Castling (5 page)

“N
ever too busy for a priority mission, Rook... That’s what priority means.”

Confused, Rook pulled himself to his full
height, baggy t-shirt still a muddy red from the morning’s excursions.

“Then why do you
look like you’ve just seen a ghost?”

“
No. That’s not his ghost face...” Hinge, their resident Shaman (for lack of a more scientific descriptor) chimed from his carpet in the corner.

“It’s just the others never ask for help
with these sort of cases,” Ron elaborated, as Hinge returned his interest to the baubles of turquoise transparency floating before him, “Molly’s gene therapy makes her ideally suited for pattern recognition. Hatchet’s strain allows for heightened olfaction. TG’s implants are attuned to specific signatures in the EM spectrum.

And Breaker, well, you know...”

Rook actually didn’t know. But given the room promptly shrugged in agreement, he was willing to make an educated guess.

“And they’ve
never
asked for your help?” He queried, disbelieving. To wilfully ignore a resource designed to process intelligence suggested a distinct lack of it.

Wendy
, a long Englishwoman about Rook’s age and enthusiastic enough for the whole team, fielded this query,

“
Well of course, we do the leg-work, research, analysis, data-entry...

But not for the
really urgent stuff, no chance! When something needs doing and fast, I guess the gut reaction is to...” she sighed, “
Leap.
”

The fifteen year old Asian g
irl to Wendy’s left groaned disapprovingly.

Nodding, Rook reclined against the
nearest bench. Clearing a (possible) screwdriver from the space, he began whirling it between his fingers.

“
Well,
my
gut reaction tells me this target might be too damn sharp to leave us any breadcrumbs. So, rather than start at a disadvantage, chasing him down, following his trail, I’m hoping between us we can figure out where he’ll eventually end up.

An
d have a surprise waiting when he gets there.”

Team Look confe
rred for a brief moment in the usual fashion. The only suggestion of their joint consultation being the faint green shade emanating from Hinge’s gaunt eye sockets.

Ron addressed his tall visitor, his expression even, his tone level,

“After much deliberation,”

“Really?!”

“We’ve decided to halt other projects and assist you in this priority assignment.”

Wendy jumped in, resting a
slender arm across Ron’s slenderer shoulders,

“And in case it’s not obvious from Ronald’s flat lifeless inflection
, we’re actually all delighted you asked! But a problem arises; to begin our investigation we require an intuitive...” she stared down at the girl beside her, beaming, “
leap.”

“Seriously?!”
Jo complained once more, eyes vacant.

Ron
explained, “Hard as this might be to process, hunches and instincts are not my area of expertise.”

Smiling, Rook threw the spinning tool, catchi
ng it as he approached the team. He leaned over the lieutenant’s shoulder, hand on the back of his chair to better view the monitor.

“You know Ron, if this
gig doesn’t work out, you could try your hand at some stand-up.”

“
I would have thought that obvious.” Ron droned.

“
You needn’t worry; I actually have a little intuition on the boil. But first I need some evidence. Any chance you can feed me the Tartarus CCTV?”

“And
he says
I’m
the comedian” Ron grumbled, instantly pasting an exceptionally clear, fluid recording into the central Smartglass terminal.

It
featured the same smug figure from the conference room, strolling unhindered from the gates of France’s super-prison. Lancet walked free of the Tartarus compound. Clad head to toe in demeaning pink (save the arterial spray cutting across his front), he sauntered into the surrounding forestry of the French Alps.

The time-stamp placed it at nine hours ago.

“That man had help...” Rook’s inductive reasoning suffered the misfortune of sounding an awful lot like stating the obvious. A fact Wendy was happy to pounce upon.

“You should donate that brain to science, sir!”
the slender woman sneered, tying back auburn curls.

“We’re after leaps and bounds,
Mr Rook. This isn’t intuitive Hopscotch.” Sabs admonished from across the room in mock reproach. A snappily dressed young woman, Sabrina hoped to distract from her relative inexperience with chirp, respect and diligence. Rook would be impressed if such positivity survived another month.

“Why everyone
avoids this room is fast becoming clear,” Rook smiled, continuing his reasoning, “So, he had help. And it’s a safe bet said help’s IQ is significantly lower, thus more likely to leave their own trail. We follow it instead.

Now, n
ot to speak ill of the dead, but what are the chances one of those prison guards was
on the take
?

Which, for the record, I’m hoping is still a thing people say...
”

“Pretty good actually,” Wendy
responded, catching up, her fingers a blur of depressed keys, “Discrepancies in two of the eight bank accounts.”

“Define
discrepancy.” Ron insisted.

“Twin payments of fifty thousand euro.”

“Oh,
discrepancy.”

Patting Ron and Wendy on the back, Rook stood again, retreated to the workbench. Replacing the screwdriver, he mas
saged his shoulder. That Tesco ceiling had done it few favours.

“
See? Breadcrumbs. So, follow that money, maybe sweep the guard’s emails and phones for informat-“

“Rook.”
Ron interrupted, face inches from his monitor, fingers dancing across his keyboard.

“Ron?”

“This is the part we’re very good at. Will let you know what we come up with, but it’ll take a bit of time...”

“Alright so, are we talking hours?”

“Pfft,” Wendy’s mouth leaked, “Twenty, thirty minutes tops.”

“Excellent, so just give me a buzz when you’re done.”

