Chapter Thirteen
Irvin was right — he couldn’t miss her. Her red mane was like a beacon in the colourless multitude thronging around the arrival area. Dressed in a dark-blue sports jacket, with a beaming smile on her face, she was looking for him in the wrong direction. A new wave of passengers gushed out of the arrivals gate and dispersed across the hall, looking for their welcome parties — excited loved ones, apathetic drivers with nameplates and optimistic lawyers clutching thick briefcases.
She didn’t notice him. Another regular flight from Londrum had departed a few hours earlier but arrived almost at the same time as the supersonic plane. She was looking for him in that crowd. He dove under the separation barrier and approached her from the side.
‘Master McArthur?’ Thaler called.
She turned to him instantly. In a flash, her shiny smile was replaced with the formal face of a junior officer.
‘Welcome to Gotham, Grandmaster Thaler!’ No, her smile wasn’t gone; it just had retreated to the dimples in her cheeks. Thaler stared at her without saying a word. She appeared to take it as a bad sign. ’At your service, sir,’ she said, her face now absolutely serious.
‘At ease, Master.’ Thaler smiled and extended his hand. ‘For brevity’s sake, you can call me Vin. I want to thank you for helping us there, in Londrum.’ Their hands parted slowly.
‘That was my father,’ she said innocently, like a little girl. ‘Suddenly, I got that bad feeling, you know, when something goes terribly wrong.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘You know it, don’t you?’
Thaler nodded. ‘Yes, I do. You saved us. But now the demons are looking for you everywhere.’
‘I know that,’ Ashley said promptly. ‘I’ve prepared a hide-away. We’re going there now.’
‘A fox’s earth?’ Thaler raised his eyebrows and smiled at her.
‘Who knows? Maybe a wasp nest.’ She smiled back.
They stood and looked at each other. Indeed, they were different: Thaler — thin and stiff, like a character from a black-and-white movie; and Ashley — a bright, smiley, agile girl.
‘How was your flight, Vin?’ Ashley broke the silence.
‘Not bad,’ Thaler said with mock snobbery. ‘Incredibly fast, you know. Good service and stuff. I didn’t even have a chance to nap.’
She squinted, like she was trying to read the message between the lines that was written in the pale ink of his voice.
‘Among the juniors, you’re a legend,’ Ashley said, switching to a new topic. ‘Guys say you smash demons like cockroaches! You must tell us about your great feats!’
‘Maybe.’ Thaler grinned. ‘To be honest, I never felt comfortable telling such epic tales in public.’
Ashley’s smile took on a cunning look. ‘I didn’t know our senior officers travelled in such a grand style, but I’m sure you deserved it.’
‘Oh,’ Thaler replied coyly, ‘I just can’t bear those long flights, so, the Order had to cough up.’
Ashley gave him the respectful look of a subordinate, but she continued to study him from the corner of her eye. ‘Are you kidding?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am,’ Thaler confessed as he looked around. ‘Let’s get out of here; I have something to tell you.’
They squeezed through the crowd.
‘Do you have any baggage?’
‘Yes, a suitcase.’
‘This way.’ Ashley waved her hand. They walked into an empty temporary passage.
‘I’m in double trouble, Ashley,’ Thaler said when they had left the crowd left behind.
‘You mean —’
‘No, I don’t mean our enemies. That’s a permanent state of war. I mean myself, my friends and my relationship with the Supreme Order. After the latest event, I’m not a legend anymore. I’m a lame duck who stepped in skunk poop.’ Thaler stopped and turned again, ensuring no one else was around. ‘I want to be frank with you.’
Ashley was all ears.
‘I was on a very important mission and nearly failed. It happens sometimes. Then, you have to go through the Order’s bureaucratic machinery. Not a pleasure, but not the end of the world either. The only bad thing is that I didn’t inform the Order’s authorities properly. So, at the moment, I’m in the midst of a guerrilla war without any support from them and potentially facing a trial for insubordination. The good news is that I still haven’t lost this battle completely. By “lost” I mean, first of all, putting my friends in trouble. Neither you nor your father had to be in this mess. It’s my fault. I’m not afraid of going to the inquisition committee. I’m afraid you or your father may be harmed somehow.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘I gave your father my mogloc and promised to save you from danger.’
