Shadow Knight's Mate (40 page)

Rachel pulled Arden away from the perimeter. The young woman looked slight, but Rachel felt a steeliness in her arm she wouldn't have expected. “What are you doing here? Where's Jack?”

“He can't be here. Everyone is looking for him. Besides, he's—” She stopped herself. “And what are
you
doing, Rachel Greene?”

She sounded odd. Well, they all did. “Trying to keep this tent from folding,” Rachel answered.

“Why?” Arden looked around at all the scurrying activity curiously. Over there across the way was a small American contingent of functionaries. They looked especially lost, their president having pulled the rug out from under them abruptly, when they had been somewhat confused to begin with, their German ambassador having been murdered shortly before the summit. Did that have something to do with why the President had pulled out?

“I don't know,” Rachel answered Arden's question. “I just feel like if this falls apart someone bad has won.”

She was watching Arden closely as she spoke. The young woman looked confused. Rachel had only seen her once, but she had exchanged emails with Jack about her, and he had spoken of her enormous self-possession. What had happened to her?

Rachel just kept staring. Arden caught her, looked away, then her eyes snapped back. “What?!”

Rachel just looked at her. A very young woman, who had grown up virtually parentless, then thrust into the heart of the most secret society that had ever existed. A woman of complete self-control, who could almost read minds. Rachel's expression was open and curious, inviting reading.

Arden studied her for a moment, then blushed.

“You betrayed him,” Rachel said wonderingly.

Arden didn't deny it. She put her arms around herself, holding tightly. She couldn't hold Rachel's eyes, and looked away across the compound.

“And what are you here to do now?” Rachel asked in a harsher voice.

Don't let it be water,
Jack thought. Please God don't let the chair splash down into a deep pool, with Jack still restrained. The thought of drowning terrified him, and somehow he feared Bruno would know that.

The chair seemed to fall faster. Jack had no reference points, because he couldn't see anything. His arms were held firmly against his chest. He sensed a huge obstacle out there ahead of him, and was certain that the chair's fall was going to end by slamming into a wall. Jack was screaming without knowing it. The chair accelerated faster and faster, eager to smash him. Things seemed to brush at him in the darkness. Every moment felt like his last.

Then his fall began to slow. The chair suddenly took a steep turn, which slowed it further, and it was sliding forward, to come to a stop. The chair fell over sideways, which completely terrified him, then its constraints popped free of his arms. Jack pushed against the wall in front of him and it gave way. He stumbled up and out into an alley. On the outside the walls looked like one of those old-fashioned freight elevators that come out of the ground. Jack staggered free of it and the doors closed, leaving him alone and completely disoriented.

He walked away a few steps, rubbed his hands over his face. It was November in northern Europe, and colder than January where he came from. Thin sunlight didn't help. Jack had been up all night, most of it spent in Bruno's sanctuary. He turned in a slow circle, trying to find a landmark.

A couple of blocks away a three- or four-story building, the tallest structure in this suburb, caught his eye. It was the most modern building in sight, glass walls rising out of the old, old town. The windows reflected the sights around them, so the building appeared to be wearing a coat of older architecture. It was an interesting effect, as if the building were hiding in plain sight. At night it would be nearly invisible.

The building held him. Three stories. Had he climbed that high through the ceiling? Somehow the building looked to him like Bruno, intrusive and secretive at the same time. The building was narrower at the top, in what could have been a penthouse. Or a control room.

As Jack watched, the top floor of the building exploded. It was a quiet explosion, self-contained, and if Jack hadn't been staring right at it, he wouldn't have known where the sound came from. The walls didn't shatter and send glass flying. One window burst, but the others just collapsed inward, an implosion that collapsed that whole top floor in a matter of seconds.

That hadn't just been an eject button Jack had hit. It had been a self-destruct switch. An emergency escape from Bruno's sky bunker in case he was invaded by overwhelming force, and needed to get away and destroy his attackers.

Jack's mouth fell open as he stared. The explosion would have been most thorough, he felt sure, destroying all traces of his old classmate's renegade operation.

“Goodbye, Bruno,” Jack whispered.

He felt sure Bruno would have wanted it this way. He wouldn't have wanted to live with defeat. In fact, this whole scheme might have been an elaborate suicide plot.

But Bruno had said something ominous.
I have more back-up plans than you can count.
Something like that. And at least one of those schemes might already have been set in motion.

Jack started running, looking for a phone and a car.

Rachel Greene's eyes kept returning to the American contingent, standing befuddled. One woman was holding a drape of the presidential seal, the kind that would hang on a podium. “Stay here,” Rachel said softly, and walked across the square. The middle-aged woman holding the presidential drape began to watch her as Rachel drew closer. The woman was a little frumpy, but with efficient-looking arms and wrists. There was something familiar about her eyes, an insightful determination. She was the kind who would make the perfect executive secretary. While everyone else had lost their heads, she had remembered the seal, but now couldn't think of anything to do with it.

