A/N: Sorry for the delay. This one's kinda big and chewy. Take your time; help yourself to the Keurig; enjoy. Thanks for the hits. And if you've got something to say-- heck, please speak up! Feedback is groovy.
*****
"So, then, who's going to take a shot at clueing me in? I doubt it'll be you." Pushing aside his breakfast plates, Richard Fallon smirked up at Carter; Lisa saw John's face go hollow as he bit the insides of his cheeks. "I've heard the Icarus mentioned." Fallon turned his attention to Burton. "What exactly am I here for, Stan?"
Jackson spoke: "Very simply, can you help us find it?"
Asked Fallon: "Is your name 'Stan' now, lad?"
Almost unconsciously, Lisa gripped Jackson's arm; he was shaking with anger. Fallon watched him calmly.
"Fancy yourself the hard man, do you, Mr. Rippner?" he said. "You little fellas, always having something to prove. Look, lad, on the football pitch, I regularly break in half men twice your size and three times as fast."
Jackson smiled tightly. "Oh, really--?"
"Jackson." Lisa turned him to face her; she spoke firmly, very quietly. "No. Please."
His eyes locked on her with all the icy fury he'd focused on Fallon. Only for a second, though. He let his brow smooth without looking away; Lisa smiled for him a bit of smile, just between the two of them. Jackson said: "My apologies for the interruption, Professor Fallon."
"Accepted, you wee psychopath. So: Stan...?"
"Jackson about covered it, Rich. Someone is looking for the Elgin Icarus; we need to find it before they do. Can you help us?"
Fallon pushed back his chair, stood, and hauled onto the table a battered, multi-pocketed canvas-and-leather field bag. From its insides he produced a black plastic folder, a neatly clipped sheaf of printouts. "The keepers of the city's shrine to Mars may have lost the original, but I took the liberty, years back, of scanning Dad's journal complete. A few pages I think might be relevant to our needs." He whisked crumbs from the tabletop and spread out the white sheets. "This passage, here, supposedly from a letter he was drafting to the girl who was to be my mum--"
Lisa and the others leaned in as he pointed with a rough fingertip; Fallon read aloud the words in cramped, faded cursive:
"'Had I chosen not to stray, near the museum stationed I would stay. Awful, that. I'm sorry; you know I'm no poet. But understand: we've come to the ends of our line. Let us cherish, my darling, the space between us.' Notice anything?"
"How could they be at the end of the line if they're not married yet?" Carter asked.
"'Ends,' John," Claire pointed out. "Looks like they each get one."
"He misspelled 'understand,'" Jackson said.
Lisa looked more closely. "There's an 'r' in it. It says 'understrand.'"
Fallon focused on Burton. "'Understrand.' Under. Strand. Under Strand, Stanley."
"The original name for Aldwych station." Burton looked around at the others. "Strand station was renamed 'Aldwych' in 1915."
"There is no end of the line at British Museum station," Jackson said. "Plural or singular--"
"But there is at Aldwych." Lisa felt a growing thrill. She looked at Jackson, at the others, saw excitement and realization blossoming on their faces. "I was there--"
Fallon nodded. "Two ends of the line: the southern platform at Aldwych. Dollars to doughnuts-- that is the phrase, isn't it?-- if we measured the distance between the end of the line at Aldwych and the end of the line coming out of Charing Cross, we'd find ourselves a discrepancy. A gap between the two. A space between those terminating walls wide enough to hold the Icarus and God knows what else."
Possibly because Fallon had already designated him the village's idiot, Carter stated, quite without qualm: "I don't understand how there can be two ends of the line that close together."
"Technically, there shouldn't be," Burton said. "Most people don't know that the Northern Line track between Charing Cross and Aldwych is complete; it's simply not used. Brief period of shuttle service during the war: that's about it. Someone--"
"Someone very enterprising--" Claire added.
"-- your father, perhaps, Rich," Burton continued, "might have-- might, mind you-- have gone down there during the Blitz and built that second wall."
Jackson spoke: "Thousands of people sheltering in the stations, debris being cleared away constantly because of the bombing, not to mention the relics and art being stored down there legitimately--"
"Aldwych was the official sheltering-place of the Elgins, remember--?" Burton interjected.
"-- who would have noticed, in all the chaos, an extra handful of workmen coming through with bricks and mortar and crates--?"
Jackson looked to Fallon with nothing but interest in his expression, excitement, not anger, sparking in his clear eyes. Fallon smiled at him, warmly, professorially, without a trace of goading. "Do we need a permit to have a look behind that wall in Aldwych, Stan?"
"I think this falls under 'necessary inspection and maintenance.'"
"Where will we find diggers?" Carter asked.
"We can't use London Transport workers, can we?" Lisa, a fellow manager, a like denizen of the corporate world, looked to Burton. "It would look too suspicious. A requisition might take days if you had to put it through the proper channels, wouldn't it? And we know that someone from your office is involved with Mason and his gang."
"I know just the people," Fallon said. "Hard-working, quick, discreet, polite, and utterly in my thrall. Utterly."
He looked about at all the eyebrows raised his way; he savored his pause with a wine-taster's relish; he added:
"Their grades are at stake, y' see."
*****
Fallon set out to round up able bodies, eager for extra credit and/or a decidedly unique impromptu field experience, from the Society of Archaeological Students at University College London. The rest of them split for business of their own, to set the dig in motion. Carter had meetings to coordinate between Professor Becker and the organizers of the freeze-tech summit. Burton drove off to the offices of Transport for London to check his messages and to clear his schedule for the rest of the day, before dropping in on the keepers at Aldwych station, Lisa's savior Harry McKay and his cohort, bristly pass-maker Martin Connolly, to announce, as a senior field manager of TFL, the conducting of "necessary inspection and maintenance" that afternoon at the wall marking the terminus of the south tunnel. Which left Lisa, Jackson, and Claire, who announced, once her husband departed:
"We're off to Oxford Street, you two. Shopping and lunch."
"Shopping--?" Jackson's brushy brows lowered in bemusement. "Claire, this is no time for--"
Claire ignored him. "I don't know how Jackson pitched your trip to you," she said to Lisa, "but the love of my life said we'd be in London primarily for glamor and leisure. Consequently, I left my spelunking kit at home."
Jackson persisted: "You two can shop all you want when--"
"And what did you pack for digging about in the muck, Dapper Dan--?" Claire shot back at him. "We stop at Marks, we buy ourselves outfits we won't mind destroying, and then we head off to what promises to be a long, dirty night in an abandoned Tube station with a decent meal in our bellies. Does that sound fair to you, Mr. Rippner?"
Looking a little more cowed, maybe, than a man with "Ripper" as a nickname ought, Jackson gnawed his upper lip. "Yes."
-- Mom, Lisa added, silently, smiling.
*****
The day was overcast, breezy but balmy. The rain if it fell would be big, splattering drops bearing no hint of ice. Claire and Jackson and Lisa took the Tube. Embankment station to Oxford Circus. Lisa slotted and re-caught her Travelcard; she walked after Claire, with Jackson behind her, to the escalators leading down to the station's lower concourse and the Bakerloo Line.
