Tommy sat at the desk, feet crossed on the black leather ottoman. This room was larger than Marklin’s, with a southern exposure, but he had never resented it. He had loved his own room. Well, he was ready now to get out of it. He had packed everything of importance in one suitcase, and hidden it under his own bed.
“Call it a premonition. I don’t want to stay here,” he said. “There’s no reason to stay longer.”
“You’re being fatalistic and a bit silly,” said Tommy.
“Look, you’ve wiped the computers. Stuart’s quarters are absolutely impenetrable, unless we want to risk breaking in the doors, and I don’t like being under a curfew.”
“The curfew is for everyone, may I remind you, and if we were to leave now, we wouldn’t make it to the door without a dozen questions. Besides, to walk out before the memorial service would be blatantly disrespectful.”
“Tommy, I can’t endure some tenebrious ceremony in the small hours of the morning, with a lot of preposterous speeches about Anton and Aaron. I want to go now. Customs; rituals. These people are fools, Tommy. It’s too late to be anything but frank. There are back stairs; there are side stairs. I’m for leaving here immediately. I have things on my mind. I have work to do.”
“I want to do what they asked us to do,” said Tommy, “which is what I intend to do. Observe the curfew they have asked us to observe. And go down when the bell is sounded. Now, please, Marklin, if you have nothing insightful or helpful to say, be quiet, will you?”
“Why should I be quiet? Why do you want to stay here?”
“All right, if you must know, we may have a chance during the memorial, or whatever it is, to find out where Stuart is keeping Tessa.”
“How could we find out that?”
“Stuart’s not a rich man, Marklin. He’s bound to have a home somewhere, a place we’ve never seen, some ancestral manse or something. Now, if we play our cards right, we can ask a few questions about this subject, out of concern, of course, for Stuart. Have you got a better idea?”
“Tommy, I don’t think Stuart would hide Tessa in a place that was known to be his home. He’s a coward, perhaps, a melodramatic lunatic even, but he’s not stupid. We are not going to find Stuart. And we are not going to find Tessa.”
“Then what do we do?” asked Tommy. “Abandon everything? With what we know?”
“No. We leave here. We go back to Regent’s Park. And we think. We think about something far more important to us now than anything the Talamasca can offer.”
“Which is?”
“We think, Tommy, about the Mayfair witches. We go over Aaron’s last fax to the Elders. And we study the File, we study it closely for every clue as to which of the clan is most useful for our purposes.”
“You’re going too fast,” said Tommy. “What do you mean to do? Kidnap a couple of Americans?”
“We can’t discuss it here. We can’t plan anything. Look, I’ll wait till the damned ceremony starts, but then I’m leaving. I’m stepping out at the first opportunity. You can come later if you like.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Tommy. “I don’t have a car. I have to go with you. And what if Stuart’s at the ceremony? Have you thought of that?”
“Stuart’s not coming back here. He has better sense. Now, listen, Tommy. This is my final decision. I’ll stay for the beginning of the ceremony, I’ll pay my respects, chat with a few of the members, that sort of thing. And then I’m out of here! And on, on to my rendezvous with the Mayfair witches, Stuart and Tessa be damned.”
“All right, I’ll go with you.”
“That’s better. That’s intelligent. That’s my practical Tommy.”
“Get some sleep then. They didn’t say when they’d call us. And you’re the one who’s going to drive.”
Nineteen
THE TOPMOST ROOM of the tower. Yuri sat at the round table, looking down into the cup of steaming Chinese tea before him.
The condemned man himself had made the tea. Yuri didn’t want to touch it.
All his life in the Talamasca, he had known Stuart Gordon. He had dined countless times with Gordon and Aaron. They had strolled the gardens together, gone to the retreats in Rome together. Aaron had talked so freely with Gordon. The Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches. And now it was Gordon.
Betrayed him.
Why didn’t Ash kill him now? What could the man give that would not be contaminated, not perverted by his madness? It was almost a certainty that his helpers had been Marklin George and Tommy Monohan. But the Order would discover the truth on that score. Yuri had reached the Motherhouse from the phone booth in the village, and the mere sound of Elvera’s voice had brought him to tears. Elvera was faithful. Elvera was good. Yuri knew that the great chasm that had opened between him and the Talamasca had already begun to close. If Ash was right, that the conspiracy had been small, and indeed that seemed to be the case-that the Elders were not involved-then Yuri must be patient. He must listen to Stuart Gordon. Because Yuri had to take back to the Talamasca whatever he learned tonight.
Patience. Aaron would want it thus. Aaron would want the story known, and recorded for others to know. And Michael and Rowan, were they not entitled to the facts? And then there was Ash, the mysterious Ash. Ash had uncovered Gordon’s treachery. If Ash had not appeared in Spelling Street, Yuri would have accepted Gordon’s pretense of innocence, and the few foolish lies Gordon had told while they sat in the café.
What went on in Ash’s mind? He was overwhelming, just as Yuri had told them. Now they knew. They saw for themselves his remarkable face, the calm, loving eyes. But they mustn’t forget that he was a menace to Mona, to any of the Mayfair family-
Yuri forced himself to stop thinking about this. They needed Ash too much just now. Ash had somehow become the commander of this operation. What would happen if Ash withdrew and left them with Gordon? They couldn’t kill Gordon. They couldn’t even scare him, at least Yuri didn’t think so. It was impossible to gauge how much Rowan and Michael hated Gordon. Unreadable. Witches. He could see that now.
Ash sat on the other side of the circle, his monstrous hands clasped on the edge of the old, unfinished wood, watching Gordon, who sat to his right. He did hate Gordon, and Yuri saw it by the absence of something in Ash’s face, the absence of compassion, perhaps? The absence of the tenderness which Ash showed to everyone, absolutely everyone else.
Rowan Mayfair and Michael Curry sat on either side of Yuri, thank God. He could not have endured to be close to Gordon. Michael was the wrathful one, the suspicious one. Rowan was taken with Ash. Yuri had known she would be. But Michael was taken with no one just yet.
Yuri could not touch this cup. It might as well have been filled with the man’s urine.
“Out of the jungles of India,” said Stuart, sipping his own tea, in which he had poured a large slug of whiskey. “I don’t know where. I don’t know India. I know only that the natives said she’d been there forever, wandering from village to village, and that she’d come to them before the war, and that she spoke English and that she didn’t grow old, and the women of the village had become frightened of her.”
The whiskey bottle stood in the middle of the table. Michael Curry wanted it, but perhaps he could not touch the refreshments offered by Gordon either. Rowan Mayfair sat with her arms folded. Michael Curry had his elbows on the table. He was closer to Stuart, obviously trying to figure him out.
“I think it was a photograph, her undoing. Someone had taken a picture of the entire village, together. Some intrepid soul with a tripod and a wind-up camera. And she had been in that picture. It was one of the young men who uncovered it among his grandmother’s possessions when the grandmother died. An educated man. A man I’d taught at Oxford.”