we’ve got left.”