And there at the top of the silver downsliding steps, she stopped. Froze. Jackson gently drew her out of the stream of people funneling onto the escalator; "Claire," he called, his voice quiet but clear.
Stepping back from the escalator with an economy of motion that belied her lanky height, Claire rejoined them. She looked at Lisa with concern, then with realization. "My God, I completely forgot-- Lisa, I'm so sorry--"
"I'm fine. I'm fine--" Lisa smiled for her, for Jackson. She could feel her jaw shaking, her pulse thrumming like piano strings in her throat.
"We can take a taxi," Jackson said.
"No." Lisa shook her head. She breathed in slowly, let her eyes drift down the walls of the escalator stairwell. "I won't be much use in Aldwych if I can't go underground, will I--? I just need to listen--"
Far below: a rumbling, a squealing. A train arriving. Human tumult, human voices, alive. The station announcements: Oyster cards and the minding of the gap. A twining of guitar through the mix, electric, amplified: a busker playing a Radiohead song.
But no voices in her head. No whispering of I want I want I want. No drawing, no tugging, no bone-deep belief that I belong down there.
"I'm okay," Lisa said.
Her expression bore no fear, presented no brave-faced lie. Jackson accepted her words; he looked frankly relieved. "Okay."
Again, Claire went first, and Lisa followed. She kept to the right, as she was supposed to, and Jackson rode the steel step behind hers. He rested his left hand on her shoulder, though, as they descended, and Lisa leaned into the reassurance of his touch.
*****
Oxford Street. Marks and Spencer, the J.C. Penney's and Macy's, combined, of the United Kingdom. Their first time shopping together. And Jackson, for all his griping, proving to be a far fussier consumer than either Lisa or Claire. Lisa joined him at the triptych mirrors outside a bank of men's dressing rooms while Claire, her selections draped over her arm, casually patrolled the spinner racks near the main aisle. She was, Lisa realized, doing just that: patrolling. They were out in the public; Mason and his people might be out in the public, too. She was also giving them space, chaperoning them. A quaint idea, a smile-worthy one. Jackson, price tags hanging out the back of his collar, was tugging at the hem of a cobalt-blue pullover from the sportswear clearance rack.
"This or the gray one-- or both--?"
"Both." Lisa drew his hands down, away from the beleaguered waistband, and leaned up to kiss him. "This one brings out the red in your hair."
"My hair isn't red."
"Mm hm." She feathered his bangs with her fingertips. "The blue brings out your freckles, too."
"You're teasing me."
"Yes, I am." She kissed him again, the contact light but lingering. Her eyes half-closed. His, too. Her lips brushed his half-smile as she said, "I love you."
She tried the words on for size, there on the first floor of a department store, near the clearance racks of men's clothing. The squeak and clatter of hangers, the smell of plastic and industrial floor- and carpet-cleaners. Three mirrors reflecting three Lisas, three Jacksons, three gentle kisses.
The Jackson at the center of the reflections, the real Jackson, the Jackson of pale freckles and warm skin and too-blue eyes, looked back at her and replied, his forehead tipped to hers, the fingers of her other hand still entwined with his: "I love you, too."
*****
They made their purchases; they walked with their shopping bags to the boisterous early afternoon chaos of the Wagamama on Wigmore Street, where they sat on benches at a long maple-topped table and swiped tastes off each other's plates, all three of them, openly or stealthily. Ramen and tofu, chicken and kare, prawns, teppan, and gyoza. Cold glasses of water and elderflower tea. Lisa, watching Claire raise a chopstick as if to stab Jackson's hand when he took the final dumpling, and seeing the boyishness in his grin as he popped said dumpling into his mouth, thought how the company wasn't just his job, it was his family as well. The woman who'd borne him, who'd gone cold and distant after Jackson's father was murdered, might be in New York working as an architect; Jackson Rippner's real mother was in London, right here, right now, at this very table, drinking down the last of her cool fragrant tea with affectionate nonchalance while the man who might have been her son savored his last, stolen bite of lunch.
*****
Wearing their new, disposable clothes, Lisa and Jackson and Claire were the first ones to arrive at Aldwych station, around three o'clock. Harry McKay was waiting for them, watching, with the interest of a man who spent far too much time underground, the traffic passing on Surrey Street. He smiled broadly when he saw Lisa; he unlocked and pulled aside for her and the others a rattling black door-sized section of accordion gating. In place of the blue jacket and striped tie he'd worn during their first meeting, he was dressed in gray coveralls. Reflector strips in metallic white banded his upper arms, traversed his broad back; Transport for London was stitched in black over the left side of his chest.
"Martin will look after you down below," he said, pointing the way to the spiraling stairs leading to the main platform and the stationkeepers' office. "I'll watch for the others. It's good to see you again, Miss Reisert," he added.
"It's 'Lisa,' Harry." Lisa smiled back at him as she led Jackson and Claire to the stairs.
One hundred and nineteen curving steps below street level, Martin, dressed, like Harry, in gray coveralls, had the electric kettle on burbling standby. He'd found more mugs as well, all chipped, most of them bearing graphics boasting their origins with Transport for London. He grinned when he saw Lisa; he smiled for Claire as awkwardly shy as a little boy meeting his new school principal; and he managed not to glare at Jackson, who, reciprocally recognizing a potential rival, if only an extremely distant one, for Lisa's affections, managed not to glare back.
"Harry says we're like the Seven Dwarfs," Martin said, offering them the first of the tea as they gathered near the ancient wooden doorframe of the keepers' office. "Says I'm Grumpy. Which is fine, I say," he said, as he carefully handed Lisa a mug, "as it makes him the other six, the fat bastard."
Lisa took the mug, thinking. "Sneezy, Sleepy, Dopey, Doc, Bashful, and--" She stopped. "I can never remember the last one."
Claire shook her head: no help from her in matters fairytale or Disney, despite her having three daughters. Jackson had wandered a few feet from the office. He was on the platform, looking toward the southbound tunnel.
"Happy," he called over his shoulder, absently.
Martin edged closer to Lisa. "Your fella-- that's him?"
Lisa sipped her tea. "Yes."
"American?"
"He's from Chicago, yes."
Martin snorted under his breath. "Little fella, isn't he--?"
Cheeky. Lisa smiled incredulously. "You're only two inches taller than he is."
"If that," Claire added, blowing lightly at the tannin-brown surface of her own mug of tea.
Martin winced. "Right." A single ring sounded from the phone on the wall by the office door; he picked up the receiver, listened. "Got it, Harry. Two more coming down."
As he spoke, bootsteps echoed from above. Stanley Burton emerged first from the tiled curve of the stairwell, followed by John Carter, joining them after his business with Professor Becker and the organizers of the freeze-tech summit. Claire smiled when she saw him; they shared a kiss, light and quick, a kiss in passing, in greeting, but very tender, too; and Lisa knew, focusing the better part of her attention on her tea, on Jackson and the platform, anywhere but on the brief, ostensibly very casual display of affection outside the keepers' office, that, for all her assurance, Claire Carter still worried when her husband was out doing his job
"How's Becker?" Jackson asked, joining them.
