A/N: Welcome back. Warning time: In the last chapter, we had violence. This time, we have sex. And plot. Lots of plot. Adjust your blinkers accordingly, folks. And, as always, thanks for tagging along....
*****
Claire went with him to St. Thomas' hospital. The morning mist was still haunting the city in pale chorister patches, and as the taxi made the turn from Westminster Bridge onto Lambeth Palace Road, Rippner's initial relief made way for a prickling pair of realizations: one, he had a job to do; and, two, he'd been a fool.
Under the awning at the main doors, he paid the cab driver and told the man to wait. He pushed through the two sets of glass doors with Claire behind him and looked for guidance to the arrowed signs hanging from the ceiling. As her lab and examination fees would have to be settled before the hospital would release her, Lisa was to be waiting for them in the main discharge area, not in the public waiting area at the front of the building. Rippner spotted an arrow hinting of admissions and discharges and set off.
"We'll put her on the next plane home," he told Claire as they crossed to the left, across the open dun expanse of the waiting area. The floor-to-ceiling windows were still streaked with last night's rainwater. "She can't be here. What the hell was I thinking, Claire, getting involved with--"
"I'll assume you're using the royal 'we.'"
Rippner scowled. "What--?"
They were passing a Costa coffee shop on the hospital's ground floor. Claire took him firmly by the arm, steered him inside, and stopped.
"She can't see you like this," she said.
"Like what, Claire?" He shook his arm sharply. She kept her hold on him as casually as a vise. She was one of maybe three people in the world who could handle him this way. She waited until he relaxed before she spoke again, and even then she watched him with cautious, capable respect. She'd lived around predators like Rippner long enough to know the damage they could do.
"You're tired, Jackson. You're wound up; you've done some horrible things in the past few hours-- I don't need to know the details. And you've had a hell of a scare."
"All the more reason for her not to be here--"
Claire drew him to the side to make way for a trio of R.N.s in floral smocks entering the shop. "You're putting her on a plane home? You and whose army? Tell me, and I'll be there with popcorn and a camera. Because that, hands down, would be the most entertaining thing to happen so far on this bloody so-called vacation. The last time you tried to make her do something, she put you in the hospital for nearly a month, didn't she--?"
Rippner winced. "I just want her to be alright."
"Why don't we wait and see what she wants?" Claire released his arm. "Is she to be your girlfriend when it's convenient for you, or when it's safe for her? She thinks you're going to walk in and take her in your arms and stammer something, you poor stoic man, about how happy you are she's okay." She reached up, gently smoothed the hair away from Rippner's left temple. "And guess what? That is exactly what's going to happen."
Rippner paused. He watched another group of people enter the shop, a middle-aged man and woman, a teenage girl between them. He drew air more deeply into his lungs, felt some of the tension ease from his shoulders. "Understood." He met her eyes. "Thanks, Claire."
She smiled. "Any time."
*****
In a windowless bunker of a waiting area well back in St. Thomas's, Lisa sat, leaned forward on her elbows, on the edge of a green upholstered chair, watching the corridor leading in from the hospital's main entrance. She had washed her face and hands, but her clothes were very dirty. Her blood tests had come back negative for opiates, but she could still feel it in her system, the channeler of voices from the Tube, a twitching through her chest like the hooked tuggings of wires, a jumpiness behind her eyeballs. A nurse had left her here with a clipboard of paperwork and an admonishment to the two women staffing the reception desk: words to the effect of She has friends coming. Keep an eye on her. They were. Through the tumult of comings and goings, patients and their families checking in and out, she felt them watching her. She wanted a shower. She wanted to sleep away the thing in her head. She wanted Jackson.
He smiled for her as he walked in, the easy, boyish smile of two years back in a bar in a Dallas airport. Claire was with him. He crossed the room to Lisa, and she rose, and he wrapped her in his arms. She molded herself against him.
"Are you okay?" he whispered.
Lisa squeezed him more tightly. "Yeah. I think so."
She bore band-aids and a handful of bruises. She'd had a tetanus shot. The results of her test for Weil's disease had just come back negative: the rats had given her nothing to take away from Aldwych or the tunnel west of Holborn. She was sickness-free. Nothing remained now but the settling of debts. From the depths of a distressed leather rucksack, Claire produced Lisa's passport. Just the passport, Lisa noted: the wallet was missing. While the older woman paid fees, courtesy of her husband's company, and saw to the paperwork at the reception desk, Lisa looked into Jackson's too-blue eyes, tried to glean from his face his doings in the last few hours. He looked tired.
She touched his cheek tenderly. "You haven't shaved," she said.
He frowned, then, and looked away. He turned his head toward an imaginary point of interest along the baseboards across the room and dragged the heel of his right hand roughly across his eye socket.
He cleared his throat. "What happened last night, Lisa?"
He was trembling against her, ever so slightly. She could feel it. She kissed his stubbly cheek. Claire and the receptionist were still fussing over her paperwork. "At the theatre-- There was something in my bag." She kept her lips close to his ear, spoke very quietly. "It's still there, Jackson. I touched it--"
"Becker's nanites, angel. He slipped them to you yesterday, at Gordon's. He didn't trust Grant; he thought we were a team--"
"Aren't we?"
He looked at her again, and this time his smile reached his eyes.
*****
She felt fine, or only slightly disconnected from herself, walking between Claire and Jackson out through the hospital's main doors to the black boxy cab waiting under the awning of the drop-off area. Claire took one of the fold-down seats, leaving the three-seater bench for Lisa and Jackson. He stayed close to her; their clasped hands rested where their thighs were pressed together--
He explained to her as they drove, and as Claire kept an eye on the traffic receding past the window next to her tousled ash-blonde head, how Burton had helped them, how Becker had admitted concealing the nanites. He told her of the gruesome discovery on the tracks east of St. Paul's station: a body they'd initially believed to be Lisa's, which they now were fairly certain was that of Professor Becker's assistant, Kathy Hobart. He told her of the imaging equipment in the abandoned station below the bookstore in Bloomsbury Court, and how they-- Carter, Rippner, and Burton-- were to meet later with a man who might tell them of the treasures placed for safekeeping during the Second World War that might be hidden there still.
