The Renegade Merchant (34 page)

“W
e found them.” It
was Agent Jones, the new man, who so far had done a better job of
keeping his composure in the current crisis than most of his
superiors.

“Where?” Callum said, holding his dripping
hands above the sink. Callum’s employer, the British internal
security service known as MI-5, no longer stocked paper towels.
Callum needed to run the drying machine, but the conversation with
Jones came first.

“Fueling up at a petrol station south of
Builth Wells,” said Jones.

“So we have them,” Callum said, not as a
question.

Jones paused before speaking. Callum sensed
him arranging and rearranging his sentences in his head to find a
way to tell the truth in the most efficient and least painful
manner. “We didn’t catch the image in real time, sir. It’s from an
hour ago.”

Callum slammed his fist onto the counter.
“What road were they on?”

“The A470, sir.”

“I want to see the images. Set it up. I’ll
be there in a minute.”

“Yes, sir.”

Callum dried his hands and was back in the
conference room within the allotted time.

Agent Jones stood at attention to the right
of the screen that filled one wall. The images of their fugitives
took up half the space: Meg Lloyd; her husband, Llywelyn Gruffydd
(who claimed to be the last Prince of Wales); and Goronwy, whose
surname they hadn’t yet determined.

“So they’re headed back to Chepstow.” Callum
nodded to Jones, who tapped a square in one corner of the screen
showing a map of Wales. He highlighted the southeastern portion of
the country and enlarged it to fill the screen.

“They must have taken that trackway from
Devil’s Bridge,” said Agent Natasha Clark, pointing to the unnamed
road that ran through the Elan Valley. “No cameras, which is why it
took so long to find them.”

“Not much of anything out there but sheep,”
said Jones, “though at least the road is paved.”

“It couldn’t have been fun in the dark,”
Natasha said. “They must have felt desperate to take that
road.”

“We made them desperate,” Callum said.

The initial pickup had been handled badly,
not by Callum, but by Thomas Smythe, a fellow security service
agent. Although the file on Meg was Callum’s, and had been for six
months, his boss had bypassed him for the lead on the case because
Smythe spoke Welsh. Smythe didn’t know anything about people,
however, and had misjudged his quarry badly, going in heavy when he
should have gone in light.

“They could be heading anywhere, not
necessarily Chepstow,” Callum said.

“If they didn’t go north, Chepstow Castle is
the most logical choice,” said Jones. “They’re trying to reverse
what they did to come here.”

According to Meg’s brother-in-law, Ted, Meg
had spent the last few years living in medieval Wales. She and her
companions had started out earlier in the week in the Middle Ages,
jumped from Chepstow’s balcony that overlooked the Wye River, and
gone from 1288 Chepstow to 2016 Aberystwyth in the blink of an
eye.

“Does that sound as crazy to you as it does
to me?” The last member of the team, John Driscoll, kicked back in
his chair.

“From their point of view, it makes a
certain kind of sense,” said Jones.

Snorting his disgust, Driscoll tossed the
papers he’d been holding onto the conference table. “A pregnant
woman and two old men, one of whom has a heart condition, are
running circles around us. How in the hell have they eluded
us?”

“While Meg might be from this world
originally,” Natasha said, “Llywelyn and Goronwy are not. That
reaches to the heart of our problem: they don’t think like we
do.”

“I wouldn’t have taken you for a true
believer, Natasha,” Driscoll said.

Natasha gave her fellow agent a sour look.
“I’m not. Just keeping my options open.”

“I can’t believe we’re even having this
discussion. As if that’s not crazy right there.” Driscoll mumbled
the words under his breath as he typed into his laptop.

“If we could focus on the mission—” Callum
said.

“Of course, sir,” Natasha said. “All I’m
saying is that if Meg is telling the truth—”

“Would you rather I put you on to
infiltrating those Welsh nationalists in St. David’s?” Callum said.
“You could reveal everything you know about the return of the last
Prince of Wales and they’d welcome you to their meetings with open
arms.”

That made Natasha laugh. “No, no. I’ll take
this case any day over that.”

