Jack Be Nimble: Gargoyle (20 page)

He shuddered as Alonzo’s hands rested on his shoulders. The smaller man turned him about, and led him onto the balcony. Jack let out a jagged sob as he leaned into the balustrade. The sunlight trembled as it touched his hair.

Alonzo gripped his shoulder firmly. Below, on the street, he could see Major Griffin marching purposefully toward the apartment’s entrance. She was carrying a briefcase or bag of some kind. He squeezed Jack’s shoulder tightly. “You’ll be all right, my friend.”

He watched Jack shake there for a few minutes. He never moved from his friend’s side. Nothing he thought of to say would be the right, exact thing, Alonzo knew.

Finally, Jack shrugged away from the stone railing and walked back into the house. Alonzo followed him to the couch, where Jack sat, staring at a small crystal bird on the coffee table before him. At length he turned. “What sort of job did you say it was? A kidnapping?” His voice sounded a shade closer to normal.

Alonzo pursed his lips. “Christine Windsor’s been abducted.”

He couldn’t have gotten a stronger effect had he dashed a pail of water upon his friend. Their eyes locked over the couch, Alonzo actually
saw
the moment when Jack’s mental wheels shrieked back into operation.

The other man was instantly electrified. His eyes darted around the room. His hands clenched. Alonzo could almost hear Jack take a slow, small step back from whatever precipice on which he’d been balancing.

“You said . . .” He swallowed. Began again. “Who’s our tech?”

“Steve.”

“Materiel?”

“Ian.”

“Sniper?”

“Sol.”

“Medic?”

“Also Sol.” Alonzo hesitated. “Brad’s the other sniper.”

“His father won’t like that.”

“When was the last time you visited the Joss House to ask permission?”

Jack made a face. “You said something about Pete?”

Alonzo nodded. “He’s on the West Coast. This thing is going to get wider.”

“Let’s go,” Jack said. He stood, unevenly, reaching for the closet. “You still a fair lockpick?”

The smaller man grinned tentatively. “You still the world’s worst pistol shot?”

Jack almost smiled, but it never got as far as the corners of his eyes. He shrugged into his jacket. “This is terrible. How’s her father?”

“Will’s frantic, but he’s sure she never left England. Everybody else thinks otherwise, that’s why he called for me, for us—for you.”

“Well, come on then, help me break into my own house.” The two men walked briskly toward the trapdoor. Jack stopped halfway and turned toward his friend. His eyes were still haunted, but he was closer to an honest smile. “You brought Greta flowers, didn’t you?”

Alonzo smiled, more to himself, and kept walking. He felt like he’d just pulled the sword from the stone.

Into the Woods

Studio City, California

11AM

Mercedes heard the truck coming long before it made an appearance in front of her quiet, shaded house. Climbing gear, water, and snack bars went into a small backpack, along with extra batteries and memory for the cameras. She picked her favorite digital, a Nikon D3X, and an old-school non-digital as well. Some of the best shots came from the old film cameras.

Her luggage sat unpacked on her bedroom floor. It would have to wait a day; the raptor center called while she and Irene were still in the airport, fishing for their suitcases. The golden eagle chicks were starting to hatch, and the young ornithologists currently on-site were beside themselves. Mercedes was going to have to sprint—literally—if she was going to make any pictures of the event.

Not that she would mind; the plane ride left kinks and knots in her legs that only a good hard run could work out. Mercedes set her cross-trainers next to her climbing shoes, and wriggled into a pair of thick canvas pants that could take a thorn or a rock’s edge well enough. Must remember to dress in layers, she thought, pulling on a fleece top. The San Jacintos could still freeze this late in the spring; she wedged a set of Softsilk thermal underwear into the backpack.

With any luck, she wouldn’t need to stay in the mountains overnight. The Raptor Center at the University of California, Davis, had a helicopter pilot coming down-state with a load of professional birdwatchers, and she could catch a ride back into the city before midnight.

She hesitated over her cell phone. There wasn’t room for it in the pack, and the battery charge was two weeks old. Besides, she was going into the woods, and Mercedes doubted the Forest Service had gotten around to installing cell towers in the San Jacintos.

Nobody besides Irene and the kids at the studio knew she was back in town, anyway.

