The car drove another level down and into a nearly empty parking lot. The only light was a flickering fluorescent hanging roughly in the center of the space. Beneath the light, incongruously, sat a boardroom-sized table with about twelve executive leather chairs.
The driver shut off the engine, and the lock on my handleless door popped open. The driver got out and opened the door for O’Malley, who walked around and opened the door for me. I stepped out and shivered. This place was about ten degrees colder than the day outside. The only sound in the whole space was the sound of an electric motor lowering a rolling metal barrier across the ramp we’d just driven down. It finished with the echoing clatter of metal locking home.
“Welcome to the War Room, Maxwell,” O’Malley said.
I had heard the rumors that Rayburn had established some ultra-secure meeting place in the early days of the Portal, back when the Feds were a military threat, not just a political one. I had taken the rumors, as had every one else I knew, as equal parts fact and exaggeration. Now I looked around at the space and decided that I, and the people I knew, probably lacked sufficient imagination.
I could barely see the near walls in the light, but what I saw was covered in small inscriptions. Mystic text no larger than the type on your average printed page. The floor, too, was covered with inscriptions. Concentric rings centered on the conference table. Unlike Bone Daddy’s magic circles, these words were permanently inset in the concrete, each symbol cast in gold, silver, or some semiprecious stone. The feeling in this place was like standing next to the main transformer at a nuclear power plant. The hair on my arms wanted to stand on end.
O’Malley walked me toward the center of the room. I kept flashing back to a memory of Bone Daddy warning me, “
The mojo’s been building here a couple hours. You break the pattern, boy, and it’ll be like someone shoved a stick of dynamite up your ass.”
I wondered how long the mojo had been building up in this room. Fortunately, someone would need a jackhammer to break the pattern.
O’Malley sat me down in one of the chairs at one end of the long table. He backed away, out of the light. My dark vision was shot now, and all I could really see was the conference table, the chairs, and the long fluorescent tubes above me. I heard a car door slam, and an engine start—
I turned and yelled,
“Hey!”
into the darkness.
I heard the car drive away, and the ratting metallic sound of another door closing.
For a few long moments I was left alone here, wondering exactly what the hell I was supposed to do. I squinted out at the darkness, trying to make out any sense of movement. The only sound now, the electric hum of the fluorescents. The air was heavy, cold, and carried the humid smell of mildew—perfect atmosphere for a dungeon.
Then there was the sound of a large electric motor, the sound so sudden in the enclosed space that I jumped.
Elevator,
I thought. I listened to its descent for what seemed an inordinately long time. Then the motor stopped and I heard the doors slide back. I also saw a narrow rectangle of light slowly open on the far wall across the conference table from me. The space revealed was huge, taller than the room I was in, and wide enough to take two cars abreast. All similarly embellished to the room I sat in.
Three human figures were dwarfed in the revealed space, and the capacity of the elevator made me wonder if they ever met dragons in this room.
The trio exited the elevator, and due to the ill lighting and misleading cues to scale, it wasn’t until they entered the domain of the fluorescent light that I saw for sure who they were.
To the left was the five-foot blonde landmine that was Cleveland’s Public Safety Director, Julian Nesmith. To the right was the pudgy and somewhat taller form of Adrian Phillips, the chairman of the Cleveland Port Authority. The man in the center overshadowed the other two, both in physical stature and in impact. Mayor David Rayburn stood six-six, and had shoulders that made it look as if he could break your average elf in half. He had huge peasant hands, blocky, the hands of a laborer—even if his dad put him through law school. He owned a legendary smile that he was choosing not to use at the moment. It might have been the light, but I think I saw a little more gray in his close-cropped black hair than I’d noticed the last time I’d seen him.
The trio sat without ceremony, Rayburn taking the seat opposite mine, the length of the table between us. “I think we can forgo the introductions, Mr. Maxwell.” His expression was grim.
I nodded and folded my hands in front of me, on the table. “What can I do for you, Your Honor?” I managed, barely, to keep my voice in line with a fiction that I had come here voluntarily.
“I’m informed that you had a recent run-in with some local Federal Agents,” the mayor said.
“I think that is, perhaps, an understatement.”
Nesmith slid a small stack of eight by ten glossies toward me. “These the men who abducted you?”
I reached for the photographs. They were all slick black and whites, apparently cribbed from whatever official IDs these men had owned. No names were attached, just file numbers. I riffled through them and tossed back Mr. Brown, Colonel Mustard, Agent Ts’ao, and the two drivers. There were a couple of other pictures in the stack of people I hadn’t seen before. I studied them—just in case I ran into any more Feds.
“You’re missing Doctor Blackstone,” I said.
“We’re aware of that,” Nesmith snapped. Struck a nerve there.
They didn’t know him until today, until that fiasco at the safe house.
Nesmith continued after pausing to look at the photos I had sent back. “These were the only agents you saw?”
I nodded.
“What did they question you about?”
I looked at the trio and got an uneasy vibe. Almost as if the Cleveland home team was on the same fishing expedition the Feds were. I answered the question, giving them a brief on the Feds’ tune. It wasn’t as if there were any privileged communications involved.
As I continued, the trio facing me grew graver.
When I finished, Mayor Rayburn folded his hands in front of him. Adrian Phillips leaned forward and said, in a squeaky voice, “Is that what you believe? After all this administration has done for—”
The mayor held up a hand, and Phillips fell silent. “Don’t attack the messenger. Mr. Maxwell is simply relating a belief held by some in the executive branch of the federal government.”
