Chapter 4

The Hunter and The Hunted

Wednesday, 6:58 PM

            Jenny Thatcher held up two photos, one of Giles and one of MacKenzie. "We have two suspects, Rupert Giles and Collum MacKenzie." Her voice cracked just slightly. This was the most important investigation she'd ever run, and she wasn't about to screw it up. She was still new in her position as a lead agent, younger than most of the others. Some said it was family connections, and so she was constantly trying to prove herself.

She had been shocked when Crombey had assigned the case to her. She had expected it to go to Jonathan Trimble. He was the 'golden boy' in Thames House. He was only a few years older than her, but his record was impressive. He'd taken on the toughest cases and always come out on top. But this was a vote of confidence in her, so she was determined to make it count.

She adjusted her petite frame a bit, nervous at addressing the combined teams in the office. She brushed away a lock of her long blonde hair that had fallen forward. Seeing everyone staring at her, she cleared her throat and continued. "They are considered armed and dangerous. They have a one hundred fifty minute head start on us. I want these photos distributed to all law enforcement agencies. Begin vehicle and mass transit inspections immediately."

She paused, surveying the group once again. Jonathan emerged from the conference room and walked over to his team, clustered at the back. He tapped them and motioned for them to follow. They left the meeting and headed back towards his office. She was slightly miffed about this – her first chance leading the combined teams and Trimble was pulling his people out.

Quickly she reshuffled her assignments. "Bobby, Theresa – you liaise with the local agencies. Get them on the ball right now." The two analysts she'd indicated nodded their understanding. Satisfied, she turned to a cluster of agents sitting to her left. "We need to go through everything in Rupert's apartment. We need some clue as to where they might've gone." More nods. So far, so good.

She looked over at a clump of analysts which included young Miles Winthrop. "I need scenarios on they're probable course of action. Did they run or go to ground? Work them up, and stay on the phone contacts. Trace every call to and from anyone he's been in contact with in the last ninety days."

She took a deep breath before continuing. "Fifty-two minutes after the explosion, Giles made a call to a home is Sussex. Minutes later, the home was vacated and we don't know where they went. Mr. Turcey," she indicated the gentleman, who nodded, "believes that they were involved in the theft. That's our best lead so far. Tom, I want you and Benjamin to be ready to assist them with what they find. Start a search right now for anything you can find on whoever was there." She nodded, looking around at the team. "Our best option right now is to contain our fugitives until we have a firmer lead on where they might be going. Let's be about it."

The final pronouncement was met with a flurry of activity. Everyone shifted to their tasks and began pouring their energy into finding the two fugitives. The furious tap-tap of keyboards quickly filled the room as urgent conversations began throughout. Everyone had a task to do.

Jenny Thatcher made her way across the room to Jonathan Trimble's office. He was in urgent discussion with four of his team members. She tapped gently and he looked up. He gestured her in.

"Um, Jon," she began, "I noticed that you pulled your team out of the meeting. I really need your support on this."

"Sorry, Jen," the young agent replied. "Something came up on the Heathrow investigation. Crombey wants us on it. Top priority."

Jenny nodded, somewhat disappointedly. She knew how important the Heathrow investigation was. It was, indeed, a top priority. She nodded absently. "All right, well, let me know if you can spare some cycles to help. Okay?"

"Will do," replied Trimble. When she'd left, he exhaled a long breath.

"Okay Jonny, what do we need to do?" asked Jerome Barrington. The former college athlete had a mind even more powerful than his impressive body.

"We need to get out from under Jen and Mr. Turcey. We can use the ruse that we're going to Heathrow, but we'll need to leave at least one person behind." Darla, his key coordinator, nodded. She knew that would be her role. Jonathan nodded back in appreciation. "However, I'm inclined to leave you, too, Jerome. I need to know what Jen is doing, and the easiest way to do that is for you to assist her. I need everything you have on this, Jerome – not just what you see, but what you suspect, as well."

Jerome nodded. "Can do, Jonny."

"Okay then, the rest of you are with me. We need someplace with secure computer access, but outside prying eyes. Thoughts?"

Darla spoke. "There's a terminal in the records room. I can make sure you're not disturbed."

Jonathan nodded. "Sounds good. Jerome, come with me. Let's make it clear that I'm doing her a big favor by leaving you here. The rest of you, make like you're heading out. Let's go."

Jonathan's team moved into action.