"He's fine; he's very well," Carter said, as he accepted from Martin a battered and tea-filled pine-green mug. "He and Dermott are getting on like a house on fire. But Simon had a call this morning from one of his colleagues at the British Museum: a young woman with credentials from a newspaper in Canada was in asking about treasures stored in the Underground during World War II. Red hair, green eyes. Edgy, but not jaded enough to be a reporter."
He added, pointedly: "She said her name was Amy Kendrick."
"The woman who signed the papers for the rental of the vault under St. Paul's," Jackson said. "Did she leave a number?"
"Mm hm. We won't need a trace, though."
"Why's that?"
"Because Paul Miller has found for us our den of thieves," Carter said. "Roland Mason, Rosemary Wheeler, and company are at the Mandarin Oriental off Hyde Park."
"I owe him a cup of coffee," Jackson said.
"Paul suggested something a little more intimate, Jackson, but I'm sure coffee will do."
"Amy Kendrick." Lisa looked to Jackson. "Why would she use her real name?"
"I always use my real name," Jackson pointed out. He touched her cheek, a gentle, slightly absentminded caress. While her skin was still clean, maybe. Before she and he and all the rest of them were covered in dust or mud. "Sometimes you get tired of hiding. The games, the duplicity. Especially when you're working around people who have so many alternate identities you wonder how they can remember who they really are."
"Like Rosemary Wheeler?"
She felt him hesitate. Just for a second. But he kept his eyes on hers, and his eyes were honest. "Mm hm."
"James Bond always uses his real name," Claire added.
"Except in A View to a Kill," Carter countered. "He called himself 'James Stock' once in that one."
"That was Roger Moore," Martin said. "Roger Moore doesn't count."
Carter blinked, frowning. "He doesn't--?"
Claire shook her head. "No, dearest."
From above, down the spiral stairwell, echoed a muffled commotion. Voices, a clanking of heavy metal, a thudding of booted feet on the stairs. Richard Fallon and his press gang had arrived.
*****
From the Society of Archaeological Students of University College London, they had Ted, burly and square-jawed handsome and prematurely balding; Ronnie, the scarecrow, all elbows and knees, who watched with disarmingly friendly hazel eyes through a thick fringe of black hair; Anne, freckled, red-haired, who appeared to have parleyed her "freshman twenty" into solid muscle; and Sally, a Londoner of Chinese heritage, small of frame, thoughtful of expression, who carried her share of the group's equipment with every bit the ease that Ted did. They had introductions all around, heavy canvas bags clunking to the platform while hands were shook and names and smiles were exchanged, and then Fallon said, with a lecturer's clarity: "Gather 'round, lads and lasses, gather 'round--"
"The Crimson Pirate," Lisa said. "Burt Lancaster."
Fallon cocked his head her way. "Studio and date--?"
"Warner Brothers, 1952."
"And the first 'A' of the day goes to Miss Reisert." He winked at her, looked around at the others. "Remember, people, we are here to remove, not to destroy. We are here to disturb, not to violate. If Mr. Burton wanted to take a wall down with a battering ram, he would have requisitioned one from the offices of TFL."
"What's behind the wall, Professor?" Ted asked.
"In all likelihood, mud and rats and and a long, dark tunnel leading back to Charing Cross station. In my our dreams, however--" He bent, hoisted a rucksack of equipment by its strap onto his shoulder; his blue eyes twinkled a smile. "-- treasure."
He nodded at Harry. "Lead on, Mr. McKay."
*****
Rippner, like Lisa and those others who weren't of Fallon's group, took his share of equipment while they climbed down off the platform and followed Harry to the terminus of the tunnel southbound out of Aldwych. The tracks and rails ended some twenty feet before the wall; in any event, Harry explained, the hot rail in Aldwych was on its own circuit: it was cold and dead except on special occasions, as when, say, a train had to be shown passing the platform for a film. When Martin saw doubt in the eyes around him, he moved to place his boot on the raised rail--
"You wouldn't, you stupid daft sod," Harry said.
Martin rolled his eyes, stepped onto the rail--
-- and jerked back, his spine going shock-rigid. "Fuck--!"
The whole group jumped in unison. Harry scowled, shook his head. "Very professional, Martin."
Martin smiled sidewise at Anne. "It hums when it's live. Y' can hear it."
"And someday you'll end with your skull stuck in the bloody ceiling," Harry said, walking on.
Rippner looked on ahead. Lisa was near the front of the group, talking with Ted, the more assured of Fallon's boys, who chatted willingly with the young businesswoman he'd found in a ghost station in the Tube, temptingly, slightly older than he was, cheap jeans, a cheap sweatshirt, boots, and ponytail doing nothing to besmirch her fresh-faced, all-American beauty, while less-polished Ronnie looked on and took mental notes. In other words, Ted was flirting with Rippner's girl, but Rippner didn't mind.
He said to Fallon: "Simon Dermott said he would help us contact you only if we minimized any contact between you and him. Why would he insist on that?"
"You've seen what a prick I am. Isn't that explanation enough?"
"No."
"You're a perceptive man, Rippner." Fallon smiled a weathered, wry smile. "When my father was finally nabbed for stealing trinkets from the British Museum, it was Simon's father's word that sent him down. Dermott pere testified against Dad at trial. Made for friction between our families, to say the least."
"Silver lining to the cloud, though." Burton had been listening; he joined them. "Your father escaped from prison, didn't he...? Rumor had it he lived out his days quite comfortably in a villa overlooking the Aegean."
"The wine-dark Aegean." Fallon's smile turned wistful. "Still, the taint remained. The stigma. He could never come home, could he? Not home to England. Just a traitor in a display of traitors at the Imperial War Museum."
Ahead of them, the others were stopping. They had reached the wall. They turned and looked to Fallon. Rippner saw the straightening of the man's broad shoulders as he looked back at them. With confidence in his hawkish face and command in his voice, he said:
"Alright, people. Let's get to work."
*****
The stop-bar had to come off first. It was an iron bumper the width of the terminus wall; the bolts holding it in place were pocked with rust but still solid and thick and frozen in place. In the end, there was nothing for it but to pry the bumper off with brute force and crowbars, a task that fell to big Ted, Fallon, and John, whose gray sweatshirt concealed a bulging wealth of muscle across his shoulders and down his arms. The three of them jumped back as the bar broke away from the wall and thudded to the dusty tunnel floor; Lisa and Jackson and the others helped to lift and move it out of the way.
Years back, decades or so ago, someone had thought to cover the original brick of the wall with concrete; that had to come off next. Ronnie passed out plastic goggles; Anne was on hand with spare mallets and chisels; Fallon and his students showed the neophytes how best to hack away. Lisa, chiseling, felt a nudge at her right shoulder. Jackson was working beside her; if she looked, she knew, no one would be behind her.
"To the right," she said, pointing to a spot near the tunnel wall, about four feet off the floor.
Fallon rapped the wall with a mallet, listened. "She's right," he said. "We have a weak spot over here, people."
He made room as he and Sally and Ted refocused their attack on the spot Lisa had indicated. Burton, watching, spoke quietly from Lisa's other side: "I have to wonder if the sumps kept the water out."
"We'll know soon enough, won't we, Stan?" Fallon replied.
