The Reluctant Assassin

A Visit to the Outhouse


BEDFORD SQUARE. BLOOMSBURY. LONDON. NOW

Riley and Chevie stumbled into the orange glow of evening streetlamps, on to the square lined with Georgian four-story houses bordering a small park like something from Peter Pan.

“This at least is familiar,” panted Riley, gazing at the square, purposefully ignoring the sounds and sights beyond. “I was terribly afraid that modern wonders would be too much for my poor nut.”

Wait until you see Piccadilly Circus , thought Chevie. Riley drew in a huge shuddering breath. “Garrick is always telling me to breathe. It calms a body, if a body needs calming.” Riley stopped talking as his nose took stock of the air that had just gone into it.

“How curious,” he said, then threw up all over the pavement.

“That’s great,” said Chevie. “We’ll never get a black cab to pick us up now.”

But she did manage to flag down a cab outside a boutique hotel on Bayley Street, and soon they were lost in traffic, heading toward Leicester Square.

Riley kept his head between his knees, drawing sticky breaths until he could make himself stop shaking. “The smell, miss. It’s like the inside of an apothecary’s pocket. I can’t smell the city.”

Chevie patted him on the back. “I guess it’s a bit cleaner these days. No one empties chamber pots out the window anymore.”

“I can’t smell the people. Are there less people now?”

Chevie looked out at the teeming metropolis rolling past the window. “Not really.”

Riley clasped his knees tightly and raised his eyes.

“I don’t smell any horses,” he croaked.

“Nope, no horses. Except outside Buckingham Palace on occasion.”

Riley straightened and pressed his face to the window. “Generally, we have horses. But I’ve seen automobiles, so this ain’t so terrifying.” Then a double-decker bus loomed alongside.

Riley flinched. Perhaps he could handle a carriage-sized automobile, but this craft was bigger than a cargo barge.

His eyes took in one modern wonder after another. Neon signs. Computer shops. Skyscrapers. Eventually he saw something familiar.

“There’s an honest-to-god Blighty pub,” Riley gasped. “Can we go in, Agent? A quick dram of brandy for my nerves?”

Chevie snorted. “You are not drinking, Riley.”

“Why not? Is it outlawed entirely?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Totally illegal. You touch one dram and I’ll have to shoot you.”

Riley sighed a spot of condensation on the window, then lifted his gaze skyward, and his breath came in sudden shallow bursts, clouding the glass.

“A-a-agent Savano?”

Chevie was halfway through dialing a number. “In a second, kid.”

Riley touched her arm with one finger, and Chevie could feel it tap-tapping with fear.

“It ain’t the Martians, miss, is it? Like in Mr. Wells’s new story, War of the Worlds?”

Chevie followed the boy’s troubled gaze and saw the silhouette of a passenger plane overhead.

“Don’t worry, kid. It’s just Ryanair, not aliens, though it’s a reasonable assumption. I think I’d better get you off the street before your head explodes.”

“Oh my God. A person’s head is likely to explode these days? Is it heat rays? I need a brandy, miss, upon my life.”

Chevie punched the last three numbers into her keypad. “You don’t need a brandy, Riley, you need an outhouse.”

“You are not in the wrong there,” agreed the boy. “It seems like a hundred years since I last went.”

Chevie held the phone to her ear. “Not that kind of outhouse.”

The FBI had several safe houses, apartments, and hotel rooms spread across London in case one of their agents got into hot water during an operation and needed a place to lie low and wait for the cavalry to gallop across from the U.S. embassy.

These safe houses were officially known as secure facilities, but the agents had referred to them as outhouses (out as in Officer Under Threat) since the term was popularized by a seventies spy series Double Trouble, starring the English actor Sir Olivier Gamgud and his faithful Yorkshire terrier.

The closest outhouse to Chevie’s location was a suite in the Garden Hotel, an understated boutique hotel on Monmouth Street where movie stars and models could be found enjoying the famous breakfast on any given morning. Bureau rumor had it that the section chief chose the Garden because of its proximity to the Monmouth Coffee Company café, which served arguably the best espresso outside São Paulo.

Chevie called the desk and asked for Waldo.

“Hello, this is Waldo,” said a deep voice. “How can I help you?”

Chevie spoke slowly, sticking to the code. Waldo was a notorious stickler for protocol and would hang up if she strayed from the correct wording.

“I would like to speak with my Uncle Sam, Waldo,” she said. “He’s in room one-seven-seven-six.”

Waldo was silent for so long that Chevie thought he might have disconnected.

“I’m sorry. What room did you say your Uncle Sam was in?”

Chevie fumed, and silently vowed to kick Waldo really hard somewhere soft at a later date. “I’m sorry, Waldo. My Uncle Sam is in room seventeen seventy-six.”

Another pause, but this time Chevie could hear a keyboard being tapped. “And what did you say your name was, miss?”

“My name is Chevron, but Uncle Sam has always called me . . .” Chevie crossed two fingers, hoping she had the right code name for today. “Spiderwick.”

“Spiderwick. Yes, I do have you on the visitors list.”

“Good. Great.”

“Your Uncle Sam is not in residence at the moment. Perhaps you would like to wait for him in the suite?”

“I would like to wait. We both would.”

More tapping. “Ah . . . both. The hotel has excellent facilities; would you care to make use of them while you are waiting?”

Chevie looked at Riley. “I think a wardrobe and some first aid are definitely needed.”

“Very good, Spiderwick. How soon can we expect you?”

Chevie checked the street. “ETA two minutes, Waldo.”

Waldo hung up without another word. He only had two minutes; there was no time for chitchat.



•••



The cab pulled up outside the Garden Hotel slightly more than three minutes later and disgorged a very unlikely couple onto Monmouth Street.

One seventeen-year-old FBI agent in Lycra, and an assassin’s apprentice from the nineteenth century, thought Chevie. We must be quite a sight. At least both of my eyes are open now.

Monmouth Street itself was quiet, in spite of its proximity to Covent Garden, with only a few tourists cutting through to Seven Dials or Leicester Square and the faint echo of carnival music. Most of the street was fenced off for street repairs, and the taxi driver was forced to reverse and go out the same way he had come in.

The Garden Hotel was one of those establishments that prided itself on the discretion it guaranteed its very select clientele. There was no sign, no doorman in a top hat, and only a tasteful awning to show taxi drivers where to stop. Chevie had stayed here once before, when Orange had commandeered her apartment during a routine pod service, and she had treated herself to a massage that had worked out muscle pains she’d suffered from overstrenuous workouts.

Chevie tucked her holstered Glock under her arm and hustled Riley into the lobby before he had time to throw up again. Special Agent Waldo Gunn was waiting for them by the reception desk.

