Now if you start adding the courtroom statistics and the hint of a deal letting Ragnan send their criminals across, we started to get into interesting territory. “You said there was a deal?”
Ts’ao nodded. “Are you familiar with Article Two of the Constitution?”
“You’re going to point out that only the president—with advice and consent of the Senate—can enter into treaties and conduct foreign policy.”
“Two things that Rayburn and the administration have been doing with Ragnan since the beginning,” Blackstone added.
I nodded. It was a well trod argument. The Supreme Court had already decided under current law, the Congress effectively annexed the Portal and made it part of the United States. And, as far as jurisdiction went, the Portal and its “contents” were inside the Cleveland metropolitan area. Until that changed, Rayburn has as much right to negotiate with Ragnan as he does with Lakewood. I told them as much.
Ts’ao raised his hands to his temples. I think I got him. “Do you understand the threat the Portal represents?” He pulled the Buddha toward him and frowned. “On the other side of the Portal is a foreign country of uncertain motives and alliance. The courts may not view it as a nation, but it still has the capacity to conduct covert activity that is against the interests of the United States.”
“What are you getting at?” I asked.
“The worst threat to this nation since the fall of the Soviet Union,” Dr. Blackstone said. He actually sounded serious.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “You mean China?”
Neither of them seemed to appreciate my humor. “It is a fact, Mr. Maxwell, which I don’t think you’ll deny, that the dragon Aloeus was fleeing an oppressive regime in his homeland,” said Agent Ts’ao. “And he was a key figure in establishing Mayor Rayburn’s policy toward the Portal.”
I nodded.
“Followed, shortly afterward, by the fall of that regime,” he continued.
“What are you getting at?”
“Aloeus was no refugee. He was the highest-ranking guerrilla in a civil war. He negotiated with Mayor Rayburn the delivery of arms and advisers from the Ohio National Guard, arms that were used to overthrow a foreign government.”
I shook my head. “How the hell could that be kept a secret?”
“During the initial chaos after the Portal’s opening, it was easy enough to keep things under wraps—including the disappearance of a whole unit of National Guard troops, three Apache gunships, and four Abrams tanks.” Dr. Blackstone looked as if he was enjoying the look on my face. “You’re wondering why none of the Guardsmen gave their story to CNN? They were debriefed by Army Intelligence when they came back, and the whole episode was classified. Those men represent one of the few intelligence assets that our government has on what’s on the other side of the Portal.”
Agent Ts’ao looked at me, sizing up my reaction. “The omnipotence of the Thesarch was tied to a vulnerability—an inability to anticipate the speed at which the invaders could move, and the damage that could be inflicted by nonmagical means. The tanks, the guns, the helicopters weren’t enchanted, so they weren’t a threat. His command and control was vulnerable, overt, and easily targeted because they were immune to any magical threat. In two days the Guard traveled to Ragman’s capital city. The battle lasted twenty minutes.” Agent Ts’ao steepled his fingers. “The guerrilla organization that masterminded that coup didn’t disband after that victory. They’ve remained in place, on this side of the Portal, engaging in espionage and political subversion.”
“That’s a lot to swallow,” I said. “Why would the Guard invade a foreign territory like that?”
“Orders from the governor,” agent Ts’ao said. “After a two-hour meeting with Mayor Rayburn.”
“Okay,” I said, “you still haven’t—”
Agent Ts’ao raised a hand. “Shall I explain the threat to you? We have elements of a foreign regime in place here, a regime created by a violent overthrow aided by rogue elements of our own military. Despite the presence of magic, our own technological and military advances operate on the other side with a few exceptions—while the ‘magical’ advances of theirs fade in effect the farther one gets from the Portal.”
Dr. Blackstone leaned forward. “We’re a gold mine to them. It isn’t a backward civilization we’re dealing with. It is as sophisticated as our own. If you hand them an AK-47, they’re capable of reverse engineering it and fabricating a copy. With magical aid they can sidestep the issues of machine tooling—in fact, with the right engineering knowledge, they can duplicate anything they want.”
“Including weapons of mass destruction,” Ts’ao said.
“Now you’re reaching,” I said.
“We’re talking about an empire that has undergone unchecked expansion for millennia, and whose leader is traditionally just this short of an absolute god.” Dr. Blackstone looked grave. “Combine technological espionage that can bear fruit in months and weeks rather than years, with a sophisticated grasp of magic. If they get a foothold here—”
There was a solid thump, and the Buddha rattled on the table.
“What was that?” Agent Ts’ao asked.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
B
ROWN burst into the interview room. “Sirs, we got a problem.”
There was another thump, louder now that the door was open. It was an odd sound, heavy, but not like an impact—more like a rush of air.
Agent Ts’ao and Dr. Blackstone got up and went through the door, which Brown held open for them. I craned my neck to look beyond the three of them, but all I managed to see was an unnatural character to the light. A flickering quality that felt ominous.
Brown let go of the door as they went toward the front of the house. I saw no incentive to meekly wait for their return, so I stood up and grabbed the edge of the door before it had swung completely closed.
I heard Agent Ts’ao’s voice, for the first time raised in anger. “Damn it, Blackstone! You said he was clean—”
“We checked—”
“Obviously not well enough.”
I edged down the hallway between the “rec room” and the living room, to get a view of what was going on without interrupting the argument. I needn’t have worried. The sight out the picture window was taking all of everyone’s attention.