"Problem with building a subway in a city that's basically a clay-bottomed swamp, isn't it?" said Martin. "They pump thousands of liters of water out of the tunnels every day, all across the system," he added, for Lisa's benefit.
"That's comforting," Jackson said, drily.
*****
The plaster layer fell away in chunks and chips and geysers of dust; they had to move more cautiously once they reached the brick layer beyond it. Not that there was a risk of the tunnel collapsing, no, but if something of value did wait beyond the terminus wall, they didn't want to risk damaging it. As the afternoon turned to evening and then to night, they went by turns on break. There was tea on perpetual standby in the keepers' office, and Fallon had dumped maybe three dozen foil-wrapped homemade granola bars on the metal-topped table; Harry made sure the office door was closed against the intrusion of enterprising rats. "We rarely see 'em anywhere but in the north tunnel, but those look right tempting," he said, nodding toward the bars. The station had a tidy working restroom, in one of the access tunnels midway along the platform, but none of them seemed inclined to venture to it alone. They left the group working at the wall only in pairs, or in threes. Even the men. Even Jackson. The din of the digging dropped away too quickly once you stepped away from the terminus; the silence was there like a palpable thing, waiting. Things beyond silence, too: distant rumblings, the trains from Holborn sounding like the murmuring of the earth itself.
And something else. Of all of them, Lisa knew that she was most comfortable with it, that hers was the most personal experience with it: what Stan called "the subsound." The voice of the Underground.
The whispering.
She waited on the platform while Claire finished in the washroom. She felt a breath of wind against her cheek, like the first stirrings of the breeze that announced the approach of a train. She turned her head and looked north along the tracks.
And he was there. Standing in his gray coveralls at the mouth of the north tunnel. She could see the clear blue of his eyes in his pale, thin face. She raised a hand in greeting, and he smiled.
Then she looked away, at the tiled tunnel wall across from her, so he could make good his escape.
And when she looked back, Jim was gone.
"Did you see something--?" Claire asked, joining her.
"No," Lisa said. She smiled past an ache in her throat. "Let's get back to work."
*****
They made a gap made in the bricks, near the right-side tunnel wall. Fallon shone a light through it, but he saw nothing beyond but darkness, and the breadth of his chest and shoulders wouldn't allow for a more thorough look.
"It needs the smallest among us," he announced. "Sally, that's you," he said, assessing his troops. "Lisa, maybe--"
His eyes fell on Claire. "Not me," she said. "I've had three non-C-section babies; my years of squeezing into tight spots are behind me."
Fallon grinned. "Your only crimes, darlin', lie in being too beautiful for words and taller than most of the men here present."
"Are there spiders--?" Sally looked genuinely fearful. "If there are, I can't-- I mean--"
"Again with the spiders, Sal?" Ted asked. "How are you ever going to be an archeologist if you can't handle bugs--?"
"I'll do it," Jackson said, protectiveness trumping his pride. "I'm nearly as small as Lisa--"
"I'll go," Lisa said. She smiled her appreciation to Jackson. "Give me a hand up, okay?"
The break was where she-- or Jim-- had suggested they make it, about four feet off the tunnel floor. Fallon passed her his flashlight; Jackson gave her a hand up, and then he and Carter held her legs while she leaned through the rough-sided hole.
The air beyond the wall smelled not of mold or damp but simply of age. A scent like woodsmoke. Dust motes drifted in the pale glare of the flashlight. Lisa shone it downward; the floor was dry. She moved the light to the left and saw dust-covered wood. Walls of horizontal slats, piles rising like a small city--
"There are crates back here," she called.
"Where--?" Fallon's voice caught with excitement. "How far back from the wall?"
"Against the left side of the tunnel, about ten feet back from the wall. They're marked-- I can see it-- they're marked 'B and M.'"
Jackson and Carter hoisted her back out; Jackson gave her a smile and a quick squeeze when her feet were back on the tunnel floor. Fallon looked pleased.
"Alright, people, that's ten feet we have to play with. Plenty of room to work." He returned his attention to the breached wall of brick before him. "Let's make a hole we can use."
*****
At ten minutes to ten, they found it.
The Elgin Icarus was stunning; it was roughly a meter high and two thirds of a meter wide, and it was packed in shreds of midnight-blue flannel and musty straw in a crate that Fallon and his students pried open as carefully as they had pried open seven other crates before it.
And it was intact. Doomed Icarus raised his blank, pleading eyes to the sun of Fallon's flashlight while the feathers of his black marble wings spread helplessly before the light: a moment suspended, eternally, before the wax holding those feathers melted away and he fell back to Earth.
"Jesus, Dad," Fallon whispered, "it's beautiful."
*****
At ten forty-five, Richard Fallon and his crew of amateur and student archeologists left Aldwych station.
Carter and Jackson, in Fallon's battered Land Rover, were to drive off with the group's most precious find to fetch Professor Becker from the home of Simon Dermott for a midnight-oil session at Imperial College, London. Fallon and his students, having in their possession a van that was the property of University College London, asked Lisa and Claire out for a pint.
"We'll see they get home safely," Fallon told Jackson and Carter. He'd recovered, it seemed, from his initial stunned awe at the finding of the Icarus, now safely loaded in the back of his Rover, and he appeared intent on rewarding himself with a thorough flirtation with Claire. Carter was confident enough in his wife, and pleased enough with the results of the evening's activities, to play along, and Claire, Lisa thought, wouldn't be human, let alone a woman, if she didn't find the attention flattering. In any case, she could handle Fallon, who was as tall as Carter, as strongly built and hawkishly handsome, but ruddy and fair compared to Carter's brooding dark good looks. Or it would seem like brooding if John didn't come off as so ordinary, as such a guy-guy.
A guy who trusted his wife. "Have a Guinness for me, sweets," he said, and kissed her before she got in the van.
Jackson watched from where he and Lisa stood, near the driver's door of the Land Rover. "See you later, sweets," he said, more quietly, as he gave Lisa a kiss of her own. "You did well tonight."
She touched his cheek. "We all did."
*****
Just before midnight in a lab in a science building at Imperial College, Professor Wenzel Becker and his freeze-tech machine met the Elgin Icarus. He greeted the statue with long, slender fingers, a spider's delicate touch on the marble, sensing, seeming to read its texture and temperature.
"You wanted to be an artist, didn't you?" Rippner said, watching.
Becker replied softly, a simple statement of fact: "I am an artist, Mr. Rippner."
The machine itself looked like an old-fashioned three-headed CinemaScope projector, and was likely just as heavy if not heavier. Roland Mason and Rosemary Wheeler might have stolen the original sample of Becker's modeling compound; now, the professor had simply instructed his nanites to formulate more, using, of all things, plaster of Paris.
Carter was frankly astonished. "How do you account for the added mass and density of marble?"
Becker smiled a thin, mysterious smile. "Would you believe me if I said 'through magic'--?"
"You could say it's a trade secret and leave it at that." Carter shrugged amiably. "If it works, I'll still be impressed."
Becker looked to Rippner. "How long do you want your new Icarus to live, Herr Rippner?"
"Four days," Rippner replied.
"Very well. Stand back, please," said the professor.
