Robert Charrette - Arthur 01 - A Prince Among Men (13 page)

Good. So did he. They passed it by.

"I think we should have people around," she said.

He'd prefer not. "Professional opinion?"

She mumbled something that sounded like "Yes."

There was a mall ahead on the right. Malls had food courts. Almost as fast as McDonald's, but more variety. Food could be better, could be worse. No way of knowing till you tried it, but the food was rarely as bad as that served in certain institutions.

"Try the mall?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. After a moment, she said, "Yes." She sounded unsure.

Parking took a while. It was late Friday afternoon and the mall traffic was picking up. Spae would certainly have people around. Holger located the food court on the map just inside the entrance and directed Spae toward it. Partway down the stairs, Spae stopped dead. Blocking traffic attracted attention. Holger urged her back into motion, pulling her to one side once they'd reached the lower level. She stared across fee crowded walkway.

"Look over there," she said, starting to point.

He caught her hand and pulled it down. Bad tradecrafit. People who were pointed at often noticed the people who were pointing at them. "Tell me, Doctor. There's no need to point."

"Over there by the sculpture."

Holger saw nothing out of the ordinary. No fireworks, no gun-waving thugs, no monsters, lust a crowd of mall crawlers, kids, old folks, shoppers, idlers, and working folk. Ordinary, everyday people. "Could you be more specific?"

"The dwarf."

Holger spotted her obvious referent: a dark, bearded man little taller than the lunch stand table by which he stood. He was short enough to be termed a dwarf, but he stood with an aggressive stance that suggested no one would call him one unless he gave them permission. Two other men, a Caucasian and an Asian, shared the table. They were holding a conversation, which suggested that they knew each other.

"I see him, Doctor. Why have you pointed him out?"

"Seeing him here tells me we've come to the right place."

This mall? She must mean Worcester. "How so?"

"He's turned up before."

"CIA?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

He hadn't thought he was being ridiculous. They were supposed to be stealing a march on the rival agency, and her reaction hadn't been strong enough to suggest that the dwarf was an enemy.

"So who is he?"

"I don't really know. He's used the name Sorii more than once. Fits if you like cross-language puns; he's a surly little bastard."

"Will we be coordinating efforts, then?"

"Over my dead body. The bastard's trouble."

"Is he a—" The therapy hadn't been totally effective. Holger couldn't bring himself to say the word, so he opted for the euphemism so popular in the Department. "Is he a specialist?"

Spae snorted a laugh. "No more sensitive than a rock. On all counts."

Holger was glad of that. It was always bad enough dealing with a situation when you didn't understand what was going on or who the players were, but to have some of them be—be
magicians ...
Well, that would be too much.

Too much like before.

"Let's get out of here before he sees us," Spae said.

Holger was happy to comply. Fresh air and sunlight would be good right now. Spae and her search would wait. Questions about the dwarf would wait.

He needed to see the sky.

CHAPTER
8

John slept better Friday night. Not well, just better. He kept waking, thinking he heard someone calling. It wasn't Faye. She wasn't around. He stayed in bed late, chasing the elusive rest, and only rose when his mother called him to the phone. He wouldn't have bothered if she hadn't said it was the Armory Museum calling.

It was Mrs. Bartholomew, the personnel director. John had a moment of anxiety when she asked how his orientation session had gone; he was afraid she was going to rescind the job offer. But it turned out that one of the guards had just quit and the museum was caught in a scheduling bind. Mrs. Bartholomew told him that the museum was in a budget crunch, and hiring a substitute from a private guard agency would cost money better spent on the museum's mission. She wanted to know if he could start tonight. He said he could. Who really needed sleep anyway? She went on about some details, but John didn't listen very closely; he was too excited. He had to ask her to repeat what she said about uniforms.

The uniform shop didn't have any shirts with sleeves long enough for him and the pants had to be taken in at the waist.

While he waited, he tried to avoid thinking about the Winston situation. He wasn't entirely successful. Obviously the museum had not gotten word of his involvement in the beating incident. He supposed that he shouldn't be surprised, since apparently no one else had either. He hoped they wouldn't, but he couldn't count on it. In the past, the flare-ups of his temper had always brought official notice. It was probably only a matter of time. He resolved to enjoy his time with the Museum while he could.

Following Mrs. Bartholomew's instructions, he arrived about an hour before the Museum closed for the day. He waded through a crowd of school kids and around to the side door of the small room that served as the ticket office. It also doubled as the nighttime guard station. John tapped on the door and Mrs. Hanson opened it. He chatted with her while he signed in. When a late-arriving visitor took her attention, he went off to the staff room to change into his new uniform. The gift-shop staff came in while he was admiring himself in the mirror, so he had to put up with Jenny's smart remarks about how handsome men looked in uniform. With the museum about to close, he had the excuse of business to extricate himself.

Mrs. Bartholomew herself showed him the watch station and how all the controls worked. When the last of the office and shop staff had departed, she turned on the security system and sat with him through the fifteen-minute diagnostic and setup program. They watched the motion sensors report the movements of the janitor as he finished the last of his chores and followed the janitorial dot as it wandered about on the console screen's map of the museum. Mrs. Bartholomew showed him how to call up identification data; the computer said the dot was Mr. Revirez, janitor, and cited a ninety-seven-percent probability. Standard margin of error, Mrs. Bartholomew told him. The dot approached the watch station and John couldn't resist greeting Mr. Revirez just before he came into sight. Revirez gave John a perfunctory "good night" and a considerably friendlier one to Mrs. Bartholomew. He left, and for the next five minutes the mo-lion sensors reported nothing. The computer reported the galleries and all of the staff areas except the guard station cleared of people.