“Two minutes?” he said testily. “That was closer to four.” Waldo was not anybody’s idea of an FBI operative, which was probably why he had survived so long in his semi-undercover capacity as liaison at the Garden. Waldo stood five feet four in Cuban heels and had a bushy gray beard that made him seem about a thousand years old, a look that had earned him the nickname Gimli in the Bureau. If Waldo was aware of this nickname, he was not sufficiently bothered by it to invest in a razor.

“Hey, Waldo,” said Chevie. “What’s up?”

Waldo scowled. “What’s up, Agent Savano? What’s up is that you should have requested an escort through the service entrance. We try to maintain a low profile here in order to avoid raising suspicion, and yet here you stand in tattered training gear with a chimney-cleaning midget in tow. Hardly low profile. That is what is up, Agent.”

At least he called me Agent, thought Chevie.

Waldo turned on his heel and strode through the small lobby furnished in late Victorian style, which was a huge relief to Riley, whose head was bursting with revelations.

“Should we follow the elf?” he asked Chevie.

Chevie smiled. “We should, or he gets really annoyed.”

Waldo translated his irritation into a quickstep, so Chevie and Riley had to hustle to keep on his tail. He led them around the front desk and into a small steel elevator, which he summoned with a remote control fob on his waistcoat.

Riley tried to appear blasé. “It’s an ascending room, no great shakes. I saw ’em at the Savoy years ago when Garrick sent me to suss out some swell’s gaff.”

Waldo raised an eyebrow at Chevie, who knew exactly what the unasked question was. “Yes, he talks like that all the time. It’s all Strike me blind or Cor, luv a duck with this little gent.”

Waldo took a smartphone from his pocket and typed a note. Chevie would be willing to bet that the word delusional was in the note somewhere.

They took the elevator to the fourth floor, with Riley holding grimly onto the rail.

“You can’t be overcautious,” he told Chevie. “I heard about one of these things snapping its cable in New York City. It dropped quicker than a shirkster at closing time. Made jam of the passengers.”

“I’m getting a headache listening to this cockney speak,” said Waldo. “Please God there won’t be any rhyming slang.”

Riley literally jumped from the elevator when the door opened, then they pushed through a fire door and climbed some back stairs up two more flights.

“Here we are,” said Waldo, indicating a nondescript gray door with the sweep of his arm, as though it was the gateway to a palace of wonder. “Room seventeen seventy-six.”

He pressed another button on his remote and the door swung smoothly open.

“In you go, Agent. You can hole up here until a field team arrives. It shouldn’t be too long, though head office tells me that our team has already been deployed to deal with a suspected terrorist hive, in Devon, of all places. False alarm, as it turned out. So I’m guessing it’ll take an hour for them to make it back here. Plenty of time for you to get some clothes on, and for the Artful Dodger to take a bath.”

“Cheers, guv’nor, you is a proper swell,” said Riley innocently, and Chevie guessed that he knew exactly who the Artful Dodger was.

Waldo frowned suspiciously but continued his briefing. “We have a range of clothes in the closet, so you should find something to fit. And there is a fridge with cold food. Don’t open the door to anyone but me, and if someone comes through that door who is not me, then feel free to shoot them. While we are not in the embassy and so technically not on American soil, this suite is attached to the embassy, and so a strong case can be made. In any event, jurisdiction over these rooms is a gray area, which should be enough to get you back Stateside if anything goes wrong.” Waldo opened a drawer in a writing desk. “In the event you are out of ammunition, we have a selection here, behind the stationery.”

“Ooh,” said Chevie. “Stationery. Cool.”

Waldo bristled. “I would have thought, Agent Savano, that after the Los Angeles foul-up, you would take this job a little more seriously.”

“I am being serious,” said Chevie. “One of my foster moms collects stationery.”

“I shall be writing a full report,” continued Waldo, “and your attitude will be both underlined and in italics.”

Chevie selected a clip for her Glock. “Sorry, Waldo. I get a little giddy under pressure. There’s someone after us. Someone a little out of the ordinary.”

Waldo was not impressed. “Well, your someone won’t be coming in here without an assault team behind him. And even then he’d need the door remote, which is paired to my biometric readings.”

Riley took his nose out of the fruit bowl. “Thanks for the grub and everything, mate, but none of you Yankees knows what you’re talking about. Garrick will come for me.”

Chevie opened her mouth to disagree, but all that came out was a soft sigh. Garrick had come through a wormhole to find Riley. He had overcome Smart’s ninja hazmat team. It seemed unlikely that a hobbit and a locked door would keep him out.

She checked her watch. “So, Gim— Waldo. Fifty-nine minutes, right?”

Waldo made a sound that was very close to an actual harrumph, then composed himself and smiled sweetly before extending his left hand, palm up.

“Tell me you are not looking for a tip,” said Chevie in disbelief.

Waldo’s smile disappeared and he closed his fingers tightly, as though crushing the soul of an enemy.

“Force of habit,” he said, and beeped himself out of the door.

Chevie and Riley spent the next half hour trying to relax somewhat, but neither of them could shake a feeling of frosty foreboding. And it wasn’t one of those vague feelings that something bad was on the way; it was the very specific belief that any second Albert Garrick was going to burst in through the reinforced door and shoot them both in the head.

Chevie wondered if she should call someone, and if she did call someone, what would she tell them?

The FBI have a set of secret time machines that we use to hide witnesses in the past.

Or, A death-dealing magician has come from the nineteenth century to kill an urchin.

Or, The world’s greatest scientist has been turned into a dead monkey by a wormhole.

It sounded pretty insane, whatever way you presented it. Better to wait until reinforcements arrived and hope that the agent in charge would have some previous knowledge of what was going on—otherwise Chevie was going to look guilty of something.

Riley emerged from the bedroom all dickied up in what looked like a school uniform, taken from Waldo’s stash. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and seemed surprised by his own features.

“That’s an excellent looking-glass, Agent. I never saw myself so clear. Look, my hair has both brown and black in it. There’s a turn-up for the books.”

The boy studied himself for a long moment, pulling at the skin of his pale face, sweeping his long dark hair back from his forehead. In the mirror he caught sight of the flat-screen television on its bracket.

“What is that device bolted to the wall? Is it a work of art, perhaps? A cloudy night, or some such? Toffs will buy any old rubbish if they believe it was scribbled by a master.”

“It’s a television, actually, Riley. Moving pictures on a screen.”

Riley turned to stare at the TV. “Moving pictures.” A thought struck him. “When I woke this morning it was the year of our Lord 1898. How far have I traveled?”

“More than a hundred years,” said Chevie softly.