Rippner and Carter took a healthy step away from the projector and the open space before it. Silently, then, and with frank wonder, they watched as lasers marked a shape in the air above the empty space on the lab floor: first dots, then lines, then a ghost-shape, three-dimensional. Then the freshly formulated molding compound flowed forth and out, guided by strings of nanites glowing blue, twisting in the air like strands of DNA. The second Icarus took shape, like magic, before their eyes. In less than fifteen minutes, it was finished, its detailing, as far as Rippner could tell, exactly matching that of its original, its texture the silken grainy coolness of polished marble, black and gleaming. A perfect replica that would be a puddle of black goo in ninety-six hours.
"I'll be damned," Carter whispered, brushing the wings of the new Icarus with tentative fingertips.
Rippner found himself smiling in awe. He turned his attention to Becker. "We need three other things from you, if you please, Professor," he said. "Slightly more prosaic things."
*****
Richard Fallon shepherded his charges to a pub that welcomed the academically grimy, where he bought for them Guinness, fruit beer, salad, and meat-and-veggie pies that he coaxed from the kitchen ten minutes beyond the hour at which food service was to cease for the night, and after which said drink and food and camaraderie and no mean amount of good-natured flirting with Claire, he and Sally drove Mrs. Carter and Lisa back to their respective hotels and, more than that, walked them to the doors of their suites. Lisa took a long, hot shower and fell into bed. She woke when the lock on the suite's front door clicked open, just after three.
Before she could move or speak, Jackson called quietly: "It's me, Lisa."
"Hey, sweetie." She switched on her bedside lamp, sat up muzzily, asked as he entered the bedroom: "Have you eaten?"
He looked weary but satisfied. "No." He started to undress, crossing to the bathroom.
"They have twenty-four-hour room service," she said.
Jackson leaned out the bathroom door with a tired smile. "Surprise me."
Lisa ordered for him while he showered. The food arrived before he was dressed; she signed for it, then stretched back out on the bed. A gardenburger with lettuce and tomato, chickpea fries. He brought her one. "You need to try these." It teetered on the edge of "sinful," crisp on the outside, deliciously creamy on the inside. She washed it down with a long drink of water, then dozed while he finished eating at the main table in the sitting room. Comforting, sensing he was there, doing something so mundane. He didn't read, didn't turn on the television or stereo. He enjoyed his food; he sat quietly with his thoughts. She listened for his movements without tensing. She liked knowing that it was just them, alone, in the suite, that the air moved only with the in and out of their breathing.
Jackson finished his sandwich and fries, flossed and brushed his teeth. The click of the glass on the marble sink-top, the click and darkness as he switched off the bathroom light. He wore a t-shirt and his boxers to bed. Lisa was still awake enough to ask, as he stretched out beside her:
"How did it go with Professor Becker?"
"Fine. We have ourselves a beautiful second Icarus."
"That's good."
"Tomorrow we'll figure out how to get it into the proper hands." He settled himself more comfortably with her; in the dim light from the bedside lamp, he studied her face. "Is something wrong, Lisa?"
He was asking out of honest concern. Not a hint of impatience or irritation in his tone; his eyes were absolutely angelic. Lisa kissed his full lips, gently rubbed his chest. "This has all been very exciting. Aldwych, the digging, Professor Becker's technology. Getting to know Claire and John. Meeting Stan and Fallon and the others. I just wish--"
"What?"
"I wish we'd have had more time for a vacation, that's all."
"We will. I promise." He kissed her forehead. "When this is over, we'll--"
"I have to get back to work, Jackson. This isn't my life. In four days, I'm going to be back at my job."
He shifted; he rolled her onto her back. He smoothed her hair away from her face, caressed her cheeks, looked down at her thoughtfully.
"Let Carter fix it," he said.
"I can't lose my job--"
"You won't lose your job. Trust me. He owes me; he definitely owes you. I'm sure he feels terrible about dragging you into this. He might be an idiot in the field, but he knows administration, and he knows how to work people and paperwork. Let him talk to your bosses at the Lux."
"And tell them what? That I'm playing spy games in the Underground--?"
"How about 'on assignment as a consultant to a top-secret United States government agency coordinating an international security operation in the U.K.'?"
Lisa eyed him with mild suspicion. "I'm not working for your organization, Jackson."
"Aren't you?"
"Bastard."
"I quite agree." He kissed the tip of her nose. "Let him fix it."
"I am not on your-- his-- payroll."
Kisses, one to each cheek. "The rest of London. At our own pace. And Claire's asked us up to her brother's, in the Highlands--"
"I won't accept a paycheck for this, Jackson."
"Consulting fee." His lips found hers, softly. "And only if you want it. To cover the salary and vacation pay you'll lose."
His expression was sincere and open. She wondered silently at the clear innocence he could broadcast from his wideset eyes, when, once upon a time, two years or a lifetime ago, those same eyes had been the eyes of a monster, something inhuman. She knew, too, as secretively, that this dichotomy in him was what sent a tingling as of electricity and icy heat through her now.
She slipped her arms around his hard warm torso and said, still looking into his extraordinary eyes, "He's not the only one who knows how to work people, is he...?"
Jackson smiled. "No."
He reached to switch off the lamp.
*****
The morning meeting at the Savoy centered around the following question: How could they get Roland Mason and his gang to switch their Icarus-seeking attention from British Museum station to Aldwych?
Pouring herself a glass of orange juice at the ever-available breakfast cart, Lisa had a revelation: "We should make a movie," she said.
Jackson, helping himself to coffee, nuzzled her playfully. "In front of all these people--? I didn't realize you were that comfortable with our relationship--"
Carter snickered, but was good enough to look embarrassed afterward. It was just him and Claire and Burton this morning, in addition to Jackson. Who now found himself on the receiving end of a look-- definitely a look of no-nonsense italics-- from Lisa. "At the station," she clarified, for the benefit of the more prurient in attendance. "At Aldwych. They're making films there all the time; we could stage something--"
John, apology lingering around his dark eyes, took a sip of his own coffee and said: "It's a great idea, but the timing's too tight. Even if I got on the line to Three Mills or one of the other studios in town right now, it would take the better part of the day to muster a crew. The summit starts tomorrow; Professor Becker gives his demonstration the day after that."
Jackson looked to Burton as he followed Lisa, their coffee and juice and a plate of toast in hand, to the smaller of the room's two sofas. "That terminus wall is bullshit, isn't it, Stan? Last night, we broke through it far too easily. That iron bumper: no way could it stop a train--"
At the table, Burton was methodically chopping and chewing pieces of well-syruped waffle. He set down his knife and fork. "I won't let you crash a train in an Underground station," he said. "Even Aldwych." He looked to Carter. "I'm sorry, John: I draw the line there."
"How about a cleaning train?" Claire asked. "They're smaller; they're automated, right? They run on programming."
Burton had resumed chewing. He stopped again. "What would a cleaning train be doing in Aldwych? The keepers there-- McKay and Connolly-- they handle the maintenance chores."
"A junior staffer from TFL sends it in," Lisa said. "He doesn't know that Harry and Martin dust the tracks by hand."
"William Donne," Rippner added, with a cool smile. "The nonexistent TFL employee who rented out the vault below St. Paul's. Blame it on him."
