“You’re quite thorough,” remarked Odette as the doctor held a container of molding putty against her left ear.
“Ah, we’ll be taking even more samples once our organizations are united,” said Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes. “The Checquy keeps very, very detailed records of all its operatives. All this is just for security and legal purposes.”
“Legal purposes?”
“We need to establish beyond a doubt who is present at what meetings and who signs what. Now, we just need to take some pictures of your eyes.”
The dentist’s chair sank down, and Odette put her bare feet on the cold tiled floor. The eye machine was just a few meters away and she had watched as her colleagues had their retinas and pupils scanned and the insides of their eyeballs photographed. “It’s pretty standard optical coherence tomography,” said the doctor. “No unusual technologies. And after that, you’re done.” She sat in the chair offered, and there was a mechanical whining as the apparatus was lowered and closed around her head. “Right, now, if you can just look directly into the lenses.” Odette obediently stared ahead, keeping her eyes wide open as a light erupted out of the machine. It flared with the force of a thousand supernova suns into her unnaturally dilated, gorgeously large belladonna-style pupils.
“Ow! Klootzak!” she shouted, flinching back and slamming her head against the equipment.
“What happened? Are you all right?” asked Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes in the frantic tones of a man who might have inadvertently sparked a diplomatic fiasco.
“Yes,” said Odette sourly, holding her hands over her eyes. Her head was pounding as though she’d just walked into a wall, and there appeared to be a disco-kaleidoscope arrangement on the inside of her eyelids. Her tender rods and cones were screaming bloody murder. “It’s my own stupid fault. I didn’t even think. My pupils were bigger than they should have been.”
“Oh,” said the relieved voice of Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes, somewhere to her left. Then, with obvious curiosity: “Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Odette, feeling that treacherous blush climb up her cheeks again. She concentrated, and the blood was sucked out of her face, leaving her even more light-headed. She cautiously took her hands away from her eyes. By now, her pupils had constricted as much as they could, but her eyes still felt like they were pulsating.
“Would you like an aspirin or something?”
“No, I’m not allowed painkillers yet, they’ll interfere with my system,” she said. “If you could just please get me out of this thing and let me sit down for a while.”
“Of course,” said Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes. He retracted the apparatus from around her head, put his latex-gloved hand in hers, and guided her to a chair. “Your shoes and handbag are right next to you,” he said. “I’m going to go help the others finish up the exams. You’re the first to be done, so you’ve got some time to recuperate.”
“Thank you,” said Odette, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. The noise of the examinations was muted, but it reverberated through her head. She heard the doctor move away and risked opening her eyes a chink. Even through her contracted pupils, the room was blindingly bright, but she could make out people moving about.
Squinting, she could just see the bathroom door immediately to her left. I’m going to sidle in there discreetly, she thought, throw some water on my face, put my stockings and shoes back on, and maybe have a quick therapeutic vomit. She fumbled for her handbag and shoes, stood up, and, keeping her hand on the wall, awkwardly made her way to the bathroom.
As Odette stepped through the door, her sullen brain made several observations in rapid succession:
1. There’s much more of an echo in this bathroom than before.
2. It doesn’t smell as bad in here as it did.
3. Someone has lowered the floor and added a step where there was no step.
4. I am falling forward uncontrollably.
5. Someone appears to have replaced the dingy tiles of the bathroom with polished marble in a black-and-white-checkerboard pattern.
6. I am able to notice this because I am now lying sprawled on the floor.
7. My face really, really hurts.
All of these thoughts added up to the inescapable conclusion that she had, in her dazzled state, gone through the wrong door. Please, God, let me have gone into the men’s room, she thought desperately. Let me look up and see several men urinating into a trough and looking at me quizzically over their shoulders. Let me not have gone through the door I think I went through. She took a deep breath and lifted up her face.
Wow. Thanks for nothing, God.
As she had feared, the elegant marble floor did not reflect a disgusting lack of equality in the standards of the Apex House lavatories. Instead, it reflected the fact that she was in the large, beautifully appointed foyer where the Checquy elite had gathered to greet their distinguished guests. She sighed and rested her cheek on the cool marble for a moment.
Finally, she got up on her knees and grimly waited for her eyes to reset. Slowly, details began to swim out of the blur of her vision. Through the clearing haze, she saw a small crowd of people standing at one end of the room. All of them were dressed in expensive-looking suits, and all of them were staring at her in astonishment.
They were not normal people. Quite aside from the fact that they all had exquisite posture, some of them were obviously not your standard-issue human beings. Odette’s eyes had scanned the group and automatically picked out the four people she least wanted to see. The members of the Checquy Court. Her treacherous memory was helpfully presenting little dossiers on them and their positions in the Checquy’s demented chess-based hierarchy.
The stately looking older lady with the dark chocolate eyes and disapproving expression is Lady Linda Farrier, one of the two heads of the Checquy. Viscountess in the British aristocracy. Spent a couple of years as lady-in-waiting to the last Queen. She can walk into people’s dreams and tinker about with their sleeping minds. Apparently, she once goaded an enemy of the Checquy into gnawing his own hands off in his sleep.
The blond man with the tan who is smoking a cigarette inside a government building is Major Joshua Eckhart. Chevalier — responsible for international operations. Superior tactician. Manipulates metal via touch. He can warp it, mold it, render it liquid. He killed Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen. Then he went out for a hamburger.
Next to him is the newest appointee to the Court, Bishop Raushan Attariwala.
And there’s Rook Thomas, the only person who appears to be concerned about the fact that I just pitched face-first onto the floor.
Odette became aware of some flashes of distant light flickering in her vision. Maybe I have a concussion, she thought, and this is all a hallucination.
Instead, it turned out that some photographers were present in order to record the historic meeting of the Checquy and the Grafters. The photographers, who knew a good thing when they saw it, were immortalizing this moment for posterity.
Terrific.
11
The car that came for Felicity was driven by an older man wearing tweed and a dissatisfied expression. Felicity had a sneaking suspicion that he was actually a retired Checquy operative who lived nearby and who had been abruptly reenlisted into service to ferry her back to London. For one thing, the car was an extremely nice Jaguar, and for another, there was a set of golf clubs in the backseat.
You never leave the Checquy, she thought. You may get your farewell party, your gold watch, and your pension, but one day, you’ll be called back out of retirement to smite evil or oversee an investigation or transport a girl in pajamas and two pairs of bed socks.
“Felicity Jane Clements?”
“Yes,” she said.
He gestured for her to get in, and the car peeled off almost before the door was closed. She hurriedly put on her seat belt.
“Do you have my address?” she asked.