((Clearly set just before Frank becomes a 'free man' again ;) ))
United Kingdom
London
Temple Hall
NOW
Frank reclined on the uncomfortable bunk bed, paperback book in hand. It was technically his thirty-sixth day of imprisonment. The days he had been recovering from his injuries, the time spent by the Inquisition on their investigation and the duration of the actual hearings hadn't counted towards the thirty-day total. So, here he was. Still.
He turned a page, and cracked a brief, sardonic grin. An anonymous friend or ally had sent him a compilation of Walt Kelly's “Pogo” comics. He had just now reached a famous, and oft quoted conversation between two of the series main characters. Porky Pine (a porcupine) and Pogo Possum had just been forced to walk across a wide pile of litter and garbage in their home, the Okefenokee Swamp.
The possum had looked out over the debris and uttered 'Yep, son. We have met the enemy, and he is us.'
“No shit, Pogo,” grumbled Frank to himself, shaking his head. There was a part of him that could definitely relate to that sentiment at the moment. With a grunt, the Templar operative-turned-prisoner set the paperback underneath his bunk, on the concrete floor. There it joined the other reading material he had acquired.
Near to hand was Michael Golembesky's “Level Zero Heroes,” an account of Marine special operators and the struggles they'd faced in Afghanistan's Bala Murghab. An acquaintance from the field cells, a fellow American and ex member of 'Uncle Sam's Misguided Children' named Shane Clark had sent it to “remind him just how much more badass Marines are than Army.”
Also under the bed was the entire collection of the Easton Press Mythology set—ten volumes in all spanning generations and many different traditions, from ancient Egypt to China to the Celts and beyond.
Bryn had been sending them, sometimes two at a time, every week since he'd been incarcerated.
The first volume (Ancient Egypt, of course) had had a note, scrawled in Bryn's tidy and well arranged hand.
“If you're going to be stuck in there eating oatmeal and breaking large rocks into smaller rocks, you should at least learn something.”
Given how things in the Secret World generally went, Frank was now assuming that all of the myths were true in some way, and that almost all of the subjects of the tales would try to horribly destroy the world at some point. Mythology almost always seemed to work against them.
He looked up, augmented hearing detecting the sound of approaching footsteps. Not the tactical boots worn by the guards, though. It sounded like dress shoes.
Who was coming unescorted?
When he saw one of his guards come up in a well made, if sober suit, he started to grin again in understanding.
The guard nodded curtly at him. He was carrying a set of dark, formal clothes that Frank knew was in his size.
“Temple Hall has acceded to your request, Mister Calhoun. We have a total of three hours.”
Frank gave himself an appraising look in the storefront window of Orchidelirium, in Ealdwic. Clean shaven, hair actually washed and combed, in a full suit.
It was terribly ironic that to actually look like he knew how to properly gussy up was to get thrown in the hoosegow.
He looked over the flowers being sold outside. The proprietress of the florist shop was nearby, smiling in a sort of vague and slightly baffled way. She didn't seem to know quite what to make of Frank's minder, clearly not a friend, and unlikely to be a bodyguard. The Inquisition trooper, looking somewhat smaller when not in his armored bodyglove of jet and crimson, glared at everything.
Maybe, thought Frank, he suspected some of the flowers were Dragon agents in disguise.
“Are you going to be long?” queried the trooper in a bass rumble.
Frank looked back, irritated.
“Y'all know what this is about, right?”
“I've been briefed, yes.”
“Then y'know it's important t' get this right. Jus' gimmie a few minutes. Please?”
The 'please' was added after a pause. Frank had learned a little politeness could go a ways when dealing with his jailers.
His minder frowned briefly, but then his face softened, and he nodded briskly.
“Thanks,” murmured Frank as he continued his search. Finally settling upon an arrangement of lilies, the Templar operative purchased them with the miniscule amount of Pax he'd been given for this outing.
“A'ight then,” he said to his minder, flowers in hand. “Let's go.”
To further 'blend' the pair had been given the use of a Chevrolet Lacetti. Their destination was a hour outside of the greater London area, and the trip in the sedan passed quietly. Frank's minder concentrated on the driving, consulting the vehicle's GPS now and then. Frank merely sat, flowers in hand. There really wasn't very much to say, and the Inquisition guards really weren't the chatty sort, as a rule.
Frank glanced over at the guard. It had to be noted, also as a rule, that his guards had been completely professional. He'd received three meals a day, he'd never been mistreated, and the guards had consistently been civil if not friendly.
Given he'd been chased across half the world by Grey and his retinue, Frank still wasn't ready to start exchanging Christmas cards with the employees of the Inquisition. The proper behavior by this contingent of that shadowy body, however, was helping to even the scales a bit. As their civilian vehicle rolled past the village of Warlingham, in Surrey, Frank idly wondered if Grey was getting the same treatment.
Fifteen minutes later, they were through Warlingham, having seen its village green and a memorial dedicated to those men and women who had lost their lives during the Battle of Britain during World War II. Given what Frank was here to do, the sight seemed appropriate.
Just outside of Warlingham was a cemetery.
His guard moved to one of the few parking spaces available, and shut off the car. Without another word, the two men exited the vehicle. Frank started walking, and his minder followed, at a respectful distance.
Unerringly, Frank made his way through the rows of flat slabs. Local regulations prohibited any other monuments. The local council that maintained the cemetery believed it made for a more tranquil, pleasing visual effect. For visitors, of course. The residents were long past caring about such things.
Or anything at all.
Honored Templar dead were often interred in catacombs beneath Temple Hall, forever residing in warded and protected chambers of torch-lit marble.
ARTEMIS personnel, regardless of how they died, were never going to considered 'honored' by the Hall. And so, upon his appointment, the old Director had started a program. All across England, burial plots were purchased. It was child's play for an organization that lived and breathed subterfuge and deception to come up with the false identities that would mark those graves.