"A film crew wants the tracks clean for a shoot," Claire mused. "So our fake William orders in the track-scrubber--"
Burton frowned even as his eyes brightened: "-- which hears the homing signal coming up the line, live, from Charing Cross--"
Jackson finished for him: "-- and hits the wall at the end of the line in Aldwych trying to reach it."
"Minimal damage, Stan," John said. "Certainly no lives at risk. The company can cover the cost of the cleaner, and whoever comes forward in your office at TFL to handle the mess is practically guaranteed to be Mason's mole."
Burton took a moment to consider. "This could work," he said, at last.
*****
"We are not crashing the Thirty-Eight," Harry McKay announced to Stan Burton and John Carter and the others Burton had brought with him back down to the track level of Aldwych station. He cast a protective eye toward the pristine antique train parked along the platform outside the keepers' office.
"They're not asking us to crash the Thirty-Eight, Harry." Martin looked to Burton and Lisa as if to apologize for the ramblings of a dotty uncle. "They're asking us to crash a cleaning train."
"And that's against filming rules, too, isn't it?" Quite likely Harry, like the rest of them, was feeling a bit prickly from lack of sleep. "We're to allow nothing that hints of danger in the system--"
"It's not really going into a film," Burton said. "We only need to make it look as if a cleaning car overshot the tracks and damaged the wall."
"And whose record does that go on--?" Harry asked.
"I'll do it, Harry. I'll take the blame." Martin focused on Lisa, thoughts of making an impression seeming to spark in his black-brown eyes. Or, equally likely, dreams of freeing himself from an accursed job.
Which said dreams unsparked when Stan Burton, Martin's lord and master, declared: "I will crash the cleaning train, Mr. Connolly."
"Right," said Martin. "Sack yourself, then," he added, under his breath.
*****
If they can afford to blow the top floor off of a luxury hotel, Lisa thought, they can afford to run one lousy jumbo Roomba into a wall-- whoever they really are.
"That latest film, the one they're making here next," Martin said, as he zipped the chest of his gray coveralls, "it's The Edge of Love now, just so you know."
A bit of movie trivia, just for her. And he pronounced "film" as a two-syllable word. Fill-um. Lisa smiled at him. "The Best Years of Our Lives was already taken, wasn't it?" she said.
"I guess. See yez." He smiled back and walked off down the platform, toward the north tunnel and Holborn. Carter and Harry and Burton were already underway. Lisa and Claire were the temporary unofficial keepers of Aldwych station; Jackson, saying he had a quick errand to run, had gone back up top.
*****
Crashing a cleaning train proved to be surprisingly easy.
Carter and Martin, armed with four-foot-long wrenches, switched the tracks on the Aldwych side by hand while Burton and Harry, having moved the Thirty-Eight to safety at the north end of the Aldwych tunnels, crossed the mainline tracks to wrangle the cleaning car from a siding off Holborn. Then stationkeepers from Oxford Circus to Bank announced a five-minute delay in service on the Central Line-- hardly worth mentioning-- while "maintenance equipment" was transferred along the line. Front to back, it took eighteen minutes from the time the boys set out to the moment at which the cleaning train murmured to a halt outside the stationkeepers' office in Aldwych.
Roughly four feet tall and ten feet long, painted bright yellow, the track-scrubber looked like a cross between a very small modern Tube locomotive and the square baggage haulers that trundle back and forth on the tarmac of commercial airports. It normally operated at night, when the current to the hot rail was shut off, so it had its own power: two large rechargeable batteries each approximately a foot and a half square. Burton detached the leads from one of them. "Backup power," he said. "It only needs the main source for what we want it to do. Safer this way."
He then unzipped the neck of his coveralls and produced from the breast pocket of his jacket a pocket-sized notebook. Sheets of numbers written neatly in mechanical pencil.
"I made a few calculations," he said, while the rest of them stared. "Accounting for speed, the weight of the train, the drag from the tracks, the distance between where the tracks end and the wall itself, the composition of the tunnel floor--"
Martin whispered to Harry: "Are we running the thing into a wall or sending it to the bloody moon?"
*****
Harry and Stan caused the crash itself; the others, for reasons of safety, went above. In the gloom of the street-level ticketing hall, Lisa and Martin, Claire, and Carter listened at the head of the tiled spiral staircase for...
... practically nothing. The cleaning train didn't thunder and squeal like its full-sized brethren. It didn't shoulder its way down the tunnels shoving the very atmosphere before it. It ran off the ends of the tracks in the southbound tunnel of Aldwych, skittered on its battery-powered wheels straight across the trackless divide, hit the already-breached wall at the end of the line with a dusty whumph and a clatter of falling brickwork, and stopped.
At street level, a phone on the wall near the ticketing booth jangled a single ring. Martin picked up the receiver, listened.
"Got it, Harry. Good job." He hung up. "All clear," he told the others.
"That's it--?" Carter asked, as he and Martin joined Claire and Lisa for the descent back to the station.
"I know." Martin looked disappointed, too. "Would've made more of a racket chucking a dustbin down the stairs."
*****
Jackson returned from his errand; he and Carter drove off in Richard Fallon's Land Rover to fetch from Imperial College the new Icarus Professor Becker had conjured for them the night before. At just past two, Fallon himself appeared at Aldwych station with Anne and Ted; Ronnie and Sally would be joining them later.
"Good thing you didn't ask for me earlier," he said to Burton. "I had class this morning." For the benefit of Jackson and Carter, who had just lugged the crated fake Icarus down eleven dozen twisting steps and were still catching their breath, he offered the obvious comeback: "Would have made a nice change, am I right--?"
He became more sober when he saw the cleaning train buried in the chamber between the end of the line from Aldwych and the end of the line from Charing Cross. Burton and Carter and had left in place the remainder of the British Museum crates that Fallon's diggers had found the night before: all they wanted was the Icarus; all of the items had been written off for over sixty years; the damage to the crates and the relics inside added legitimacy to the crash site. Still, Fallon frowned.
"Looks like you were wanting a battering ram after all, Stan," he said.
His job, now-- their job, actually, for Lisa and the others were once again under Fallon's command-- was to put the Icarus-- the new Icarus, the fake one (Lisa found herself thinking of it as the Icarus II)-- back in the chamber beyond the now-shattered brick-and-concrete wall in the tunnel running south out of Aldwych, and, more than that, to put it back in such a way as to make it seem as if the Icarus, real or fake, one or two, had never been disturbed.
"Now we're working in reverse," Fallon told them. He turned to Anne and Ronnie, who were mustering brushes and tubes, funnels and spatulas, all in marked contrast to the heavy blunt tools of last night. "You know the drill, my clever ones."
He explained to Lisa and Jackson and the others, as Anne and Ronnie disappeared into the chamber with their tools and field lamps: "It's a test I give: to fake a site, to make it appear as undisturbed as possible while we hide in it an anachronism for the underclass diggers to stumble across." He'd instructed Jackson and Carter to save the crate in which they'd found the Icarus, and all the straw and dusty packing flannel, too; he added, with a smile, as he and Martin carried the crate down the tracks to the treasure chamber with the cleaning train wedged inside: "The looks on their faces when they uncover a Swatch jumbled in with the shards of an Iron Age grain pot: priceless."