Marty’s Ford Bronco rumbled to a stop in front of her house. Didn’t she pay him enough to buy a new truck, at least one with a muffler? At least he had the manners not to honk, she thought as she keyed the house alarm. Its reassuring light blinked from green to red.

*

Under the shade of an anonymous eucalyptus further down the block, two unremarkable, plain-dressed men in a gray Audi watched the woman smile a greeting and climb into the truck.

“You see that? Man, am I glad we saved her for last.”

Both men dressed in L.A. casual, yet neither wore a tan—or sunglasses, for that matter; their expressionless eyes drank in the Southern California light in all its hues of harsh and soft. The driver started the car, but waited until the Bronco was nearly out of sight before following.

“Sure,” he said. “But that rack has got to be after-market. They’re all plastic around here.”

“Don’t kid yourself. She’s real. She could strangle a horse with those legs.”

“Huh.”

“At the gym the other day she did a pyramid set on the bench press. Eight reps at one thirty-five, six reps at one fifty, four reps at one eighty, and three reps at one ninety- five.”

“Huh.”

“Leg press, too. Topped out at six hundred pounds. Telling you, could strangle a horse between those thighs.” He was silent for a moment. “I hope she tries to run.”

Chutes and Ladders

Paris

9AM

Why on earth hadn’t she demanded they drive the car? Major Griffin glowered and quickened her pace to keep up with the two men in front of her. Flynn insisted upon strolling–practically marching--to the café, threading more or less straight through the crowds that grew thicker and thicker.

Paris was finally awake. Major had been assigned in the French capitol briefly during her second year in the diplomatic corps, though her schedule at the embassy offices had thankfully precluded her venturing forth before noon. Now, struggling to match pace with the two Americans, she was amazed at the volume of people on the streets. Vendors called out to passing
mamans
whose arms were full of the day’s groceries. Taxis blared through clusters of pedestrians, leaving inky, staccato marks where they’d tapped their brakes. She passed a young man busy stapling
yet another
poster onto one of the cylindrical billboards that graced nearly every street corner. Such noise. A wonder the city didn’t deafen itself.

Flynn led them around an aproned man who was positioning chairs around small tables at a streetside restaurant. Was this the one? Obviously not, as the American kept walking. Why a café? Her orders were elementary: collect Flynn and the others back at the hotel, then return to London. His Majesty had mentioned she’d be required to improvise considerably while assigned to Alonzo Noel, but Major Griffin had simply nodded and taken that to mean she’d be snared into acting as tour guide for the group if they ever actually arrived in London. Where they were to
consult
her superiors on the search for the Princess. Consult. A Hollywood actor and his ratty accomplice? Doubtful, but the mission had come directly from William, the king. Under any other circumstance—

First the girl selling flowers and now, off to a café for a late lunch. They were bloody wasting all this time.

Major Griffin closed the distance between herself and the two men in time to hear the shorter one make an exasperated noise. “Listen, Jack. I didn’t want everybody to meet at your place. I got that itchy feeling, so I sent ‘em all to Vincenzo’s. Maybe I’m paranoid. Who could know we’re in town?”

Jack Flynn didn’t say anything. The man was far less than Griffin expected; unshaven, a bit listless and dissipated, though he looked to be in above-average physical condition–no doubt thanks to a personal trainer or some such. He seemed preoccupied, eyes darting apprehensively at the faces in the crowd. Flynn hadn’t said more than two dozen words to the major at his apartment, and then she’d had to wait nearly two hours while he’d attended to who knew what on a lower floor of his suite. The Major sniffed. Actors. She’d never met a group more emotionally flat or uninteresting. The rest of the motley group would no doubt prove similar.

“Here, we should see them any minute. They took our old table at the edge of the balcony—”

Alonzo’s phone chimed.

“Yeah, hello.” He said. “Yeah. About another minute, I can almost see Solomon’s big bald head. Good, tell Mama Spiranza I’d like an omelet–what?” He pressed a button on the folding phone and waited a few moments. “Encrypted. All clear.” His tone changed instantly. “You’re sure? No, we’re just around the corner, by the river.” He grimaced and rolled his eyes at Jack, who shook his head. “Okay. The minute I call again, clear out. Standard evasion, rendezvous at Jack’s.”