Riley sank deep into a sofa, eyes downcast, and hugged himself.

“A hundred years? That far. Everyone I know is dead, and everything I know is gone.”

Chevie didn’t know what to say. She tried to imagine herself in the boy’s situation, but couldn’t. The shock must be incredible.

“I feel lost at sea,” Riley admitted. He pondered, then said, “But Garrick doesn’t. He is somehow different. Something has changed him. He has knowledge of your weapons and codes. Who’s to say he does not already have the codes for this gaff?”

Chevie sat on a low glass coffee table, facing the boy. “Garrick would have to be crazy to come here. He’s got all of London to get lost in. Why would he even bother tracking down a kid?”

“His reasoning is difficult to explain,” said Riley, frowning. “He calls me his son, to save or drown as he pleases. But I ain’t his son, and I hate him. I have bolted before, and he has followed me across the whole of the city.” Riley pointed to his right eye. “I ran away to Saint Giles last year. Squared myself away down with the guttersnipes, but Garrick’s snouts informed on me. That devil rooted me out and gave me a sound thrashing. The eye was never the same, but I can see out of it clear enough. Now Garrick has even followed me here, like Mr. Wells’s Time Traveler.”

“Well, Mr. Garrick has no snouts here,” said Chevie. “And, just for your information, people have being trying to find the outhouse for years. People from this century—if they couldn’t find it, neither will he. You have no idea how things have changed since your day.” Chevie thought of something. “But I can give you an idea. Sit there.”

Chevie pointed to the deep purple sofa in front of the flat black TV. She logged on to the Internet and navigated to a Web site that had a series of videos documenting major political, scientific, and cultural changes. She chose one and played it.

“Now sit there and learn something,” she instructed the Victorian boy.

Riley had been dumbfounded so often already this evening that he did not remark upon the HD graphics, but the site’s music almost moved him to tears.

“It’s like sitting beside the entire orchestra,” he said softly. “A music machine with pictures.”

Chevie walked toward the bathroom. “A music machine with pictures. I like that. Okay, you absorb whatever you can while I clean up a little. Just don’t touch the screen.”

This time Riley did look away from the TV. “Why not? Would I be transported to the land of the magic machine?”

Chevie was tempted to say yes, but the kid had been through enough for one day. “No, this ain’t Tron. But you would smear the screen, which would freak out the elf.”

Riley returned his gaze to the screen. Freaking out the elf sounded like a terrible thing indeed. He would look but not touch.


BEDFORD SQUARE. BLOOMSBURY. LONDON. NOW

At first Albert Garrick was mightily angered by being trapped in Bedford Square, but such were his new powers that a dozen solutions to his problem soon flowed like a balm across his spiky mood. The magician calmed himself and sat in front of his laptop in the ground floor office.

No, not my laptop. Felix Smart’s laptop.

Though that more or less amounted to the same thing. Felix Smart’s mind was inside his own, leaking information like a cracked gourd.

And there is more. The explosion inside the wormhole has changed me. I am more than human now. I am the universe’s first quantum man. The rules of normal space do not apply to me anymore. My very appearance is fluid, and my mind is chock-full of useful nuggets.

It took Garrick mere seconds to lift the lockdown from Bedford Square, and he listened with satisfaction as the shutters rolled back from the windows.

The magician cackled aloud.

Computers! Wonderful machines.

He was free now to leave and wreak havoc on this new age, with no one to stop him or even understand what they were trying to stop.

So, why don’t I abandon my hunt for Riley and disappear into the multitude?

Garrick now understood his need to track the boy down. Garrick’s father had deserted him in dramatic fashion when he was ten, so he had a deep fear of desertion.

You is sorted proper now, my son, his father told him one morning. And I cannot live sober with what my hand was forced into doing to secure your future. I slit the throat of my best mate and a few more besides to keep you in a bed away from the Old Nichol.

The ten-year-old Garrick noticed his father’s belongings tied in a pillowcase at the foot of their room’s small bed.

Are you leaving me, Da?

Tears flowed down his father’s ruddy cheeks as he answered, I am, boy. You know I have struggled with a grog habit all my life. And now, with dreams of blood and your poor brothers and sisters occupying my mind, I can’t fight no more. So it is my intention to return to the Nichol and drink myself into the grave. Shouldn’t take more’n a month. Don’t try to find me, as I plan to be drunk and violent. I will shout hello to your mother on my way past the pearlies, and keep an eye on you from the devil’s shoulder.

And he was gone, stumbling through the doorway, half blind with tears. Albert never saw his father again but heard rumors that he had died from a fractured skull following a crack on the head from a peeler outside the Jerusalem Tavern.

I was deserted and so have a fear of desertion, concluded the creature that was Albert Garrick. I know this but still feel it.

But there was more to this current pursuit than a fear of desertion. Wherever Riley was, there too would be Chevron Savano. Garrick had an urgent desire to make contact with that young lady, for she possessed the final remaining Timekey, and with that he could return to his own time and be its master.

Garrick knew that in this world he was something of a prodigy; there was much he could achieve, but he would always feel the scrutiny of satellites, crouched like electronic spiders in high Earth orbits. And with enough resources, his enemies could find him and kill him, as there were many with his knowledge in this era. But back in his own time, Albert Garrick could be godlike. In Victorian London, a man with his knowledge and foresight could be a prophet in his own land.

I could lead a revolution against the government. I could discover antibiotics and invent the solar panel. I could build the first working airplane and drop hydrogen bombs on my enemies. There is nothing I could not do.

But first I must open the wormhole. This is where my efforts must be concentrated.

Given ten years, unlimited funds, and the backing of a large government, Garrick knew that he could possibly construct a Timekey, but there was already a key in existence and it hung around the neck of Special Agent Chevron Savano.

That strange and stupid girl, thought Garrick. She will follow procedure and I will trap her in the Bureau’s own red tape. Once I have the key, all I need is five seconds with the WARP pod.

Garrick quickly posted out a Be On the Lookout report to the Bureau network for Chevron Savano, and tested the extent of his new computer skills by inserting her on the FBI’s most wanted list. The hazmat team was gone, so why not make Miss Savano responsible for killing them?

Hazmat, thought Garrick. What a delightful word.

Garrick removed his own bowler, plucked Smart’s softbrimmed hat from the stand by the desk, and, tip-tapping his spidery fingers along the brim, put it on.

Only six people in the Bureau have met Felix Smart since he came to London. Four are dead, one is on the run, and the last is on assignment in Iraq.

“Hello, Waldo,” he said, trying out Smart’s voice. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Agent Gunn. At last we meet face-to-face. I believe you’ve got a couple of fugitives for me in the penthouse?”