She saw, from the haunted look around his eyes, that he wasn't telling her everything. She could sense from him an aura of lingering violence. Not guilt over that violence, though, nor pride in it. She might ask him later to elaborate; then again, she might not. She felt that he would answer any questions she might ask: for now, that was enough.
She was fine, if shaken-- this she told herself; she felt no fear, not until they drew near the Aldwych, and Jackson said: "You can get cleaned up, get some rest--"
"No--"
The insistence in her tone surprised all three of them. Jackson and Claire looked at her with concern.
"Not here." She struggled to match words to her unease. "I don't want to be alone--" She looked at Jackson desperately. "I don't-- Where will you be?"
"At the Savoy--"
"We have plenty of room," Claire said. "Jackson, we have a spare bath." She smiled at Lisa, leaned across to squeeze her hand, still clasped with Jackson's. "Let's get you some clean clothes from your suite. You can shower and change back at the Savoy. Okay?"
*****
In the common room of the Carters' suite, Lisa sat very still while Professor Becker gently tipped her chin up and to the right.
"This will be a little bit chilly, my dear," he said. "I apologize."
From the corner of her eye, she saw Jackson watching intently, balefully, as Becker opened a flat jar and scooped onto the rounded blade of a knife like a jam knife a dollop of glass-clear gel. Lisa shivered as he spread a thin layer of the gel over her pulse point.
"And now we wait," he said. "If the nanites in your system are still alive, they'll surface. This is a treat for them. They should be very hungry by now."
"How alive are they?" Lisa asked.
"I can program them to eat, or not. I can program them to reproduce themselves when I require more of them."
"When I touched them, they tried to program me," Lisa said.
"Simply following their basic function. They made you receptive to molding, if you will, as best they could. Nearly a pre-hypnotic state, I imagine. Since I had no specific commands for them-- there was nothing I wanted you to be, but they had no way of knowing that-- they left you open to suggestion."
"I wanted everything in every ad I passed." Lisa spoke slowly. The sensation she'd felt last night revived, crept like a worm along her spine. "I heard voices in the Tube stations. On the train. And then, in the tunnel, on the tracks outside Holborn, I saw him--"
"Who?" Jackson asked. "Grant--?"
"No--"
Had his expression been tinged with with skepticism, suspicion, or jealousy-- anything ugly-- she would not have gone on. But his eyes held nothing but concern. Lisa looked at him as she continued:
"I saw-- He was a track walker. His name was Jim. He got me out of the way of the train out of Holborn. He led me back to the tunnel to Aldwych station--"
"Good lord," Burton said softly.
Lisa kept her eyes on Jackson. "That's where Harry, the Aldwych keeper, found me."
"Where did this Jim disappear to?" he asked.
"He, umm--" Lisa bit her lip. She sensed in her next words the stigma of madness; now she looked away. "He was never there."
From the corner of her eye, she saw Jackson's brows gather in a frown. "Lisa--"
"You saw a ghost, didn't you, Miss Reisert?" Burton said.
"That's what Harry told me. Yes."
"Miss Reisert--" Professor Becker interjected. He again tipped her head back; now he gently scraped away the clear gel. He smiled slightly, held the blunt blade of the knife for all of them to see: embedded, now, in the clear gel were tiny, glittering flecks of blue.
"They're still alive," he said, with satisfaction and relief.
Jackson looked less pleased. His shock-blue eyes were on the professor, not on the nanites, and from him Lisa felt again an aura of violence like the pressure drop before a storm.
*****
"Have your nanites damaged Lisa's brain, Professor?"
Rippner was in the main room of the Carters' suite with Becker, Burton, and John, waiting for Simon Dermott to call. Claire was in the master bedroom, keeping a mindful ear toward the bathroom door while Lisa showered.
"I would hope not, Mr. Rippner." Becker was standing near the room's largest table, on which Lisa's bag stood open. With gloved hands, he was carefully repacking and resealing the jar of nanites he'd surreptitiously passed her at Gordon's. "They're out of her system now; she should recover--"
"'Should,'" Rippner echoed, coldly.
"The corpus callosum." Burton spoke from the sofa. Rippner and the others looked at him; he continued:
"A mere two thousand years ago, the human brain was a very different thing. The ancients, who had yet to have the hemispheres of their brains joined by the nerve membrane we know as the corpus calllosum, saw solutions to their problems in the form of waking dreams. How the Greek pantheon of gods came to be, for example: were I a farmer, Athena might come to me and give me the wisdom to know when to plant my crops. If I were a general, Ares might tell me how best to attack my enemy." He looked at Rippner. "The Underground is full of trapped sounds, trapped voices. Some even say it has its own voice, a subsound below the range of human hearing. Jim is part of that 'sound.' I haven't seen him, but I know people who have. Good, stable people who work for me. He 'showed' Lisa the entrance to the Aldwych tunnel when her brain was most desperate for help."
Becker nodded. "The nanites may have enabled her to access an area of consciousness to which the modern brain is not normally privy."
"Exactly," Burton said.
Rippner stared at them. "That sounds insane."
"Would you rather she had been hit by that train out of Holborn?" Burton countered mildly.
Claire emerged from the master bedroom. "Quite understandably, she's decided on a nap," she said. She touched Rippner's arm. "Go tuck her in."
