The Rain-Soaked Bride (21 page)

The waiter had brought a tureen filled with water. He placed it on the table in front of Shining.

‘Thank you,’ the old man said, ‘most kind.’ He turned his direction back to the rest of the table. ‘In many ways magic and physics are similar. It’s all about matter and energy. It has rules. It has structure. It’s about cause and effect. Look at the nuclear bomb, something that would have been considered magic two hundred years ago but is really just about the combination of certain types of matter. A potion if you will, with a terrible, devastating effect.’ He patted his pockets as if searching for something.

Toby smiled, knowing full well that Shining knew exactly where he had put whatever he was hunting for, however spontaneous and casual he was trying to be.

‘And, much like dealing with radioactive material leaves traces, so too does dealing with magic,’ he went on. ‘As was proven by a man called Enrique Formosa, a Spanish alchemist who was bending science long before Fermi or Einstein were even born.’ He removed a couple of small bottles from his jacket pockets. In one there was a violently pink coloured liquid, in the other a chalky powder.

‘Formosa classed these traces as “the devil’s fingerprints”. There’s nothing quite so dramatic as an ancient Spaniard. Ignoring his hyperbole, however, the principle is sound enough and is easily replicated today. Magic lingers, like radiation, on those who have come into contact with it.’

He added some of the pink liquid to the bowl of tap water, then some of the white powder. The bowl of water frothed and sputtered.

‘This is the sort of thing I liked doing at school,’ Spang enthused, ‘like when you put magnesium in a Bunsen burner and it went off like a firework.’

‘A process that would – and almost certainly did – appear magical if demonstrated to a person who had no knowledge of chemical reactions,’ said Shining.

The bowl of water was now beginning to smoke, faint pink tendrils rising up from the bowl.

‘I say,’ said King, ‘you’re not going to make a terrible mess of the place, are you?’

‘Not at all,’ Shining reassured him. ‘The water is changing state, as you can see.’

Slowly a column of smoke was rising from the bowl, much to the appreciation of all except the ever-miserable Rowlands.

‘That is very beautiful,’ said Tae-young watching as the smoke rose in a steady pillar, climbing towards the ceiling.

‘More than that,’ said Shining, ‘it’s very useful. As you can help me prove.’

‘Go on, glamorous assistant,’ said April, ‘go and help him out.’

Tae-young got to her feet and, rather nervously, stood next to Shining.

‘Now,’ said Shining, ‘to the best of your knowledge, you have never been involved in anything magical have you?’

‘No,’ Tae-young said, ‘not as far as I know.’

‘Then stick your hand in the smoke.’ She gave him a cautious look. ‘It’s quite safe,’ he assured her.

She stuck her hand in the smoke and it flourished out in thin tendrils as the air from the movement of her hand hit it.

‘Gently,’ said Shining. ‘It’s easily displaced.’

Tae-young tried again, sliding her hand into the now reformed column. The smoke pulsed with yellow light around her hand like lightning passing through a storm cloud.

‘A negative reaction,’ said Shining. ‘Whereas when I do it …’

He stuck his hand in the cloud and it turned a deep green.

‘Brilliant!’ Spang shouted, clapping his hands like a precocious child at a pantomime.

‘Parlour trick,’ said Rowlands, who was getting more and more uncomfortable by the moment.

‘No,’ insisted Shining. ‘Future science. Now …’ He turned to Tae-young and whispered in her ear and, after a moment, she nodded. ‘Let’s see about the rest of you,’ said Shining and, together, he and Tae-young blew hard on the pillar of smoke, turning slightly as they did so, in order to aim the resultant wave of smoke across the whole table.

‘My God!’ said Spang, jumping up in a flash of bright yellow. ‘It tingles.’

Indeed it did, Toby realised as it erupted green around him. He noticed a similar effect around Fratfield.
Welcome to the world of Section 37
, he thought.
One mad afternoon and a crashed car and you’re marked for life.

Rowlands jumped to his feet, trying to back away but the smoke ignited green as it touched him.

‘Nonsense,’ he said.

Then it hit Man-dae and a pulse of brightest emerald shot through it.

‘Oh,’ said Shining. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

Man-dae jumped to his feet, grabbing the large knife that sat on the cheeseboard. Fratfield was the first to respond, the others still distracted by the smoke. He had his hand inside his jacket, reaching for his gun but Man-dae beat him to it, stabbing the knife into the officer’s arm and stealing his gun as his spasming fingers dropped it onto the table.

