A man lay in the middle of the room—half on the floor and half on a mattress, as if he were too weary to find his way to bed. Maya grabbed the man’s arms and dragged him out the doorway and into the garden. She was coughing hard and her eyes were filled with tears, but she could see that the unconscious man was Gabriel’s friend Jugger. Straddling his body, she slapped him hard across the face. Jugger’s eyes fluttered open and he started coughing.
“Listen to me!” Maya said. “Is there anyone else in the house?”
“Roland. Sebastian…” Jugger began coughing again.
“What happened? Are they dead?”
“Two men came in a van. Guns. Put us on the floor. Gave us injections…”
She returned to the house, took a deep breath, and stepped back inside. Crawling like an animal, she moved down the hallway and headed up the narrow staircase. One part of her mind was clear while her lungs struggled to breathe. Killing the Free Runners with guns or knives would have attracted too much attention from the authorities. Instead the Tabula mercenaries had drugged the three men and set fire to the dilapidated house. Now they were watching the front door and the entrance to the garden to make sure no one escaped. The next morning, firemen would find what was left of the bodies in the smoldering ruins. The local council would sell the land to a speculator and the London papers would run the story in the back pages: Three Die in Illegal Dwelling.
Maya found Sebastian in an upstairs bedroom, grabbed his arms, and dragged him down the stairs to the garden. When she returned the third time, she could see flames flashing in the darkness, burning the floorboards beneath a parlor chair, reaching up the walls to touch the banisters. There was black smoke at the top of the stairs, and she was completely blind when she reached out and found Roland’s body in the garret bedroom. Pull and stop. Pull and stop again. Sight and sound disappeared and she became a small fragment of consciousness passing through the smoke.
Maya burst out the back door, let go of Roland’s body, and collapsed on the muddy soil of the garden. After several minutes of coughing and gasping for air, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. Jugger was still conscious, talking with slurred speech about the injections. Maya touched the chests of the two other Free Runners and felt them breathing. Still alive.
She was carrying the gun, but using it would be dangerous in this neighborhood. Hollis had once explained that there were so many handguns in Los Angeles that New Year’s Eve celebrations sounded like a firefight in a war zone. In London, the sound of a gun was an unusual occurrence. If she fired her revolver, half the people living around the square would hear it and immediately call the police.
The house continued to burn, and there was a flash of orange flame as the window curtains in Jugger’s bedroom caught fire. Standing up, Maya approached the back door and felt a wave of heat pushing through the cold night air. As her breathing returned to normal, she remembered overhearing a discussion between her father and Mother Blessing about silencers. Gun silencers were illegal in Europe, hard to find and awkward to carry. Sometimes it was easier to improvise a substitute.
Maya searched the backyard and found some overflowing rubbish bins near the wall. She rummaged through the garbage until she discovered an empty two-liter water bottle and a wad of pink rubbery material that looked like carpet padding. Maya stuffed bits of padding into the bottle, then inserted the gun barrel into the opening. An old roll of tape was on the steps near the back door, and she wound it tightly around the gun and the plastic bottle. Jugger was sitting up and staring at her from the other side of the yard.
“What…what are you doing?”
“Wake up your friends. We’re getting out of here.”
Clutching her improvised weapon, she climbed back over the wall, hurried down an alleyway, and approached the back of the delivery van. A side window was rolled halfway down to let out cigarette smoke, and she could hear the two men talking.
“How long do we have to wait?” the driver asked. “I’m getting hungry.”
The other man laughed. “Then go back into the house. Some meat cooking there…”
Maya stepped up to the driver’s window, raised the gun, and fired. The first bullet blew out the bottom of the plastic bottle and cracked through the glass. The gun made a sound like hands clapping—two quick shots, and then silence.
30
A n hour before his flight reached Heathrow Airport, Hollis stepped into one of the airplane toilets and changed his clothes in the cramped space. He felt conspicuous returning to his seat wearing a navy blue shirt and pants, but people were groggy from the overnight flight and no one appeared to notice. His old clothes were stuffed into a small bag that would be left on the plane. Everything he needed to enter England undetected was inside a manila envelope that he carried under his arm.
