Wolf in Shadow-eARC (48 page)

“Sefrina, the evil, fecking, sucker bitch,” Frankie said. “She could have arranged for us to transit home anywhere in Southwark or London, but she had to do it halfway across London Bridge.”

“I don’t understand,” Rhian said. “So what?”

“Londinium’s bridge was not in quite the same place as the modern one. I suppose we are lucky it was downstream. Upstream, we would have been sucked into the whirlpools around the bridge supports and drowned. We nearly did anyway. It was sheer bloody chance that the tidal flow pushed us within reach of a floating pier.”

“Sefrina set us up,” Rhian said, turning the idea over in her mind. “She actually tried to drown us, but why?”

“For the hell of it, because it amused her, because she doesn’t like witches, because Max values you: take your pick. That’s why suckers don’t rule the world. You can generally rely on fear and self-interest, if nothing more noble, to get human beings to cooperate in a crisis. Suckers combine total self-absorption with a vicious sense of humor.

A woo-wah announced the arrival of a blues and twos meat wagon. An interested crowd of rubberneckers examined them from the embankment. Paramedics trotted purposefully down the wooden ramp that connected the landing platform to terra firma. They had the air of people with a job to do and the determination to do it properly.

“Oh no,” Frankie groaned to herself before appealing to the paramedics. “We’re fine, really. We just need to get home where a hot bath and a cup of cocoa will set us as right as rain.”

“You’ve been in the Thames tidal estuary,” said a woman paramedic, wrinkling her nose.

“Well, yes.”

“You and six hundred thousand tons of sewage poured in annually, mostly after heavy rain overloads the sewage system.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“Like the heavy rain we had last night. ‘Course, cholera’s not been a problem since the nineteenth century, which only leaves dysentery, meningitis, and legionnaire’s disease. You remember David Walliam’s charity swim down the Thames?”

“Well, yes, but my inoculations are up to date.”

“Really, got your medical card with you?”

Two paramedics marched Frankie up the ramp. Rhian walked behind, still coughing up the odd centiliter.

“Walliams had a full suite of inoculations and antibiotics before his swim but still went down with Thames-Tummy. This is not as fun as it sounds, unless you like running a high fever while throwing up for twenty-four hours.
Escherichia coli
and
Cryptosporidium enteritis
are not best mates with the human body.”

Frankie managed one more feeble protest. “You can’t take me in to casualty against my will.”

“I can section you if I conclude that you are of severe mental impairment—such as might be indicated by jumping in the Thames. Do you want to spend six weeks in the funny farm trying to persuade the trick cyclists that you’re sane?”

The paramedic carried on remorselessly as her male colleagues stuffed Frankie into the meat wagon.

“I haven’t even got to diseases like Rat Catcher’s Yellows.”

Rhian paused as she was about to climb in behind Frankie. “That doesn’t sound good,” she said anxiously.

“Rat Catcher’s Yellows is also known as Black Jaundice, Fort Bragg Fever, or
Leptospirosis
to the medical trade. No, it isn’t good. We can’t inoculate against it, but a large injection of a heavy dose of penicillin should provide some protection.”

“Why’s it called Rat Catcher’s Yellows?” Rhian asked.

She knew it was the sort of question you never asked medical people but she just couldn’t help herself.

“Because you turn yellow just before you die. You catch
Leptospirosis
by swallowing the rat’s pee in the river.”

At that point Rhian cleared her stomach of the last of the river water by throwing up violently all over the ambulance steps.

Jameson hadn’t piloted a helicopter for months. It wasn’t like riding a bike, you really did forget. Even a modern chopper with sophisticated electronics that combined the cyclic and collective into a single control was a tricky beast to handle. The Commission’s runabout was a heavy two-engine job. The law required two engines to legally operate over London. Nevertheless, the treacherous crosswinds over the mountains of North Wales tossed the aircraft about like a microlite. He cut the throttle to ride out an updraft when it promptly became a downdraft and he had to climb frantically.

“Perhaps we should have taken the train,” Karla said.