Man-dae put the gun to Fratfield’s head, dragging the man to his feet, the knife still sticking out of his arm, a bloodstain widening on his jacket sleeve.

‘Keep back!’ Man-dae shouted, dragging Fratfield back towards the door.

Toby saw the look on Shining’s face, a momentary calculation on whether he might be able to intervene as the Korean passed him. He made his decision, pulling Tae-young behind him and backing away.

Rowlands had got over his momentary panic, withdrawn his gun and was following Man-dae with it as he backed towards the door. Toby thought he was probably making the same calculation. Could he shoot Man-dae before Man-dae shot Fratfield? More to the point, did it matter? Was it more important to stop the Korean before he could escape than concern himself with Fratfield’s safety? Toby was by no means sure he could rely on Rowlands to make the right decision and for a moment he tensed, ready for bullets to start flying.

Then Rowlands lifted his gun up and Man-dae left the room.

‘He won’t get far,’ said Rowlands, ‘not with my men outside.’

Then there was the sound of a gunshot and he, Toby and Shining were all running for the door.

Fratfield was in the hall, on his knees. ‘Sorry,’ he said, clutching his hands to the wound in his lower abdomen. ‘Bastard shot me.’

‘Get out of the way.’ Toby turned to see Chun-hee had joined them. ‘I have medical training,’ the man said. ‘You deal with the traitor.’

Rowlands didn’t need telling. He was already running along the corridor towards the rear exit, walkie-talkie in his hand as he barked orders at his men outside.

Toby hesitated but Shining nodded at him. ‘You can’t help, go.’

Toby followed Rowlands, deciding, as the security officer had before him, that it was unlikely Man-dae would have doubled back towards the front door.

He caught up with him in the conservatory. ‘Gun?’ he asked.

‘You haven’t got one of your own?’ asked Rowlands.

‘I didn’t arm myself for dinner, no,’ Toby admitted.

‘Then you’re no use to me.’ Rowlands turned to a couple of his men. Toby recognised them as the guards he had talked to earlier, Arnold and Bateman.

Toby pushed past them and ran out into the night. He paused for a moment to listen, hoping to catch the sound of the fleeing man but the three men behind him were making too much noise.

He took another guess. Man-dae wouldn’t work his way around the house and aim for the front gate, he’d try and make a break for it over the rear wall. He’d aim for the woods, the one ‘weak spot’ that Fratfield had identified to them when they had arrived.

Toby ran across the lawns, skirting past the sculpture park and on towards the treeline.

He spiralled around, keeping low in case the Korean opened fire.

There was no sign of him.

He could see Rowlands and his agents spreading out towards him, hoping to cover all the angles but if Man-dae wanted to run, and surely that was his only viable option now, he would be over the wall and gone before any of them could stop him.

Toby ran into the trees, stopping for a moment to listen again. The undergrowth was heavy underfoot; surely if Man-dae was ahead of him he would hear the sounds of the man’s running feet?

There was a faint rustle to his left and Toby moved carefully in that direction. If he ran, he would make so much noise himself that he was bound to drive the Korean ahead, like a beater scaring up birds at a country shoot. His only hope was to move quietly, keep his ears peeled and hope he could get the drop on him. After so many months of Shining drumming into him the pointlessness of guns in their line of work, he realised he was no longer prepared for the more traditional side of their job. Perhaps Rowlands had been right to mock him.

Eventually, he reached the far wall. There was no sign of Man-dae and all he could hear was the others running around the grounds.

He sank back against the wall and sighed. They’d brought their assassin out of hiding and now they’d lost him.

a) Lufford Hall, Alcester, Warwickshire

Chun-hee had done his best to control the bleeding from Fratfield’s wound, tearing makeshift bandages from the table-cloth in the dining room.

‘The entry wound is low,’ he explained. ‘With luck it has avoided major organs.’

‘With luck,’ Fratfield replied, his voice weak.

‘You’re still breathing, you’re still conscious,’ said Chun-hee. ‘That’s as good as it gets right now.’ He turned to Shining. ‘We need to get him to a hospital right away.’

Keeping one hand applied to the wound, the Korean reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a phone and threw it to the old man. ‘Call an ambulance.’

