The Reluctant Assassin (28 page)

Chevie was less stuffed, having ignored ninety percent of what was offered to her.

I cannot stay here, she thought. My cholesterol count would kill me in a week.

“Okay, gents,” she said, slapping the table with purpose, “we should draw up our plans before you guys get blind drunk.”

Bob Winkle snorted. “Drunk on beer? I ain’t been
beer drunk
since I were ten.” He grabbed the rest of the black bread from the plate and shoved it into his pockets. “I better go and look to the mare. You two do your good-bye cuddling, and I’ll be back to bring whoever’s going to the Orient. I suppose there ain’t much more than splinters left of that conjuring equipment me and the boys ferried over earlier.”

Winkle dodged down the street, eyes and ears open for bluebottles.

“That guy will land you in trouble,” warned Chevie.

“Well, he won’t be spending his waking hours trying to murder anyone, or his sleeping hours dreaming of death.”

“Maybe so. But I still think you should come back with me. A part of you belongs in the twenty-first century.”

Riley sighed. “But a part of me is here. I have a half brother still living somewhere. Perhaps in Brighton? With Bob Winkle’s help, maybe I can find him.”

“You can afford Winkle’s help?”

Riley shrugged. “For the time being. I know where Garrick kept his cash. I suppose the theater is mine too.”

“So you will search for your brother?”

Riley pulled the magician’s cloak tight around his shoulders. “I am a magician now. I shall put a troupe together and enjoy the theater life until I find Ginger Tom. Perhaps he knows my Christian name.”

Chevie’s eyes were downcast. “Yeah, I bet he does.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the final Timekey left behind by the hazmat team. “The team and their gear went down with the house, but I had Bob’s boys collect their Timekeys while they were setting up the mirror trap, so, if you ever change your mind . . .”

Riley hooked the lanyard around his neck. “Thank you, Chevie. But this is my century, and I belong here.”

Chevie wagged a finger. “Never say never, right?”

“Yes, you are correct. There may come a time when I need to escape.”

“It’s preprogrammed, set up already, so all you have to do is press the button. Make sure the four quadrants light up, or you’ll end up stuck in the wormhole with you-know-who.”

“I will be certain to check.”

Chevie sipped her coffee, which had the consistency of mud and tasted like cough syrup. “I feel there should be more, you know. We’ve gone through hell, and now I’m just gonna walk away?”

“We will always be close, Chevie. I know the secret of your tattoo, remember?”

Chevie patted her own shoulder. “My tattoo? Yeah, well. I’m afraid I got sold a turkey on that one.”

“Sold a turkey?” said Riley, frowning.

“A crock. A bowl of bull. A heap of lies.”

“Your father lied to you? And you lied to me?”

“Afraid so, but I’m telling you the truth now, on account of all the bonding we’re doing. Dad loved telling that story, but the whole Chevron thing came about because my father had a falling out with the owner of the local Texaco.”

“Tex-a-co?”

“Yeah. A fueling station for automobiles. So, just to annoy this guy, and because of his beer problem, he gets a tattoo and then calls his firstborn Chevron, which is a competing gas station.”

Riley pushed his tankard away with the tip of one finger. “So, no noble warrior?”

“No. And I based my whole life on that story, got the tattoo, told anyone who would listen, became an agent. Last year I meet the Texaco guy, who is broken up that my pop died, and he tells me the truth. I am named after a gas station.”

“Wow,” said Riley, who had heard the word used in the future and liked it.

“Wow? That’s it, huh? No magical wisdom from the Great Riley?”

“We have both built our lives on lies,” said Riley. “I was not abandoned to slum cannibals, and your ancestors were not great warriors; but the lies did their work, and we are who we are. I think you are the youngest agent in your police force for good reason. Perhaps in spite of the name Chevron.”

Chevie smiled. “Yeah, okay, Riley. That’s not bad. I’m gonna go with that.”

They abandoned the cab and walked to the house on Half Moon Street. Bob Winkle was doing his utmost to decipher the limited facts he had been given.

“So, princess. You plan to enter this house and stay there for a hundred years?”

Chevie patted his shoulder. “Something like that, Winkle. I would say
See you around
, but it’s probably not going to happen.”

“So we should kiss now?”

“Of course,” said Chevie and gave him a peck on the cheek that he would have to be content with.

“Next year I will be fifteen,” said Bob Winkle, emboldened by the kiss. “We could be married. I could make fair chink off a battling Injun maid at the fairgrounds.”

“Tempting as that offer is, I think I’ll pass.”

“Very well, princess. But now that I am part owner of a theater, the ladies will be all over Robert Winkle. Six weeks I will wait for you, not a minute more.”

“I understand,” said Chevie, smiling. “It’s the best you can do.”

Riley walked her to the front step, while Bob perched on a neighboring set of stairs, watching for constables’ helmets.

