Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (91 page)

 
          
Rowan's
dissertation was solid, cautious stuff, but the lemon-juice notes were far less
so. In them, she covered names, dates, places, that Colin had thought hidden or
lost forever
—
documenting the failed occult ritual that had stranded Hess
in England; the secret talks with Dulles that began in Switzerland under the
guise of meetings of the BIS, the Bank for International Settlements; the
Thule Group's transfer to America. She went on to document ties between the
Peronistas,
Colonia Dignitad,
and important members of both American
political parties
—
if even half of what Rowan had written here were published,
she'd be defending against libel actions well into the next century, whether it
was true or not.

 
          
And
the picture she painted with her collage of names and dates was worthy of the
wildest conspiracy theory.

 
          
But
haven't conspiracy theories been discounted lately? As if someone
—
or something
—
wants to make the whole idea
of conspiracies into a joke? So that any conspiracy, no matter how real, is
automatically questionable at the moment of its disclosure. . . . Between
Watergate and
Roswell
, nobody even cares what the
truth is, anymore.
Reflexively,
Colin groped for his pipe before remembering
—
as he always did
—
that he didn't have it. He'd
given it up years ago, at the combined nagging of Claire and his doctor
—
a pity, as this was what the
great detective Sherlock Holmes would certainly have called a "three-pipe
problem."

 
          
He
took off his glasses and fussed with them, polishing the lenses and then
settling them back on his nose. Sometimes they proved to be an adequate
substitute, giving him something to fiddle with while he gathered his thoughts.
He put them back on his nose and peered at the pages on the desk. Not tonight,
though. Tonight nothing would help.

 
          
His
watch beeped, reminding him it was time for his pills. Colin sighed, and
rummaged through his bag until he found the bottle. His life was circumscribed
by medical advice
—
the alchemy of Time making him no longer Roland but Don
Quixote.

 
          
For
a moment Colin thought of calling Claire now instead of tomorrow. At least
Colin could share his thoughts with someone who could understand the horror and
the powerlessness he felt. It was something he would have to do soon
—
if Rowan had been seized,
her family would also be at risk. But Colin dreaded having to tell her
—
as if ignorance alone could
be a shield against whatever evil had taken Rowan.

 
          
Evil.

 
          
There.
He'd said the word, if only to himself.
Evil.

 
          
It
was not a fashionable word these days. In a world where children were
slaughtered in the dozens, the thousands, by gun and bomb and knife, the word
"atrocity" came glibly to people's lips, but somehow the recognition
of evil had fallen out of fashion. The horrors of the modern world were bad
luck, business as usual, "age-old racial tension," political
terrorism, crime . . . but never Evil. It was as if one color in the palette of
human understanding had been excised, lest . . . what?

 
          
Lest
there be hope?

 
          
To
accept the existence of Evil was to believe in its opposite
—
to hope, to believe that the
Evil could be fought.

 
          
As
Colin must fight now, though his years were like a persistent weight, and his
own destroying angel beat within his chest, always ready to betray him. People
spoke of the burden of age without understanding where the cliche had come from.
Colin knew age as a thing apart: a constant heaviness sapping the vitality of
the man he remembered being. Now the time had come when
—
though, even with his heart
condition, in good health "for his age"
—
he must plan his days like a
master strategist; husbanding his resources, committing his forces with
caution, lest he be left, aching and exhausted, his work undone.

 
          
He
could not afford to leave this work undone.

 
          
Colin
removed his glasses and rubbed his weary eyes. He didn't doubt any of what Rowan
had written in these pages. That was the worst of it. To believe, and to know
that honest men did nothing, was an agony greater than any defeat. . . .

 
          
He
set the manuscript aside and picked up the notes that Dylan had found for him.
There wasn't much here, only a name
—
Caradoc Buckland
—
and jotted reminders of the
questions he'd asked. Good student? Good work record? Drug use?
Hospitalization? Arrests or convictions? Close friends? Family? Outstanding
loans? Buckland had said he was calling from
Washington
D.C.
, but the location
—
like the name the man had
given
—
might
well be fictitious. It wasn't much to go on.

 
          
Deep
inside Colin, some fearful part cried out that he was old, he was tired. That
he had done enough for any lifetime
—
won enough victories, made
enough sacrifices. That he should be permitted to pass this battle on to a
younger man.

 
          
One
phone call would do it. He would call Nathaniel, tell him what he knew, pass on
the blasphemous crucifix, the key, and Rowan's paper. Nathaniel would act.
Colin would have done what Dylan needed.

 
          
But
he would not have done what Dylan had asked of him
—
or what he knew he must do,
even if he were to die in the attempt.