The thumps, which were more sustained and rhythmic now,
were
from a rush of air. A wall of it, rushing by the front of the house, glowing a peculiar orange in the sunlight.
“We weren’t tailed here,” Dr. Blackstone objected.
“Then that,” Ts’ao waved toward the window, “is one hell of a coincidence, Doctor. You grandstanding Company spooks have done nothing but screw up since you got here. You probably got one of our assets killed—”
“Sir—” Brown’s voice sounded strained.
Ts’ao shook his head. “Now you’ve blown the cover off of the
only
magically secure safe house we have.”
“Sir—” Brown was pleading.
“Do you know how many man-hours it took to make Feng Shui look this crappy?”
“Sirs,
what do we do?
” Brown shouted at them.
Ts’ao looked out the window, gave a half smile, and shook his head. “About that? Nothing.”
Dr. Blackstone looked appalled. “What do you mean, nothing? We’re under attack.”
“I’ve confidence in the building’s security. If there was a breach, they would be exploiting it.”
I looked out at the moving wall of force. I saw debris swept up in it, trash, paper, mulch—all darkening it like an approaching storm. Occasionally it would swell and seem to sweep toward the glass, but it would pull away before it touched.
“No,” Ts’ao said. “The wind isn’t the threat.” He glanced at Brown and Mustard. “Break out the guns. And vests.”
The way he said it let me know he wasn’t talking about pistols.
Doctor Blackstone looked befuddled.
“Doctor, out there is a distraction. Very high profile covering fire meant to pin us down for the real attack.” He looked out the window. “Which is going to be soon. No one can keep this up for long. You better keep an eye on our guest.”
For some reason—probably complete obstinance—I backed away from the living room and slipped behind the first door that wasn’t the interview room. Turned out to be a bedroom that, fortunately, was unoccupied.
Damned if I knew what I was doing, but I had a pretty good idea who the fireworks were for. Somewhere along the line I picked up information, or someone thought I had picked up information, that was worth pulling out all the stops to keep a secret. Elvish discretion or not, these guys were panicking. Whoever was in charge had completely lost any sense of proportion. I could not see anything I knew as being important enough to make a frontal assault on a bunch of Feds.
All I knew is that I’d seen Egil Nixon’s corpse and I was not making plans for a similar end.
I ran over to the window. It was shaded by heavy drapes that I drew aside. I was looking toward the back of the house, but I saw the same swirling wall of air. No escape that way. I stared into the maelstrom, watching the wind growing darker with accumulated dirt and debris. I knew enough not to open the window. The charms at every opening in this place gave this house an unbroken circle of protection. That was what kept the winds outside. Once that circle was broken—
“
Maxwell
—” came a voice from behind me.
I looked behind me and saw Dr. Blackstone standing in the bedroom doorway. “What the hell are you doing?” he snapped at me.
“Figuring my odds on getting the hell out of here.”
“You’re not going anywhere, son,” Dr. Blackstone said.
“I don’t remember being charged or Mirandized.” I stared out the window. If I agreed with Ts’ao’s tactical assumptions—which I had no reason not to—when our opposition was ready to assault the house, the winds would drop to let the attackers in.
“It’s not safe by the window,” Blackstone said. “You need to come back to the interview room.”
“So what do you do for the CIA?” I asked him, staying by the window.
Blackstone stayed silent.
“You don’t strike me as a field agent. You’re more an analyst type, right? Must be quite a legal Gordian knot to have you guys working on Ragnan when it’s supposedly part of the U.S.”
Blackstone grunted.
“That’s why you’re with the FBI, isn’t it? Because you don’t really have jurisdiction here—you need them to make it all neat and legal.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
What I was doing was babbling at Blackstone while I tried to engineer my escape. The problem was how many people we’d have to deal with in the attack. Would they have enough to hit every opening? Would they have snipers?
I was betting that the attack would be limited. The bastards had a lot of magical resources at their disposal, but I doubted that they had a lot of spare warm bodies. They didn’t have enough to flank me after the meeting with Cutler, they probably didn’t now. I suspected that was the reason for the windstorm. They had to pin us all down, because they had limited numbers to devote to the attack itself.
That probably meant snipers.
I had studied the window and saw all the protective charms were attached to the storm window. That meant I could slide the inner window open without breaking the protection.
“Jesus, Maxwell—”
Blackstone wasn’t doing anything. He was an academic type, and he suffered the flaw that, if no one automatically succumbed to his authority, he didn’t quite know what to do.
I had a plan now. It wouldn’t work until the winds dropped, but it gave me a chance.
Blackstone finally got over the fact that I wasn’t listening to him. He grabbed my arm and said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Self-preservation,” I said.
Blackstone backed up and pulled a gun on me.
“You really want to shoot me?”
“Don’t force me to make that decision.”
I looked him up and down. “You’d do better to train that gun on the window.”
“You’re coming back with—”
The wind stopped suddenly. The sound ceased as if someone pulled a switch. Almost at the same time there was the sound of gunfire. Blackstone ducked and suddenly didn’t know where to point the gun. I ducked to one side of the window frame and looked outside. I didn’t see anyone prepping to enter this way. Good and bad. Good, because they didn’t have the manpower to cover every entrance. Bad, because that almost certainly meant that they had a sniper covering the area.
I threw open the inner window, and heard more gunshots.
“Christ,” Blackstone said.
I looked back at him as the sounds of breaking glass and wood came from the front of the building. “We’ve got to get out of here,” I told him as I tried to get the storm window off its track, while exposing myself as little as possible.