S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

"This all seems to be in order," the man said.

But he's tense. Not very tense, but alert. So if this is but a routine check and everything's in order, why -

"We will be doing a physical inspection of this container, madam," he said. "This is purely routine, due to the heightened state of alert currently in force."

He smiled, politely. So did the woman trooper behind him, with the C7 on the assault sling across her armored torso. Everyone was paranoid about this sort of thing since Marseilles.

The real irony was that if she'd been the jihadi lunatic they were looking for, she'd have a deadman switch rigged to the bomb, and Europoort-Scheldt and much of Rotterdam would cease to exist about now.

Training kept her from snarling. She couldn't just bludgeon his mind the way a purebred might. Instead…

Warmth. Such a pretty face. Yes, you have warm feelings for me. Mother/sister/lover. Look into my eyes…

Feeling emotions was easy. Manipulating them was much harder; you had to sort of tie them to your own, then change what you felt. It took effort, and she could feel it drawing on the inner reserve, as if something deep inside her were draining away like blood through a wound. Guha smiled and gazed into his eyes, blue meeting a brown so dark it was almost completely black.

Such a nice young man. He joined the gendarmerie because he wanted to help people, to protect them. We know each other. We trust each other…

The man blinked. "I'm…I'm very sorry to bother you," he said, mumbling a little.

The sharp blue eyes had lost their focus. He slurred in his birth speech, enough like both English and Dutch that she could follow along:

" Mem…mem…"

She remembered her own mother: the warmth, the comfort, the security that were like nothing you ever felt again.

"It's just that we're behind schedule," she murmured. "You can see that. And there're all these people behind us, waiting. We don't want to get into trouble. You don't want to cause us trouble…"

She could feel the decision crystallizing in his mind, like a muscle flexing under her fingertips.

"What's the scanner say?" he said over his shoulder.

The woman with the assault rifle glanced at the team with the paddles and whispered, probably into a throat-button pickup.

"Absolutely clean," she said. "But they've got the machinery ready to open the container."

She looked and sounded part Indonesian by background, and was even younger, without any rank badges at all. Her mind felt a little puzzled by her superior's actions.

"Let them by, then."

"Sergeant, we're supposed-"

"We're supposed to stop one-tenth of one percent at random and so far we're over quota. The next but ten will do just as well. Pass this one through."

The truck accelerated soundlessly save for a slight whine of electrics as the barrier went up and the spikes sank into the roadway, then with a low burbling mumble as the turbodiesel cut in. The scraggly clutter of the area around the Europoort faded as they swung onto the A15 snelweg that ran all the way to the Ruhr; if you wanted to hide a needle, the best place was in a pile of needles, not a haystack, and this road swarmed with big trucks hauling cargo containers.

"You okay, Anni?"

Guha shook her head, clasping her arms around her middle. "Not so great, Jack. Overstrained. That was a stubborn man."

Cold. Empty, cold, alone. A bit nauseous too.

"Yeah, squareheads are like that. You did a great job. We definitely weren't the droids they were looking for."

She nodded jerkily, feeling his concern and walling it off. They pulled off into a desolate little place with just enough to merit the title of a truck stop, and the European equivalent of a motel; the noise of the thundering traffic was louder when they had parked and opened the door. A youngish man lounging against a cheap elderly hybrid threw away a cigarette and came over to meet them: thin and dark and shifty eyed.

"Here are the papers," Jack said, waving them while he spoke in the Italian that was their common language; it was easier than any of the other Western tongues for a Romanian speaker to acquire. "And here are three thousand euros in advance. You get the container to Istanbul and you get twenty more."

" Si, si," the man said, smiling like a lamprey. "I know this is an important cargo, me. Very important, very valuable, eh?"

Beneath the growing physical misery, Guha felt a little comfort; you didn't have to have the old blood to be a bastard. Ordinary humans could manage that quite well on their own. Jack took a stride closer and his hand moved. From the mercenary driver's sudden guukkk! and wide-eyed stillness Guha knew what the other Brotherhood agent had grabbed.

"And, Shandor, if it doesn't get there, or if anyone opens that container, I will hunt you down and kill you. Slowly, with lots of cutting and burning and peeling and taking your teeth out one at a time, so you beg to die first. Believe me, the teeth hurt even worse than the balls. I know."

Shandor tried to smile ingratiatingly, and Jack squeezed harder while staring into the man's eyes and smiling in a completely different way. She knew that look; nobody with any experience would doubt that Jack meant exactly what he said, or that he could do it. A faint scream and a very quick nod came together. The Brotherhood agent stepped back, and the driver quickly scrubbed a hand across his face to wipe away gelid sweat.

"Here's an extra thousand because I like the swift and decisive way you accept the reality principle," Jack said, extending a sheaf of bills, which was half snatched. "Don't fuck up."

Guha felt herself swaying as her partner came back, but she managed to remain upright until the truck pulled away towards the access ramp. Then she let herself lean against him as he helped her into the room they'd rented. Then she stumbled and half collapsed to fall facedown on the bed, shivering. The pain seemed to be throughout her, as if it were following her veins, or her nerves where they ran through the flesh.

Dimly she was conscious of hands undressing her, getting her into the bed, the sting of an injection. The pain was still there, but it ceased to matter quite so much as peace flowed out from the spot on her arm. Water and broth were held to her lips.

"So hungry, Jack," she said. "So hungry!"

"It'll be all right," he said, holding her awkwardly against his shoulder. "It'll be all right. Don't worry. We're going to get them all."

Three days later she looked at the text. " California?"

Jack shrugged. "Looks like it."

"What about the bloody bomb?"

"It may actually be safer if we don't go near it," he said. " We might draw the attention of a Shadowspawn adept. By itself-"

"It stands out like a bloody fireworks!"

"Yeah, again. That's why we're holding it in Istanbul for now. Harvey says he's working a way to disguise it, something new and radical. Plenty of time before Tbilisi."

She blew out her lips. "This is bad tradecraft."

"Yeah…I seem to say that a lot, you know? And now we'll be working with the Boy Wonder again." He grimaced at her frown. "Okay, I know he saved you. Hell, we'd all have died in that shitty motel if he hadn't shown up. So I'm grateful, right, but I don't like him."

"Or anyone else, Jack."

He sighed. "At least with him picking up the tab we don't have to fly coach."

"Magnificent, Great-grandfather," Adrienne said sincerely. "Merely an amusement, simply duck with figs and olives, but magnificent. Even better than the lemon-cured baby scallops."

"You eat with all the enjoyment of one back from the dead," Etienne said. "And I should know, since I am dead."

"Only the least important part of you," Adrienne replied graciously.

They were dining on one of the outdoor terraces of the Villa Leopolda, looking down over the acres of cypress and olive trees that studded the gardens and the moonlit waters of the Cote d'Azur far below. The villa was a Belle Epoque fantasy of tile and terra cotta and marble, originally built on a whim financed by colonial plunder over a century ago, like some Edwardian dream of ancient Rome. The mild warmth of the air was full of the scents of roses and lady-of-the-night jasmine; bougainvillea frothed down from the balconies overlooking them; below was a tumble of jeweled lights and gardens and the running lights of the yachts in the basins below.