It was a fair approximation of the Scottish agent, and perhaps there was more he could do to bolster his impersonation. He was the master of illusion, after all, and the world’s first quantum man.

Garrick checked his appearance in the hat-stand mirror. His face had always been plain as tapioca, which was a boon in his line of work, as people tended not to notice him, or to forget him instantly if they did. During his theater days, he would literally paint a personality onto his face, changing it to suit the illusion.

Garrick stared into the mirror and watched as his skin began to bubble.

For Garrick had come by more than knowledge in the wormhole; he had gained control of his own workings, right down to the smallest particle. Where most men operated on a small slice of brain, Garrick had the choice of the whole pie. This did not lead to telekinesis, but it meant Garrick could communicate with his own fibers more efficiently. He could control the whorls of his own fingerprints, or the balance of his thyroid to turn hair gray. Or, with a little effort, he could communicate with the marrow in his bones or the layers of fat under his epidermis to entirely change his appearance. He could not become just anyone, nor stray too far from his own mass, but he could certainly allow a physicality that was already inside him to emerge.


THE GARDEN HOTEL. MONMOUTH STREET. LONDON. NOW

Chevie took a quick shower, strapped a gel-mask across her eye to bring down the swelling, then checked the closet for something to wear other than the workout gear, which seemed to scandalize Riley. There were numerous outfits to chose from, all draped in plastic, including several pairs of crime-scene overalls, a leopard-skin dress, and a puffy cartoon character mouse costume.

Some of these people were deep, deep undercover, she thought, selecting an Armani suit and a pair of black Bally loafers that would have cost her more than a month’s pay.

Finally. A perk.

The suit fitted well, and after Chevie had checked herself in the full-length mirror, she sat down to compose a report on the bedroom computer, trying to make the day’s events read more like real happenings than an episode of a sci-fi miniseries.

Found out I was guarding a time machine in case the inventor happened to pop in from the nineteenth century.

Nope, there was no way to make it sound like a serious report, even by using bureau buzz terms like unsub, asset, and AO.

By the time she had pounded out five hundred words on the keyboard, Chevie was developing a headache behind her right eye and was glad to hear the doorbell ring. She pulled off the gel-mask.

The cavalry, finally.

Riley was still stuck in front on the TV when she passed by, stuffing his face from a platter of cold meats.

“I hope you’re not drinking brandy,” said Chevie.

“Absolutely not,” said Riley, waving a brown bottle. “Beer only, Agent. I do as I am told, I do.”

Chevie deviated from her course to snag the beer bottle. “No alcohol, Riley.” She nodded at the screen. “How are you liking the twenty-first century?”

Riley burped. “The Take That are most melodic. And God bless Harry Potter is all I can say. If not for him, all of London would have been consumed by the dark arts.”

“Keep eating,” said Chevie, thinking that she would have to watch the videos with him next time. “And you can stop worrying, kid. Help is here.”

“We need all the help we can get, Agent. You should fill your belly, so we can face the challenges of the day with full bellies and without weevils in our shirts, eh?”

Chevie was not sure what a weevil was, but she was pretty certain that she did not want one in her shirt.

“No weevils,” she said. “I’m with you on that one.”

She left Riley by the TV and walked to the door, flattening herself to the wall as she had been taught, drawing her weapon, and pointing it at the spyhole. There was a small video intercom mounted on the wall beside the door, and Chevie was relieved to see Waldo on the screen, looking even grumpier than last time, which was somehow reassuring. The security camera showed that the hobbit-like liaison officer was alone in the corridor.

Chevie pressed the talk button. “Has the Bureau team arrived?” she asked.

“They are on the way,” replied Waldo. “I am to debrief you, apparently. Though that is not in my job description. What do they think I am, a secretary?”

“Don’t get your baggins in a twist,” said Chevie. She holstered her Glock and opened the door. “This is an important case. We need to work together.”

Waldo stood in the hallway, hands behind his back, not looking remotely in the mood for cooperation.

“Work together, you say? Like you worked together with the hazmat team?”

Chevie felt her stomach lurch and reached for her pistol. She even managed to get it clear of the holster before Waldo whipped a stun gun from behind his back and fired two needletipped darts into Chevie’s chest, sending 50,000 volts sizzling through her frame. Chevie felt the shock like a thousand hammers pounding on every inch of her skin, forcing her to her knees and then onto her back.

“I got the BOLO from Agent Orange,” she heard Waldo say. His voice was thick and slow, floating from far away. “You killed those men, and one of them owed me money.”

No, Chevie wanted to say. It’s a trick. You’re being tricked.

But her tongue felt like a pound of raw steak in her mouth, and her limbs were slack, like half-filled water balloons. She saw Waldo loom over her, and the view reminded her of a Godzilla movie where the monster stepped over a bridge.

“I’ve got one more charge,” said the harmless-looking hobbit in that faraway, underwater voice.

Run, Riley! Run! Chevie wanted to scream, but all that came from her mouth was a hiss of dry air.

Riley heard the exchange in the hallway, and then that particular rumbling sound of a body falling over.

Garrick! he thought, and sprang to his feet on the sofa. He wanted to help, but that would seal his own fate as well as Chevie’s.

I must hide, he realized. But there was no time for such tactics, as Waldo stepped briskly into the living room brandishing a metal tube.

“I will only use this,” he said, “if you attempt to flee, if you attack me, or if you insist in speaking in that ridiculous accent.” Riley tested the spring of the cushions underneath his feet. With my training, I could jump clear over that little man’s head, like

Spring-Heeled Jack, he thought. That baton of his won’t be much use if I stay beyond arm’s length.

Riley bounced twice, then threw himself into the air, arcing over Waldo’s head, leaving the FBI agent no choice but to shoot him in the stomach with the second charge from his stun gun.

Riley’s head hit the floor with a thump, and in his dream the thump was Albert Garrick rapping him on the forehead with sharp knuckles during a lesson.

“Attention, son,” he said. “This is one of the basic principles of stage magic, which is the kind we are stuck with presently.”

They were on stage at the Orient, where Riley’s lessons were conducted. On these boards he studied fencing, marksmanship, strangulation, and poisons, as well as the more exotic skills of escapism and camouflage.

“Now, I pose the question again: Where is the guinea?”

Riley stared at the three cups on the boards where he knelt and hesitantly pointed to the center cup, already knowing that the coin would not be his.

“No, Riley,” said Garrick. “Though you were a step closer this time.” He lifted the cup on the left, revealing a shining coin beneath. “I gave your eyes the slip on the second-to-last switch with a tap of my nail on the center cup. Misdirection, you see? I sent you toward what was not there.”

I understand, thought Riley, wishing that somehow he could use misdirection to escape from Garrick.