Tova Stolt had explained the program to him during his first trip to Warlingham, last year. Frank had expressed surprise at the sentimentality of it. Stolt had arched an eyebrow.
“We ask a lot of our agents. More so, in some ways, than the Hall. No one else is going to take care of them when they die, so we will.” And so ARTEMIS agents who died in the line of duty were given their due six feet, shielded by fake names and histories.
Before too long, Frank was standing before a slab marked “Melanie MacBeth.”
He exhaled, slow and deep, and bent down low.
The person lying beneath this slab wasn't a “Melanie MacBeth.”
Her name in life had been Amelia Paiva.
Romania
Bucharest
Ferentari
THEN
With the majority of the view comprised of drab, five story concrete apartment blocks all in serious need of repair and drifting piles of trash, it wasn't difficult to believe that this was one of the poorest sections of Bucharest. Frank Calhoun and Amelia Paiva, agents of ARTEMIS both, walked with their hands stuffed into the pockets of their dark jackets, faces bent low against the cold. Now and then they passed disheveled, sunken eyed locals who gave them suspicious glares then quickly turned away.
“Y'know, Amelia, I don' think we're 'blendin'' all that well.”
The long legged Brazilian grinned ever so slightly back at Frank.
“Perceptive, Frank. The brief said things were bad in here, but...”
“Yeah. Seein is believin'.”
Frank remembered looking at very old black and white photographs of some of his long dead kin who struggled to survive in Appalachia during the Great Depression. Pictures of people who were thin, tired, and drawn. Too much grief and hardship and too little food, too little clean water, too little of everything.
A lot of the people here looked the same. Mass transit, in general, didn't even bother coming to Ferentari. The majority of the inhabitants got their power, water and other utilities illegally. Drug trafficking, prostitution and other criminal enterprises seemed to have a base here. And until very recently, elements of the Romanian mob had called Ferentari home, before the local bosses had been arrested.
In other words, this was not a place Frank or Amelia would come to for a vacation.
However, a possible break in the Zamfir case had come to them. Feeling the pressure as ARTEMIS started to close the vice around the occult human trafficking syndicate, one of the criminal groups money-men had gotten in contact with ARTEMIS. He wanted to flip sides. He wanted to give information in return for protection. It was a common enough story in this business, and was often how such groups got broken open.
He wanted to meet them nearby.
The pair walked past cracked pavement and turned into a wide open space between two mostly vacant apartment stacks. Dumpsters, abandoned cars, and other metallic detritus squatted here and there. Up ahead of them, next to a cannibalized vehicle that might have been an ambulance once upon a time, was the turncoat-in-potentia. The sallow skinned man looked nervous. As well he might, given what the Zamfir would do to him if they caught him.
The few locals out and about hastily started to grab children and belongings and get back inside.
“Oh, now that's a good sign,” murmured Amelia to Frank, brown curls bouncing as she shook her head.
Frank glanced over to his left as she spoke. A crow had landed on a dumpster. Instead of pecking at the garbage found there, it watched them. Intently. Resisting the urge to grin, Frank moved a little quicker to keep pace with the Brazilian ex-policewoman. A few seconds later, they were standing in front of the financier. He looked from one of them to the other.
“Forgive me for broken English. I am very pleasant to be seeing you before me. I am Andrei.”
“My name is Amelia, Andrei, and this is my partner Frank,” answered Amelia. “Let's skip the formalities. What can you offer us in return for our protection?”
Andrei fidgeted, beady eyes flicking past them for a moment.
“Ah, you have travel very far. Are you not tired?”
“Nope. Wide awake,” grinned Frank toothily.
The man stared at them for a moment. Around them, the chill wind blew trash around in little whirlwinds.
“Not...tired...at all?” He blinked rapidly.
Amelia Paiva smirked down at him.
“Sorry, 'Andrei.' The little magic trick is not working. This is the part where you surrender while you still can, and we might still consider protecting you in return for everything you know about the Zamfir.”
He gaped at them—and then turned to run, screaming in Romanian.
“Oh, no you do--” Frank began, reaching for him as bullets started panging off the bodywork of the old ambulance, gunshots sounding above the wind. He ducked back, unzipping his jacket as he did so. Amelia was a step slower, and was in the open as a man with a battered old SKS rose from behind another dumpster, and fired directly at her.
The bullet hit her.
She staggered backwards, but seemed to suffer no other ill effect as she joined Frank.
Frank spoke to the open air as she took unzipped her jacket.
“Nice save, Kastner!”
The voice of the pale, ghoulish mage sounded in their ear pieces.
“Naturally. Now, make sure my familiar doesn't get shot to bits. We're still two minutes out.”
The crow was the mages link to them, and he had been casting protecting warding magic on them through it the minute they'd arrived at the meeting place. He'd prevented Andrei's unseen caster from forcing them to fall asleep, and then kept Amelia from being harmed by the bullet.
Davidovich had assumed it was a trap. When it came down to it, they all had assumed it was a trap.
The shooters Andrei had brought along were mob soldiers from the Cămătaru clan, who had once held sway in Ferentari. They had cheap, locally made pistols. The SKS carbine. A double barreled hunting shotgun. The men, in the process of bouncing rounds off of the pile of junk, suddenly quailed as Frank and Amelia popped back up into view.
With its stock folded, the Mini-Uzi was only fourteen inches long and weighed six pounds. Certainly not tiny, but more than small enough to conceal inside a jacket or coat. With a cyclic rate of fire of 950 rounds per minute, it could put out a hail of lead. The mob goons began to scatter as the two agents began to demonstrate how while they were outnumbered, they most certainly were not outgunned.