*****
When he was alone with her, his anger and fear, his irritation and doubt, melted away. She was in clean blue jeans and a rust-red sweatshirt; she was curled on her side on the bed, facing away from the door. Rippner quietly lay down behind her, eased close. Her washed hair was still damp; he brushed it gently aside, leaned over her, pressed his lips to the soft warm skin of her cheek. Then he settled himself behind her, draped his arm across her waist.
"Do you want to go home?" he asked.
"I want to stay with you," she murmured, without hesitation, in reply.
He felt the need to persist. Her response pleased him, but he didn't know quite how to react to devotion, more especially devotion in the presence of danger.
"Say the word," he said softly, "and we'll leave. Carter can go fuck himself."
Lisa was relaxing against him. They might have been in their own bed back at the Aldwych, or safe in her bed in Miami. "You're trying to prevent something bad from happening here, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Then you should do your job."
Rippner frowned at the tears suddenly stinging his eyes. He pressed himself closer to her. "I'll be leaving for an hour or so. Claire will be here. Get some sleep, okay?"
"I will." She shivered then. "Leave the light on."
"Okay."
"Just for now. I'm alright, Jackson," she added.
"I know, sweetheart." He squeezed her; she pressed her hand over his, against her midriff. Rippner wondered at the ache in his chest. "I know."
In the suite's sitting room, a phone rang. Behind them, someone tapped at the one-quarter-open door; Carter's voice said: "That's Dermott, Jackson. He's meeting us at the British Museum."
"He can wait," Rippner said. Weariness and tender reluctance seemed to weight him to the bed. Stay, his body said. Only after he was certain Lisa was asleep did he carefully disengage from her and get up.
*****
Both Becker and Burton were tagging along to the British Museum. Having resealed his nanites, Becker was bringing them along, in a reinforced leather satchel like a camera case. He seemed loath to let the things out of his sight. Rippner couldn't blame him. They were taking Burton's car: he'd parked in the hotel's Adelphi garage using Carter's name and suite number. Before they left Claire and Lisa behind in the suite, Rippner turned to his boss, the manager of managers.
"You need to tell me who's getting screwed here, John," he said. "The whole European Union wasn't invited to the freeze-tech summit, were they? Who got left out?"
He reviewed the list of invitees as they drove. Among the most notable exceptions were the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, and Greece. The last stuck in his mind as they climbed the broad steps to the museum's entrance. The British Museum might claim to steward treasures from all the world's history, but the lion's share of its holdings, its proudest claim to glory, was its collection of items from ancient Greece.
Including the Elgin Marbles, thought Rippner, glancing to the left, toward the hall in which the Elgins were displayed, as he and Carter and the others stepped through the heavy doors into the museum's soaring glass-ceilinged indoor courtyard.
*****
Simon Dermott's office was on the museum's ground floor, in the west wing. He was at his desk before a flatscreen iMac when Carter knocked at the open door; he rose to greet them not quite smiling. He was in his mid-sixties or thereabouts, tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and once very handsome, time and, Rippner suspected, wilder living than the man would care to admit having lent ruin to his face (suitable, perhaps, given his profession), but still slim and elegant now, in a black suit and a subtly embroidered gray vest that balanced calmly on the edge of flamboyance. His tie was a shimmering cascade of silken plum-purple checks. He shook Burton's hand and wasted only minimal introduction time with the others.
"What are you looking for, Stanley?" he asked.
"What are you missing, Mr. Dermott?" Rippner countered.
Dermott stiffened. "Subtle, Jackson," Carter muttered.
"An admission that, understandably, I am unwilling to make." Dermott focused his blue eyes coldly on Rippner as he spoke. "But the fact is, of course, that hundreds of things have gone missing over the course of the museum's history." He didn't keep the disdain from his voice. "I'll assume you're not looking for a handful of verdigris-encrusted Etruscan coins."
In an office off the main reading room, he showed them the catalogue of the British Museum's vanished items, a tall, leatherbound set of books. The earliest entries were made in fading ink longhand, just descriptions, an occasional sketch. Later, though, photographs of varying quality made their appearance, amid measurement markers that lent to the air of criminality. Like mugshots, Rippner thought. On the screen of the computer in his office, Dermott called up an actual database of the museum's lost pieces, not available to the general public. He and his visitors concentrated on the items that went missing after the World Wars, many of which had found sanctuary in the Underground during the German bombing of London. Vases, bits of statuary, jade and lapis pieces the size of paperweights. Examples of the afore-mentioned coins. Mostly things that would fit manageably in a pocket, or in a box or burlap sack.
"We at the museum assume," Dermott said, "that all of these items have long since been fenced, that they've fallen into the hands of private collectors."
"Lost and found and lost again," Rippner murmured, watching with the others as images scrolled down the screen. And then--
"Wait," he said.
Dermott paused the scroll of photos. It was extraordinary: carved in polished black marble, the statue of a young man in flight, a set of magnificent spread wings strapped to his back, his torso arched as if in ecstasy or pain or both.
"Jesus, that's incredible," Carter whispered.
"Not Jesus, Mr. Carter, nor any of Milton's archangels," said Dermott. "About twenty centuries too early for them. That's Daedalus's doomed boy, there."
Rippner looked at the identifying tag on the photo. "The Elgin Icarus."
Burton was incredulous: "They lost one of the Elgins, Simon--?"
Carter looked blank; Burton explained: "The museum sheltered nearly a hundred tons of Greek marble in the Underground during World War II. A hundred tons."
"The Elgins, John," Rippner added. "Legendary. Friezes and sculptures plundered-- no finer term for it-- from the Parthenon by British archaeologist Thomas Bruce early in the nineteenth century."
If Dermott's expression stopped short of admiration, he at least looked at Rippner with less contempt. "Very good, Mr. Rippner."