Someday, I will send you somewhere that I have never been. And then I will give you the slip for good.

Chevie woke up with plasti-cuffs around her ankles and wrists securing her to the toilet. Her head throbbed with dull pain, and drops of blood plinked into a pool between her feet from the tip of her nose.

She was about to unleash a string of swear words when she noticed Riley in the bath, cuffed to the safety rail.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, the sentence’s final t stabbing her brain on its way out.

Waldo! That moron. I will shave him while he sleeps for this!

“No, miss,” said Riley. “Though that lightning rod knocked the stuffing out of me. These cuffs have me baffled. They are slimmer than a shoelace, but I can’t even get a stretch on ’em.”

Riley talked a little more about the cuffs and their fantastic strength, but Chevie zoned him out. What she needed was a moment or two of quiet time so her mind could settle down a bit after the Tasering Waldo had surprised her with.

I wasn’t expecting that. And how was it possible that Felix Smart had put out a Be On the Lookout for me on the network when he never made it back from the past?

Unless he did come back and holds me responsible for all the mayhem?

It didn’t sound likely or plausible.

Orange was with the hazmat team. He knows I didn’t kill them.

Riley was saying something. His tone was insistent, urgent even.

Chevie blinked the stars from her vision. “What? What is it, kid?”

“Your nose is bleeding, miss. Snort it up and hawk the lot out in one go. That’s the best thing for it.”

Snort it up and hawk it out.

Chevie did as she was told, spitting a ball of blood into the sink, and was surprised to find that the bleeding stopped immediately, though the snorting did make her head hurt a little more.

“Did Waldo shock you?”

“He did,” said Riley. “That electric pistol of his had me dancing the dotard’s jig on the floor. I woke just before you.”

“We need to get out of here, kid. You opened your cuffs back in Bedford Square. You got any more magic tricks down your sock?”

Riley glared at his own tethered wrists as though he could free them with mind power. “Not one, miss. How do you open a set of bracelets that don’t have no locks?”

You don’t was the answer to that question.

Chevie followed the logic of her train of thought, ignoring the waves of pain.

“Okay. We’re secured but safe. Waldo has the wrong end of the stick, but the cavalry are on the way, and we can clear things up when they get here. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. So long as we’re in this room, we stay alive.”

Riley frowned. “So this being trussed up like market fowl is a good thing?”

“In a way, yes.”

“No offense, miss, but maybe you being a female has clouded your judgment. If we dangle here for much longer, Garrick will slit our throats and watch us bleed. He won’t even need to mop up after me, for heaven’s sake, seeing as I am already in the tub.”

Chevie glanced sharply at the boy, surprised that he would make a joke, even a gruesome one, at such a time, but then she saw the fear in the boy’s eyes.

The poor guy lives with terror on a daily basis, she realized.

From the suite came the distinctive clatter of armed men entering a room. Chevie heard footsteps padding across the carpet and the oily clicks of pistols’ safety catches being engaged. Muted orders were issued, and Chevie imagined agents taking up positions at entrances and other possible breach points.

“Hey,” she called. “Hey, you guys. In here.”

Seconds later an agent appeared at the bathroom door, dressed in the FBI’s version of Casual Male, which had been thirty years out of date when they thought of it twenty years ago. Tan chinos, blue Windbreaker, button-down shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. This guy might as well have had FBI written on his back in big yellow letters, which, in fact, he did have if you ripped away the Velcroed patch. The agent could not suppress a smile when he saw Chevie on the toilet. He drew a switchblade from his pocket and pressed the catch, releasing the blade, as if he were about to cut the plasti-cuffs, then retracted the blade with a touch of the button and pocketed the weapon.

“At ease, Savano. Don’t get up.”

Chevie scowled. She knew this guy from back home. His name was Duff, and he had been tight with Cord Vallicose, her favorite instructor from Quantico. Vallicose had seen potential in his young student and taken Chevie under his wing.

“Hilarious, Duff. You won’t be laughing so hard when I get out of here and rearrange your hairdo.”

Duff scowled back, obviously proud of his perfect do. “Can it, Savano. You and your little mystery buddy are in serious trouble. I’m hearing talk that our hazmat boys are MIA. The AD is on his way down from a meeting in Scotland, so until he gets here, keep your trap shut.”

Chevie swallowed her anger; she’d have words with this guy when this was all over. “Okay, Agent. I realize you’re doing your job, and I would probably do the same thing myself if I was in your nineteen-fifties shoes, though possibly with a little more empathy and less jargon. But we have a scared boy here, and with good reason. There’s a pretty impressive guy on our tail, who probably took out the entire hazmat team with a musket.”

Duff sighed like this crazy talk made him sad. “Yep, the BOLO said you were delusional. London does that to a person. Can’t get a decent pizza in the entire city.” He snapped his fingers. “Hey, you know who I should tell about this?” Chevie stiffened. “Don’t you dare!”

Duff pulled a phone from his pocket and made a big deal of focusing the camera. “No, no really. Cord needs to know about this. He said you were his finest student. This is gonna break his heart.”

Duff snapped a couple of shots of Chevie cuffed to the toilet and texted it across the Atlantic to Cord Vallicose.

“Take this seriously, Duff!” said Chevie, struggling to keep her voice down. She knew this guy; the moment she shouted at him he would simply walk away and slam the door. “People are dying, and it’s not over yet. Take your weapon off safety, tell your guys to look sharp.”

Duff seemed on the point of taking her seriously when a text jingled through on his phone. He consulted the screen and smiled broadly.

“It’s from Cord. You should read this—he’s devastated.” And with a nasty chuckle Duff backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Albert Garrick arrived at the Garden Hotel seconds after the London team, and could do little but scowl in frustration as he watched them hurry through the entrance. Six agents in Windbreakers, blending in about as effectively as a half dozen penguins would in the chic lobby.

Garrick cursed them for fools, then treated himself to a coffee from a nearby café while he adjusted his plans. His BOLO had yielded an almost immediate callback from Agent Waldo Gunn, and Garrick had hoped to reach the safe house before the inevitable band of heavy-handed federal overkillers. Except in this case it was not overkill. An entire garrison of agents would not be enough to keep him from Riley and the Timekey.

Had Garrick succeeded in reaching the scene before the away team, he could simply have taken what he wanted and disposed of Waldo Gunn; but with six armed agents keeping watch, improvised violence could not be relied upon. The odds were still in Garrick’s favor, but Riley had skill in the martial arts, having been taught by a master, and Garrick had no desire to be felled by a lucky strike from a child.

