No Hero (13 page)

“Anyway, not totally relevant. But basically the electricity reaches out of our reality into another one and pulls something through. The problem isn’t reaching out of our reality; it’s knowing where exactly you’re reaching into and what you’re going to pull out. So it’s nice to know someone else has tried it before. See, a spell’s like a map. It lets you know where your spell is going and what it’s going to bring back with it. If you just randomly open holes in reality you have no idea what might come through. Nasty stuff, often.”

“Chernobyl,” Tabitha says.

“Exactly.” Clyde is animated now. “See, Chernobyl wasn’t really a nuclear meltdown. That was the Russians trying to pioneer their own spell. Tried to punch a particularly tricky and experimental hole and it did not go quite as well as they had hoped.”

“Wait a second,” I say. I blink several times. The gears are turning. I feel like I can almost get a handle on this one. “You’re saying the Chernobyl accident was caused by a communist Harry Potter?”

“Little more complicated.” Tabitha gives a disingenuous shrug and seems about to leave it at that, but then can’t help herself. “Experienced bastards, actually. Too ballsy for their own good, though. Ended the magic arms race. Pretty much. No one wanted to mess then. Beginning of the end. For us. This place.”

Clyde nods. “After that nobody wanted to play magic anymore. Everyone pretty much just gathered up their marbles and went home. Which, you know, understandable. Bit knee-jerk perhaps. I mean, depends on your point of view. Made things harder for us, though.”

“Freak out,” Tabitha says. “Massive. Collective trousershitting.”

“So a lot fewer funds. And a lot fewer people hunting down the remaining grimoires,” Clyde says.

“Speaking of which...” I start.

“Yes,” Clyde says. “Well, basically, a grimoire is like an atlas. Or a travelogue. Big list of where someone’s spells went, what they brought back. So you can reproduce the effect if you want.”

“And Olsted probably owns one,” Tabitha says.

“And now,” I say, finally connecting dots, “he’s using it to target MI37.”

“Working hypothesis.” Tabitha nods, still not quite looking at me. “So: either in league with the Progeny or is one of the Progeny. Neither scenario is very good.”

“Why, in God’s name, would anyone help the Progeny?” The idea is beyond me.

“Daughter,” Tabitha says.

“That makes sense, doesn’t it?” Clyde says. “What Tabby says.” He shrugs.

Tabby? This time there’s no reaction from Tabitha to the nickname. There is something... But didn’t Clyde mention a girlfriend? Something else I can’t wrap my head around.

“What exactly did Tabby say?” I ask, trying to catch up.

Tabitha gives me the finger, so I’m still shy my Brownie points for the day.

“The Progeny do brain stuff,” Clyde continues. “Olsted’s little girl has got a brain problem. The whole mad cow thing. And I think... we think... Tabby thinks and I agree that there’s got to be, you know, some sort of overlap, some sort of knowledge. I don’t know. Even if there’s not, maybe one of them is riding around in a brain surgeon or something.”

I nod slowly. “OK,” I say. “Makes sense.” Probably. And Tabitha looks at me without abject disdain for a fraction of a millisecond, so maybe it really does.

“So,” I ask, “what’s next?”

There is a long pause.

“Get the grimoire.” Tabitha shrugs.

“Do we know where he’s keeping it?” I ask.

“Internet a bit light on that.” Tabitha doesn’t smile.

“I sort of... I don’t know—” Clyde shrugs “—just rather assumed the what-do-we-do-next bit was your sort of territory. Didn’t want to tread on toes.”

And there you go. Kayla’s gone and I already have a niche. I smile. “So we need to find out where he has it. Well, have I got a great idea for fans of coffee and body odor.”

Clyde cocks his head. Tabitha rolls her eyes in as disinterested a way as I think is humanly possible.

“Who’s up for a stakeout?” I say.

Stakeouts. The paragon of policing tasks. Tedium at his most absolute. We’ve spent the entire working day parked outside Olsted’s apartment, crammed into Tabitha’s beaten-up Honda, and so far our most significant learning is that it only takes four cups of coffee before Clyde’s hands start to shake.

Tabitha could be happier about the situation. Actually, she could be happier about most situations, but this particular one seems to have irked her more than usual. The phrase “I’m a fucking researcher” has become her mantra. I hear its echoes even though it’s been about ten minutes since she last said it.