“Be careful, Chevron Savano,” he said. “The future is a dangerous place. It is only a matter of time until the Martians arrive.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna watch out for anything with tentacles.”

“Hurry yourselves,” called Bob Winkle. “This is a posh road. Two more minutes and our collars get pinched.”

The boy was right. It would be a shame if this affair were to end in a prison cell.

Chevie hugged Riley tightly. “Thanks for everything,” she said.

Riley hugged her back. “Thanks to you, too, Chevron Savano, warrior and fuel station. Perhaps one day I will put our story into words. It would rival the tales of H. G. Wells himself.”

“Maybe you already did,” said Chevie. “I’ll Google it when I get home.”

“Googling sounds like a painful procedure,” said Riley.

Bob whistled loudly. “I see a helmet, Riley. Leave her be, now.”

There was no more delaying it. Chevie kissed Riley’s cheek and squeezed his hand, then closed the door behind her. The basement room was dark and dank, just as Chevie remembered it from that brief moment before the sack went over their heads. She saw chicken bones in the corner with rats huddled over them like tramps around a bonfire. The rats did not seem concerned by her presence; rather they looked her over for the meat on her bones.

Being stared down by large rats was a good way to focus a person on getting to someplace with smaller rats, so Chevie pulled out Bill Riley’s Timekey and walked briskly to the metal pad.

No time like the present.

She punched the Timekey’s control pad and made very sure that all four quadrants lit up.

After a second’s dry vibration, the key began sprouting orange sparks like a Roman candle.

Here we go, she thought. I hope Victoria’s house doesn’t fall down.

And then she thought, I hope Riley will be okay. That kid deserves a break.

She frowned.
Not that my own future will be a bed of roses. I am going to spend months answering questions. Thank God Waldo saw the whole thing. I hope he recorded it.

Chevie held up the Timekey. All four quadrants were flashing.

Good-bye, Riley. Be well.

Chevie smiled and orange sparks flowed between her teeth.

Please, no monkey parts, she thought, and then was gone.

Out of time.

Bob Winkle volunteered to steal a bicycle to ferry them both across to High Holborn, but Riley said no.

“I am your partner, you know,” Winkle said. “How come you is issuing commands like some form of little Caesar?”

Riley decided to stake his claim right off. Winkle could swallow it or not as he pleased.

“I am the Great Savano, Master Winkle. I own the theater and the equipment, and I know where the gold is buried. If you want to work for me, then bully and do as yer bid. If not, then off back to the Old Nichol with your bones and smoke some wallpaper for yerself.”

Bob whistled. “Harsh, Riley. Harsh and cold. But them are good traits in a master and will keep the others from getting out of line. Also, the Great Savano. That has a real ring to it.”

“Thank you, Bob.” Riley paused. “Others? I can’t feed the entire rookery.”

“I know, but I have three brothers that need looking after. We come as a set, you see. All or none.”

“Who could split a fellow from his brothers?” said Riley. “That would be uncommon cruel. You should fetch them at once, and we will rendezvous at the Orient to draw up our plans. Can any of your brothers juggle?”

“Juggle?” said Bob, already crossing the road. “Why, Mr. Riley, they juggles
each other.
”

And he was off down an alley, making a direct line for the rookery, to break the news that the Winkles were saved from Old Nichol.

Riley walked on alone, casting furtive glances over his shoulder whenever a chill breeze cooled his forehead.

Garrick is gone, he told himself. Lost in the wormhole.

Lost in the wormhole? Could that be any more than a dream?

Chevie was no dream.

A beautiful maiden from an exotic land come to free him from the tyrant Garrick. It read like a dream and would make a capital novel.

The only thing missing is a dinosaur come back to life.

Riley walked on, realizing that it would be a long time before he could fully enjoy the sun on his face and ignore the chill.

Every stone kicked in an alley, every creak of wood on the stairway— I will hear and see Garrick everywhere.

But there would be a friend close by, and his brothers, and in time maybe his own brother.

Ginger Tom
, he thought,
I am coming, and oh, boy, do I have a tale to tell you.

Riley lifted the hem of his velvet cloak out of the city mud and gazed up at the triple span of the Holborn Viaduct, the city’s most impressive feat of modern architecture.

Home once more, he thought. Home to a new life.

Riley stepped around a toppled fruit cart and in seconds was lost in the morning throng of everyday folk doing their daily job of staying alive in London town.

The Battering Rams’ resident tattoo artist, Farley, trailed behind Riley through Holborn, his face hidden by a silken hood of a kind favored by Arab mercenaries. Riley might not have recognized the tattooist even without the hood, had he caught sight of him. Farley did not seem nearly so decrepit as he had in the Hidey-Hole. His back was ramrod straight, and his sure-footed stride was that of a man in early middle age.