"How much would the Icarus be worth?" Carter asked.
Dermott considered. "It's difficult to say, precisely--"
"Millions, right--? Two or three, at least."
"To the right buyer--"
"What if that buyer were Greek--?" Rippner asked.
"The opportunity to own an Elgin, Mr. Rippner--? To take back from Britain a piece of Greece's plundered heritage--? Priceless." Realization sparked in Dermott's pale eyes; he looked at Rippner with frank incredulity. "You're assuming it's still down there, aren't you? Down in the Underground, waiting to be found."
"What if someone concealed it in hopes of selling it and never had the chance to come back for it--?"
"Do you know who took it, Simon?" Burton asked.
Dermott hesitated. He glanced away from them, away from the image on the screen of the iMac. "There was a man who stood accused of stealing and fencing dozens of pieces from those stored in the Underground during the Second World War," he said. "Bit of a scandal: he was a junior curator here at the museum. His name was Andrew Fallon." His lips pursed, as though the words were sour. "And, coincidentally," he added, looking at Burton, "his journal was stolen from an exhibit at the Imperial War Museum three weeks ago."
"Is he still alive?" Carter asked.
"No. But his son is." Dermott spoke hesitantly, and with distaste. "He teaches archeology, of all things. Here in town, at University College London."
"We need to speak to him," Rippner said.
*****
Back at the Savoy, Lisa's stomach clamored her awake. She looked to the bedside alarm: she'd been asleep for just over an hour, and that sleep had been dreamless and sound, but now her body was reminding her that she hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon at Gordon's.
She stretched, stood, padded in sock feet out into the sitting room. Claire was seated at the main table with a semi-circle of laptops before her. "Hey," she said, smiling over. "Trouble sleeping?"
Lisa smiled muzzily back. "Mm mm. I'm hungry."
Claire nodded toward the phone and the room-service menu. "I expect you to molest the company's expense account well and truly before this is over. Unless you're thinking of stepping out--?"
"No. Not right now." She was in a strange city, under decidedly strange circumstances, and she still felt shaky. She looked over the menu while Claire went back to her work.
"How did you meet?" she asked, after requesting of the hotel's kitchen a club sandwich and a salad and a bottle of water.
"John and I--?"
"Yes."
Claire smirked at the screen before her. "'Just a Scots girl with a knitting needle.' Famous last words."
"You're Scottish?"
"Once upon a time. I was also Royal Air Force stationed out of Prestwick, but the hapless bastard didn't find that out until it was far too late. He proposed to me about a week after they re-inflated his lung."
Lisa smiled. Between Jackson's initial experience with her and what sounded to be a disastrous first encounter between Carter and Claire, she had to wonder if the company's men might yearn for an easier way of meeting women. "You hide your accent. Why?"
"I've lived in the United States for nearly twenty years, and what I've learned is that people tend to listen to the brogue, not to what you're saying. If they can understand you through the brogue at all, which frequently is doubtful. My older brother still gives me hell for 'talking American.' He and his family are situated on Scotland's west coast, near Mulvern." Something on the monitor to her left caught her eye. "Ah, and there's Paul Miller, up at last."
Lisa came closer, looked over Claire's shoulder at the messages scrolling down the right side of the monitor screen. Who can I do you for, Claire?
"That's 'For whom can I do you?', Miller, you tit," Claire keyed in reply.
Ask, and I shall obey, oh goddess of grammar.
Claire smiled as she typed out her request: she and Carter and Rippner needed the last-known whereabouts of Rosemary Wheeler, her present associates, and hotel reservations that she or those associates might have made in the U.K. in the last month, in their names or under any known aliases.
Well, there goes my Sunday, Miller typed. I'll let you know what I find, pet.
"Many thanks, Paul," Claire tapped out. Then she pushed back from the table with a yawn. "I'm having a nap," she announced, aloud. "Don't worry: you won't keep me awake," she said to Lisa, as she stretched her lanky frame out on the sofa. "The bed is all yours."
She pulled a throw over herself and closed her eyes. Lisa stayed up. Her food arrived. As she ate, she watched the transmissions Miller began to send along. She froze with the bottle of water raised to her lips: in a surveillance photograph snapped less than a month ago on a midtown sidewalk in New York City, she saw with the petite, dark-haired woman identified as Rosemary Wheeler the panther-like tall man from the crypt in St. Paul's.
Roland Mason, read the caption on the photo.
*****
Sunday saw the receptions area of University College London understaffed; nevertheless, with patience and transfers and after roughly twenty minutes of hold-time Vivaldi, Rippner and the others at the museum learned that Professor Richard Fallon was currently on-site in Cornwall at a Bronze Age settlement with a group of underclassmen. The college had a contact number; would Dr. Dermott be interested...?
"Can you put him on speakerphone?" Carter asked.
Dermott tapped a button on the black desk-set; six burring ring-tones later, the phone said:
Fallon. Speak.
"This is Simon Dermott of the British Museum." Dermott looked coolly at the air above the phone as he spoke. "How are you, Fallon?"
Up to my arse in mud and mussel shells, Simon. How're you?
"We have you on speakerphone, Fallon. Do you mind?"
'We'? Who else is there, Simon?
"Stanley Burton of London Transport, three other gentlemen."
Stan I know. Lose something down your train in the drain, have you, Stan?
"Not me, Rich."
You lot haven't gone and perforated another crypt, have you? Antiquities: you know the drill. You find a site, you file it with the city--
"It's about your father's journal," Dermott said.
A long pause. Have they found it? Those other three: are they the police--?
"No, Richard--"
"We believe that someone is looking for something your father mentioned in his journal--" Rippner began.
Ah, an American. Speaking with typical American specificity.
