Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

“ ‘Just cause,’ ” the standing man echoed. “That’s a laugh. You needed our magical bag of tricks for the most astounding multicasino heist in Las Vegas history, and were prepared to pay us ‘royally’ for preparing and carrying it off on your command.”

One of the gun barrels lifted.

“Hal, Carmen,” Czarina cautioned in a low, trembling tone, “we’re in no position to argue.”

“We’re in every position to argue—for our lives,” said the fiery brunette named, of all things, Carmen. No wonder C. R. Molina hated her given name. “We know nothing of where the funds were kept, or in what form. Cosimo Sparks was our leader, our emissary to you people. And you killed him.”

“We did not,” the voice of the other figure in Darth drag answered. “That doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of killing you. Perhaps one of you wanted all the funds—they’d been just lying there for so many years—and killed Sparks in an attempt to get them.”

“And then,” the other Darth’s twin voice suggested, “you moved everything. The cash, the bearer bonds, the guns, and explosives.”

“There were explosives?” the brunette asked, astounded.

“Of course, Carmen,” Hal answered her. “The actual robbers would have needed them for the heist, and we would have needed them as a distraction to turn the Strip into a bigger sound and light show than the Fremont Street Downtown Experience while the robberies were going down.”

“ ‘Lying there for so many years’?” Czarina asked. “That’s absurd. The Synth has been active for only the last three, when Cosimo recruited us and a—”

“There are more members than you?” one cloaked figure demanded.

“None that knew of the scheme or the stockpile of money and weapons,” Hal answered. “Only some disgruntled minor prestidigitators we convinced to be part of our ‘mystical, magical’ alliance, so we’d have ‘extras’ to deploy for our Grand Strip Illusion, which would be the talk of the nation and the world. We are the Synth, the synthesis that old alchemists dreamed of, the creators of a method to turn base material into gold. Only we were after taking a golden parachute out of the demeaned profession that magic has become in these days of media manipulation.”

Temple noticed that the paired gun barrels had lowered slightly. The masked invaders were surprised by what they were hearing. Could the Synth talk itself out of such a double-barreled threat?

“What of this Phantom Mage you mention?” one Darth asked.

Carmen stood, also sensing their confusion. “Only our most prized and recent recruit. He was a marvel. He could have produced the Strip-long illusion you demanded. He maintained his anonymity to the last, but I know he was Max Kinsella, playing a double game as himself and this lowly nightclub magician named the Phantom Mage.”

Temple felt a gentle tap on her calf and glanced down without moving her head.

Her eyes finally had adapted to the room’s dimness. She saw a long black furry tail.

Louie!

No. This was a longer-haired, plumed tail. Midnight Louise had guided her here.

Thanks a lot, sister, Temple thought. Maybe you can distract them while I claw out my gun.

“Who the bloody hell is Max Kinsella, and why would anyone want to kill him?” one transgendered voice demanded.

The three Synth members seemed struck dumb, as Temple was. Come on; Max had starred in a major Strip hotel show, billboards and all! True, he’d performed sans surname, but the Mystifying Max had been huge until he had first disappeared two years earlier. Where had these Vader creeps been, on the dark side of the moon?

“Did one of you, perhaps?” the other Vader twin asked.

The entire scene was getting so absurd and Alice-in-Wonderlandish that Temple was forgetting to be afraid and was getting angry instead. Which was dangerous, but also liberating.

She waited for the Synth’s answer—her presence “unbeknownst,” as some put it, to the others, making her the third armed but so far invisible person on the premises.

“We don’t know,” Hal said. “As we told you, Cosimo was our maestro, our go-between. He’s the one who would tell us what to do, when we were called upon. Meanwhile, I guess we felt useful, part of a pending, monstrously amazing illusion, our parting shot to the world that had once applauded us. We were all in the same sorry boat—passé and poor. Cosimo waved his magic words, and we believed we’d get the best revenge—living well. We trusted him.”

“And he betrayed us!” the pair of Darths said as one.

“I doubt it,” Czarina said.

“You saw it in your crystal ball?” a Vader jeered.

“No. I just knew Cosimo. We trusted him because he was a straight shooter.” She regarded the leveled weapons. “Oh.”

“Perhaps Cosimo was robbed,” Hal said. “If you knew of this … hidden treasure, wouldn’t others of your … type also possibly know of it?”

Silence prevailed. Temple was watching a true stalemate. The intruders wanted information, not blood. The Synth as represented here certainly was nothing sinister, although that Ophiuchus and alchemy mumbo jumbo would appeal to anyone with an occult mind, like those drawn to magic. Someone had been playing both ends against the middle, and it was getting obvious to everyone in the room that they all might be the “ends.”

Standing there, Temple let the key phrases stamped on her mental tape recorder replay: money and guns and explosives, oh my … stockpiled for years, oh my … all-time major Vegas heist, oh my … a team of magicians providing a distraction … just cause … bloody hell.

She remembered that some 2001 Al-Qaeda surveillance tapes of Vegas casinos, including New York, New York, with its faux-Manhattan exterior skyline, had turned up from foreign sources years later, and that Mohamed Atta and his 9/11 suicide crew had visited Vegas before the world-devastating plan was put into motion on the other coast… .

Terrorists were drawn to Vegas as a target … of destruction or bankrolling. Civic powers were always underplaying, perhaps even concealing, that fact to keep the tourists coming.

And … years ago, before 9/11 in 2001, before the previous bombing at the Twin Towers in Manhattan, another terrorist group had issued a “dead or alive” Western-version death fatwa on a teenage Max Kinsella for his youthful antiterrorist activities. The Irish Republican Army, aka the IRA. Temple knew Max’s thriller-novel past, but had always considered it a cul-de-sac of personal ancient history. Not a current concern.

The connections jumped synapses in her brain, jumbling around, not adding up to a scenario she could link into anything sensible.

The Synth members were having trouble too.

“Look,” said Hal, striding forward, “you’ve—”

Carry a gun in your purse, and you’re depending on crooks to give you time to react.

Hold two guns in your hand and—

The chilling, preliminary double clicks seemed simultaneous with a booming, double-rapping sound. The burnt whiff of firearms discharge in the small room was overwhelming. Temple’s hands clapped over her ears before her conscious mind could kick her in the damn-fool shins.

The motion brought every eye to her … and then came the sickening sound of clicks from all sides, triggers being pulled to release a hail of … not bullets, but—

—hidden doors all around the room springing open at once! A swarm of black screaming figures leaped through them like a circus act of black panthers—a riot of cats hurtling onto Darth Vader cloaks and climbing them, heavy fabric rending with audible groans from the weight of three swarming feline bodies to a cloak. The wearers bent at the knees, screaming as leaping cats clung with all fours to their forearms, while the third attached to each climbed their heads from behind to start clawing the sinister face masks, all the while screaming like, well, tomcats fighting, a sound echoed in double strength by their startled victims.