*****
Late that afternoon, Ken Warwick was only half listening when Stanley Burton announced, at a meeting of greater-than-moderate and yet less-than-emergency importance (ah, the joys of corporate-speak) that there had been a crash at Aldwych station.
He'd called the meeting as informally as he always did, not in an actual conference room but on the office floor, summoning together his thirty or so people so that half of them were standing and the other half were still in their chairs, leaning out of their cubes to see and hear or at least to feign interest; everyone knew that if Stan had anything of dire importance to say, he'd say it pithily in an e-mail flagged as URGENT. What he said now seemed vaguely ludicrous, nearly like a joke. More than a handful of chuckles and snorts greeted his news: how could anything crash in Aldwych? It was a toy station, little more than a film-set mockup; what trains passed through there were either the yesterday's news of the system or precious antiques that the crazy keepers of the ghost station under the Strand treated with white-glove reverence.
When Burton mentioned rumors of crates found behind the wall through which the cleaning train had broken (and there: see? They couldn't even crash a proper train in poor old Aldwych!), people checked their calendars to see how far off All Fools' Day was. Ken himself was too distracted to take much notice. He was jumpy and unfocused from lack of sleep. And from something else: this morning, as he and Amy Kendrick had made their way to the ladder up out of British Museum station, she stumbled. He caught her; she smiled her thanks. And then, still bent slightly at the waist, she touched him. She might have been catching her balance, but her hand went to his thigh and squeezed. Drifted upward and inward, squeezed again, then released. She moved away as though someone might be watching. In her eyes he thought he saw the promise of more to come.
At his desk in the cube-field of Transport for London, Ken Warwick closed his twitchy eyelids.
There in British Museum station. She touched me. He smiled, leaned back into the ergonomically padded curves of his wheeled chair. And those stupid bastards in Aldwych, less than four hundred meters away, managing to put a cleaning train through a wall behind which there were-- oh, yes, certainly-- crates. As if they'd stumbled on buried treas--
Crates.
Crates. Buried treasure.
Ken opened his eyes and sat forward.
*****
"Pardon me? Mr. Burton--?"
Stanley Burton was at his desk, reading his way through what appeared to be a stack of hard-copy maintenance reports. He looked up when Ken rapped on the frame of his open office door.
"Yes, Ken?"
Ken wanted to sound interested without seeming too eager, and all he managed to do was stammer. "H--has anyone offered to handle that c-crash in Aldwych?"
"You're the first." Burton smiled.
Thoughtfully, Ken noted. Maybe with a bit of relief. And there: the situation was Ken's to control. Burton was grateful for not having to go out there himself, for not having to get his thick stump legs all the way down those damned Aldwych stairs and back up again. Everyone knew the old man's active fieldwork days were well behind him.
"May I have it, sir?"
"It's not as if they've really found buried treasure, Ken," Burton said amiably. "Likely just railway supplies and shoring timbers. A few boxes marked 'B and M.' The British Museum will probably claim those."
"Still--" Ken smiled back. He managed to stifle his stammer. "--it would make a nice break from the office, sir."
Burton nodded. "It's yours. Let me know what you find."
Fifteen seconds later, Warwick was back at his desk, on the phone to Amy Kendrick.
Hello--?
She sounded gorgeously tousled. Tired. She slept during the day, a vampire's hours, before she and Ken descended to British Museum station. He imagined her now, frowning sleep from her beautiful green eyes.
"Ken here," he said. Then he leaned toward the phone set where it sat on his desk, into the sheltering U of his cube, cupped the transmitter closer to his mouth, and added, very quietly: "I think someone's found it."
*****
That evening, Jackson Rippner planned to crack the safe in the suite that Roland Mason had reserved in the Mandarin Oriental off Hyde Park. He announced as much to Lisa, Claire, and Carter as the four of them sat, around sundown, in the lobby bar of the Aldwych. The hotel, not the station.
"You're assuming they'll leave the compound in the safe while they go for the Icarus," Lisa said.
"They'll leave it. They need me to lead them to the nanites."
He spoke reasonably, gently even. Lisa looked away, troubled.
"You'll need the dummy code for the safe, if you're not going to crack it by hand," Claire said.
Blue dusk and headlights beyond the arched windows. People strolling. Another clear, placid spring evening in London. Lisa and Claire were to meet Fallon at the station soon, but they had time: one of the most eye-opening realizations of the last seventy-two hours had been the simple fact that Aldwych the hotel and Aldwych the station were less than three blocks apart.
"You can't crack it by hand," Lisa said. She looked back at Jackson, at Claire and John. "The latest models are equipped with silent alarms. If you interrupt the power-- by breaking the circuit with two wires and a battery, through the keyplate-- that's what you were planning to do, weren't you--?" -- as Jackson frowned his surprise-- "-- they'll know at the front desk."
He met her eyes; they both knew she was crossing a line here. Definitely professionally, possibly ethically as well. She continued: "Try subtracting the sum of the model number from the eight-digit international hotelier's license number; the last four digits of that number should be the dummy code programmed by the manufacturer of the safe. With luck, the managers at the Mandarin Oriental haven't changed it."
Jackson just nodded, looking at her; John spoke for him: "Thank you, Lisa."
*****
Night was spreading a blanket of shadow across the trees of Hyde Park when Rippner arrived at the Mandarin Oriental. He passed invisibly across the polished tiles of the lobby; on the third floor, he stepped to the side of the door of a parkside suite. He knocked and called: "Room service." No reply. He didn't expect one. He master-carded the door lock, entered, closed the door quietly behind him. The suite was dark, save for a single wall sconce glowing above the bar. He was at the safe in the sitting room when a man said: "Stop right there."
Rippner kept his hands open-palmed at his sides. He turned slowly.
It was the young American from the bookstore. From the chase, the rooftop in Soho. He must have been hiding in the bedroom. He was pointing a Glock at Rippner, and he was shaking with fear.
"You were supposed to shoot me through the door," Rippner said, conversationally. When the kid didn't reply, he continued: "Only you weren't, were you--? Rosemary and Roland want me to open the safe. They want me to steal back the molding compound: if I do, they think I'll lead them to the nanites." He took a step toward the kid; the kid took a step back. "So if you're not here to stand guard, do you know what that means--?"
"They'll be back any second--"
"Bullshit." Rippner smiled coldly. "They're long gone. And now they want me to tie up a loose end for them by killing you."
"I'll shoot--"
"Rosemary will be very upset if you do. You don't want to see Rosemary upset."
The muzzle of the gun wobbled level with Rippner's forehead.
"You saw what happened in the bookstore when Morgan tried to shoot me."
Terror in the brown eyes. The kid was on the verge of tears.
"What's your name?" Rippner asked.
"Seth." He sounded like a little boy. "Seth Patterson."
Rippner continued, quietly: "Let me break it down for you, Seth: I tell you the safety is on. It is, by the way. You can't resist the urge to look. In that second, I take the gun from you. I yank your jaw into the point of my elbow, and your neck snaps. Or you pull the trigger, and nothing happens. Nothing, that is, except for me cutting out your liver and your tongue and flicking your eyes across the room. I let you live on the roof; you know I don't have to kill you now." He held out his hand. "Give me the gun."