For a moment he allowed himself to be mildly distracted by the changes that had overhauled Monmouth Street since what he had begun to think of as his day. Even though Smart’s memories had prepared him for the bright, shiny wonders of the present, it was quite another thing to spy them first hand.

In his day Monmouth Street had been mainly penny digs, and by this time of night it would be lined with residents taking great amusement from the japes of juvenile beggars trying to pry coin from the theater crowds. Now, there were no beggars on the street and barely an Englishman to be seen, though if Smart’s memory served him correctly, they let anyone call themselves British these days.

I might have something to say about that, thought Garrick. When I am king.

He was, of course, joking. He had no desire to be king. The prime minister held the real power.

Garrick finished the really rather excellent coffee, thanked the waiter, then strolled across the street to the Garden Hotel.

Inside the safe suite, Waldo Gunn was not happy. This place was blown, and he knew it. After nearly a decade of caretaking this wonderful location, with more than two hundred at-risk subjects sheltered, the FBI away team had rolled up in their black SUVs and marched mob-handed into his discreet haven. Discreet no more.

And, though Waldo was slightly miffed that his own cushy posting was jeopardized, his main worry was professional.

I don’t even know for certain who the bad guy is, he thought. Agent Orange makes strong claims against Agent Savano, but nothing in her file suggests such a violent nature. There was that infamous incident in Los Angeles, but in my opinion she acted heroically and lives were saved.

So now she’s a mass murderer? It didn’t make sense. Everything was topsy-turvy today. Instead of protecting fugitives, he was detaining suspects. Even more irritating was the sight of those clodhopping agents tramping all over his beautiful Italian rugs, and now they were even trying on jackets from the closet.

If one of them even looks at the Zegna suit, I will shoot him myself, vowed Waldo.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he called to a lanky agent sprawled on the sofa. “Take your shoes off the furniture. That’s a Carl Hansen!”

Waldo’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and it was the dedicated buzz that meant the message was on a coded channel and therefore official business. He checked the screen and saw the text was from Agent Orange. Short and sweet: Coming up.

Great, thought Waldo, twisting his gray beard to a point. Another fly in our overcrowded ointment.

The doorbell to the suite chimed, and half a dozen agents instantly threw various combat shapes, training their weapons on every flickering shadow.

“At ease, storm troopers,” said Waldo drily, crossing the small lobby to the intercom. “It’s one of our own.”

Waldo Gunn knew that he would probably choose to retire when this post went belly up. There was no way he could integrate with an office full of gun monkeys after twenty years of culture at Covent Garden.

The intercom screen showed a single figure outside the door.

Waldo pressed the talk button. “Identification, please.”

The man glared at the camera, as though reaching into his pocket was an inconvenience he didn’t have time for, then sighed and pulled out his badge, flipping it close to the lens.

It was Agent Orange, all right. Not a great photograph, but definitely the same man.

Maybe so, thought Waldo. But the FBI doesn’t operate on mugshots in our own facilities anymore. Why would we, when we have biometrics?

“Thumb on the scanner, please,” he ordered curtly.

“Really?” said the man with Agent Orange’s FBI badge and card. “I’m in a hurry here. Don’t want to be stuck in the cold just because some bucket of bolts can’t read my digit.”

“Thumb on the scanner, if you please,” insisted Waldo, not bothering to argue. If Orange was in a hurry, he should simply press the glass and be done with it.

“You’re the boss for now,” said Orange, and he placed his right thumb on the scanner bar, which took about five seconds longer than usual before matching the print to the one on file.

“See?” said Waldo. “That wasn’t so difficult. It’s just protocol.”

Waldo opened the door and shivered as a chill wrapped itself around his legs.

Must be a window open, he thought. I could have sworn I closed them all.

“The legendary Agent Waldo Gunn,” said Agent Orange, extending a hand. “Protector of lost sheep.”

“Legendary in certain circles,” said Waldo. He shook the offered hand and thought involuntarily, I don’t trust this man’s hand.

Waldo could not help glancing down. He noticed that Orange’s fingers were slim as a girl’s and the nails were as long.

Why the instinctive dislike? wondered Waldo, and then he remembered one of his mother’s various long-winded sayings: Never trust a man with long nails, unless he’s a guitar picker. A long-nailed man has never done a day’s work in his life, not honest work at any rate.

Orange relinquished Waldo’s hand and stared over his shoulder into the suite.

“Quite a gathering you have here, Waldo,” he said, his Scottish accent making the sentence five seconds longer than it would usually be.

That accent would drive me crazy, thought Waldo. It could take all day to finish a conversation.

“What can I do for you, Agent Orange?”

Orange’s smile was wide and thin. “Isn’t it obvious? I need you to release the suspects into my custody.”

Waldo bristled at the idea, which was so outlandish that he initially thought Orange was joking. “Your custody? That’s hardly procedure. These are suspects in an investigation. You are not an investigator.”

Orange seemed saddened by this attitude. “Perhaps not, but I do outrank you, Waldo.”

Suddenly Waldo did not appreciate this man calling him by his first name. “That’s Special Agent Gunn, if you please. And for your information, nobody outranks me in this suite. As officer in charge, I can trump the president himself if I deem it necessary. At any rate, the Assistant Director is on his way, and he has ordered that nobody interfere with the subjects until he arrives.”

“But they killed my entire hazmat team!” objected Orange. “No quarter was given, though it was asked. I was lucky to escape with my life.”

No quarter was given, thought Waldo. Quaint choice of words. “You do seem remarkably alive. And unscathed, too. Where are the bodies?”

Orange coughed into his fist. “That’s delicate and strictly need to know. It’s connected to our operation, which is about fifteen grades above your security clearance. I could tell you, but then . . .”

“You’d have to kill me,” said Waldo, completing the hackneyed phrase.

“And your family,” added Orange, straight-faced.

Waldo’s instinctive dislike of this Scot burned brighter. “There’s no call to be rude. We have a procedure in place here, and that’s the end of it. You may wait in the lounge if you wish, but there will be no contact with the suspects. After all, we only have your word for it that the detainees are guilty of anything.”

Orange’s smile never wavered. “That’s an excellent point. Unfortunately, I am not in a mood to be detained at the moment, and as you pointed out, you outrank me only inside the suite. And I am outside. So I shall partake of another excellent coffee from the establishment across the street and return later when the big-knob bluebottle has joined the party.” Orange stopped suddenly and his eyes brightened as though lit from within. “Can it be?” he cried, his accent suddenly less Scottish. “Why, I swear that it is.”

Waldo was reluctantly intrigued. “What is? It is what?”

Orange gazed past the suite’s custodian into the room itself. “Blow me if I haven’t been here before.”