‘I really appreciate it,’ Ashley was listening carefully. ‘Could you tell me what happened that night before I called?’
‘I’ve been hunting for the black box – you know what that thing means for us all,’ Thaler began. Ashley nodded. ‘That evening, I got a call from my informer. I couldn’t believe it: I had, on a silver platter, not only the black box itself but also the demons’ secret headquarters. Of course, I had to inform the Order about that, but I didn’t; otherwise, I’d have lost time messing with our bureaucracy. Instead, I decided to take the risk and take the responsibility on my shoulders.
‘I arrived at the spot and everything looked perfect. The building wasn’t even guarded. And now, I’m asking myself — why. But anyway, I got in. Then your father called. He had just finished a job around the corner and asked if I was ready for a pint. I had to keep my mouth shut. Of course, he came. Still, we had plenty of time. The ritual was planned at midnight, and I needed just a few minutes to make a nice bonfire from the black box’s boards and then get away. At that moment, I felt no threat at all. But suddenly, everything changed. They had spotted us.’ He shrugged. ‘You know the rest of this story.’
‘Anything else?’ Ashley asked. She was no fool.
‘There was a dead guy on the floor,’ Thaler continued, ‘a very famous man in the city. I knew who had killed him. It would’ve been a high-profile case. It would’ve boosted your father’s career and saved him from his new boss with whom he didn’t get along.
He stared at her expectantly.
‘I can’t see anything that you’d be blamed for,’ Ashley said. ‘You know, the Order might not be that pleased with me either as I used the spells that only top masters are allowed to employ. When the demons discover they were spooked away by a low-ranking officer, they’ll be furious.’
‘Correct,’ agreed Thaler. ‘And now we are two outcasts caught in the crossfire,’ he laughed mockingly, like a cheap movie villain.
‘You shouldn’t have buried your dramatic talent,’ Ashley granted him a supporting look. ‘I just wasn’t sure if you even knew how to laugh.’
They walked quickly into the baggage claim area, where Thaler picked up his suitcase. Then, they made for the parking lot.
‘I knew what I was doing,’ Ashley said, ‘but the rules exist to be rewritten from time to time, don’t they?’
‘I couldn’t have said it better myself,’ Thaler replied. ‘But I’m not sure our bosses are of the same opinion. Where are we headed now?’
‘To the fox’s earth,’ Ashley whispered. ‘By the way, I haven’t noticed any suspicious activity around here.’
‘Me neither.’ Thaler confirmed. ‘So far, it seems they haven’t spotted us. But we can’t relax.’
‘There.’ Ashley pointed at a row of elevators leading to an underground parking lot.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Can you imagine, Vin? Just fifty years ago, most of the vehicles in the world ran on petrol.’ Ashley leaned over the glass barrier and looked down into the seemingly bottomless parking well. Its walls looked like gigantic honeycombs composed of dozens of parking cells. Two robotic arms moved quickly up and down rails in the middle of the well juggling cars: pushing them into the cells, pulling them out and returning them to their owners. Despite the system’s dexterity and speed, there was a short queue at the pick-up point.
‘Could people in those times even breathe?’ Ashley asked.
‘They certainly could,’ Thaler said. ‘Besides that, they used to make love to each other, play rock ‘n’ roll and run nuclear tests — all that at the same time.’ He tittered. ‘Smog and carbon dioxide pollution was nothing compared to the manure crisis that struck the big cities at the end of the nineteenth century. Only in Londrum at that time, the army of steeds produced about three million pounds of poo and pee a day. Just imagine the smell in the streets as well as the hordes of flies and rats that fed on the squalor. Hundreds of people died every day due to infections and poor hygiene. You know, what saved the world? The gasoline engine.’