Callum checked his watch and then pointed to
Jones. “Keep watching the cameras. If they’re in Chepstow, or
getting close, we need to know.” He looked at the rest of his team.
“I think we all should be involved in this.”

Driscoll closed the lid of his computer and
got to his feet. “I’ll get Ted ready.” He left the room.

Callum turned to Natasha and Jones. “I don’t
want to hear talk about anything but the task before us. We have a
job to do, and we’re going to do it.”

“Yes, sir,” Jones and Natasha said
together.

The SUV pulled into the parking lot of
Chepstow Castle a few minutes before seven in the morning.

Natasha rubbed her hands together. “It looks
cold.”

“It’s November in Wales. What did you
expect?” Callum unlatched the door and discovered that the driver
had parked directly over a puddle. Having just responded curtly to
Natasha, Callum refrained from chewing out the driver. They were
all going to get a lot wetter than this before the day was over.
Callum was still dressed in his regular work clothes: business
suit, trench coat, and respectable shoes. Half an hour ago when
they’d left Cardiff, he hadn’t felt he could stop by his flat to
collect his rain boots and hat.

The men who made up Callum’s security team
wore Kevlar under black trench coats. While it was standard policy
to wear armor during operations like this, Callum hadn’t seen the
point for himself. As far as Callum was concerned, nobody was
shooting anyone today, and certainly not pregnant women or men who
thought they were nobles from medieval Wales. They weren’t a threat
to anyone but themselves, and even that was debatable.

In fact, this was a crap assignment, and
Callum would be the first to admit it. MI-5 usually dealt with
threats to national security such as the detection and apprehension
of terrorists. These people needed a psychiatrist. They certainly
didn’t need to be chased by a dozen agents from MI-5.

For this mission, Callum had brought two
SUVs and a larger van, which he directed to park in the castle’s
rear car park. He then dispersed his ten men around the perimeter
of Chepstow Castle. They could patrol the exterior until Callum got
word that Cardiff had rousted the government official who managed
the castle, and he had arrived to unlock the main door. Callum left
Ted inside the second SUV with two agents to watch over him. There
wasn’t any point in getting him wet until the castle opened for
business. Callum got back into his SUV himself just as his phone
rang.

It was Jones. Callum put him on speaker and
popped up the tablet that connected the SUV to the computer in the
conference room back in Cardiff. His eyes went instinctively to a
corner of the screen where Jones had pasted the picture of one of
the girls who’d somehow gotten caught up in all this: Bronwen
Llywelyn. She’d been an archaeology graduate student in
Pennsylvania before she’d disappeared three years ago. Ted had met
her and claimed that she’d gone back to the Middle Ages with Meg’s
son, David.

“What can you tell me?” Callum said. “Are we
in the right place?”

“A camera caught their car coming into
Chepstow earlier this morning,” said Jones.

“When this is over, heads will roll,”
Natasha said. “You can be sure that Smythe’s will be first, even if
he is the current pet of Thames House.”

Callum glanced at Natasha in the rear view
mirror, surprised at the venom in her voice. He was touched if it
was on his behalf but sensed there was more to it. Ever since he’d
come back from Afghanistan, there were moments when Callum didn’t
trust his instincts, particularly with women. He wanted to ask
Natasha what Smythe had done to her but now wasn’t the time.

“Just so long as the head that rolls isn’t
mine.” Callum couldn’t allow this mission to get out of control,
not with junior MI-5 agents lurking in the wings, waiting for him
to slip up. He walked a thin line as it was, having come back from
Afghanistan with enough Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (known as
PTSD) to feel like he had to hide it. The fact that everyone came
back from Afghanistan with issues of one form or another meant that
his obsessions were so minor they didn’t prevent him from working.
But he didn’t care to advertise them either. As his American father
had said, “Son, the war screwed you up, but not so much they feel
they should mention it.”

It might be, for example, that the goons
deep in the belly of Thames House knew all about Callum’s secret
compulsion to wash his hands a little too often, even if the IT
department swore they hadn’t put cameras in the loo. Callum didn’t
trust them to tell the truth. Admittedly, that was an occupational
hazard.