He was too busy to think of a witty reply. They staggered on erratically through the air like a drunk walking back from the pub. Finally, they left the mountains and he could descend onto the coastal plain and into relatively calm air. Jameson concentrated on landing. It was a bit bumpy, but . . .any one you walk away from is a good one, as the moustachioed Brylcream boys of the RAF used to say. By the time he put the machine down, he was exhausted and the sweat running down his face had started to drip onto his shirt collar.

“Too many cigarettes, too many whiskeys, and not enough exercise,” Karla said disapprovingly.

Jameson ignored her and took off his headphones.

“Why can’t bloody academics hold their meetings somewhere civilized, like Kensington High Street? Why do they have to find some God-forsaken hole on the periphery of human civilization? And why don’t they ever switch on their mobile phones?”

“Humans are too complex for their own good, and academics are complex humans. What do you expect, common sense?”

The helicopter blades stopped turning with a final whine and Jameson released his harness by hitting the central button. He opened the door and jumped out, narrowly missing a cow pat. He’d landed in a field by the sports lodge that was proudly hosting the International Society of Bronze History annual bunfight.

A desk was set up in reception to hand out badges and programs. It also sold memorabilia, such as T-shirts announcing that Bronze Age historians did it with ground radar, which must have seemed achingly funny and ever so daring to the assembled academics. Jameson flashed his Special Branch card to the two bored female undergrads on the desk and asked for Dr Ferndale.

One of the students shot off while the other examined Jameson thoughtfully. Karla gave her a look, whereupon she busied herself sorting T-shirts in a box under the counter. Jameson eyed Karla suspiciously, wondering what that was all about. She gave him a radiant smile of perfect innocence and put her arm through his.

Doctor Ferndale turned out to be an astonishing elderly lady of tiny proportions and short grey hair. She had a large amber necklace that seemed way too heavy for her neck. Jameson thought she would be in danger of blowing away in a light breeze, let alone the bracing Welsh sea air.

“I’m sorry to drag you away from your meeting, Doctor Ferndale,” Jameson said, showing her his card.

“Think nothing of it, young man,” she replied, her manner measured and precise. that of someone who chooses words carefully. “You’ve saved me from having to sit through Professor Rontogeist’s annual lecture on Hittite legal procedure in the event of divorce. His faculty won’t give him the money to attend unless he gives a lecture. Unfortunately, he hasn’t produced anything new for a decade so we get the same slides every year. He’s a nice old stick and so enjoys these get-togethers. Nobody has the heart to disappoint him by rejecting his paper. It does get a little dull, though, after the sixth or seventh time of hearing.”

“Er, yes,” Jameson said, who thought it sounded as if it would be balls-achingly boring the first time.

Doctor Ferndale was not quite what he expected. She might be a bit doddery but she had bright, observant eyes like a sparrow. He had the impression that she didn’t miss much.

“Is there somewhere we can talk privately?” he asked.

“The coffee bar will be empty until the midafternoon break. We can go there.”

Jameson obtained a couple of coffees, which he had to pour himself from vacuum flasks set up in the corner. It took him a little time to find milk, sugar, and little plastic swizzle sticks. He carried the refreshment back to a table in a recess where Karla sat with Doctor Ferndale. Karla flashed him a grateful look when he arrived.

“I’ve been chatting to your companion. Such a pretty girl, but I suspect she is older than she looks,” Ferndale said blandly, raising her coffee cup to her lips.

Jameson gave Karla an inquiring look and got a rather helpless shrug in silent reply.

“Now what would Special Branch, no less, want to talk to me about so urgently that they fly up from London in a helicopter? How exciting. I shall be invited to every party and pumped for information. I must think up some way of hinting at exciting derring-do around the pyramids. Possibly I shall invent a story involving spies or some such, since I assume that you will wish our talk to be confidential.”

“Ah, yes,” Jameson replied, thinking it was time he reclaimed the conversation. “I believe you’ve had contact with Doctor Vocstrite of Whitechapel University.”

“Indeed, concerning Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs.”

“Could you be more specific?”

Ferndale dabbed her lips with a paper tissue and examined the complimentary biscuit on the saucer before putting it carefully to one side.