‘Nice punchline,’ Ashley said with an approving smile. ‘Are we okay these days?’
‘Not so much,’ Thaler said grumpily. ‘The hydrogen industry causes a freon-like effect on the atmosphere, solar panels blind birds and wind-power plants make people mad with their humming sounds. Humankind still produces way too much energy to stop the icecaps from melting,’ he grunted. ‘We never solve problems. We just replace them with other, more complicated ones.’
‘Your vehicle has been delivered,’ the robotic voice announced. ‘Please, be careful and take your car from the pod. Drive safely, and have a nice day.’
A sleek, sporty red coupe was waiting for them at the edge of the parking well.
‘This is my beauty.’ Ashley waved her hand and the doors, like two wings, rose up. ‘I call her Nilly. We’re friends.’ She smiled. ‘She’s not the latest model, but she serves me pretty well. You see, she even has a steering wheel.’
‘Oh, for me that’s normal,’ Thaler said, looking inside the car with curiosity. ‘In my country, most of the cars still have them. The drivers almost never put their hands on the steering wheel, but without it, they feel uncomfortable. We call it “a love for tradition.”’
While Thaler walked around the car to put his suitcase into the boot, Ashley slipped into the driver’s seat and fastened herself in. The car awakened immediately. The headlights lit up and a long queue of activation screens started to run on its central display.
‘Hello, Miss McArthur, the pleasant female cyber-voice said, ‘How are you today?’
‘Not bad, Nilly,’ Ashley said. ‘How are you?’
‘Very well.’ Nilly sounded delighted. ‘They gave me a spa treatment and ran diagnostic procedures — nothing serious was found. Pity we don’t come here more often.’
At that moment, Thaler got into his seat.
‘Did we pick somebody up?’ Nilly asked casually.
‘Oh, you know –’ She stopped when Thaler gripped her forearm. She got the message and pushed some buttons on the screen.
‘I’ve switched it off,’ she said.
‘I’m probably being paranoid,’ Thaler murmured. ‘But that question sounded suspicious.’ He withdrew his hand. ‘I beg your pardon.’
Ashley chuckled. ‘I’m a fighter. I can stand a little pinch.’
‘I had to be sure.’ Thaler smiled. ‘You’d better disable the navigation system, too.’
Ashley flipped a couple of switches. ‘No problem. Back to the basics.’
They set off with Ashley navigating through the maze of the parking lanes towards the exit.
‘You didn’t sleep all night. Why don’t you take a nap now?’ Ashley asked. ‘This car is adapted for sleeping.’ They stopped at the traffic light.
Thaler looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was 3 a.m. — five hours back from Londrum time.
‘You’re right.’ He made himself comfortable in his seat. ‘But before I do, I have to make a couple of calls.’
She glanced inquiringly at him.
‘Don’t worry, my line is protected,’ he said as he tapped his phone’s screen.
‘Irvin!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hello, old man! Yes, we’ve already met and everything is just peachy! We’re driving to a safe place now. Good luck, old man. Your daughter sends her regards. I’ll keep you informed.’
Thaler hung up and fiddled with the smartphone’s screen again. By that point, they had left the labyrinth of airport lanes behind and the car had merged onto the highway.
‘Hello, Security?’ he said. ‘Doesn’t matter who. There’s a bomb on the Glambird. Under the sink, in the pilot rest cabin. It’s a hexen monolith bomb, and it’s safe as long as it’s kept at least one hundred degrees below zero. Of course, I mean Celsius — not that Fahrenheit nonsense of yours. You know what to do. This is not a joke. Thank you.’
The short conversation left Ashley thunderstruck.
‘Not a joke?’ she whispered.
‘Not at all.’ Like an old man suffering from a cold, Thaler wrapped himself in his coat. ‘The demons rigged the plane, and I had to defuse it during the flight.’
‘Unbelievable,’ Ashley breathed.
‘Nothing special,’ he said. ‘I made a few phone calls and my friends helped me to fix it.’
‘Why have you informed them just now?’
