“We need to get you to a hospital,” he said.
Her look could have peeled layers of metal off a tank. “Don’t be a child.”
“But—”
“Drive. Look for a tail, can you do that?”
“Sure, but—”
“Then go. No destination. Don’t get us pulled over and don’t draw attention.”
“Where are we going?”
She ignored him and removed her small laptop and opened it. She did not hit any keys, but instead spoke to it. “Authorize Arklight field protocol five.”
The monitor flashed several times and then settled on a screen saver with the smiling face of the Mona Lisa. Harry nearly sideswiped a car looking at it.
“Pay attention,” snapped Violin.
The Mona Lisa spoke. “Oracle welcomes you.”
“Oracle,” said Violin, “I am in company. Friendly. Not family. Confirm.”
“Confirmed. All secure data is shielded.”
Violin then switched to a language that Harry did not recognize even one word of. It sounded a little like Italian, but then most European languages sounded a little like Italian to Harry, and he could not speak Italian. Harry drove aimlessly, constantly checking the traffic patterns. If they were being followed he could not spot it, and he did not think so. Beside him, the strange woman’s tone became sharper, more agitated, and she said some other words he didn’t know but that he was positive were curses. They had that quality.
“Pull over,” she barked. When he pulled to the curb she turned the screen to him. The Mona Lisa was gone and now there was a diagram of a hand with splayed fingers. “Place your hand here.”
“Why?”
“Do it.” It was not a request, though not exactly a threat, either, but he took it that way and placed his hand on the screen. A scanner bar lit up and ran from top to bottom, mapping his palm and fingerprints. Suddenly Harry’s driver’s license, passport information, and birth certificate popped up in different windows on the screen.
“Hey!”
“Drive,” she said, and this time gave him directions. She spoke once more in the strange language to the computer and then signed off. He caught glances of her out of the corner of his eye. She sat there, chewing her lip, looking troubled.
“You want to tell me who the heck you are, what the heck is going on, and where the heck we’re going?”
“I have bad news,” she said.
“Really? Why spoil such a great day?”
“Your team is dead.”
“I know that. Both of them were—”
“No,” she said, cutting him off. “Your station office. There was a fire. Everyone is dead.”
Harry screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. Horns blared at him.
“What?” he bellowed.
“Drive the car,” she hissed. “You’re going to draw attention.”
He started driving, but he felt like he was in another world. Dazed and confused. “What happened?” he asked softly. “Was it those Brotherhood assholes?”
“No. Closers, I think,” she said. “Oracle gave me the story from the news services. Authorities suspect a gas explosion of some kind. The entire building went up.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”
Harry nodded and wiped tears from his eyes. “I hated those guys.”
“The Closers?”
“No, the guys at the office. Total bunch of dickheads.” Tears ran down his cheeks. Then he bristled as her words finished processing in his shocked brain. “Wait… whoa, hold on just a damn second. Closers? Closers? How the hell are Closers involved in this crap?”
“Do you know who the Closers are?”
“I’m in the fricking CIA, of course I know who they are. Men in freaking black who used to work for Howard Shelton and those ass-pirates at Majestic Three.”
“What is an ass-pirate?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is why there are even still Closers anymore. I thought the DMS chopped them all up. How are they back and why did they target my station? And why did they try to kill us?”
Violin stared out the window for a moment, then turned and looked over the seat at the suitcase. “We are in a lot of trouble.”
Harry just rolled his eyes.
“The Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum — the Brotherhood — are bad enough. They are dangerous but they’re few. I can handle them, but—”
“I saw. You did pretty good against those Closers, too. Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
“My mother taught me.”
“Geez. I bet you cleaned your room when you were a kid.”
She studied him. “When I was a little girl my room was a filthy cell in an underground prison. My mother had to kill a dozen men to get me out.”
Harry blinked at her. “Is that a joke?”
“I wish it were.”
“Holy…”
“It’s in the past where it belongs,” she said. “Right now we are in deeper trouble than I thought. If these are Closers, then they will have resources we can’t match. Not the two of us, and you have no station left to help us. The Closers will have people inside your embassy and in local police.”
“I can make some calls. My dad knows—”
“We cannot trust anyone on your side of this, Harry. Not even your father. If the Closers are after you, then they will have people on him, tapping his phones, hacking his computers. Reach out to him and they will backtrack to you. It’s what I would do.”
Harry swallowed. “You have to be wrong about that. If we go directly to the American ambassador, he’ll give us a marine detail and—”
Violin shook her head. “You know so little about your own profession, Harry. How is that possible for someone who works as a spy? How did you even become a spy?”
“Nepotism and bad choices,” he suggested.
Violin gave him a faint smile. “We need to get this book into the hands of someone who can protect it.”
“Your mother, maybe?” he asked.
“No. She is in the field and out of touch.”
“How about my dad? Nobody’s going to take anything away from him.”
Violin thought about it. “Maybe. But first we need to get out of the country without being spotted. That won’t be easy and it won’t be quick. We will have to use some back routes that I know about. This is one of those times when slow is safer than fast.”
“Before we do this,” asked Harry, “tell me why the Closers, if that’s who they are, would want an old magic book? Majestic was all about some kind of UFO bullcrap, from what I heard. Howard Shelton was into the arms race, not voodoo.”
“It’s not voodoo and it’s not magic,” she said. “It’s science.”
“Science? That book’s a couple of hundred years old at least.”
“Older than that.”
“Then how’s that going to be useful to some black budget government agency trying to build weapons of war?”
Violin shook her head. “You clearly don’t know anything about war, Harry Bolt. Now… drive.”
INTERLUDE SEVENTEEN
They sat in the dark and talked. They were unalike in almost every way. Prospero Bell was very tall, thin, pale, blond, with piercing blue eyes and a full and sensual mouth. His cheeks and nose were dappled with freckles that had paled in captivity but not fled with boyhood.