«No,» admitted the Indowy with another grimace. «The individual affected is unaware of the actions of the societies. However, the Bane Sidhe are in the individual's debt. Furthermore, we believe that the individual may represent a strong destabilizing factor to the Darhel.»
«One individual is not worth risking the Société,» stated the Monsignor definitively.
«Not normally. However, this individual has repeatedly demonstrated traits that make him outside the norm. And the Bane Sidhe ask it. We have aided the Société much. This is nothing compared to what we have done for the Société!»
«What about you, Paul?»
«All of our Marion teams are in the Northeast right now. Otherwise we would be handling it.»
«So, you think it worth the risk. Where is it that you need help?» asked the Jesuit, warily.
«We need Team Conyers.»
The monsignor smiled thinly and tried not to let the surprise show on his face. He hoped like hell the Darhel did not have the Mother Church so thoroughly penetrated.
* * *
The robe-clad monk knelt in the dirt of the well-tended vineyard and carefully tasted a grape. His mouth worked as he swirled the juices around, gathering every last nuance. The harvest would have to be gathered soon or there might not be one. The grape lacked that last bit of sweetness, but the lack might be to the good. Surely the wine of such a bitter time should not be sweet. The gentle wind of the night was a boon to his soul. The night was still the same, even as the world had come apart around them. The sheltering night had not changed.
He rose to his feet with the grace of a dancer as one of the senior brothers approached. The senior brother gestured for him to follow and headed towards one of the outbuildings of the monastery without a word. The monk saw others being gathered and realized that there must have been a special calling. The senior brother turned aside as he entered the building.
The assistant abbot would retire to his cell and pray continuously until the team returned. He remembered his own days on the teams and feared that many would not be at the next vespers. A call from the Société was so often a death sentence. They were like the French Foreign Legion in a way; the only thing that mattered to the Société was the mission and damn the casualties. To the Benedictines, the importance was the ritual and the art. That is why, contrary to popular myth, the special troops of the Catholic Church were not Jesuits. Shao-Lin did not own the monopoly they thought.
The monk perused the briefing under red «battle-lights» as his black– and gray-clad brothers assembled the instruments of their arts. The mission was complex but not terribly so. The gravest question was time. And of course going in with no communications and limited intelligence.
The monks had special dispensation to speak during briefings. There were, however, no questions. They took up their equipment, changed their clothes and loaded into the darkened vans without a word.
* * *
O'Neal stared at his opponent across the dimly lit green expanse. The next move would decide the outcome of the contest. The stakes were high, but Michael O'Neal, Senior had been in tougher spots. There was always a way out if you tried hard enough, thought about the situation and acted with precision and violence. But he usually had better cards.
«Raise you five,» said Cally.
«Call.»
«Two pair, kings high.»
«Damn!» said Papa O'Neal, throwing his cards down. The pair of aces lay forlornly on the table as if mocking his inability to win a simple hand of poker against an eight-year-old. It was well past midnight and he should have had her in bed long before. But with news coming in from the fighting and her father on his way to the front, Mike Senior was waiting for her to fall asleep naturally. So far she was showing all the stamina of a professional gambler.
«One more hand like that and you'll be doing the dishes for a month,» Cally said with a laugh.
«Yeah, well . . .» He tried to think of a retort but just gave up. What could he say?
His pager went off and he pulled it off his belt. The device was hooked into the property sensors, not his phone; just because he was in his sixties didn't mean he couldn't use modern technology. And it showed that they had a visitor. First motion sensors and then metal sensors had detected movement on the long road into the farm. However, the device that monitored for subspace transmissions was quiescent.
So, not Posleen then. Maybe the sheriff coming up to make sure he wasn't making moonshine. Or at least not at the house where it might get found and be embarrassing. Best not to offer him a taste of the latest batch. Although it made little or no sense at this time of night.
«We've got a visitor,» he said.
«Friend or foe?» Cally asked seriously. She tossed down the cards she had been shuffling.
«Don't know,» he said. «I guess we ought to go look.»
* * *
It was an unremarkable Ford Taurus. Probably a rental. The driver was a male. There wasn't much else Papa O'Neal could tell, even with the high-definition light-amplifying binoculars. He waited in the front room of the house, screened by the light curtains over the windows, until the car pulled up to the front and stopped.
The driver revealed in the glare of the security lights was a male, early twenties and alone. He looked faintly Hispanic—mostly because of his swarthy complexion—but could have been any of a hundred races and mixtures across the world. He was wearing an old and battered field jacket. It had a Special Forces patch on the right shoulder but was otherwise unadorned; «sterile» in the parlance of the special ops community. He also looked familiar, but O'Neal could not place the face.
Mike Senior opened the front door and stepped out, watching the stranger warily. There was no reason for a total stranger to come to the house. Come to think of it, he had never had an uninvited visitor. With the exception of the law. But it wasn't like he had much choice.
«Mike,» the guy said on first sight and his face broke into a broad grin. «Long time, 'mano!»
Papa O'Neal's face creased in thought but his expression remained wary. «Do I know you?»
«Shit.» The stranger shook his head in apparent chagrin. «How 'bout this: 'Sometimes you get the feathers, sometimes you get the bones.' «
Papa O'Neal tilted his head sideways and his mind wandered down a lot of years of memory. Then his eyes widened. «Harold?» he asked, incredulously.
* * *
«So that's the deal man. Got a new life, new identity and I've been workin' for the Man ever since. Just call me Lazarus,» he ended with a lopsided grin.
«You work for the Company?» Mike asked, leaning back in his cowhide-covered chair.
«No,» Harold said, with a shake of his head. «There really are groups nobody ever talks about.» He suddenly leaned forward in his own chair. «You know what fucked us, man. It was the bean counters in the States. The peaceniks and the politicians in uniform that would never let us do our job the right way. You know man, you did the job we were supposed to do!»
«Sure, Harold,» said Mike Senior soothingly. «But that was then, man. Different world. Different enemy.»
«No,» said the visitor with a shake of the head. «The enemy's still the same. The rear-echelon bastards that sit in their air-conditioned offices and fuck everything up for the poor bastards that have to do the job.»
«Harold,» said Mike Senior, with a gesture at Cally. She was on the other side of the room from him, behind the visitor's chair, trying to work the puzzle box. He was indicating that Harold might want to watch his language, but he also hoped it would calm him down. He did calm down, but something else happened and it snapped Mike's attention down to earth like a bolt of lightning. A sixth sense he had developed in more really bad places than he wanted to dwell on told him that something had changed in his visitor. And he didn't think it was for the good.