During his last few days in New York, Hollis had received an e-mail from Linden telling him that his work was done and it was time to come to England. The French Harlequin wasn’t able to find a merchant ship that would illegally transport Hollis to Europe. It was possible that the Tabula had inserted Hollis’s biometric information into the security data bank that fed information to customs officials throughout the world. When Hollis arrived at Heathrow Airport, he might activate a security alert and be detained by the authorities. Linden told Hollis there was another way—an off-the-Grid way—to enter Britain, but that would require some skillful maneuvering at the terminal.
The American Airlines flight landed on time at Heathrow, and the people sitting around Hollis began switching on their cell phones. Security guards watched the passengers carefully as they walked across the tarmac, then were loaded into airport transit buses and taken to terminal four.
Since Hollis wasn’t transferring to another flight, he needed to take another bus across the sprawling airport to passport control at terminal one. He went into the men’s room for a few minutes, then came back out and mingled with passengers arriving from different flights. Gradually, he was beginning to understand the clever simplicity of Linden’s plan. He was no longer surrounded by anyone who knew that he had just arrived from New York. The other passengers were tired and passive and ready to leave the terminal.
He got on another transit bus that was going to terminal one. When the bus was filled with people, he took a bright yellow safety vest out of the envelope and put it on. The blue shirt, pants, and vest made him look exactly like an airport employee. A card dangling around his neck held a fake ID card, but that really wasn’t necessary. The drones working at the airport looked only at the surface, searching for quick clues to put each stranger into a category.
When the bus reached terminal one, the other passengers got out and hurried through the electric door. Hollis pretended to talk into his mobile phone as he stood on the narrow sidewalk in the loading area. Then he nodded to the bored security guard sitting inside at a desk, turned, and strolled away. He half expected emergency sirens to go off while police officers ran out waving guns, but no one stopped him. The airport’s high-tech security system had been defeated by an eight-dollar reflective vest bought at a bicycle shop in Brooklyn.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Hollis was sitting in a delivery van with Winston Abosa, a plump young man from Nigeria who had a soothing voice and a pleasant manner. Hollis gazed out the window as they drove into London. Although he had traveled through Mexico and Latin America, Hollis had never visited Europe. British roads had lots of roundabouts and zebra-striped pedestrian walkways. Most of the two-story redbrick houses had little gardens in back. Surveillance cameras were everywhere, focusing on the license plates of each passing vehicle.
The new landscape reminded Hollis of a passage from Sparrow’s book, The Way of the Sword. According to the Japanese Harlequin, a warrior had a big advantage if he was familiar with the city that would be his battleground. When the warrior suddenly had to fight in a new area, it was like waking up in the morning and finding yourself in a different room.
“Did you ever meet Vicki Fra
ser?” Hollis asked.
“Of course.” Winston drove carefully, with both hands on the steering wheel. “I have met all your friends.”
“Are they in England? I could never get an answer from my e-mails.”
“Miss Fraser, Miss Maya, and the little girl are in Ireland. Mr. Gabriel is…” Winston hesitated. “Mr. Gabriel is in London.”
“What happened? Why aren’t they together?”
“I am just an employee, sir. Mr. Linden and Madam pay me well, and I try not to question their decisions.”
“What are you talking about? Who is Madam?”
Winston looked tense. “I know nothing, sir. Mr. Linden will answer all your questions.”
Winston parked the van near Regent’s Canal and led Hollis down back streets to the crowded arcades and courtyards of Camden Market. Following a zigzag route to avoid the cameras, they reached the entrance to the catacombs beneath the elevated railway tracks. An elderly British woman who had dyed her hair a pinkish-white color sat beside a sign that offered her services as a tarot reader. Winston dropped a ten-pound note on the woman’s folding table. As she reached for the money, Hollis saw a small radio device concealed in her right hand. The old woman was the first line of defense against unwelcome visitors.