“Yes?” Phillips asked slowly. “But what’s
his
view?”
I was about to answer, but the mayor spoke for me. “His views aren’t the issue here. What side he takes in this turf war with the Feds is, at the moment, completely beside the point.” Rayburn waved a hand at me. “You’re not here because of your politics.”
I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. “Why, exactly,
am
I here then?”
Rayburn leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. His collar shifted and I caught a gleam of gold around his neck.
The chain Aloeus gave him?
I wondered.
“The dragon.” The mayor spoke softly, almost a whisper. “You know something about his death.”
“Something. I wish I knew more.”
Adrian slammed a palm on the table and looked at me with distaste. “Why are we bothering with him?”
“I know the pressures you’re under, Adrian,” Mayor Rayburn said. “But allow the man to speak. Tell us about what you do know.”
Again, I gave them the story I gave the Feds. I studied them for reactions as I talked. To my surprise, none of them reacted when I talked about Cutler and crooked elf cops. Phillips himself was fuming.
When I’d gone through to my liberation from Dr. Blackstone, Phillips turned to face Nesmith and said, “Your people already established he wasn’t on to anything. Why aren’t your elves doing something productive, like finding Faust?”
The name “Faust” fired a switch in my brain, recasting everything that I’d been going through to date. No wonder O’Malley thought I didn’t have a clue.
“Your elves?”
I leaned on the table and stood up. “Those were
your
elves?”
Nesmith looked at me with a slightly pained expression, the kind of face I’d expect to see on a mother when she learns that her six-year-old son has found out about sex. “Please sit down, Mr. Maxwell.”
“These corrupt SPU elves that kidnaped me and fed me to the late Bone Daddy, they’re yours?”
“Mine, actually,” said Mayor Rayburn. “They’re not corrupt, and they’re very, very dedicated. Sit down please.”
I shook my head and sat down.
Nesmith started, “That episode was outside normal channels—”
“No shit,” I muttered.
“—because the people we’re looking for have sources, perhaps even a mole, inside the administration. If we had brought you in for a formal questioning, your life might have been endangered. Even if you knew nothing, the appearance would have been that you did.”
“Thank you so much, it worked so well. I’m sure Mr. Bone Daddy would agree—”
Rayburn leaned forward. “Let’s dispense with the recriminations.”
“Okay, let’s.” I said, glaring at Nesmith. “So what the hell was Cutler investigating? I have transactions between these guys and Bone Daddy since the start of the SPU.”
Nesmith looked at Mayor Rayburn, who nodded at her.
“I will tell you this, Mr. Maxwell, only because Mr. Caleb Washington is dead. The gentleman you refer to as Bone Daddy was the best undercover cop this city ever had.”
“What?”
“Caleb Washington was the first recruit the SPU ever had. We spent years building his persona, all the more genuine because he was one of the most talented native mages in the city. We knew about Cutler’s investigation. He labored under a mistaken assumption. We used him to help maintain Washington’s cover.”
Suddenly, everything over the past three days took on a surreal cast. “No, wait a minute, Egil Nixon—”
“Died less than three hours after he went home the day of the dragon’s death.” Nesmith shook her head. “Through his own means, Mr. Washington had followed a trail to Mr. Nixon’s corpse.”
“Why the shootout?”
Nesmith shook her head. “It was a decision O’Malley made. Washington was ambushed by someone, probably the people responsible for Nixon’s death, before he could meet with O’Malley and pass on what he had discovered. O’Malley decided to preserve his cover by planting the weapon and manufacturing the story . . .”
“Jesus.”
I whispered. The guy was a cop.
“The same people more than likely set up the episode with you and Cutler.” She shook her head. “These same people may have set Cutler after Washington in the first place. Washington was getting very close to them.”
“Faust?”
I was answered by a silent trio of nods.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
P
ERHAPS you begin to understand,” Mayor Rayburn said quietly. “There have been threats that, up until now, it hasn’t been in the city’s interest to acknowledge publicly. To do so would have been to hand ammunition to the forces that want to remove local control of the Portal.”
“What, exactly, do you mean?” I asked him.
“The Feds have been as reluctant to publicize their operations here as we’ve been to acknowledge the threat you named ‘Faust,’” Nesmith explained. “Their contact with you has shown that their attitude has changed. That is why you’re here, and not in the Justice Center.”
“What are you saying?” I smiled and shook my head. “You offering an exclusive interview?”
“I am offering you a deal,” Mayor Rayburn said.
“Over my objection,” Phillips said, mostly to himself.
“What deal?”
“Help us get Faust,” Nesmith said.
“Pardon?”
“Their activity has risen to an unprecedented level,” she said, “centered on you.”
“Now wait a minute—”
“They are giving us an opportunity to flush them out.”
“Using me as bait?” I stood up. “Thank you, no.”
“What did I tell you?” Phillips said. When he shook his head, his whole body moved. “This whole exercise is pointless.”
“Please sit down, Mr. Maxwell,” Rayburn said. It was the kind of voice I associated with Charlton Heston as Moses—after the bush incident. I stood my ground and looked Rayburn in the eyes.
“I think the discussion’s over,” I said.
“I don’t think you want to leave just yet,” Rayburn said.
“Is this where you start threatening me with criminal prosecution?” I snapped at Nesmith. I could feel the old self-destructive stubbornness strike. I did not like to be threatened.
Nesmith surprised me. “No. If you don’t cooperate with us, you’re free to go. No strings.”
The silence filled the cavernous room. From somewhere water dripped. A vent kicked on and began to suck a mildewed wind across my face.