There again I think I made a pretty good argument about needing as many eyes as possible. Which she ignored. And then Clyde made a terrible one on the same point, and she agreed to come along.

There is seriously something going on there.

She sits in the driver’s seat, he in the back, but I keep catching nervous-looking glances between them. Clyde seems to unconsciously touch his ear every time he speaks to her.

Working that mystery out seems like the least of my problems, though.

The doorman at Olsted’s building has a serious aversion to remaining behind his desk. He patrols the glass-fronted lobby, striding between leather couch, stone fireplace, and mahogany end tables. He doesn’t stay still. His eyes don’t stay still.

“He’s patrolling,” I say eventually. “Walking the perimeter. Guarding the place.” I shake my head. “That’s not what doormen do.”

“Wasn’t a doorman all his life.” Tabitha is sitting next to me. Despite her insistence that she shouldn’t be doing fieldwork, she’s good at this.

“Definitely,” says Clyde from the back seat. “I mean... probably. I guess. If you guys say so.”

That is actually one of the more exciting moments. And the sad bit is that part of me likes it. I feel comfortable in the car. Despite the pleather seats.

But the patrolling doorman makes me think that maybe we know where the grimoire is.

Then, just before midnight, a limo pulls up. Olsted gets out. Clyde jots down the plate number. And watching Olsted walk away from us, toward the building, I realize that our big takeaway from the evening is going to amount to knowing which door he prefers—left or right. A piece of minutia. Something that might be useful if we were going to carry out this operation in a month or two, but I don’t know if reality has that long. If Ophelia has that long. What we’re doing is sensible, but there’s no time for it.

This, I suddenly realize, is the moment for something reckless. This is the moment when Kurt Russell throws over his desk and screams that he can’t sit by and watch things happen anymore. It’s the time to storm out and right serious wrongs. Except it’s me sitting there. No hero.

Olsted uses the left-hand door. He likes the left door.

And a little bit of me snaps at that. I can’t leave just knowing that. I just can’t.

I open the car door. “Follow the limo,” I say

“What the hell do you—” is all Tabitha manages to say, before I shut the two of them in the car.

I jam my hands into my pockets, put a little stumble in my walk. I’m twenty yards behind Olsted. Tabitha’s clapped-out Honda chugs past me. I’m pretty sure she’s giving me the finger. Adrenaline is buzzing in my system. I’m terrified, and overjoyed, and on the verge of voiding my bowels. I am excited. After twelve hours of mind-numbing, jittery boredom, I am excited.

In the lobby, the doorman welcomes Olsted, but he’s already looking at me. The pair move toward the back of the room, toward the elevators. I push through the same door. Olsted’s palm print is still on the brass plate.

“’Scuse me,” I say, talking too loud.

“If you could wait a minute, sir.” The doorman has put himself between Olsted and me.

“Wouldn’t know if there’s a curry place round here, would you?” I advance. My heart is hammering in my chest.

The doorman stops, turns fully. And I realize then what an enormous slab of a man he is. Bodybuilder and champion breakfast eater, I’ll be sure. Olsted’s at the elevator bank, third on the left. It has its own separate panel.

“No, sir,” says the doorman loudly, forcefully.

“No, there isn’t one, or no, you don’t know?” My voice is shaking a little at the end. I wonder if he knows how scared I am.

The doorman lets his arms drop. They’re big arms. And that’s it for me.

“I’m going. I’m going.” I back away, palms up, keeping my eyes on the doorman. He ignores me with studied patience—threat assessed and dismissed. He slides a card into a slot next to Olsted’s elevator. The elevator doors open. And then I revolve back out through the door and into the night.

I find Tabitha’s Honda idling in the entrance to a loading bay between a purveyor of fine Oriental rugs and, of all things, a curry house.

“What the fuck?” Red spots shine in Tabitha’s dark cheeks as I climb back in. “Heads up please. Next time. Except, no next time, please. Discussions help. Stop you from being fucking stupid. From letting Progeny-aiding magicians seeing your face. Stop them from remembering you.” She waves her hand around the car. “Fucking team here, jackass. Resources. People to trust and who need to know they can trust you.”

Up until then I’d been rather pleased with myself, but then I realize I did something a little bit stupid. And it’s not exactly like I’m high up on Tabitha’s list of lovely-people-who-deserve-a-cuddle. I need to curry trust. I mean, I’m sure she distrusts me as much as I distrust Kayla. Shit, there are alien mind worms about. Everyone’s going to be a little short on trust.