“He was interested in the spells in
The Book of the Dead
, and other tracts, concerning the Egyptian concept of
maat.
”

She looked at Jameson quizzically.

“Are you familiar with the term?”

“More or less,” Jameson replied. “It concerns divine order, truth, and justice personified by the goddess of the same name.”

He felt like an undergraduate again, giving a stock answer in a tutorial and waiting for his tutor to expose the shallowness of his intellect.

“Like all translations from Ancient Egyptian, the English words fail to convey the real significance.”

“I know, Professor Fairbold explained the difficulties.”

Ferndale raised her eyebrows.

“You know Fairbold, well, well.
Maat
was another name for the human universe, which could only be sustained and protected from chaos by the proper observances and rites involving religion and magic. The temples were like power stations or beacons to create order from madness. The main duty of the pharaoh was to use his divine power to arrange balance and order among the gods by means of magic and ritual. As I said, it doesn’t translate very well. Our civilization works on the assumption that the universe does its own thing all too well according to its own laws, with or without our participation.”

“And what did Vocstrite want?”

“Translation help to code the hieroglyphic scripts in such a way that they could undergo statistical analysis. I understand they had some idea to describe
maat
in mathematical terms and compare it to modern models of mass psychology.”

“I see. Did you know they were funded by a City financier?”

“I didn’t, but I’m not surprised. It had to be that or the military.”

“What makes you say that, Dr. Ferndale?”

“They were working on Egyptian curse spells to disrupt
maat
by threatening or bribing gods. Only generals, bankers, or James Bond villains have an interest in stirring up mob reactions and access to the necessary funds. I discounted Blofeld on the grounds that he was either dead or at least one-hundred-and-thirty-one, which only left bankers or generals.”

Jameson laughed.

“Bankers might think they could clean up by knowing just when induced irrational fear would crash the markets,” Ferndale said. “It’s all nonsense though.
Maat
is a meaningless term in the modern world, so any value it ever had as an insight into mob psychology is lost.”

“So why did you help them, if you thought their project was hopeless?” Jameson asked.

“All knowledge can be useful. No Egyptologist would ever get the computing power and mathematical assistance to carry out such an intensive study of ancient writings. Who knows what they might turn up?”

“Who indeed,” Jameson said, thoughtfully. He stood up abruptly.

“You’ve been most helpful, Doctor Ferndale, thank you.”

“Not at all, young man, and thank you for introducing me to your fascinating companion. I have read about such beings, but never expected to meet one.”

Rhian and Frankie found Max and Sefrina waiting at a table when they tottered into the Black Swan wearing National Health Service paper bathrobes. The hospital had insisted on disposing of their clothes as a biohazard. Gary appeared from behind the bar.

“We’ve been in the river,” Frankie said.

“We know,” Gary pointed up at the TV screen in the corner of the pub. It was tuned to the rolling news.

Some bastard had taken a phone video of them crawling out of the Thames. Another clip showed paramedics frogmarching a protesting Frankie into the ambulance. In fact, from the amount of material, there must have been a whole suite of amateur Hitchcocks at the Thames. The news people spliced the clips together into an entertaining ten-second loop that was the cause of much merriment to the pancake-makeup-coated bimbo acting as anchor.

Rhian elected to stand but Frankie settled into a chair, slowly and carefully as befitted someone whose rear end had been used as target practice by a trainee nurse with a horse syringe.

“What were you doing in the Thames?” Max asked.

Rhian gave him a sharp look, but he seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Swimming! At least I was swimming; Rhian was drowning. That fecking useless toxic homicidal bitch there,” Frankie pointed at Sefrina, “set us up and nearly killed us.”

Max’s eyes narrowed.

“Is that true, Sefrina?” he asked quietly.

Sefrina laughed, her voice tinkling as pleasantly as a tuning fork falling through a forest of icicles.

“Perhaps, just a little,” she said. “Still, no harm done.”

Rhian remembered struggling in the river, her panic as the water entered her mouth and her terror. Rage hit her like a thunderbolt and she snarled. All her life people like Sefrina had bullied and frightened her, but she wasn’t just meek little Rhian anymore.