‘Not supposed to still have phone,’ Fratfield whispered.

‘You’re lucky I do not always do what I am told,’ Chun-hee replied.

Shining called the emergency services, explaining quickly and concisely. ‘They’re on their way,’ he said, cutting off the call.

Chun-hee held his hand out for the phone. After a momentary pause, Shining gave it to him.

‘That phone doesn’t leave my side,’ he explained, ‘whatever your security people say.’

‘Because if there’s one thing security people don’t like to do,’ whispered Shining, ‘it’s listen to other security people.’

Chun-hee narrowed his eyes.

‘KCIA?’ Shining asked. ‘Sorry, I’m old, you call it National Intelligence Service now, don’t you?’

Chun-hee smiled but said nothing.

Shining nodded. ‘I shall keep it quiet,’ he promised, ‘on the understanding that we can talk later.’

Behind them, the gathered diners were being kept at a slight distance by Clive King. The last thing the wounded man needed, he had decided, was an audience.

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Tae-young, looking at April. ‘All this time it was one of us?’

‘Not one of us,’ Jae-sung said, ‘not if he did this. He must have allegiances with the North.’

Tae-young shook her head. ‘He just seemed so …’

‘Innocuous?’ asked April.

Tae-young nodded.

‘They so often do.’

Toby returned from the gardens, shaking his head. ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘Rowlands and his men are still searching but if he wanted to escape he’ll have done it by now. I ran to the far wall and back but there was no sign of him.’

Shining sighed. ‘A final bit of table magic to end the evening. A man vanishes into thin air.’

‘The building should be checked,’ said Chun-hee.

Toby nodded. ‘It will be. First I’m going to head down to the gate and see if they caught anything on the cameras.’

‘I’ll check my room,’ said Shining, taking the key from his pocket. ‘The candle.’

Toby squatted down next to Fratfield. ‘Still alive?’ he asked. ‘Just.’

‘Good job.’ Toby patted him gently on the shoulder and made his way towards the front door.

b) Lufford Hall, Alcester, Warwickshire

Toby ran down the drive to the front gate. The front of the house also featured its fair share of security men poking around in the bushes but Toby was sure they wouldn’t find anything. Given the skills Man-dae had already shown, it seemed unlikely that he was a man who would be so easily caught. They were lucky, he thought, that he had retaliated with nothing more dangerous than a knife and a gun. Time and medical care for Fratfield would show how lucky. Given the forces he had to call on, Toby was sure that the evening could have proven more destructive had they not caught him on the back foot.

‘Hey,’ he shouted, holding his hands in clear sight as he approached the guardhouse. He didn’t want whoever had been left on duty to get any worrying ideas and mistake him for the enemy.

‘Hey yourself,’ came a voice from inside the small building. ‘Come on in, you don’t look Korean and psychotic.’

It was one of the private security guards. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with the crew-cut hair and build of a man who has known a gym in his time. Toby immediately wrote him off as one of those men who liked to get their knuckles grazed and went into security work hoping to get paid to do so. Then he berated himself for it; he had been the victim of such snap judgements in his time and he didn’t know the guy one bit. He could be the best, most conscientious man working in the private sector for all Toby knew.

‘Just come from the house,’ he said, nodding as the guard shrugged. ‘Yeah, fair point, where else would I have come from? Just wanting to know what you picked up on the security system.’

‘As I just told your boss,’ the guard replied, tapping his walkie-talkie, ‘absolutely nothing. He seems to think I’ve been asleep on the job but I’ve been paying attention and there’s been no movement at all.’

‘Rowlands?’ Toby asked.

‘That’s the one.’

‘He’s not my boss and he’s a bit of an arse, sorry.’

‘No problem. Bloody government jobs, you never know who’s running what.’

‘Tell me about it. So anyway, there’s been nothing on the cameras …?’

‘And nothing on the fence alarm. I don’t know where your bloke’s gone to. The camera feeds rotate on the monitors so I might have missed something watching live.’

Toby noted that the guard wasn’t taking his eyes off the screens while talking to him. He could see several Box men making their way back towards the Hall.

‘But I can control playback,’ the guard continued, ‘and run the footage back through the spare monitor, bottom right.’ He tapped the screen. ‘Your man Rowlands thinks the bloke left by the rear.’