“I think you’re mistaken,” said Waldo in the most patronizing tone he could muster. “I have a log of every single person who has set foot across this threshold in the past twenty years, and you are not on it.”

Orange was so delighted that he actually clapped his hands. “This was years ago, Waldo. Many years ago. If I remember it right, an exceedingly dodgy character answered the landlord’s rap in those days.”

“Fascinating story, really. But if you won’t come in, you must leave. Security and all that.”

Orange doffed his cap, revealing a head of hair that seemed gray or black depending on the incline of his head. “And all that, indeed, Waldo. A quick coffee bath for the ivories, and I shall return. Watch for me, won’t you?”

Neither man offered his hand upon parting, but Waldo Gunn flicked through different camera views on the security screen so that he could watch Orange all the way to Monmouth Street.

“I will watch for you, Agent Orange,” he said between his teeth. “You give your ivories their coffee bath, and I will watch for you like a hawk.”

Waldo placed a hand on his round stomach, the result of too many fried Cumberland sausages and late night hot chocolates with Chantilly swirls.

What is that feeling? he wondered, trying to match an emotion to the acid churning in his belly.

Waldo Gunn realized that, for the first time in twenty years, he did not feel safe in his own fortress.

Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. Orange is a disconcerting character, that is all. He’s not dangerous.

But Waldo Gunn’s subconscious was trying to tell him something, and the portly agent really should have listened.



•••



Garrick ignored the coffee shop and virtually skipped down the Garden’s service alley, still hardly crediting his good fortune at having previously cracked this establishment.

He found that he could roll through his memory like a moving-picture show and find each frame as clear as reality, smells and all.

He remembered this house well. In his day, a flourishing bootmaker’s shop had stood on the ground floor, with a brass plate in the window claiming Charles Dickens himself as a patron, which was difficult to contest as by then the great novelist had been dead for nigh on a decade.

Above the bootmaker’s lived the dodgy character with a curious name. Billtong . . . no . . . Billtoe, that was it. George Billtoe had passed a sheaf of homemade pound notes in Barnet Horse Fair and incurred the wrath of a certain gang, who did not appreciate their turf being poached without ask nor license. The gang’s wrath was embodied in the form of Albert Garrick.

Vengeance from above, thought Garrick. As I came down the chimney.

George Billtoe had heard rumors that papers had been passed on him, and he grew increasingly secretive and prudent, barricading himself into the upstairs apartment, employing an urchin to run his errands. Garrick was forced to use all his skills as a contortionist to inch his way down the man’s chimney.

Garrick chuckled. On that night he had actually roused Billtoe before slitting his throat, just so the mark would realize that his precautions had counted for nothing.

Happy days. How he and Riley had chortled over that faker’s folly.

Garrick remembered acting out the entire episode, right down to Billtoe’s stunned final plea for mercy before he gave him a close shave across the Adam’s apple.

The magician smiled at the memory as he scaled the hotel fire escape to the third floor, sliding silent as a shadow across the cast-iron steps. The top step stood eight feet below a flat copper roof, which offered a wide lip and ample grip for a man of Garrick’s abilities. He trusted the strength of his fingers and launched himself upward from the railing, grasping the cold copper rim and swinging himself bodily onto the flat roof.

Across the dull copper he ran, hunched to avoid the prying eyes of curtain twitchers, bent so low that his torso was horizontal and Orange’s sharp nose cut the night air like a beagle’s.

This is indeed the life of champions, thought Albert Garrick. A fresh breeze from the Thames, preternatural quantum powers, and a room full of Yankee bully boys to test my skills against. Magic is real and lives inside my person.

The chimney was where he remembered it, a red and yellow brick stack bound with crumbling mortar, weather-stained, perhaps, but otherwise virtually unchanged. Even during Billtoe’s residency the chimney had been out of service, plastered up at the base with a line of cracked clay pots that had not diffused smoke in many a decade. Garrick brushed the pots aside with a cavalier sweep of his arm and heaved the chimney cap from its perch.

Not even a slap of mortar, he thought, almost disappointed. These federals are supposed to be the world’s finest.

The chimney pipe stretched below him from dark to pitchdark. There was no comforting smell of soot that would have reminded Garrick of home, but there was the feeling of depth and drop and the sour gust of damp. The magician swung his legs easily over the stack and sat on the rim, peering down.

It’s narrow as I remember.

Garrick’s breadth of shoulder could barely squeeze down that shaft, even on the diagonal.

Last time descending this box took some time and a fifth of nerve, thought Garrick. This time will be different.

Garrick used his quantum abilities to order his shoulder ligaments to slacken so that the ball of his humerus popped out of his socket.

No pain, he told his sensory neurons. I need my senses sharp, and last time I descended through this shaft the agony was a chink in my plate.

Garrick had always been a touch shortsighted but enjoyed excellent night vision, which he attributed to boiled vegetable poultices that he molded into his eye sockets two nights a week, then ate for breakfast in the mornings.

Even so, he thought, using his good arm to hoist himself into the black shaft, no harm in opening my pupils a little to trap the ambient light.

Garrick smiled, his teeth shining like candied lemon drops in the gloom.

Ambient light? Smart, my friend, I cannot thank you enough for educating thyself so thoroughly on your multifarious interests.

Garrick’s pupils zoomed till they filled his irises and he could see black spiders hiding in the black hole of a dark chimney at night.

This is what magic really is, he thought. An open mind. Garrick cranked his knees apart until they braced his body weight, then lowered himself into the darkness like a demon descending into hell.

Inside the bathroom of the safe house, Riley was wondering if his brain had been somehow etherized by his trip. Or if he had suffered some form of mind malady brought on by a life of continual terror.

I feel nothing. Even my fear is fading. Perhaps I am in a sanatorium somewhere wearing the lunatic’s overalls.

And yet this futuristic fantasy was particularly detailed. Miss Sav-a-no was plainer to him now than any individual he had ever spied. He could make out the drops of sweat on her brow as she worried the plastic ties on her wrists. He could hear her teeth grind in frustration and see the cords of her long neck stand out like a schooner’s rigging.

“Are you looking at something in particular?” said Chevie.

Riley started to mumble a denial, but Chevie interrupted him.

“You want to hear something ironic, kid?”

“Yes, miss. As you please.”

She tugged on her cuffs, which held her arms fast around the toilet’s plumbing. “I find it ironic that I could really use a bathroom right now.”

Riley tried not to smile.

“And this is ironic because you are tethered to a bowl and yet cannot use it?”

“Exactly.”

“Thank you, Chevie. I have often encountered the term irony in my reading but never truly understood it till now.”

“To educate and protect,” said Chevie. “Though I’ve been falling down a little on the protecting.”