Pedestrians gave Farley a wide berth on the footpath for two reasons. For one, something red glittered from the shadows under his hood like the night eye of a wolf, and for another—if a second reason was needed to avoid a gent with a wolf’s eye— this man was obviously a lunatic and destined for a bed in one of Her Majesty’s asylums, for he was speaking into his closed fist as though there was a fairy living in there listening to every word.

So people stepped aside and cast quick, sidelong glances at Farley.

Talking to oneself is the first sign of madness, they thought. And there ain’t no predicting when a madman will spring into sudden violence.

What the Victorian pedestrians could not have possibly known was that Farley was speaking into a microphone strapped to the back of his wrist rather than to a fairy. And the wolf’s eye glowing from the shadowy recesses of his eye socket was, in fact, a monocular infrared scope with a visible-lightblocking filter. Simply put, to Farley, anyone who had been in a time tunnel and whose atoms had been coated in its particular radiation would sparkle gently, as though coated with gold dust. It was a very handy way to keep an eye on someone without getting too close.

“Rosie, patch me through to the colonel,” he said into the microphone, his accent still English, as it had been in the Rams’ Hidey-Hole. Farley had been in character so long that he rarely came out of it.

“You sure?” said a voice in his earpiece, male in spite of the name. “He’s having a massage. You know what he’s like.”

Farley did indeed know what the colonel was like—no one knew it better, but he also knew that the colonel had asked to be kept up to date. In truth, Farley suspected that his superior was excited that something a little out of the ordinary was happening. This stage of the operation was all preparation, which was never very interesting, so this whole Agent Savano thing had put a little pep in everyone’s step.

“I am sure, Rosenbaum. Just put me through. I’m out in the open here, talking into my hand like a halfwit.”

“Connecting you now, Major.”

Farley held for a moment, watching Riley open the door to a theater that had seen better days.

The boy knew where the other key was, noted Farley, stepping into the archway of a butcher’s yard. Looks like he inherits the building.

His earpiece crackled as the colonel picked up the phone at his end.

“Hey, dude. How’s it going on the street?”

Farley winced. He hated it when the colonel tried to be casual and chummy: that was not how the army worked. And, at any rate, it was an act. The colonel had no friends.

“It’s fine, sir. On the streets. That situation we talked about is winding down. No need to deploy.”

The colonel chuckled and it sounded like a well-oiled engine purring. “Come on, Farley. Why are you speaking in code? Who’s going to be listening in? That clown Charismo barely managed to put a landline together. Telephonicus Farspeak? What a joke. Spell it out, Major.”

Farley took a breath. “Yessir, Colonel. Force of habit, sir. Never jeopardize the operation. Loose lips sink ships, and all that.”

“Just give me the facts, man. Where’s Garrick?”

“He’s gone, sir. Toast. I got the gist on the bug I planted in the boy’s bandage.”

“Gone?” The colonel sounded disappointed. “I liked him. He was a funny guy.”

Funny
was not the word Farley would have chosen, especially when he remembered the assassin looming over him with a bottle of ether.

“The others?”

“The boy is here, in Holborn,” continued Farley. “And Agent Savano has entered the portal at Half Moon Street.”

“So, no damage done?”

“No, sir. We are still running dark. As far as the future is concerned, Charles Smart’s technology died with him, and we are on schedule.”

“What about Charismo? Is he still nicely placed where we can use him?”

Farley ground his teeth, never happy about delivering bad news to the colonel. “Not exactly, sir. The boy set him up for a fall with the duke. They saw the mutations. I imagine he’s getting lobotomized about now. I doubt he will have enough brain cells left to play fetch, Colonel.”

There was silence for a moment, except for the
thump-slap
of the colonel’s masseuse at work.

“I never liked that guy and his creepy masks anyway,” said the colonel at last. “We can work around him.”

Farley dropped his hand for a moment and sighed. A soldier never knew when the colonel would go off like an automatic weapon, spewing bile instead of bullets.

“What about the boy? Should I remove him from the equation?”

The colonel mulled this over. “No. That’s a plucky kid there. He could be useful, and I don’t want you to get caught with your hands wet.”

“Riley is a loose end, sir. And he could cause trouble.”

“We know where he is, correct?”

“Yessir.”

“And we can neutralize this Riley anytime we want, right?”

“Yes, we can. Easy as pie.”

“Well, then, Major. Let’s keep an eye on the boy for now. If he pokes his nose into anything remotely non-Victorian, then you pay him a midnight visit. How’s that sound?”

Farley stepped into the street and watched Riley’s form flit past a row of upstairs windows, his outline shining through the net curtains.

“That sounds fine, sir. He’s not going anywhere.”

“Good,” said the colonel. “Now put one of your men on the kid. I need you back at the Hidey-Hole so that Malarkey doesn’t get suspicious.”

“On my way, sir.”

Farley severed the connection and took one last look at the Orient Theatre.

“I’ll be seeing you, Riley,” he said to the glowing silhouette. “Real soon.”