* * *

            "Blockade up ahead," MacKenzie muttered. "Time to see if this disguise works." The traffic had slowed to a low crawl as officers looked inside each vehicle. They had narrowed the traffic getting onto the M4 to one lane, and an officer on each side examined the driver and passengers of each vehicle. Dusk had begun to settle and rain had begun to fall. The officers stood shining their flashlights into the passing vehicles.

            Giles and MacKenzie both held their breath as they crept up in the line. They pulled aside the officers, had the lights shined into the vehicle to see their faces, and then they were waved through. The disguise spell had worked perfectly, as near as they could tell.

            They pulled onto the highway, accelerating into traffic. The rain worsened; the rhythm of the slap of the wipers became the only sound that broke up the monotony of the hum of the wheels on the road. The stress of the day quickly overcame Rupert, and he quite unintentionally fell asleep in the passenger's seat.

            In his sleep, his subconscious drifted through all the doubts assailing him. Image after image sprung up in his mind. Evil Willow, bringing about the destruction of the Earth, her black eyes and white skin glistening like an overexposed photograph. Her laugh was terrible – cold, soulless. Behind it he heard the dry cackle of an old man, like the creaking of timbers in an old house. His mind knew it was Arinoth's laugh, although he couldn't say how it was he knew.

            The dark witch rose large in his dreams, pulling everything to her in a swirling chaos of darkness. One by one he saw his friends caught up in her maelstrom, the force breaking their bodies like old dolls. Crack, crack, crack, the sound echoed in his ears like a hammering from somewhere far outside this reality. Crack, crack, crack, he heard again, and somehow in the laughing chaos of the dark witch, he swam towards it.

            Higher and higher he swam, through the maelstrom, struggling for all he was worth, dodging the broken bodies of friends and enemies. He could hear it more distinctly now – not a cracking sound. More of a knocking sound. Knock, knock, knock he heard.

            Giles woke abruptly, disoriented for a moment by the vividness of the dream. A bright light shown to his left, blinding him a bit. Knuckles rapped on the window once more – knock, knock, knock. As he began rolling down his window, he realized that they were no longer traveling, although the sounds of the highway could be heard distinctly in the distance.

            On the outside of his window, a British police officer stood with his light shining in. He dropped it slightly when he saw Rupert awake. "Sorry to disturb you, lad," the officer said, his voice giving all indication that he wasn't the least bit sorry. "We've orders to check every car. Looking for some suspects in the bombing this afternoon." He held up the light once again, examining Rupert's magically altered face. "Besides, there's no sleeping in the car park."

            "Of course, officer," Rupert replied. He looked around, unsure of where he was. It was full dark and the rain was driving down. MacKenzie was not in the car, and for one terrible moment he thought he might've been abandoned for some unknown reason. "My friend …" Rupert began, waving generally in the direction of the driver's seat, but in his still half-asleep state could not seem to find the rest of the words he was looking for.

            "Can I help you?" a voice said from behind the officer. The Scottish tinge to the voice raised Rupert's spirits immensely. The officer turned, shining his light behind him, and Rupert could just see around him. The altered form of MacKenzie stood there holding a carry-out tray with two cups of tea and a spot of food wrapped in some waxed paper. "Just grabbing a quick bite." He offered the carry-out tray as evidence.

            The officer shined the light on his face one more time, and then dropped it. "All right, gents," he said, a slight hint of disappointment in his voice. He had hoped to be able to at least write a citation for sleeping in the car park, but it was clear that while the passenger had been asleep, the driver was well awake and had only been away from the vehicle for a few moments. "Carry on, then." He walked off without any further word, his light shining into the other cars beyond theirs as he walked past.

            MacKenzie came around and climbed in the jeep, handing the carry-out tray to Rupert. "Spell seems to be working," he said as he slammed the door. Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed one of the paper cups of tea and one of the sandwiches in waxed paper from the tray and began to eat.

            Rupert followed suit. After the first bite he realized that he was actually quite hungry. The two quickly consumed the sandwiches in silence, pausing only to take sips of marginally acceptable tea. In moments, the food was gone, and Rupert stretched a bit, trying to get the kinks out of his neck and back.

            "A nice spot of food, a bit of tea, and right like that, Bob's your uncle." While the food and tea may have made things somewhat better, Rupert wasn't sure he was quite ready to go quite that far. "Good thing, too. We've got trouble."

            Rupert stopped in mid-sip, his eyes casting right at MacKenzie. "What kind of trouble?" he asked.

            "They've made both you and I, and they're listing us as armed and dangerous. You're no longer a victim, you're a wanted terrorist."