Rippner bristled at the speaker. "-- something that he may have hidden in British Museum station."
Well, then, they're looking in the wrong place, aren't they? Another pause. From the speaker came the sound of wind gusting in distant Cornwall. Would this be easier in person, Simon?
Dermott managed to silence most of his exasperation. "Yes, Richard, it would."
I'll be back in London tomorrow morning. Care to tell me where we're to meet--?
"The Savoy, suite four-ten," said Carter.
Another American. Thrilling. 'Til tomorrow, then, lads.
The call terminated. "That's that, then," said Dermott. "What now?"
Next to him, Professor Becker stifled a yawn. Rippner looked at Carter. The man had had nearly as little sleep as the rest of them, and he was older than Carter by at least fifteen years. After the drama of last night, he had to be exhausted.
"Perhaps, for the time being, we should find different lodgings for Professor Becker," Rippner said.
"I can contact one of our safe houses--" Carter began.
Dermott interrupted: "Do you play chess, Professor Becker?"
Becker blinked. "Certainly I play chess, Herr Dermott."
"Do you play well?"
Becker studied Dermott's face; he simply smiled.
Dermott said: "The professor is welcome to stay at my house. Three days until your summit, correct--?"
Becker nodded. "Correct."
"No one else knows we're here--" Carter said.
Burton added: "No one but me, Miss Reisert, and Claire."
Carter scoffed. "We are spread pretty thin, John," Rippner said.
"One condition," Dermott added.
Carter turned to him. "What's that?"
"You are to minimize any and all contact between that hooligan Fallon and myself."
"Fine." Carter's tone, like his expression, was bemused but conciliatory. "As you wish."
Rippner asked Dermott: "Do you have a safe in here?"
They left the nanites behind in a wall safe whose combination was known, first, only to Dermott and then, by extension, to Rippner. Becker, armed with a panic-button beeper, went off with Dermott. Carter would send the professor's things along later.
*****
As Rippner, Carter, and Burton left via the museum's grand main entrance and Dermott and his chess-playing houseguest departed via the staff parking area off Montague Street for an address in Belgravia, a woman who looked nothing like Rosemary Wheeler rapped quietly on the door of Professor Becker's suite at the Savoy.
"Housekeeping," she called.
No response. In she went. Five seconds for the door lock, using a master key-card not unlike the one Jackson Rippner had used to access Robert Grant's room at the Radisson in Seven Dials, and another twenty seconds to open the room's safe using the code poor shattered Miss Hobart had programmed into the lock. With the naivete typical of his nerdish species, the good professor hadn't thought to change the combination.
Less than thirty seconds, then, to disappointment. The safe was empty. The nanites were gone.
"Shit," muttered Rosemary, from behind her less-than-skin-thick latex disguise.
*****
You didn't honestly think they'd be there, did you? Roland said, voicing Rosemary's thoughts from the earpiece of her phone, as she stepped, still in disguise, out onto the Strand.
His prescience, however well it matched hers, didn't prevent her from mouthing a Fuck you. "Well, now we know they're not. What are you doing?"
Errands. I'll be back at the hotel in an hour or so.
*****
As Rosemary Wheeler strolled away, incognito, from the Savoy, Lisa and Claire, up from her nap, were sharing their info-feed finds with Jackson, Carter, and Burton. Paul Miller and his people were still trying to locate hotel reservations under any of Roland Mason's or Rosemary Wheeler's known aliases, but Jackson, looking at the photo from New York, said, "We should have a look at what's in the vault under St. Paul's."
"In broad daylight?" Carter asked.
"I'm thinking they do most of their work at night," Rippner replied. "This way, we don't have to break in, and we'll run less of a chance of being noticed. Blend in with the tourists."
"It would look more official if you were properly dressed," Burton said.
Carter looked his way. "You're going with us?"
"I am. That is TFL property there, under the crypt. Or it was."
Lisa spoke: "I'm going, too." Jackson opened his mouth to protest; she continued: "There was a man in the crypt besides Mason and Morgan. Remember, Jackson? Younger, sandy hair, kind of pudgy. I've seen him; John and Stan haven't. I can keep an eye out for him."
Claire added, when Jackson hesitated: "Remember: he may have seen you, too."
"Does Mason know you, Jackson?" Lisa asked.
"If he's working with Rosemary Wheeler, she may have mentioned me." His voice was steady, casual even, but Lisa saw his cheeks color for a moment when he spoke.
*****
En route to St. Paul's Cathedral, Burton, driving a maroon Sterling sedan whose immaculate wax job and interior cleanliness belied years of hard wear, made a wide detour to the main offices of Transport for London for a jacket for Jackson and hardhats with lamps for both of them. "People step aside when they see helmets coming through," he said, escorting them to a basement room hung with uniforms, shelved with equipment. "They think the roof's coming down. You might be needing the light as well," he added, as Jackson took the hardhat Burton offered him.
As long as they were there, Burton walked them to his office and checked TFL's system to see who might have signed the paperwork for the rental of the jewel vault beneath St. Paul's. The renter was one Amy Kendrick, whose name Carter phoned back to Claire. But the name of the person initiating the rental was not on the employment lists of Transport for London; "William Donne" had a dummy employee number as well.
*****
On a sidestreet a block from the cathedral, Burton hung a Transport for London permit on his rearview mirror. "With my luck, the bastards will clamp me anyway," he said. "It won't be the first time."
Carter and Lisa went first, looking the part of tourists as they ascended the steps to the cathedral's main entrance. Carter wore a Black Hawks bill cap and an inconspicuous earpiece and transmitter. "Can you hear me, Jackson?" he said, as he and Lisa entered the cathedral; he nodded to Lisa as Jackson replied. They made their way down to the crypt. Lisa picked a floor-plan brochure from a wall rack, and she and Carter were intently pretending to contemplate the tomb of Florence Nightingale when Burton and Jackson walked past in their hardhats, accompanied by a young cleric with a set of keys.