Winston walked down a tunnel and they entered a shop filled with drums and African statues. There was a banner at one end of the room that concealed a steel door to a hidden apartment. “Tell Mr. Linden I’ll be here in the shop,” Winston said. “If you want anything, let me know.”
Hollis found himself in a hallway that led to four rooms. No one was in the first room, but Linden sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. Hollis made a quick evaluation of the French Harlequin. Some of the big men Hollis had fought in Brazil were bullies, eager to use their size against a smaller opponent. Linden weighed at least 250 pounds, but there was nothing swaggering in his appearance or behavior. He was a calm, quiet man whose eyes seemed to notice everything.
“Good morning, Monsieur Wilson. I assume everything was satisfactory at the airport?”
Hollis shrugged. “It took me a while to find the employee exit. After that, it was easy. Winston was parked down the street in the van.”
“Would you like some coffee or a cup of tea?”
“I want to see Vicki. Winston said she was in Ireland.”
“Please sit down.” Linden gestured to the opposite chair. “A great deal has happened in the last ten days.”
Hollis put down the manila envelope that had contained his disguise and sat on the chair. Linden got up, plugged in an electric kettle, and measured coffee grounds into a French press. He kept glancing at Hollis as if he were a boxer evaluating a new opponent on the other side of the ring.
“Are you tired from the flight, Monsieur Wilson?”
“I’m okay. This country is just a ‘different room.’ That’s all. I’ve got to adjust to the changes.”
Linden looked surprised. “You’ve read Sparrow’s book?”
“Sure. Is that against the Harlequin rules?”
“Not at all. I had the book translated into French and published by a small press in Paris. Maya’s father met Sparrow in Tokyo. And I met his son before he was killed by the Tabula.”
“Yeah, I know. Let’s talk about that later. When am I going to see Vicki, Maya, and Gabriel? Your e-mail said you’d answer all my questions when I got here.”
“Vicki and Maya are on an island off the west coast of Ireland. Maya is guarding Matthew Corrigan.”
Hollis laughed and shook his head. “Well, that’s a surprise. So where has Gabriel’s father been hiding all these years?”
“It’s just his shell—his empty body. Matthew crossed over to the First Realm and something went wrong. He hasn’t come back.”
“What’s the First Realm? I don’t know all this stuff.”
“L’enfer,” Linden said, and then realized that Hollis didn’t know French. “The underworld. Hell.”
“But Vicki’s all right?”
“I’m assuming she is. Mother Blessing, an Irish Harlequin, left a satellite phone with Maya. During the last few days, we’ve called and called, but no one has answered. Madam was quite annoyed about this. Right now, she’s traveling back to the island.”
“Maya told me about Mother Blessing. I thought she was dead.”
Linden poured boiling water into the French press. “I can assure you that Madam is very much alive.”
“And what about Gabriel? Can I see him? Winston said he was in London.”
“Mother Blessing brought Gabriel down to London, and then he was lost.”
Hollis twisted around in his seat to look at Linden. “What are you talking about?”
“Our Traveler went searching for his father in the First Realm. He’s still alive, but he also hasn’t returned.”
“So where’s the body?”
“Why don’t you have some coffee first.”
“I don’t want any goddamn coffee. Where’s Gabriel? He’s my friend.”
Linden shrugged his massive shoulders. “Go down the hallway….”
Hollis left the kitchen and walked down the hallway to a shabby little room where Gabriel lay on a bed. The Traveler’s body was limp and unresponsive—as if he was trapped within the deepest level of sleep. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Hollis touched the Traveler’s hand. Although he knew that Gabriel probably couldn’t hear anything, he felt like speaking to him.
“Hey, Gabe. This is your friend Hollis. Don’t worry. I’m going to protect you.”
“Good. That’s exactly what we want.” Hollis turned around and saw Linden standing in the doorway. “We’ll pay you five hundred pounds a week.”