He snapped the phone shut and pursed his lips. “Just like old times, already,” he said to Jack as the three of them pressed into a vacant spot between two street vendors. “That was Ian on the restaurant’s special phone. Some of Vincenzo’s boys spotted a surveillance nest right across the street. At least two guys three stories up in some kind of hat shop. It was set up in a hurry, but professional. Curtains didn’t even move, that sort of thing.”

Major Griffin shifted her briefcase and frowned. “What are you saying, that--”

“Sorry, Major.” Jack leaned closer to Alonzo, his eyes hard. “Who?”

“Couldn’t be local intelligence; they all know Vincenzo.” Alonzo glanced at Griffin. “Vatican agent, Major. His café is like a fortress, and well-screened. Ultrasonics, the works. He’s got acoustic and infrared sensors set up in case of sniper activity, to tell where a shot comes from–that’s how he knows someone’s using a vibrational laser-listening device. Works the same as a laser rangefinder that a sniper would use to sight in on someone’s head. Vincenzo’s a genius.” He looked at Jack. “A safe place, with a hell of a good cook.”

“What else did he say?”

“Ten minutes after they sat down, somebody bounced a directional audial laser off the screen set up on the balcony. Vincenzo slipped a note to Solomon in his menu, and the four of them have been shooting the breeze for a couple hours, waiting for us. What do you think?”

“What do I think?” A long pause. Something like indecision crossed the American’s face, then his eyes narrowed. “Hat shop, third floor?” He glanced around for a street sign, and said, “All right, how about this: going to be four exits out of the place. One in front, two in back–one’ll be a fire escape–and a fourth through the attic, if they haven’t had it sealed off. Shops in this district share an attic crawlspace, locked from the inside.

“That’ll be mine. Give me, ah, a five minute head start, then tell everybody to get off the balcony and meet—where?”

“Your place?”

“Fine. Vincenzo’s men can monitor the front entrance on the street. Major, if you wouldn’t mind staying with Al and watching the back alley?”

Major Griffin took a breath. What were these two playing at? “I really don’t see much point.”

“You’re right; it’s probably nothing. Still,” Jack’s eyes glittered strangely. “Gives us a chance to practice, eh?”

The major nodded slowly. Something in Flynn’s demeanor had changed slightly, though she couldn’t put her finger on the exact inflection of voice or tone. He still looked flat and common.

Alonzo nodded sharply. “Good. You still want to meet at Vincenzo’s?”

“Mama Spiranza won’t like it if you let that omelet get cold.” Jack said, then hesitated. A pained expression crossed his face. “This still feels a little . . . off.”

His friend prodded his shoulder. “Like she said, Jack,” he indicated the major. “Probably nothing. We’ll see you inside or at the café.”

Flynn leaned out toward the stream of pedestrians. With a single glance back at Alonzo and a still-dubious Griffin, he slipped into that river of moving humanity, plunging quickly towards the row of shop faces nearly a block away.

“Hey Major, watch this,” Alonzo said as the other man departed. She looked from Jack to his grinning friend and back again, and almost missed it.

Amazing. It was the first time she suspected there was more to the two men than met the eye.

Approximately a dozen steps from them, Jack shrugged. Once, then again, and suddenly he changed. His stride shortened considerably, simultaneous with a change in posture and the angle of his whole body. He appeared smaller and more stout, slightly thicker through the neck and waist. The very manner in which he placed his feet altered as well. Another step, and Jack had shed his short jacket, then reversed it and began tying it about his waist.

To a casual observer, it might have appeared as though the man had briefly stumbled. For Major Griffin, it was as though a subtle yet absolute transformation had taken place. General characteristics were unaltered, of course. His hair and such were the same, but if she had glanced away or perhaps even blinked, the major was certain she’d have convinced herself she was looking at a wholly different man.

The crowd swallowed him as he shrugged again, and practical invisibility became part of the major’s reality.

Alonzo looked at her. “Classic. I love it when he does that.” He motioned for her to accompany him down a nearby alley.

“One moment.” Griffin lingered at the entrance, vainly searching for the American. “That was bloody incredible.” Perhaps this would make for an interesting assignment, after all. “And what was all that business about the entrances to the hat shop? A shared attic? Has he been there before?”

The small man raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know. Jack never was much for hats. He probably came across the zoning plans for this block some time ago. Most of these buildings would qualify as landmarks back in the States.”