"Safety inspection," Burton was saying to the young man. "We need to check the power cabling they're using down there." As Lisa watched out of the corner of her eye, Jackson and the cleric disappeared into the alcove where they had first seen Mason, Bill Morgan, and the pudgy young mystery man. The cleric emerged from the alcove; Jackson did not; the cleric spoke briefly to Burton and walked away. Burton stayed where he was, looking casually officious, just outside the alcove.
Carter and Lisa drifted from the tombs toward the souvenir shop. She made a show of examining a display case of religious jewelry while Carter looked at prints.
And her heart jolted against the base of her throat as Roland Mason came lithely down the stairs of the crypt.
She glanced Carter's way. "Jackson, get out of there," he said, tightly and very quietly, to a watercolor of the cathedral on a rainy day.
Mason, checking his watch, was crossing the crypt toward the alcove. He was moving casually, ostensibly without suspicion. Burton spotted him and moved away from his spot at the wall near the alcove's entrance. Carter looked at Lisa and shook his head. He moved closer and murmured: "He's not up yet."
"I'll see if I have any change, honey," Lisa replied loudly. Peering into her bag, she turned away from Carter and walked at speed right into the spinner of postcards Jackson had been looking at the day before last.
It toppled and hit the floor with a brittle and explosive crash. Postcards skittered across the flagstones. The shop clerks started; heads turned. Including Mason's.
"Darn it-- darn--" Lisa nearly tripped into the wreckage. "I'm so sorry--"
She scrambled to help the clerks right the spinner and gather postcards. In the moment before Mason turned his attention away from the commotion, Jackson slipped out of the alcove and into the cathedral's crypt-level cafeteria. Burton quietly followed him.
*****
He hadn't had time enough for a truly thorough look at the contents of the vault, but Rippner had been able to snap a handful of pictures. Once again, he handed his phone to Claire; he spoke as she downloaded:
"At a guess, I'd say they're trying to perfect a way of shielding the nanites from Becker's kill-signal, John."
"All the better to make a clean getaway. When and if they score the nanites in addition to the half of the compound they've stolen already." Carter frowned thoughtfully. "We know who they are, and we know where they've set up shop. We don't know where they're staying, but Paul is working on that." He looked to Rippner. "What now, Jackson?"
Rippner shrugged. "Tomorrow morning we talk to Dr. Fallon."
"Why not nab the blackguards now?" Burton asked.
"Because we're not the police, Stan," Rippner said. "We don't know the specifics of their operation; we don't know how many more of them there might be. Besides, in the long run, sending a message will be far more important. We're going to discredit them in the eyes of a buyer or buyers who won't take kindly to being duped."
Lisa sat forward on the sofa. "How?"
Rippner smiled for her, slightly, mysteriously. "I'm working on it."
"Right, then." Claire was sitting on the sofa; she stood. "We have the nanites, and Professor Becker is tucked away safely. Or so we think," she added, drolly. She went to the closet, got her coat, and turned to Carter. "Come on. If nothing else, my darling, tonight you are taking me for a proper bloody drink."
*****
They would meet again at the Carters' suite tomorrow at nine-thirty in the morning; for now they split up. Burton, off to stop in again at the office before going for a pint, said his goodnights. Jackson called to check on Becker and Dermott: all quiet there, save for one sharp admonishment from the keeper of antiquities--
"'We are playing chess, Mr. Rippner,'" he said, as he put away his phone, and Lisa laughed at the snooty mimicry in his voice.
They ate dinner at a North African restaurant in Short's Garden, downstairs, seated by lamplight on the comfortably worn cushions of a low sofa. Saffron rice, mildly but exotically spiced lamb and chicken. Mint tea that they drank, hot, from delicate glasses set in brass holders. Then they strolled around the piazza of Covent Garden, the Royal Opera House and the glass-roofed length of the market glowing eggshell white beneath a midnight-blue sky. The weather was clear and cool; Lisa was glad of the weight she'd chosen in a jacket. Jazz echoed on the cobblestones, saxophone, string bass, live, from the cafe at the end of the market. Beside her, Jackson seemed relaxed and comfortable. As a northerner, he was less prone, she knew, to feel the chill, just as she, the native Floridian, was less apt than he was to wilt in heat.
They were passing the London Transport Museum. She found herself thinking of burly Harry down in the Aldwych station and his pride, that antique train from 1938. Jackson put his arm around her shoulders.
"Warm enough?"
"Yes, I'm fine." She reached back and caught the fingers of his right hand. "Will you be working any more tonight?"
"No." Jackson stopped walking. A pause while he chose his words. He turned and looked at her. "I think there's only one thing I could concentrate on right now."
The fingers of his right hand knitted themselves with hers; he gently drew her closer, his eyes clear and frank, oddly innocent. Lisa leaned up and kissed the corner of his mouth.
Both of them trembled, but not from cold.
*****
They said their "Good evening"s and "Goodnight"s to Peter the receptionist, once again on duty at the front desk of the Aldwych. They crossed the open airy whiteness of the lobby, and in the shelter of the elevator, as the doors slid shut, Jackson pressed Lisa back against the wall of the car. He bent slightly, reaching around to slide his hands up Lisa's legs, parting her thighs. He pushed up against her as he straightened again, and Lisa wrapped her legs around his waist. He was definitely, absolutely aroused.
"There's a camera up there," she whispered, nodding toward the ceiling in the right-hand corner of the car.
Jackson smiled devilishly as he nuzzled her throat, rubbed himself against her. "Mm hm."