With only the two of them left in the building, Mrs. Bartholomew demonstrated how to key the system up to the next level of security, Once it was activated, she had three minutes to exit the building without setting off an alarm. The combox on John's belt exempted him from the same requirement. The box was a call unit as well as a part of the security system loop, and broadcast continually to the system's scattered sensors; the system would ignore any readings generated within two feet of him. Mrs. Bartholomew said good night and wished him a pleasant first night on the job. He waved to her through the window as she passed through the lobby and listened until he heard the heavy steel doors thud closed behind her. The console flashed its green lights. The Woodman Armory Museum was secured for the night.

The position of night watchman didn't really require a lot of effort. The electronics did most of the work. All of it,- really. The watchman was more a concession to tradition, a sort of honor accorded the men who had worn the armor and used the weapons that the museum so proudly displayed. It was better to think of the position that way than as a pointless redundancy in the security system.

Pointless or not, John was glad to be there. The museum felt different at night. Different even from just being closed. He'd been around when it was closed before, and then the arguments and jokes of the staff had still given the place a sort of ordinary life. Now with everyone gone but him, it was quiet in an absolute way. There was only John.

John and the armor.

He couldn't stand sitting in the watch room any longer. He had to get out and experience the great quiet in person. He wanted to see those hollow knights in all their solitude.

He took the back elevator up to the great hall. His passkey opened the lock on the ancient wooden door and he entered. The gallery lights were on their lowest setting, adequate for a slow amble and soaking up the somber, glinting magnificence of burnished steel, but not enough to see very far with any clarity. He liked the ambiance.

A suit of seventeenth-century three-quarter armor faced him. It was a new acquisition, said to have belonged to one of Oliver Cromwell's generals. It was a fine piece, but not the sort that John favored. He turned right, toward the medieval wing. The Middle Ages, when knights were knights.

The center of the hall was dominated by the jousting display, two mounted knights in full tourney armor aiming their lances at each other over a section of tilting barrier. Beyond them two English men-at-arms attacked a mounted French knight of the Hundred Years' War. Beyond them a pair of sixteenth-century knights fought with poll axes within the confines of a tiny list. The freestanding displays were only the highlights. More suits and isolated pieces of armor filled the alcoves on either side. The museum was blessed with a number of fine suits and had commissioned an equal number of fine replicas. All were carefully labeled as to which was which. He liked the replica displays better; they were generally mounted in more interesting ways.

Tonight, they ail belonged to John.

He leaned on the railing around the Hundred Years' Warriors, admiring the narrow, tapering shape of the French knight's blade. John recalled the curator saying that the sword was the only real piece in the display, the only omission in the museum's labeling. It certainly looked real enough to slash unarmored men and thrust its diamond-shaped point through any gaps in a foe's armored protection, John imagined himself in the armor. He had survived the English arrow storm, and his horse, half mad with wounds and excitement, now reared and plunged among the scrambling English. They feared his good Bordeaux steel, these English dogs. As they should. John raised his blade high, ready for another slash.

A noise, half heard, made him spin around, reaching for his flashlight. He turned on the beam and sent it searching through the alcoves. The light played across glass cases, past
wall-mounted weapons, and over suits of armor standing tall, proud, and motionless. The shadows of the armorer's shop display parted, but nothing moved among the anvils, tools, and half-finished pieces.

He heard the sound again, a soft, furtive shuffling. This time it came from his left, toward the new addition that housed traveling exhibitions. His light fell across the gallery sign: "Romano-Brithonic Warriors of the Dark Ages." There were a lot of rare pieces in there, many of which had never left England before. If John had been a thief, he would have considered it a target. From where he stood, his flashlight showed nothing of the gallery itself.

He thought about heading back to the watch station and calling the police, but he'd look awfully foolish if it was a false alarm. Checking out strange noises was part of his job. Cautiously he moved toward the gallery.

What if there really was someone there? What would he do about it? He couldn't hold a thief at gunpoint; he wasn't armed. He tried to convince himself that no one would be there, that it was just a random noise. Maybe it was a rat. Old buildings had rats, didn't they? Old buildings made all sorts of strange noises, too, didn't they?

From the doorway, he swept the flashlight beam around the gallery. The room was less crowded than the rest of the museum.

The walls were white and the carpet cream, a strong contrast to the dark wood-framed cases and the darker relics within them. The cases around the walls held minor artifacts and interactive displays covering the history of the time, detailing the various archaeological digs that had resulted in the exhibit, and even one covering legends associated with the countryside from which the finds had come. But the important stuff had pride of place in a large central case.

That case was set up like a grave mound for a warrior—a prince or king, from the quality and quantity of the grave goods laid around him on the bier. An armored form lay upon a carefully reconstructed cloak of handwoven cloth, rich with embroidery. The cloth itself was a minor, if
modern, treasure. But the real treasures were the armor and weapons. The scraps of ancient armor that had survived were pieced together, missing parts reconstructed in plastic, and adorned blank-faced mannequins. The gold decoration of the real pieces glinted tawnily in the light. Four of the armored mannequins stood around the bier, one in each corner of the case, martial mourners for their dead mannequin king.

The five figures represented the best parts of three burial finds and the most complete martial suites yet recovered from post-Roman Britain. Each was more complete than the famed Sutton Hoo find, of which a few minor pieces resided in a case on the far wall. Each item was priceless; together their worth was even more priceless, if such a thing made sense.