“And he’d remember such an esoteric detail?”

Now it was Alonzo’s turn to shrug. “Jack remembers all sorts of stuff. Let’s go.”

*

“
Bonjour, mademoiselle. Où sont les toilettes?”
Jack smiled and moved quickly through the store at the young cashier’s direction, past racks and rows of headgear. It was a large shop, and customer flow had reached its peak. He wasn’t sure why, but he’d never liked wearing a hat. Not that he was totally opposed to the idea.

He sidled past the doors to the restroom and silently ascended the stairs at the rear of the shop. The rooms on the second floor were well-organized, and he could move quickly. Between the rooms of neatly-spaced sewing machines were racks of raw materials–orderly stacks and sqares of satin, felt, velvet, and grosgrain, and bins of straight pins and paper-covered wire.

He walked past two busy Asian women, their backs to the hall. Jack wove around a draft table littered with the equipment necessary to design and trim millinery, and found the door to the adjacent shop behind a bolt of stiff, gray, two–ply buckram.

Like many of the shops that altered or designed their own clothing, the manufacturing floors of the boutiques were linked with those of adjoining shops. The practical business of Parisian milliners allowed for their workers to move from station to station within each shop and, during the season when business flourished (thankfully for Jack, this
was
Paris) workers could move freely between the boutiques. Thus had the shop owners answered the equation of supply and demand and yet maintained a battalion of skilled craftsmen.

Only the storerooms above were isolated from the other boutiques, though each was accessible through the adjoining attic space. The fire escapes were another matter entirely.

Jack fought the urge to look up at the ceiling, towards the level where unknown men were spying on his friends. It didn’t make all that much sense, given the security in place across the street. Local talent–rogue agents, mercs for hire, whatever--would be aware Vincenzo’s restaurant had the tightest security and surveillance-detection equipment that Vatican superiors could provide. That left intelligence officers with an organized government behind them—no, too obvious—or rank amateurs.

Yet to set up an observation nest so quickly opposite the balcony, whoever it was had to be stone cold professional, not to say accustomed to the territory.

Jack took the staircase quietly, practically mincing up the steps to the storeroom of the shop adjacent to the one occupied by the watchers. He found the trapdoor in the ceiling–secured with a simple hasp from below--and eased it up and open.

The crawlspace beyond was wide enough for him to stand and spread his arms. There were sooty, thin skylights intermittently placed along the roof’s peak, allowing narrow slits of sunlight to angle down. Jack followed their path, noting the swirling dust motes and footprints along the floor. Two men, moving fast. From their tracks, Jack judged them to be wearing soft athletic shoes. Comfort and speed. These two knew what they were doing.

Craftsmen.

Silently, silently now, Jack maneuvered up into the attic. The air was stagnant, numb, full of the smell of old wood and the tinny, metallic murmuring from machinery and artisans below. A line of insulation vertically in the wall marked where the first boutique began, and then he saw where the trapdoor lay open, swung up and back, flush with the floor.

Feeling for the weight of his handgun, Jack knelt down and placed his head close to the door. He barely breathed. On the floor below, sideways in his field of vision, two men sat with their backs to the trapdoor on either side of a mounted parabolic directional mike.

One of them, in headphones and a dark jacket that reminded Jack of the kind orchestral conductors wore, only minus the tails, shook his head and muttered something to the other, who bent over a phone.

“No sir, they’re still talking about some kind of . . . fishing trip the fat one and the Asian took in the Czech Republic. The fat one is working at a portable computer, but we can’t visually confirm what’s on the screen. No sign of the other Americans or the British woman.” The speaker was probably American–Midwest, Jack decided, though echoes in the empty storeroom made it difficult to make out. He was a pale man with a small, squarish jaw, a broad forehead, and sunken, fleshy eyes. As he listened to whoever it was giving orders on the other end of the phone he played with a double folding blade, the kind Americans called a butterfly knife, flipping it open and closed, open and closed. Jack licked his lips. In the Philippines, where such weapons were conceived, they were called bente nwebes–29's–and he’d seen the little knives thrown with enough force to drive through a silver dollar.

From the look of the youth on the phone, he knew just how to make that happen.

“No sir, no sign at all. No. The two Americans had some sort of disagreement in Flynn’s apartment this morning, and that’s the last we’ve gotten of them.