He was very hard, and he was as much as slowly thrusting; Lisa relaxed into his touch and motion with an audible sigh of pleasure. She took his face in her hands and had a long, indulgent look at the decadent fullness of his lips, and Jackson groaned softly as she opened her mouth into his.
*****
In their suite, things slowed, became quieter, gentler, less frenetic. Lisa felt as though she were entering a time capsule of yesterday. Jackson hung her jacket and his while Lisa sat down to take off her boots. She rose again when he offered her his hand and led her into the bedroom.
Not trouble with the words. Maybe not exactly. More, perhaps, with foreign feelings, expressions. She stood with him beside the bed.
He looked at her a little helplessly. "I thought I'd lost you," he said, finally. "Last night-- I thought you were gone."
*****
They undressed one another. No tugging, no fumbling, no desperation. A slow progression of touch, of increasing, and then absolute, nakedness, the two of them working methodically and tenderly there beside the bed. Nude, they embraced. Jackson wrapped her in his arms, nuzzled her neck; Lisa held him in return, the warm, lean hardness of him, and let her belly rub gently against the frank eager thrust of his erection.
She lay back on the bed, and he followed her. She was ready for him; she wanted him; she grasped him and guided him to her slick opening, and Jackson pushed into her. He looked between them, watched their joining; he raised his eyes to Lisa's and smiled. She met his eyes. She felt as though they were balancing a breath between them. She relaxed beneath him, opening herself more thoroughly to him. She wanted him as deep inside her as he could be.
He moved to position himself on straight arms above her, but she wrapped her arms around his upper back and drew him down.
"Come here," she murmured. "Let me feel your weight."
"Okay." He pressed his lips to her jawline, just below her left ear. "Anything, angel. Anything you say."
Really, it seemed to be what he wanted, too: simply to be as close to her as possible, in any possible way. He wasn't heavy; the mattress was very good. He nestled his face against her neck, and the motion of his hips, once he settled himself completely with and within her, was less a thrusting than a slow, sweet undulation: deep push, hold, relax, repeat. Lisa closed her eyes and held him. She moved with his rhythm, felt his loins and belly and chest shift against hers, the give and motion in his muscles. She pressed her face to the skin of his shoulder and let his scent fill her nostrils, the light muskiness of him, his pheromones and maleness, and something else, too, exotic and smoked-spicy, a hint as of sandalwood.
Her climax took her by surprise. The suddenness of it, the intensity. She heard herself moan, deep in her throat; she heard herself whimper, a sound that was nearly a sob--
"Lisa--?"
Only when she opened her eyes did she realize she was crying. Jackson was looking down at her, panting, his expression stricken.
"Am I hurting you?" he asked.
"No." She smiled through her tears; she caressed his cheek. She gasped as aftershocks of pleasure shook through her body. "God, no. You feel wonderful."
Jackson smiled back at her. Relief glowed from his ethereal eyes. He kissed her parted lips; he brushed tears tenderly from her cheeks and went back to work.
*****
She kept him where he was even after he came, groaning helplessly, wordlessly, against her neck as he did. He seemed content to remain. He might ease away and move to his own pillow and side of the bed later; for now, he dozed off still in her arms, and still inside her. A trove of contact between them, a deep, warm cache of security and trust. Lisa held him close as she followed him off to sleep.
*****
At eleven-thirty, the bedside phone rang. They had shifted onto their sides, though they were still deeply and thoroughly entangled. Jackson reached for the receiver.
"Rippner," he said. The lamp on his side of the bed was still on; Lisa saw surprise displace the sleepiness from his eyes. He offered her the receiver. "It's for you."
Puzzled, Lisa took the phone. "Hello?"
Lisa? I've been trying to reach you. Are you alright?
Her father. Joe Reisert, trying not to sound frantic. Lisa kicked herself internally: she'd forgotten to call him when she and Jackson arrived in London; more than that, she'd forgotten that she'd mislaid her phone last night in the access tunnels in Holborn station.
"Yes, Dad, I'm fine. I lost my phone; I'm sorry I didn't call."
You lost your phone--?
"Yeah. It was dumb: I had it in my jacket pocket, not my bag, and I dropped it in the Tube."
You're keeping your passport and money safe, I hope.
"Yes, Dad. Absolutely."
Jackson kissed her temple, then eased away, gave her some space. She followed him with her eyes, appreciatively, as he got up and went to check his own messages.
How's London, sweetie?
"Interesting."
Interesting--? Joe Reisert prompted.
"Interesting."
Now he spoke with open, cautious concern: Is he treating you well, Lisa?
"Very well, Dad."
She could hear him struggling not to pry, not to sound overly protective. I woke you up, didn't I?
"We had a long day; it's alright."
Jackson, having re-abandoned his phone, passed by the bed en route to the bathroom. Lisa heard an unsnapping, a rustling, the sound of running water.
I'll let you get back to sleep. I love you, Lisa.
"I love you too, Dad."
Enjoy your vacation, honey. Sweet dreams.
A distant click as he hung up. She was just tired enough to feel a pang of homesickness at his last words. Lisa leaned across Jackson's pillow to return the handset to the base. Then she lay back and wondered, weariness warring with curiosity, what Jackson was doing in the bathroom.
He emerged a minute later rubbing his freshly shaved jaw. "I thought you could do without the sandpapering," he said, as he came back to bed.
Lisa smiled for him. He lay back; she nestled herself against him, laid her head on his chest.
"How's your dad?"
She assumed from his tone that he'd had no drastic missives from Carter. "More worried than he's letting on."
"That's because he loves you. Which reminds me--"
She could hear his heartbeat, slow and steady and strong. "Yes, Jackson--?"
"Would you mind very much if I loved you, too?"
