LITMIR.BIZ

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Ray said, and instead of a friendly collie, a dire wolf stood on the platform with them, six hundred pounds of sin with fangs like a saber-toothed tiger.

      The crowd stopped as one, though IBT slithered forward, shouldering aside refugees as he pushed his way to the front. Inkar Omarov transformed as quickly and smoothly as Moon had, becoming the Tulpar of Kazakh legend, the golden-coated, eagle-winged horse with razor-sharp hooves.

      ‘Stop!’ Dr Pretorius limped forward, pushing himself to stand between Jones and the SCARE agents and the seething crowd of refugees. ‘Nothing will be solved by violence! There is another way. There must be another way.’

      The aging lawyer dominated the scene by the sheer force of his personality, stemming the tide of rage before it overwhelmed the situation.

      ‘You expect us to turn away and slink off into the darkness,’ Olena said heatedly, ‘when we have no fuel, no food? How can we even hope to recross the Atlantic—’

      ‘As I told you,’ Jones said with surprising calmness, ‘the United States will be more than pleased to fill your fuel tanks. It’s a cheap enough price to pay to be rid of you.’

      ‘But the food,’ Olena added, ‘we’re almost out—’

      Jones shrugged. ‘Can’t help you there,’ she said. ‘There’s been no official requisition for supplies—’

      Ray had suddenly had enough. ‘Screw that,’ he said. He reached into his back pants pocket, took out his wallet. ‘Harry,’ he said to the agent by his side, ‘take this.’ He handed him a credit card. ‘Go clean out a 7-Eleven or something. Get a boatload of food—’

      ‘Director Ray,’ Jones said in a hard voice.

      ‘We’re talking about children, here,’ Ray said stiffly. ‘Children, women, old people – hell, no one deserves to starve.’

      ‘Wait,’ Pretorius said. He took his own wallet out of a pocket in his jacket and extracted a card. ‘I appreciate the generous offer, Agent Ray.’ He held out a card. ‘But take mine. It probably has a higher limit.’

      It was black.

      Ray and Pretorius locked gazes, and Ray nodded. ‘Do it,’ he said to the young agent. He quirked an eyebrow, and Huginn nodded. He stepped away from the others and took the card Pretorius offered. He turned, headed for the police launch that was awaiting them.

      ‘Well,’ Jones said. ‘Is anyone accompanying us to shore?’

      There was a ripple in the crowd, as if a wind were blowing, but not one of the named refugees stepped forward.

      Jones swept them with her gaze. ‘Fools,’ she said. She followed Huginn to the launch.

      ‘Let’s go.’ Ray took the Angel’s arm, and she started at the touch, like a nervous horse. She looked at him with something of the old fire in her eyes, then nodded.

      ‘Moon,’ Ray said, ‘you’d better power down. I don’t think there’s enough room in the launch for you in this form.’

      The agent was a collie before Ray could blink. She smiled and wagged her tail.

      Ray turned to Pretorius. ‘Harry will be back with the food as soon as he can.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Pretorius said simply.

      Ray shrugged. ‘Like I said. None of these people deserve to starve.’ Then he added in a low voice that only the lawyer could hear, ‘One of the boys is going to stick around for a while. Kind of keep an eye on things.’

      ‘I understand,’ Pretorius said. ‘He’ll be safe.’

      ‘Maybe,’ Ray said, ‘there is a way where we can work this out.’

♦

      Evangelique Jones was as good as her word. By that afternoon a tanker had moseyed up to the Schröder and was pumping enough fuel into her tanks to get them back across the Atlantic.

      Ray and the rest of the SCARE team waited on the riverbank. Some protestors from both sides had reassembled, but the earlier storm had taken the starch out of their attitude. Rick and Mick were not to be seen. Probably, Ray thought, off arguing about what to have for dinner.

      Ray realized that it would all eventually build up until it started to chafe and something set it off again. More violence was inevitable as long as the Schröder was moored in sight of everyone. He hoped that she wouldn’t be there much longer. He was sympathetic to the plight of the refugees, but there wasn’t much he could do for them, other than ensure their safety when they were still under his watch. And that he was going to do.

      They waited patiently until Harry Klingensmith returned with a rental truck full of food and supplies.

      They helped the crew of the police launch, moored as usual at the small dock near their vantage point, load the supplies. It took several trips for the launch to ferry it all across to the Schröder. Obviously, there wasn’t enough to provide provisions for the refugees for a voyage across the ocean, but for now it would furnish them with a decent meal after days of rationing.

      It took a couple of hours to get all the groceries unloaded. When the task was finished Ray thanked the launch’s crew for their help and then he and the others headed back to the motel. No one noticed that Max Klingensmith had remained on the Schröder.

♥

      They all crowded into the room shared by Ray and the Angel. Colonel Centigrade was lying on the bed, still exhausted and fighting his bad head cold. Moon, still in her collie form, curled up next to him on the bed, but watched alertly as Harrison Klingensmith took the room’s only comfortable chair, settled into it. The Angel looked on with some interest while Ray paced restlessly back and forth across the small room.

      ‘What can you see?’ he asked the pale, scarecrow-thin SCARE agent.

      Huginn screwed both eyes shut tightly, frowning with concentration. When he opened them he stared at the plain, dull green drapes drawn across the hotel room window.

      ‘I see,’ he intoned in a soft, faraway voice, ‘people eating.’

      Ray made an impatient sound.

      ‘Munnin,’ he added, ‘is panning the room. It looks mostly calm. Most seem resigned, some are angry.’

      He went on, narrating the scene as if it were a movie, relaying what his twin brother could see with his own left eye. His right eye saw just the blank cloth of the drapery he was staring at. This mixed vision shared by two minds could be disorienting as hell, which was why he concentrated his own sight on a neutral view. His brother also saw what he saw from his left eye. Their ace had no distance limit and could never be turned off. Unfortunately – or, for them, perhaps fortunately – vision was the only sense they shared, and it had taken long and hard practice to get used to the disorientation this collective sight caused. It was, of course, an ideal means of instantaneously transferring information.

      ‘Hold on – something’s happening. Max is leaving the hold where most of the refugees are encamped.’

      ‘Why?’ Ray stopped pacing.

      ‘Hard to say. He’s being stealthy, though. Sneaking. He’s good at that. Sticking to shadows, ducking. He’s on deck. It’s dark now, nighttime. He’s watching a small launch approach. Men are coming aboard.’

      ‘How many?’

      ‘I count eight. Max is going to the bridge. Olena’s there with the captain and some of his officers and the man you described as the JADL liaison, who’s talking to them. He looks worried, like he’s trying to tell them something they’re not believing. Max is concealed outside the bridge, but he can hear them. Hold on. He’s writing something – we carry pads to communicate complicated messages. I can read it as he writes. Robicheaux says that you can’t trust the man called Witness. He’s gotten in touch with his contacts in Cuba – someone from the Gambione family. No one in Havana knows anything about the Schröder getting asylum there. But they know this guy Witness – he’s heavily into human trafficking.’

      ‘I

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