            "Good God!" Rupert exclaimed. "How could that have happened?" The thoughts running through his mind were quite disturbing. What if they decided to shoot first and ask questions later? What if he couldn't explain what was really going on? How could MacKenzie have so totally miscalculated?

            "I'm not sure, but my boss will know. In the meantime, it's slow going between here and there. They've set up a lot of checkpoints looking for us." MacKenzie started the engine and pulled the old jeep back out onto the roadway and headed towards the highway. "As long as this spell holds up, though, we should be able to get where we're going and get some answers."

            Rupert fervently hoped so.

* * *

            Jonathan Trimble and his team looked up from the work table of the records room at Thames House. Alicia Sommerset fingered her service pistol, but Jonathan shook his head. He was tensed, ready to strike if need be, but only non-lethal force would be used to hide their activities … for the moment.

            However, it was Darla who came around the corner. Everyone breathed a bit easier. "I told Jen that as long as you were in transit, I didn't have much to do, so I could do her running down here."

            "Good thinking," Jonathan replied. "Get the files she needs and get back before she notices you've been gone too long."

            "I've a few minutes," she replied. "What have you found?"

            Jonathan nodded to Eric, the newest member of his team. Eric looked over his notes to organize his thoughts, and then began speaking. "Well it's like this," he said. "The Weber Institute is operating under a very old charter of the Queen's Seal. Literally hundreds of years. I was able to tie the current incarnation as the Weber Institute to some historical documents without raising any alarms. We're not going to be able to get anywhere querying directly, but we were able to put together enough from their public documents to tie it to one of the old charters. You're not going to believe what it was."

            "Don't keep me waiting, what is it?"

            "I was just getting to that when you walked in. It's magic," he replied.

            "Magic? Are you off your feed or something?" Alicia Somerset rolled her eyes at him. "That's mad."

            "I'm telling you, the original documents of Seal refer to a group called the Watchers. They were to help guard the world against the misuse of magic, the actions of demons, vampires, and such. They aid someone called The Slayer, and guard and train all the potential Slayers around the world."

            "One minute," replied Darla. She pulled out her PDA and called up a document. "Jerome slipped to this me just before I came down. It's a list of what was found in Rupert Giles's flat. Magic books. Fragenheim's Grimoir, The Hierarchy of the Demonic Realm, stuff like that." She scrolled a few moments more. "Here it is – The Watcher Histories."

            "Good," Jonathan replied. "Send that to my account when you get upstairs. For now, get those files she requested and get going." He waited patiently while Darla complied and left. "What do you think?" he asked.

            "It's mad, like I said," Alicia spoke up with vehemence.

            "I agree," Jonathan replied, noting that Eric clearly did not. "However, it's a pretty strong connection. Whether or not we believe in magic and demons, it seems that Mr. Giles – and by extension the Weber Institute – does." He held up his hand to forestall any protests from his staff. "More importantly, they've got a Queen's Seal to prove it. That gives us a link, but since we already had that – he worked for them, after all – I'm not sure that it really tells us anything." He paused long enough for everyone's logical brain to grasp what he just said. Then he turned to Alicia. "What have you got on Mr. Turcey?"

            "Not a lot, but some." He clicked on the terminal to bring up several surveillance photos. "Here he is about two years ago, meeting with Sir Mark Blackwell."

            "He was head of Military oversight then." Eric habitually kept track of what committee every MP had served on.

            Alicia nodded, then continued. "They met several times. Then he began with Brigadier General Atwater. That went on for several months, March through May of 2001. Then Atwater had that massive coronary, and Sir Mark moved to the foreign office."

            "Now there's a coincidence," Jonathan muttered. His team looked up at him expectantly. "May 2001 was a very busy month. Captain MacKenzie went AWOL that month, and about the same time Sir Radcliffe Holm was assassinated in a terrorist bombing."

            "Do you think there's a connection?" Eric asked.

            "Let's find out," Trimble responded. He thought for a moment. "Alicia, find out what Blackwell was assigned to when he moved to the foreign office. I don't care how. Eric, track down Captain MacKenzie's last set of orders. I want to know what he was supposed to be doing."

            "That will require breaking into the RAF files. They won't like that."

            "Can you do it?" Jonathan needed that information.

            "From here, probably. I can use the override codes and access their personnel records. Possibly the mission records. But that's going to set off alarms."

            "Well then, I better see if Crombey can shut them off before someone notices." Jonathan picked up the phone while the other two got to work.