She smiled sleepily at the wonder that filled her. "Not very much, no. Not if I can love you back."
"That sounds fair." He reached back and switched off his bedside lamp, and in the dark he cradled her, held her close. "Goodnight, angel."
"Goodnight, Jackson."
*****
At the Mandarin Oriental, in the company of a somber Roland Mason and Rosemary Wheeler, Seth Patterson, at least, was feeling pleased: at five o' clock that afternoon, he'd performed the sixth of six consecutive successful tests on a pulse-proof case for Wenzel Becker's nanites. That they had yet to locate those nanites, as well as the Elgin Icarus, irritated Roland and Rosemary: that much was plain to Seth, who was celebrating the successful completion of his primary portion of the venture with pizza and one or two or four too many beers. That a cleric at the cathedral had allowed an inspector from Transport for London to check the wiring in the vault seemed to bother Roland even more, even though he had to know that Seth's equipment would have meant nothing to the man.
That the inspector had managed to slip away without Roland getting a look at him, and without re-locking the door leading down to the vault: now, that was cause for concern.
"It was as though he turned invisible," Roland said. "One man stayed above; one man went below--"
"That could be standard procedure," Seth pointed out. "One guy stays up top in case something caves in."
"Or it could have been Rippner." Rosemary opened herself a bottle of Bass ale. "Between that and what happened to Bill: he treads very lightly, Jackson does."
"That guy from the bookstore?" Seth was suddenly far less beer-brave. "He knows about the vault? Does he know about us--?"
Rosemary took a long draught off her bottle, tsked at Seth's wide eyes. "Do try to keep up, Seth."
Seth looked to Roland. "Becker has moved the nanites," he stammered. "Maybe we should move the Play Doh--"
Roland kept his eyes thoughtfully on Rosemary. She kept her eyes on him. "No," she said. "We're better off leaving it right where it is. Right here with us."
Roland smiled. "Bait, Rose--?"
She gave him a cool, blue-eyed wink and tipped the neck of her beer bottle his way. "Exactly."
Oh, shit. Glancing toward the room's safe, wherein dwelt the Play Doh, Seth thought he knew how it felt to be the goat tethered to a stake during a tiger hunt.
*****
"Led Zeppelin," said Ken Warwick, looking at the picture taped to the monitor of Amy Kendrick's laptop. "It's been driving me insane, trying to think what that reminds me of." He tapped the image lightly with a fingernail. "Zeppelin's label: Swan Song." It was just after one a.m., and they were in British Museum station, commencing the night's search for a statue whose existence Amy was beginning to doubt. Out of frustration she'd stuck to her screen a printout of a file photo of the Elgin Icarus, the picture Ken was studying now; she'd added to it the caption Have you seen me?
"CD or vinyl?" she asked, without looking up from the scanning scope.
"Vinyl, of course."
She smiled. "You know what surprises me...?"
"What?"
He'd proved handy, Warwick had, since Morgan had died. And not just in terms of the efficiency with which he'd disposed of Bill's body, no. Here in the dusty dark, he moved the scanner probes where Amy told him. He kept an eye out for vagrants and Tube workers. And he seemed steady. Dependable. He was good company.
"That you haven't asked for more money."
"I'm content with my contracted price." He was looking at her through the night-goggles he wore when he kept watch where the station's platform had been. "I'm assuming that if I don't get greedy, I stand at least a chance of emerging from this alive."
"You're very honest."
"I tend to think of myself as 'realistic,' actually."
"Morgan won't be needing his cut. I don't know; I'd say you've earned it."
Warwick smiled, looking pleased despite himself. "We'll see."
*****
Rested and showered and-- Lisa found herself thinking the words shyly, almost parenthetically--
-- (that is to say, in love: he loves me; I love him)--
-- she and Jackson were back at the Carters' suite at nine twenty-eight in the morning. Burton was there already. And it appeared as though Claire's standing offer of room service had fallen on yet another pair of receptive ears. At the room's largest table, Richard Fallon sat with a feast before him: bangers as well as bacon, potatoes, tomatoes, baked beans. Black coffee and possibly a pint of orange juice. When Lisa and Jackson entered, he was excavating runny yolk from one of four fried eggs with a triangular spade of toast. He might have been forty-five; he might have been sixty-five. Fair hair, straight and in need of a cut, a weathered, hawkish face above broad shoulders.
"I'll have a bit of that, too, if it's on the menu," he said, looking at Lisa with wry blue eyes. He winked at Claire. "No offense, darlin'."
Carter looked about ready to kill him. He shrugged helplessly as Jackson shot him a glare. Smiling sweetly, Claire topped off Fallon's coffee cup before pouring a cup for herself. "None taken, Professor Fallon."
"Though I take it the answer's 'no,' given the look of offense on yon wee man's face." Fallon bit off a mouthful of toast and turned his sharp eyes to Jackson. "Who doesn't look nearly stupid enough to be a policeman." A nod Carter's way. "Him, on the other hand--"
For a second, Carter looked blank. Then his brows dropped to a thunderous scowl. "Now hold on--"
"Dermott told you, Rich: they're not the police." Burton came over, placing himself between Carter and Fallon as he did. "Lisa Reisert, Jackson Rippner: Professor Richard Fallon."
"Pleased to meet you, Professor Fallon," Lisa said.
"It's 'Richard,' darlin'."
"Dick," Jackson muttered.
"Nope: 'Richard,' if you please, Jack my boy," said Fallon, scooping beans onto a fresh slice of toast. "Now, if you'd care to tell me which of my father's borrowings you believe lies buried still in Stan's tunnels--"
"The Icarus," Jackson said. "The Elgin Icarus."
Fallon paused with beans dripping back onto his plate.
"Ah," he said, smiling. "Now I'm interested."
*****