 
          
He
had been summoned to battle one last time, and though his esoteric armor was
gone, he had been armed with a mighty weapon: the knowledge of a secular crime.
Properly handled, Rowan's abduction could be used to expose and destroy the
exoteric components of this Shadow Lodge
—
if through nothing more
than the credence it lent to her dissertation. Though such an exposure would
not be a conclusive victory for the Light, it would be a significant one. And
knowing what he knew, Colin might be able to use it to win Rowan's life
—
if she were still alive.

 
          
Nathaniel
could not
—
but Colin might. His enemies knew him of old, and their
memories were long.

 
          
He
sighed, and prepared himself for the battle that would be fought not with
strength but with cunning, and with luck. He must check every clue that Rowan
had left behind, looking for a place to start. And his soul told him that he
must check, as well, to see if
—
beyond expectation, beyond sense
—
Toller Hasloch had somehow
survived.

 
          
Perhaps,
in an odd way, the thought gave Colin hope. If Hasloch were somehow alive after
what he had done, then Colin was spared the guilt of the deed, if not of the
intention.

 
          
But
that hope, unworthy and conflicted as it was, paled beside the honest fear of
what Hasloch could have become in the intervening years
—
of what the Thule Group
certainly had become
—
if Colin had too easily assumed victory over its brightest
fallen star.

WASHINGTON
,
D.C.
,
WEDNESDAY,
OCTOBER 26,  1998

0 villains, vipers, damn'd without redemption! Dogs, easily
won to fawn on any man! Snakes, in my heart-blood warm'd, that sting my heart!
Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!

—
William SHAKESPEARE,
Richard
II,
III.II.129

 
          
IT
TOOK NINIAN APPROXIMATELY A DAY AND A HALF WITH A PENDULUM and maps on a
gradually increasing scale to link the key with a safe-deposit box in a bank in
Manhattan. The key had a relationship to its lock: by the logic that drove
Ninian's gift, psychometry, the two were still connected.

 
          
By
that time Claire and Justin had arrived in
Glastonbury
—
Colin could not, in good
conscience, leave either unwarned.

 
          
Justin
took the news of Rowan's disappearance very badly. If Claire had not been there
to calm him down, he would certainly have gone to the police.
"How
could you have let her do it? Why doesn't someone
do
something?"
The
outcry of any anguished parent whose child had gone astray.

 
          
Dylan's
attempts to reassure him
—
to explain
—
were useless.

 
          
"Let
them do their work!" Claire rapped out sharply.

 
          
Justin,
who had been pacing the floor of Dylan's living room, rounded on her in
surprise. "Give me one good reason that I should! Palmer here didn't even
have the common decency to tell me she'd disappeared; I should
—
"

 
          
"If
you interfere, she will die," Claire said flatly.

 
          
Justin
Moorcock stared at her. Claire took a deep breath and continued.

 
          
"Justin,
you've known me for years. I've known Rowan since she was a little girl, and I
love her as much as you do. I know these people, Justin
—
they tried to kill me when I
was about Rowan's age, and Colin saved me then. Let him save Rowan now."

           
"Why doesn't someone do
something?" Justin demanded. But the fury was gone from his voice now. He
sat down on the couch. Claire put an arm around his shoulders and looked at
Colin pleadingly.

 
          
"We
are doing all we can," Colin told him gently. There was no need to tax
Justin with the fuller explanation of the powerful political protection the
Thulists could summon, of their expertise in hiding the proof of the cult's
existence.

 
          
"What
can I do?" Justin asked. "If money will help
—
"

 
          
"I
won't hesitate to ask for it," Colin told him firmly. "But right now
we need to get into Rowan's safe-deposit box in
New York
and find out what she's
left there for us
—
"

 
          
Claire
was watching him with an odd expression on her face.

 
          
"I
think I can help you out there, Colin."

 
          
All
five of them went down to
New York
to open the box, though
only Colin and Claire went to the bank itself. Claire was cosignatory on the
box; Rowan had rented it two years ago, something Claire had long since
forgotten about.

 
          
"She
fooled me completely," Claire said, a little bitterly. "I had no idea
she wanted it for something like this."

 
          
"Probably
she didn't know either, then," Colin said. "Two years ago would have
been before she started investigating the Thulists."

 
          
Or
would it?
he wondered, gazing down at the open box on the table between
them. Its contents were heartbreakingly pragmatic: another copy of her
dissertation, letters for Justin and Claire, a copy of her will. Rowan's notes
and correspondence were there as well, but, as Colin had expected, they did not
constitute anything that might interest the police, or comprise proof of a
kidnapping. The documents were only ominous if one understood what they
represented.

 
          
Caradoc
Buckland's signature was on a number of otherwise-innocuous letters bearing the
name of the Cincinnatus Group and an address in
Washington
,
D.C.

 
          
"Now
what?" Claire said, when Colin had read everything over twice and taken a
few notes.