“I’m not a mercenary and don’t want to be treated like one. I’ll guard Gabriel because he’s my friend. But first I need to make sure that Vicki’s all right. You got that?”
Hollis had always favored the aggressive approach when someone was trying to order him around, but now he wasn’t so sure. Linden bent down and drew a 9mm semiautomatic pistol from an ankle holster. Seeing the gun and the cold expression on the Harlequin’s face, Hollis thought he was dead. This bastard is going to kill me.
Linden reversed the handgun and offered Hollis the grip. “Do you know how to use this, Monsieur Wilson?”
“Sure.” Hollis took the automatic from Linden and hid it beneath his shirt.
“Mother Blessing will reach the island tomorrow. She’ll talk to Mademoiselle Fraser and see if she wants to travel to London. I’m sure that you’ll see the young lady in a few days.”
“Thank you.”
“Never thank a Harlequin. I’m not doing this because I like you. We need another fighter and you’ve arrived at the right time.”
Hollis and Winston Abosa walked up Chalk Farm Road. Most of the shops on the street were selling different styles of rebellion: black leather motorcycle pants, vampire Gothic dresses, or T-shirts with obscene messages. Punks with lime green hair and pierced eyebrows huddled in little groups, enjoying the stares of the passing citizens.
They bought cheese, bread, milk, and coffee, and then Winston took Hollis to an unmarked door between a tattoo parlor and a shop that sold fairy wings. A room with a bed and a television was on the second floor. The bathroom and kitchen were down the hall.
“This is where you’ll be staying,” Winston said. “If you have any questions, I’m at the drum shop all day long.”
After Winston left, Hollis sat on the bed and ate some bread and cheese. The smell of curry came from somewhere in the building. Cars honked their horns out on the road. Back in New York he could find a way out, but now the Vast Machine surrounded him. Everything would be all right if he could hold Vicki Fraser and hear her voice. Her love made him feel stronger. Love increased you. It connected you to the Light.
Before he went down the hall to take a shower, he stuck a piece of chewing gum in the gap between the floor and the lower edge of the door. The shower s
tall had mold around the drain, and the water was lukewarm. When he dressed and returned to his room, he noticed that the gum had been pulled in two.
Placing the soap and towel on the floor, Hollis reached beneath his shirt and pulled out the automatic. He had never killed before, but now it was going to happen. He was sure that the Tabula were waiting for him. They would attack the moment he came through the door.
Holding the gun in his right hand, he inserted the key into the doorknob as quietly as possible. One, Hollis counted. Two. Three. He turned the doorknob, raised the gun, and charged into the room.
Maya stood alone beside the window.
31
E arly the next morning, Maya climbed up onto the roof of the old horse hospital at the center of the Camden Market. The sick horses and the slaughterhouse had vanished at the end of the Victorian era, and now boutique shops selling organic soap and Tibetan prayer rugs occupied the three-story building. No one noticed Maya as she stood next to a creaky weather vane of a galloping horse.
She watched Hollis walk through the market and enter the brick tunnel that led to the catacombs. Linden had spent the night at the drum shop, and Hollis would let her know when the French Harlequin left the secret apartment.
During the last twenty-four hours, she had been continually moving around London. As Vine House burst into flames, she helped Jugger and his friends get out of the back garden. The four of them had found a taxi near Vauxhall Bridge, and the driver had taken them to an empty apartment in Chiswick owned by Roland’s brother. The Free Runners were used to living off the Grid, and all of them promised to stay hidden until the authorities stopped investigating the two dead men in the florist’s van.
Gabriel had told Jugger he was staying at a drum shop in the Camden Market. Maya assumed that both Linden and Mother Blessing were guarding the Traveler. For the rest of the day, she watched the entrance to the catacombs until Hollis arrived at the shop. Mother Blessing would have killed her for disobedience, but Hollis was a friend. He would arrange everything so she could safely see Gabriel.