I look to Clyde for support. He doesn’t accuse me, but he’s not defending me either.

“Sorry,” I say. “Impulsive. Stupid. I shouldn’t have...” This is not the sort of speech that great leaders make. Can’t imagine Mel Gibson in a kilt saying, “Well, chaps, I was sort of hoping... if you don’t mind much... Well, to put it one way, would you mind fighting for our freedom?”

So I try again, and say a little more assertively, “I wanted to see what sort of security he has. Ex-military, I’d guess. And I think he was carrying a gun, because there was no way he was that happy to see me.” A small smile from Clyde. “Uses some sort of card to call the penthouse-exclusive elevator. Which we’d have to take from him. I guess there’s more like him up at the top of the elevator as well.”

Tabitha looks at me. She’s still pissed but she’s curious now.

“Can we take the card off him?” Clyde asks. “I don’t think we can take the card off him.” He pauses. “I can’t take the card off him.”

“I don’t think any of us can.”

“How do we get in without Kayla?” Tabitha asks.

Or do we back away from stupid fucking ideas and get her back on active duty, is the question I think Tabitha is really asking.

For a moment I don’t say anything. I’ve got nothing. But then I realize I’m thinking like a policeman. And I’m not a policeman. A policeman wouldn’t barge into a suspect’s lobby and scope the place out. I’m Agent Wallace. I am ballsy and impulsive, and screw the minutia. Go big or go home.

I smile. “We con our way in.”

I’m sure it’s difficult to organize a conference, more so than you’d initially suspect, but it hardly seems like it’d be brain surgery. Yet, the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the British Neurosurgery Society seems to have a strong resemblance to Bedlam. Clyde and I are jostled by crowds as we hunt for Olsted. It’s like playing
Where’s Waldo,
except Waldo is a besuited older gentleman in a mass of besuited older gentlemen.

“There,” I say, finally, after two hours. I point from the back of the lecture hall we’ve just sidled into. “Second row, three in.” He’s sitting there. Leather-face himself. And after all the hunting through random conference rooms and seminars, he’s not actually that hard to find at all. Because none of the other scientists are flanked by bodyguards the size of water buffalo.

“I think we should just turn around,” Clyde says. “Probably. Don’t you think? No. You probably don’t think. That. Certainly do think.
Cogito ergo sum
and all that. But yes, turning around, silly idea. Shouldn’t do that. Should we? Could we?” He shakes his head. “No.”

I’m a little worried that Clyde is so nervous. This is meant to be his show. These are his people. His skills are at the core of this plan. But there’s no need to put him on further edge by pointing any of that out, so I just ask, “You think you can fudge on this topic?”

This Fourteenth Annual Conference is meant be to where the latest and greatest breakthroughs in neuroscience are presented. And occurring in this very room is one of the key talks about treating encephalopathies, which, Clyde informed me out in the corridor, is why Olsted is taking time out of his busy destroying-the-world schedule to listen in.

Clyde pulls a face. Slowly, his hands shaking slightly, he takes one of the little earbuds from his pocket and plugs it in. Up close it makes him look very CIA.

Well... as CIA-like as it’s possible for Clyde to look. Actually not that CIA at all.

“You getting any of this, Tabitha?” he whispers. He squints at whatever reply he receives. Quickly I plug in my own earbud.

“—the subject?” I hear.

“Basically recombinant DNA in CJD,” he whispers. “Protein biomarkers. Couple of other things. Preliminary stuff.”

“Lit search. Incoming.” Tabitha’s voice is tinny in my ear. There is an ease and efficiency in their voices and manner that was missing during the stakeout. They seem more comfortable with each other when there’s electronic interference they can hide behind.

Clyde looks at me. “I think we can fudge this,” he says. “Maybe. Not really sure. Hope we can. Sort of need to of course. So, yes, I’m sure it’ll all be fine. Fudge-tastic. I love fudge. Caramel too.” He looks away. “Not truffles for some reason. Not sure why.”

I give a nod toward the stage. “Probably help if we...” I start.

“Oh, gosh, yes. Paying attention now.” An affable smile from him. Something similar for me, nerves at the edge of it. But I am gung-ho now. Fearless and impulsive. I need to remember that.

“Not planning any coups are we, Arthur?” Tabitha’s voice sounds in my ear again.