Hesitation. A wavering. Rippner kept his eyes on the kid's. Very coldly, but reasonably, too.
Seth handed him the gun.
Rippner took it, his shoulders relaxing ever so slightly. He held the automatic by his side, let the barrel point at the floor. It wasn't as if he needed the damned thing. "I don't suppose you know the combination to the safe."
A spastic head-shake.
"And the suite is in Mason's name, correct--?"
Seth nodded now.
"So if you call the front desk and ask someone to come up and open it, they can tell you to fuck off."
"I-- I-- Yeah."
"You're not much good to me, are you--?"
Realization. Seth's eyes widened--
Rippner removed the clip, unchambered the last round. Handed the empty automatic back to the kid. "Get out of here. Don't contact Wheeler or Mason. They'll be able to find me on their own. And this is twice: two lives you owe me. Don't forget that."
"No, sir, I-- I won't."
The door shut behind him. From the hallway: footsteps on the thick carpet, running, fading. Rippner went back to the safe. He had the license number for the Mandarin Oriental; he tried Lisa's trick: he subtracted the sum of the safe's model number from the license number and keyed in the last four digits of the result. The lock-light turned from red to green. Rippner opened the door and looked in. He smiled.
The stolen sample of Professor Becker's modeling compound was there. Rippner put on a pair of latex gloves. He removed the metal container from the safe; he carefully unscrewed the top. Then, using a syringe, he added to the compound the first of the three additional things Professor Becker had concocted for him and Carter in the lab at Imperial College.
He resealed the container and left the Mandarin Oriental, crossing the lobby briskly, almost cheerfully, by all appearances brashly oblivious to watching eyes, and took a taxi to the British Museum.
*****
At Aldwych, Lisa and Claire and Fallon, dressed in the coveralls and bright yellow hardhats of line maintenance workers for Transport for London, assisted with the removal of the fake Icarus from the crash site at the terminus wall. Three TFL "agents" had come for the statue, offering permissions in the form of clipboarded paperwork and saying that the rest of the relics would be removed once they'd been in more definite touch with the curators of the British Museum. "They" were, in fact, Roland Mason, the red-haired woman from the bookstore on Holborn who had to be Amy Kendrick, and the pudgy young man from Lisa and Jackson's first trip to the crypt at St. Paul's. He identified himself to Harry and Martin as Ken Warwick. Perhaps he had adopted Kendrick's attitude toward the use of real names: he was, Lisa was certain, the man who had signed as "William Donne" on the paperwork for the rental of the vault below St. Paul's. On the walk to the broken wall of the terminus, he took an earful of fake hell from both Harry and Martin, who berated him and TFL and whatever other idiots, specifically or generally, had seen fit to put a cleaning train on their tracks.
"I feel almost sorry for him," Claire said. "Almost. Grubby little bastard." She and Fallon and Lisa were following the others at the respectful distance of underlings.
Lisa had her hair up under her hardhat; she kept her shoulders squared as she walked, her head down. Both Amy Kendrick and Roland Mason had seen her before, even if Mason's look at her might have been indirect at best.
"Peter Pan," Fallon whispered to her.
"What--?"
He smiled slightly, kept his eyes straight ahead. "You look enough like a fella, dressed like that. A damned cute fella, don't get me wrong--" He caught himself. "But don't get me wrong like that, either, alright?"
"Thank God." Claire eyed him sidewise, drolly. "You had me worried for a second there, you old horndog."
Fallon grinned.
*****
He and Martin did the greater part of the work: to them fell the task of carrying the Icarus-- the fake Icarus-- back to street level, up those many curving steps. Warwick and Kendrick made a show of inspecting the crash site, going so far as to take pictures and measurements. Lisa was the temporary keeper of the street-level keys. She led the way to the surface, ahead of Fallon and Martin and their precious counterfeit cargo. Mason followed behind. He and Kendrick and Warwick had come in a dark blue van with Transport for London stenciled in white on the sides and back; it was parked outside the station, near the corner of Surrey Street and the Strand. Lisa unlocked and pulled back the accordion gating for Fallon and Martin. Mason had a cell phone to his ear. As he brushed past Lisa, for all social purposes invisible in her coveralls, just a faceless Underground drone in a hardhat, she heard him say:
"-- take care of him, Rose. We're on our way."
She knew she knew who he was. She fought to stay still as a rictus chill ran through her.
Not "get the nanites, Rose." Take care of him.
Kill him.
Kill Rippner.
She watched Mason watch Fallon and Martin load the crated fake Icarus into the back of the blue TFL van. Possibly because of the fear she felt, she made up her mind, acted. Possibly because of how Jackson had kissed her so tenderly before he left for the Mandarin Oriental, she stepped away from the open gate, onto the sidewalk outside the station. You've helped me again, his eyes had said. Thank you. He was no longer a monster. Quite likely, he never had been. He was simply hers.
And possibly she moved now because the timing was so ineluctably perfect: she was near the corner of Surrey Street, and a taxi was approaching on the Strand. Mason couldn't see her; he was with Fallon and Martin at the open back of the van. She simply held out her arm, and the cab nuzzled to the curb and stopped. The driver didn't look twice at her worker's garb when she got in.
Lisa took off the hardhat. Her hands were shaking. "British Museum. Please."
*****
Rosemary Wheeler's first words to Jackson Rippner, as she pointed the Walther at the back of his dark-haired head in a ground-floor office in the west wing of the British Museum, after-hours and night-lit, were less clever than she might have preferred and certainly more honestly incredulous than she would have believed possible:
"A desk clerk, Jackson--?"
He was standing, as already indicated, with his back to her; he was placing in a wall safe behind the office's antique oaken desk the container of modeling compound that he had just taken from Wheeler's and Roland Mason's suite at the Mandarin Oriental.
He left the safe open; he turned slowly, keeping his hands in plain sight. In the light shining from the top of the stained-glass shade of the lamp on the desk, his were still the most amazingly blue eyes she had ever seen.
Even from across the room. Rosemary left the doorway and came closer.
She limped slightly as she did. Rippner noticed; he smirked. "How's the leg, Rosie?"
"You did quite a bit of damage to my right hamstring, Jack: you know that."
"Maybe it was you stabbing me-- quite literally-- in the back." He cocked his head, his smirk becoming a mockingly apologetic smile. "I wasn't as neat as I might have been. I take it you're here for the modeling compound I just stole back from you," he added, casually.
"Mm hm. And the nanites you've got in that safe, too, if you please."
Rippner didn't move. He regarded the muzzle of the pistol. "You wouldn't shoot me over two jars of goo, would you, Rose?"
"No. But I might shoot you over a desk clerk." She steadied the gun at his head and said, thoughtfully: "A bullet in one of those beautiful blue eyes--"
His left eye. Rippner didn't blink. A frown flickered on his brow and vanished; other than that, he watched her calmly.
"No," Rosemary said again, more softly. She was, she knew, one of two, maybe three, women who would have seen his expression change. "You broke my heart; let me return the favor."
She aimed the gun at Rippner's chest, at his left pectoral, and squeezed the trigger.
Blam.
*****
*****