“Will send Wendy.” Ron corrected, “Faster.”

The woman’s eyebrows bounced twice, before she thr
ew herself back into the search. Her digits bounced across a trio of keyboards at inhuman speeds.

“I believe you
.

Okay,
talk to you later, Lady. I’m off to see a tower about a crane...”

*

“Enter” beckoned the silken voice beyond the heavy door. Rook slid both hands into the gigantic latch and pulled.

As expected, Gil’s room was appropriately oversized, furnishings scale
d to accommodate a man almost half a ton in weight. A table, chair and bed of reinforced alloys framed what Rook struggled to describe as anything other than a shrine to the former Middle-Eastern idol.

The only aspect of Gil’s
quarters not comically oversized were the myriad photographs, paper clippings and magazine spreads framed and hung across the four walls. A cabinet crafted to accommodate hands the size of spades housed almost two dozen medals and ribbons, awards denoting past glories and achievements.

Gil’s lodgings stood as a mausoleum to
prouder days, happier times.

Rook whistled long and low.
The room celebrated the hero Gilgamesh had been, not only to his people, but to the wider world. The scene would honestly struggle to further contrast the vast being slumped lethargically in his armchair, sipping whiskey straight from the decanter at two in the afternoon.

“Vanity” Gil started, gesturing with
a spare hand to the case, “is not a quality deemed respectable in any social sphere I’ve yet encountered. But still...”

The giant paused to wet his lips
, sipping the golden beverage, “... each of those self same spheres encourage, demand maybe, that we strive for achievement, for excellence, for triumph.

What do you think that says about
us, Sir? That we’re bred to accomplish but forbidden from relishing it?”

Rook smirk
ed, tearing his gaze away from the front page spread of an articulated truck hoisted clean off its front wheels by the man now wallowing in self pity.

“
I’m no philosophiser, Gil, certainly not when I’m trying to walk off a concussion. But I’ve not come to resent you your pride.

Hell, there’s not a single shoulder in this joint without a sizeable chip on it.”

“Presumably you include your own sloped pair in this sweeping generalisation?” Gil asked indifferently, sniffing the fragrance wafting up from the crystal carafe.

Rook
’s smile grew wider, his eyes darker.

“
You’ve come to ask me about Lancet.” The Lebanese warrior sighed, reaching, returning the decanter to his bed stand.

Hooking
thumbs in his pockets, Rook settled in against the nearest wall, finding a space for himself among the assorted paraphernalia, “And I thought Ron was the telepat-“

“I’m not actually a cretin, Sir. I know my si
ze invites a certain stereotype. And, by my own admission, my intellect is dwarfed by many in this very house. But rest assured, I am not so slow as to wonder why you, a man charged with this villain’s...
disposal
, would come seeking the one fool here who’s actually suffered an embarrassing, not to mention public defeat at his hands.”

Gil’s voice strained, as if Rook’s
innocuous comment had somehow rocked the giant’s core. But, as their eyes locked, the former’s hot with suspicion, the latter’s cold and unyielding, Gil buried his head in immense hands and huffed.

Wiping his mouth, the
Lebanese’s pained eyes puffed red as he whispered,

“You want to know about the bus, don’t you?”

Actually, Rook did not want to know about the bus. Not in the slightest.

He had
certainly registered Gil’s reaction when the cause of Lancet’s second incarceration arose. But he also had an exceptionally dangerous job to do.

Normally, Rook was a dab hand at feigning sensitivity. But
, unfortunately, letting the leviathan weep into his shoulder wasn’t going to help him survive the night.

“No, Gil, I don’t.” Rook surprised himself at how soft, how sincere his voice could sound when the need arose. He almost had
himself
fooled.

Almost.

“
If you
want
to tell me your tale, then I’ll stand here silently, impartially and I will listen. And you won’t get a lick of judgement, not from me. Hypocrisy is a suit I’ve long since outgrown, you understand?”

Rook said this with a wry smile, a flick of his
forehead. It was an unconscious invitation for the big man to relax, to settle, to befriend.

“What I
was
hoping to learn from you, Gil, was how someone like
me
is supposed to stand a chance when this mark took down someone like
you.”

Ah,
flattery. The great equalizer.
Rook mused as his face slid, effortlessly, into a mask of dishonest admiration.

Responding
, Gil’s features ran the usual gamut – suspicion boiled into entertainment before eventually cooling into agreement. To Gil’s credit, he spent longer on suspicion than most.

But
surround arrogance in relics of its bygone stardom and it will eventually flourish, however wounded. After all, Gil used to be the best.

Well, top five maybe
.

“Rook,” he began, composed once more, his voice rolled silk,
“I don’t think I’ll be much help to you. The fact is he blind-sided me, even though I had him in my very sights!”

Gil stood
. The room nearly rocked as he pushed on his knees. Maybe two inches shorter than Rook, Gil was twice as thick and almost four times his width. An impossibility of human motion, he crossed his living space in a single stride, resting dinner-plate-palms on Rook’s shoulders.

An indomitable force pressed
down, sizing, gauging, judging.

Snorting
his satisfaction, Gil retreated a stride, swiping his whiskey back from the dresser,

“He’s actually quite
strong, you know. People forget that, because of his intellect. Now those prosthetics of his are scarcely a shadow of...” rolling-pin fingers brushed his own barrel chest,
“this.
But I’d say he might have you matched, son.