‘I didn’t want to get stuck in the airport with security procedures.’ He stretched his legs wearily. ‘How long is it?’
‘About an hour,’ Ashley said, still slack-jawed.
‘I’ll nod off for a bit,’ Thaler said and closed his eyes. ‘The road always lulls me to sleep if I’m not driving.’
‘Sweet dreams,’ Ashley whispered, gripping the steering wheel tightly.
Chapter Fifteen
All at once, Thaler felt the tiredness and abuse his body had accumulated over the last few days. Ashley was right: he hadn’t slept that night or the night before. He pushed the back of his seat almost into a horizontal position, folded his arms on his chest and relaxed. His eyelids drooped as his mind glided away, down through the depths of nothingness. His sleep was short, though.
Suddenly, he felt a stabbing pain, as if a giant arm had squeezed his chest. It was short but strong enough to drive away his slumber. He opened his eyes. Ashley was still driving, her eyes on the road. Thaler returned the back of his seat to an upright position and stretched his arms. The wide and unlit highway was empty, and the landscape alongside the road was draped in darkness.
‘You slept just a few minutes,’ Ashley noted.
‘I feel better now.’ Thaler kneaded his arm and shoulders.
‘Bad dreams?’
‘You told me about premonitions,’ Thaler said, rubbing his eyes. ‘I’ve just had one.’
‘Are they following us?’
‘I see no signs of it.’ Thaler narrowed his eyes and turned around. ‘I’m probably getting on a bit and need to see a doctor.’
‘What happened?’ Ashley glanced into the rear-view mirror.
‘I felt a chest pain,’ Thaler said, also staring back through the mirror, ‘a major alert in my terms.’
‘What are you looking at in this impenetrable darkness?’ Ashley wondered.
‘I can see pretty well, even at night,’ Thaler answered, still peering into the mirror. ‘All that because I like cats, I suppose. They taught me all their tricks.’
Ashley smiled. ‘I like cats, too. They’re clever creatures and natural fighters. Cats have personality — that’s what some people can’t bear.’
‘That’s true.’ Thaler glanced at her arms. ‘Cats are independent; they never become your slaves. You have to make some efforts to become their friend. But, to be honest, I prefer them to be purring, not fighting.’
A delighted smile appeared on Ashley’s face.
‘By the way, your hands are too gentle for a boxer,’ Thaler continued.
‘That’s right,’ Ashley agreed, ‘I almost never use my fists during fights. I need to keep my fingers in good condition to play music.’
‘How do you fight then?’
‘I mostly use my legs,’ she said, ‘as well as knees and elbows in a close fight.’
‘Is it okay to use your head?’
Ashley glanced at Thaler’s cryptic smile and pretended it was a straightforward question.
‘It depends,’ she said. ‘Head butts are prohibited in the official tournaments, but they may be quite useful to get rid of a random suitor on a late-night suburban train.’
Thaler nodded. ‘Seems to be a very good way to defend yourself. But, I don’t quite understand the fun in two women beating the socks off each other in front of a crowd.’
‘It’s okay,’ Ashley said, ‘a typical man’s view. You might understand it better if you saw it as a pure sport, leisure.’
‘Leisure?’ Thaler wondered. ‘How did you get into it?’
‘I was about ten. I came home from school with a black eye. I was crying and asked my dad to stand up for me — after all, he was a policeman. Instead, he bought me a pair of boxing gloves and took me to his coach. And, to be honest, I am very grateful to him for that. It became my way and meaning of life. But now he’s got a different idea. He wants me to get married and have children. That’s the kind of nagging I get every time I talk to him. And you know —’
Her words were still hanging in the air ready to escape her lips when Thaler grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it to the left. The front wheels of the car played their part well, evading collision with the huge blacked-out truck that had suddenly appeared in front of them. The car’s rear, however, wasn’t so nimble with the right quarter panel receiving a knockout blow from the truck’s front bumper. It sent the car into a wild dance across the highway. It span around a few times, smashed into the railing on the opposite side, heaved up into the air, then landed on its roof and skidded towards the hard shoulder. A few external and internal airbags had gone off and collapsed immediately. Glass splinters and debris bounced across the highway with an awful jangling sound.