“The other news could be better,” said
Jones. “Chepstow is having a fair today—hundreds of people are
expected.”

“Bloody hell. We need to shut it down,”
Callum said.

But even as Callum spoke, Natasha was
shaking her head from the back seat.

“Hold on, Jones.” Callum turned to look at
her. “What?”

“If nobody is here, if all Meg sees when she
arrives is our men, she’s smart enough not to approach. A crowd
might be better,” Natasha said.

Callum directed his voice towards the
speaker again. “I take that back. We’ll stick to the current
plan.”

“A crowd will give them cover,” said
Jones.

“But it will also make them think they’re
safe,” Callum said. “We can’t let them get away again.”

“The men are good,” said Jones. “They’ll see
to it.”

“You’ve got the camera feeds?”

“Eight of them,” said Jones. “The only
difficult spot is the rear of the castle. The cameras in the car
park are working, but the two that cover the west side are out.
You’ll have to mind that back gate in particular. That’s where
we’re completely blind.”

“The gate was locked when I visited Chepstow
a few months ago,” Natasha said. “I know because I wanted to use
it, but the custodian told me I couldn’t.”

“I doubt that something like that would have
changed,” Callum said, “but we shouldn’t presume.”

“Right,” said Jones. “According to the plans
I have here, the original entrance was destroyed, and that gate is
used only for maintenance.”

“I’m orienting the men now,” Natasha said,
one hand to her ear piece. “They’ll patrol there specifically.”

Jones disconnected, and Callum scrubbed at
his hair with one hand, feeling every one of his thirty-four years.
Natasha had deep circles under her eyes too, not surprising since
neither of them had slept in twenty-four hours. If they stayed at
this much longer, their boss would replace Callum’s team with a
different unit. Tired men made mistakes.

“Worst case, the river patrol has to scoop
our fugitives out of the Wye,” Natasha said.

“I’d prefer it didn’t come to that,” Callum
said. “I can see the headline now:
Pregnant Woman Evades
Security Service, Jumps into Wye River!
”

“Have you ever been inside the castle?”
Natasha said.

“I dated a girl who brought me here soon
after I arrived at Cardiff. It was summer, so warmer then.” Callum
checked the sky as he slipped his gloves back on. “Though
admittedly, not by much.”

Natasha nodded her head towards the entrance
to the castle. Only three people had passed across their line of
sight since they’d arrived. “Where should I set up the command
post?”

“You’ll be my point person here and
coordinate with the team,” Callum said. “I’ll take the balcony when
it comes to it.”

“They’ll never reach it,” Natasha said. “We
could use you elsewhere. Maybe on the battlement.” She gazed up at
the crenellations on the closest tower. The rain had turned the
normally yellowish stone a dark grey.

“We’ve underestimated them from the
beginning,” Callum said. “I’d like to start thinking two steps
ahead.” The driver had left the engine running and the heat bathed
Callum’s face. Callum relaxed against the headrest. “We need to
move to a less noticeable location. We don’t want to scare them off
before we’ve started.”

It took until eight o’clock to contact the
custodian of the castle. By then, the man was already on his way
in. To top the morning off right, the rain started to fall again,
though the crowd that had gathered to await the opening of the
castle seemed unperturbed by it.

Natasha, talking through her headset, had
been patiently directing the men. As the time neared eight-thirty,
she tapped Callum’s shoulder. “Have you noticed what everyone is
wearing?”

Too late, Callum realized that the crowds
not only would hide Meg, Llywelyn, and Goronwy, but would provide
them an easier cover than he had expected: everyone in the crowd
that was forming outside the castle gate wore medieval garb.

Callum grabbed the binoculars and put them
to his eyes, focusing on one individual at a time as he worked his
way through the crowd. It was one thing to find the three fugitives
in broad daylight, but with the rain, hoods were up and cloaks were
tucked tight under chins. Callum’s men were going to have a hard
time spotting them, even with cameras watching keenly.

Callum turned up his earpiece. “Driscoll,
get Ted to the front gate. We need someone closer who can recognize
them on sight.”

“Yes, sir,” Driscoll said, “but we risk Meg
spotting him.”