 
          
"Now
comes the hard part. You stay here and keep Justin and Dylan out of trouble
—
Ninian may be of help there,
he seems like a sensible young man
—
and I go pay a call on some
old friends."

 
          
"God
be with you," Claire said solemnly, her face grave.

 
          
Colin
took the shuttle from JFK on Wednesday morning.
National
Airport
had been renamed for Ronald
Reagan last February, but the name change stuck about as well as changing
Sixth Avenue
in
Manhattan
to Avenue of the
Americas
. People used the old
familiar names in defiance of signage.

 
          
Washington
was just as he remembered
it: a city that seemed at times to be no more than a stage set, a backdrop for
implausible events. It was raining when he arrived, and that, too, matched his
memories.
Washington
, like
Berlin
, was a city best understood
in the rain. He took a taxi directly to his
Georgetown
destination, giving, out of
old habit, an intersection and not an address. The past seemed present once
more, and habits abandoned for decades had gained new currency. Once again,
Colin became the man he had abandoned, the one for whom he'd thought he had no
further use, once upon a time.

 
          
But
once upon a time could not last forever, and even the loveliest fairy tale had
to end.

 
          
With
the legendary city traffic, the ride took over an hour, even though Colin had
used the closer airport. The neighborhood slowly changed, becoming more
moneyed, until the street where the driver stopped at last was filled with
brass-plaqued brownstones whose tenants were wealthy and reclusive
organizations: law firms, consultants, other groups with less specific purposes.
Though long absent from the political chessboard, Colin recognized this
shadowland well: this was the intersection of wealth and power, a realm where
corruption flourished.

 
          
The
taxi stopped. Colin paid it off and watched it drive away before turning to
locate his destination. Some part of his mind insisted that it would have been
better to give an address several blocks away, to make the determination of
his destination even more difficult for the hunters, but he knew that was
pointless. No one was hunting him
—
yet. That would come only
after he stepped into the arena.

 
          
He
walked up the street and located his destination: a brownstone indistinguishable
from the others. The Cincinnatus Group was the only tenant.

 
          
Colin
had done his homework. The Cincinnatus Group was an advisory think-tank of the
sort frequently retained by the Administration to do in-depth research on
various unspecified issues. It was named for the legendary Roman general who
had been admired by George Washington
—
the one who had saved the
city, then returned to his plow. The civilian soldier had been an American
ideal, once upon a time.

 
          
When
there had still been American ideals.

 
          
Colin
mounted the steps. There was an engraved brass nameplate beside the door. The
door was locked; he pressed the bell beside it. To his mild surprise, the door
opened.

 
          
There
was one last moment when he could have turned and run. It was surprising how
strong the impulse was; as if he shared his body with a pragmatic animal
interested only in its own survival, a creature who knew that only danger lay
ahead.

 
          
But
he was not an animal. He was a man. Colin shrugged off the sensation of dread
and stepped over the threshold. The reception area was directly to his right.

 
          
Colin
walked through the archway under the politely inquiring gaze of a receptionist
who looked faintly disconcerted to see an unfamiliar face. The desk was bare of
anything that might suggest that she worked for a living; there was a
telephone, a Tiffany lamp, and a Georgian silver card receiver, nothing more.
The woman behind the desk was blond, fine-boned, and patrician, and looked as
if she'd be more at home on the runways of
Milan
than she was here. Her
pageboy bob almost
—
but not quite
—
concealed the button in her
ear and the wire that ran from it to a transceiver somewhere beneath her
jacket; a crack in the amiable facade, and proof that someone, somewhere, was
watching.

 
          
"May
I help you?" she asked. One hand was out of sight beneath the desktop
—
hovering, Colin had no
doubt, over a security alarm.

 
          
"I'm
here to see Mr. Buckland," Colin said.

 
          
"Yes,
of course, sir," she said, relieved. Both hands appeared on top of the
desk. "Who may I say is calling?"

 
          
"Colin
MacLaren."

 
          
She
spoke quietly into the telephone for a few seconds; Colin heard his own name
spoken. The receptionist hung up the phone and brightly invited Colin to take
off his coat and have a seat.

 
          
Colin
thought he preferred to stand, and to keep his coat. The blasphemous crucifix
was a cold weight in his jacket pocket bringing it here had been a risk, but
leaving it elsewhere would have been as much of one.

 
          
He
heard the rumble of an elevator through the walls of the old house, and a few
moments later, a young man
—
presumably Caradoc Buckland
—
appeared.

 
          
He
was not precisely what Colin had expected. Buckland was somewhere in his early
thirties, sleek and model-handsome, with dark brown hair cut fashionably short
and hazel eyes. He was dressed in the
Washington
uniform: a dark blue
blazer, maroon rep tie, and grey flannel slacks. Despite such scrupulous
conservativism, he wore a heavy gold hoop in his left ear and a massive gold
signet ring on his right hand.