Half minute later, the heavy black truck pulled up to the wrecked car concealing it from the road. A couple of self-nav vehicles with lone sleeping drivers aboard whizzed past as if nothing had happened. After that, the road was empty. A steady cool wind from the nearby hills, which were dotted with sparse faraway lights, blew across the road.
Both truck doors opened, two men jumped to the ground and approached the crashed car. They looked like average workers who had been called in to fix a flat tire, except that the driver was wearing night-vision goggles flicked back over his head.
‘Bad job, Pit, bad like my ass,’ the passenger grumbled, kicking away pieces of small debris. ‘Mody may flip us two birds instead of paying for this kind of job, I tell ya.’
‘No, he won’t, Tom,’ said Pit, the driver. ‘He’s got a lot of dough for the job we’ve done and now he’s sitting on that lump of cash. We’ve done a decent job, Tom, we were risking our lives. He’s gotta pay. Am I right?’
‘Who knows?’ Tom said, walking around the car. ‘Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t. We’ll see. We have to prove to him these guys are dead. The cabin is damaged but not a total loss. Bring me the fooking cutters, Pit, the long ones. I see no other way to prove it but to dig them out of that wreck and check their pulse like my granny would. It was a bad job, Pit, I tell ya. It was just a side collision. They may still be alive. And if they’re alive, we’ll get no money, just a fooking bullet instead. Mody is not a man who fooks around with these sort of things.’
‘Why he didn’t do this job himself?’ Pit asked, scratching his neck.
‘Because he’s a busy man,’ Tom grinned. ‘He kills people with his own hands, and he’s fooking booked all year round, like a seaside hotel with a bunch of easy girls on board. Besides, the client said it had to be an accident, not an obvious murder. And when it comes to cars, you’re the boss, Pit. At least you’re supposed to be. I think it’s all politics, bud, when the people with nice faces tie up loose ends. That’s why I don’t like politicians. Mody himself was shitting bricks when he got this call. I saw it. He was scared. And to make him scared, you have to be devil himself; or close. That might be another reason why he passed this job on to us. But I don’t care. Can you bring me the cutters, Pit?’
‘Bring them yourself, Tom,’ said Pit, his arms akimbo. ‘I’m not a fooking trained monkey to bring you chestnuts from the fire!’
‘Pit, please, by all saints, bring me the cutters,’ Tom said, raising his hands in a mocking plea. He got down on his knees, took out a flashlight and peered into the crushed car cabin.
‘I see a girl with nice hair hanging upside down and a gentleman in a leather coat next to her with a pool of blood under him.’ Reported Tom. ‘They don’t look like politicians to me and I see no reason to hate them. And I don’t like to see girls hanging like that, Pit. And that man, he looks good. Clever face, I tell ya. People like him have money in their pockets. If Mody won’t pay, this man will — if he survived, or just if his wallet did. Bring me the cutters, bud. You botched this job, and now you have to help me fix it.’
‘Okay.’ Pit walked toward the truck in a huff. He returned holding a pair of long-handled bolt cutters. ‘Mody said they have to be dead,’ he murmured, handing the tool to Tom.
‘That’s what I’ve been telling you since we got here, bud. Have you just noticed that? We’ll see. If they’re not dead, it’s your fault. It was your plan to catch them by surprise in a head-to-head collision. You were the driver, and you missed them. But if they aren’t dead, I’m not gonna kill ‘em. I’ll bring them to Mody, and he’ll do whatever he wants. Bring me the gloves, Pit,’ he ordered, ‘in the name of joy, please, bring me the fooking gloves. I don’t want to mess up with Mody. You don’t know him enough, but I certainly do. He would’ve taught you to bring him not only nuts but also the fresh shit from a grizzly’s ass, I tell ya.’
Pit obeyed.
© 1995–2025 Alexander Daretsky. All rights reserved.