“May I?” Rachel asked, holding out her hands. The woman's faded blue eyes stared into Rachel's soft brown ones. She looked puzzled and even a little angry, but she was used to taking orders. Her fingers eased their grip and she let Rachel gently pull the cloth from her hands.

“Thank you,” Rachel said, and walked on. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw Arden watching her.
Are you so smart, girl?,
Rachel thought.
Do you know what I'm going to do?
Jack had trusted this girl, at least to an extent, but Rachel did not.

The stage was already set up in front of her. There was no central podium, just eight chairs on the stage. A great deal of planning had gone into that arrangement. If the chairs were put in a line, two people would be on the ends, shuffled off to the sides. Someone would be central, someone not. There were other considerations. Israel could not be next to Syria, the U.S. not next to Britain. (They didn't want to look too insider-ish.) War had almost broken out at the peace summit over the arrangement of the chairs. In the end—Rachel's subtle suggestion to a chief of protocol—the chairs had been arranged in a horseshoe shape, with two up high and the others in two arms circling around, so that the ones on “top” were farthest from the audience and the two on the ends were closest, positions of prominence. This had satisfied everyone, and the various presidents pretended it had been a tempest over nothing, that they couldn't care less where they sat.

Rachel mounted the steps beside the stage, walking slowly. Two Secret Service agents in the wings, along with security personnel from other countries, watched her closely, but there were no presidents on the stage, so who cared about a young woman providing window dressing?

Rachel chose one of the chairs near the top of the horseshoe and carefully draped the American presidential seal over its back, facing the audience. Now the chair was more prominent than all the others. It was dressed and they were naked. The chair also looked expectant. Let's get on with the show. Rachel backed away, checked to make sure the seal was on straight, then walked quickly away.

She had done everything she could.

As Rachel walked back toward Arden, the character of the square changed. The American contingent looked pleased: a small victory for American diplomacy. The woman from whom Rachel had taken the drape smiled at her, then kept her eyes on her. Photographers from dozens of news organizations watched curiously, unlimbering their cameras.

The effect on the members of other nations' representatives was most pronounced. The aides and attaches in the square began whispering to each other, then getting on phones and walkie-talkies. The confused, almost idle air of the square, a place where obviously nothing was about to happen, became purposeful.

The first head of state to appear on the stage, three minutes and forty-three seconds after Rachel had placed the presidential seal, was the French president. President DeVinces almost skidded to a stop in his haste, then checked himself to make sure his dignity was intact. An aide followed closely, but the president waved him away. With great deliberation, the French president seated himself in a chair across from the presidential seal, smiled out at the crowd, and waited.

The president of Israel was next, followed very closely by the president of Syria. The men exchanged words, apparently not unpleasant ones, and took their seats on either side of the chair adorned by the American presidential seal.

Within ten minutes all the chairs except one were filled. The British prime minister was the last one to take the stage, but he did so talking on a cell phone, perhaps as if in intimate conversation with his friend the American president. The P.M. seemed nonplussed for a moment to have only one chair to choose from, but then took the chair on one end of the horseshoe with good grace.

For a moment they all sat, smiling , posing. That's when all the cameras went off. The next day the front page of every newspaper in the world would carry that picture: the most important heads of state in the world coming together to try to solve the world's problems, with one empty seat among them, that seat prominently displaying the American presidential seal.

Then the presidents and prime ministers and premiers stopped posing and started talking. The Syrian and Israeli presidents leaned across the empty chair to chat amiably. England and Russia got into an animated discussion, the Russian president sweeping back her long blond hair at one point. Germany, France, and China leaned close to each other, chatting and nodding as if they were all multilingual.

The conversations began to look less chatty and more purposeful. There were undisguised frowns, but no apparent angry words. Clearly positions were being taken, then changed. The conversational groups shifted. The heads looked thoughtful, forceful, flexible. Watching them—and the whole world was watching—anyone would have longed to be part of that conversation. It shifted and flowed. Apparently hearing something he liked, the British prime minister nodded, then got up and walked a few steps to the chair displaying the American presidential seal, sat in it, and engaged the Syrian and Israeli presidents in animated discussions, obviously conveying information, or perhaps an offer.

Now the American contingent was not pleased at all. The executive secretary frowned at Rachel. Then her gaze shifted and she looked puzzled for a moment.

Rachel took her place beside Arden and stood quietly, ignored by everyone else.

“My God,” Arden muttered. A compliment. Rachel nodded in acceptance.

“May I sit at your feet and be your disciple?” Arden added after a moment, looking around in awe.

Rachel turned to her with her hard look back in place. “No. And let me tell you why—”

Her cell phone rang.

Rachel answered, holding the phone tightly to her ear.

“Rachel,” Jack said, out of breath. “I got away. I'm on my way. I don't know where Arden is, she was supposed to—”

“Don't worry,” Rachel said tightly, not wanting to give anything away. But she could tell from the girl's pleading eyes that she had known who was calling from the moment Rachel answered the phone.