“It was bad luck that you came up against Albert Garrick. Of all the coves you could have scooped out of the past, he is the worst, no doubt about it.”

“He’s just a man, you know, Riley. Whatever you think about him, that’s all he is.”

Riley slumped in the bath. “No. There are men who are somehow more than men. Garrick has always been one of these, and now even more so. The trip from the past has given him gifts, I would swear on it.”

Gifts, thought Chevie. Or mutations.

“Garrick is truly beyond your experience,” continued Riley. “Mine too.”

“You make him sound like Jack the Ripper.”

This casual reference caused the blood to drain from Riley’s face as a memory hit him like a mallet, and while his mind wandered, Chevie shifted her focus to the room beyond. For the last fifteen minutes the only sounds had been typical agents-on-babysitting-duty noises: sharp comments, jock laughter, coffee percolating, and an almost incessant flushing from the second bathroom.

“Hey!” she called. “Waldo! Duff! You want to open the door? We’re feeling a bit unloved in here.”

In response someone turned up the TV. The loud bass of dance music bounced off the door.

“I hate those guys,” muttered Chevie. “I am going to work real hard, get promoted, then fire every last one of them.” She noticed Riley’s stricken face. “Are you okay, kid? Riley?”

Riley’s eyes came back to the present. “Garrick told me a story once about old Leather Apron, Jack the Ripper. He playacted the whole thing in our digs.”

“Don’t tell me, Garrick is Jack the Ripper.”

Riley’s head jerked backward as if Garrick would hear this accusation. “No. Certainly not. Garrick hated Jack the Ripper.”

Chevie kept one ear on the noises outside and the other on Riley’s tale.

“He hated the Ripper? Weren’t those guys like peas in a pod?”

Riley sat up as far as he could. “No. Oh, no. Old Jack did what Garrick would never do. He courted the bluebottles and the press gentlemen. Sent ’em notes and so forth. Gave himself a nickname. Garrick prided himself on being a like specter with his business, and here was this night slasher leaving kidneys and hearts strewn about all over Whitechapel.”

Riley’s eyes glazed over as he lost himself in the story.

“The Ripper was busy before Garrick got me, but the case obsessed him for years after. I knew to stay clear if the papers were running a story on Jack. Until one night Garrick comes home, just as the sun hangs between the spires. He shakes me gentle, like we are genuine family, and his touch was so soft that I came out of my dream thinking my father had come and I says, ‘Father?’”

Riley paused to spit toward the plughole. “I was barely eight years in the world and knew no better, but the word is magical to Garrick, and he smiles like Alice’s cat. ‘I suppose I am,’ he says. ‘That is my responsibility.’

“I am full awake by this point and more than a little afraid. Garrick is covered from head to foot in blood, like he’d been swimming in the slaughterhouse trough. Even his teeth are red. He must’ve seen how scared I was, for he says then, ‘Don’t worry, son. This is not my blood. Jack will be ripping no more.’ And then he waits for this nugget to sink in.

“It takes me a moment, but I gets it. ‘You killed Leather Apron? Ripper Jack himself? But he is from hell,’ says I.

“This draws a guffaw from Garrick. ‘He’s in hell now,’ he says. ‘His soul, at any rate. His body is sleeping with the rotting corpses of common hoodlums in the sludge on the Thames’s bed.’

“I know Garrick doesn’t like questions, but one pops out before I can stop it: ‘How did you find a demon, sir?’ But he isn’t angry; he seems to be in a mood for questions.

“‘Aha,’ says he, tapping his forehead. ‘With man’s deadliest weapon: the brain. Jack was a creature of habits, and that was his undoing. The first five girls were done in a frenzy, but after that Jack calmed himself and used the moon as his clock. For three years now I’ve been patrolling Whitechapel and Spitalfields on the nights of the full moon, and finally he shows outside the Ten Bells.’ Garrick laughs then. ‘It’s barely credible, this so-called genius plans to snatch yet another girl from the Bells. I spotted him right off, a toff in common getup, all twitchy with nerves.’

“Garrick leaned over me then. I remember blood dripping onto my forehead and I thought, That’s Leather Apron’s blood.”

Chevie was so enthralled by the story that she wouldn’t have moved even if the plasti-cuffs had miraculously fallen from her wrists.

“‘I let him take a girl, just to be sure,’ Garrick says. ‘And I trail him from the rooftops down to Buck’s Row. I can hear them talking and joking about poor Polly Nichols, who was done for at this very spot. Old Jack had a surprisingly feminine giggle on him, something he never boasted about to the papers. And all the time I am looming overhead with my favorite Cinquedea blade all blacked up and ready for blood.’ He showed me the short sword then. It had not been washed, and the blood was thick and lumped with gore.”

If Chevie had not been so engrossed in the tale, she might have noticed that, while there was still noise coming from outside the bathroom, the sounds of agents joking had ceased and there were thumping sounds that could not be attributed to the music pumping from the television’s speakers.

“‘As soon as he pulls out his own blade, a common-as-muck scalpel, I leaped down from on high and had him open from neck to nave. It was a clean swipe, like something from the theater. He went down like they all do, no special powers, no memorable last words. The girl was rightly grateful and fell to her knees, calling me Lordship. I should have killed her, I know, me lad. But the street was dark and my face was blacked, and so I simply says, “Tell your friends that London is rid of Bloody Jack,” and lets her run off for herself. It was a moment of weakness, but I was feeling well disposed toward the world. And then, what’s this? A little moan from the cobbles. My boy Jacky is still breathing. “Not for long,” says I, and set to work. Before he goes, Jack confesses to nineteen murders, with something of a gleam in his eye. “Nineteen?” says I to him. “I done twice that last year alone.” His heart gave out after that.’”

Riley drew a shuddering breath. “And that was when I realized that Albert Garrick was indeed the devil.”

The bathroom door buckled suddenly as a body was hurled forcibly against it. The crash startled Riley from his reverie. Again the door heaved, this time coming away from its hinges entirely, falling into the room, weighed down by the unconscious form of Agent Duff.

A dark figure appeared in the doorway and seemed to glide into the room.

“Orange?” said Chevie, but she saw almost immediately that, while the figure resembled the FBI agent, it was not in fact him.

Riley looked into the man’s cruel, dead eyes. “No. No, it’s my master. Now do you understand?”

Albert Garrick hammed it up for Chevie, striking a pose, then he gave a deep bow.

“Albert Garrick, West End illusionist and assassin-for-hire at your service, young lady—come down the chimney to introduce myself proper.”

As he bowed, a drop of someone else’s blood fell from his nose, landing on Chevie’s forehead, and she was struck to her core with a terror that she could barely contain.

“Now I understand,” she said.