Between heaven and hell.., p.3
Between Heaven and Hell 2, page 3
The Gulfstream took us over London, further south, and into a wide estate with its own airstrip. A gorgeous manor house surrounded by immaculate gardens grew larger as the pilot carried us down through the thin sheet of rain and turbulence.
It took balls to land on something so small, but the pilot had probably seen worse.
We landed on a thin strip of tarmac. A small cluster of guys in fluorescent windbreakers helped the plane coast toward some kind of boat house. The OGI guys got to their feet before we did, depressurized the cabin, and got the stairs ready for us.
Harrington gave me a nod.
“I’m going to have to ask you for any phones you’ve got,” he said. “They won’t work down here anyway, but it’s a formality.”
I put the burner on the table between us. I didn’t let my go-bag move from my feet, however. Our little trip in New Zealand had given us access to a small crew of psychopathic demons who were all too happy to rip their way through anyone I pointed them at.
The OGI guys still hadn’t picked up on it, which meant they didn’t know everything.
The demons from Cellblock 545A were less of a loaded gun and more of a frag grenade, but I was glad to have easy access to them. I needed four words to turn the plane into a killzone.
Jasmine and Breeze parted with their own burners. Harrington didn’t ask for Breeze’s occultist gear, which I found strange. He’d struck me as a careful man. Breeze could call up all kinds of trouble in the blink of an eye, and the Greyhound barely seemed fazed.
Harrington had played it straight with us so far, though.
I had no intention of showing our hand unless they tried to put us down.
Jasmine and Breeze led the way out onto the tarmac. I brought up the rear.
The OGI crew fell into a wide circle around us and led us up to the 18th-century manor house. I didn’t recognize the architecture. The place should’ve been a tourist destination or a museum, but there were worse places to be questioned.
“Welcome to Briarbridge,” Harrington said.
“Nice place,” Breeze said. “How long have you had it?”
Jasmine hid a smile, and I bit back a laugh.
The question was so honest and she really expected a serious answer.
“Not quite as long as your little office in Seattle,” Harrington replied.
A pair of guards in windbreakers opened the front doors for us and led us into a fully-restored manor house. Antique furniture, chandeliers, and everything a history nerd could want decorated the interior of Briarbridge. There were a handful of modern conveniences here and there.
We moved past the open door of an office.
Holographic computers hovered over desks and a handful of neatly-dressed admin officers worked their way through endless streams of information. One of them glanced up at us with a friendly smile before he turned back to his headset.
The technology was angelic. The OGI had been busy in the last couple years.
Harrington led us up a marble staircase and down a maze of corridors.
He halted in a small parlor with an honest-to-god fireplace in the corner.
“The ladies can wait here,” Harrington said. “If you need anything, just ring the bell.”
My eyes came to rest on a side door built entirely out of reinforced steel.
“That looks friendly,” I said.
“Precautions, mate.”
I set my bag down beside Breeze. She saw the warning look in my eyes and nodded once. Jasmine took a seat beside a table with an empty, pretty smile. I kissed her hair as I passed and murmured a soft sentence in Russian.
“Be ready to make a mess.”
Harrington placed a hand on the steel door. Bright-blue runes swirled around his palm in a triangular pattern. It clicked open with a high, bell-like tone. The scent of freshly-mown grass and clean air billowed out from the room. He pulled the door open and gestured for me to step inside.
I fought off the nerves and went into the interrogation room.
It looked just as comfortable as the parlor outside. Thick carpet covered the floor, chintz armchairs surrounded a circular table, and bookshelves crowded around the walls. Blue crystals provided soft blue light in a chandelier overhead. A calming force rolled through my mind the second I stepped inside.
A room shouldn’t have been able to remove my focus like that.
There was some kind of juice at work. I didn’t know what it was, exactly.
I hadn’t dealt with angelic energy before. Cal’s warning about lies and sin echoed through my mind and a sudden idea sprang unbidden into my mind.
“Two plus two is fi-” I began under my breath.
My teeth clenched shut before I could finish the untruth.
I hadn’t done it. Something about the room had halted me from lying.
No wonder Harrington had been so eager to get me to Briarbridge.
They’d put together a room reinforced with some kind of magical truth serum.
I didn’t know what had prompted the sudden reflex to lie, but the chips were stacked against me. Untruths were off the table. I’d spent a lot of my life working with lies, and the best way to lie was to tell the truth and obscure the important points of information.
I could be honest and still be devious.
“Nice place,” I said aloud. “Better than most debriefing places I’ve been in.”
Harrington saw the look in my eyes and caught my tone.
“It’s necessary,” he told me. “Trust me on that, mate. We’re playing for big game here. I’ll be back in two minutes. You want anything? Water, tea, coffee?”
I suppressed the urge to ask for coffee and just shrugged.
“I can have something after,” I replied.
“Easy,” he agreed.
Harrington left me alone in the room with my thoughts.
I called up every piece of experience and training I’d learned when it came to resisting interrogation. I’d never been injected with a truth serum, but SERE had been a bitch to get through in the HWC. I still had my own willpower, my own thought process, and despite the magical compulsion to tell the truth, I was sure I could navigate whatever Briarbridge had to throw at me.
I just had to keep my edge.
The juice in the room was making it difficult.
Harrington returned exactly two minutes later with an older woman in her prime. Brown hair streaked with the occasional gray caught my eye. A classy pantsuit and comfortable pumps made up her outfit. Sharp blue eyes inspected me through wire-framed glasses. A flicker of familiarity washed through her gaze. She placed her file down on the table across from me, fished a pad and pen out of her coat pocket, and drew out a chair across from me. Harrington closed the door behind her and took up a post beside the door. He relaxed back against the frame and his eyes went a little out of focus.
Tension coiled through his body. He was ready for action the second the older woman lifted a finger. The interrogator relaxed back into her chair and studied me for a full thirty seconds.
“You look fantastic for a dead man,” she observed.
Her British accent reminded me of a schoolmarm I’d seen in a movie once.
“Appreciate it.”
“Harry briefed you on what you’re doing here?”
“He briefed me on being debriefed. He didn’t get into details.”
“Then I won’t waste any more time. Yes, before you ask, we know all about the SIA and what our friends over the Pacific are up to with the Iron Depths. Yes, we’re also a new organization, and yes, we know about New Zealand and Paris.”
“Seems that this could’ve been solved with a phone call, then.”
“Our understanding is that, with the exception of Miss Lefevre outside, you and Jasmine are on retainer rather than full-blooded members of the SIA. Bull likes as much deniability as he can get—he always has—and that’s why we decided to extract you from Dundee rather than call.”
“Maybe I should’ve brought a badge.”
“It would’ve made things more complicated.”
“What do I call you?”
The woman pursed her lips.
“Davies,” she said finally.
“Miss or Mrs.?”
“Mrs.. But Davies is fine.”
“I know how you Brits like your manners. Just thought I’d ask.”
That actually drew a reluctant smile from her.
“Our sources can’t seem to get a good understanding of how much you know regarding the Family and their activities. Was this the first time that you’ve been in contact with them?”
I didn’t see any point in lying.
“It is. He approached me.”
“What did he call himself?”
“Cal.”
“Did he say what he wanted with you?”
“It took a minute through all the self-righteous bullshit. But he wanted to recruit me.”
“Did he leave you with any contact details? Any way to reach him?”
I kept my face neutral.
“Why?”
“Answer the question, Michael.”
The crystals in the chandelier brightened a little at her words. Calm pushed its way into my mind. Something pressed against the back of my head. It wasn’t sharp, but it wanted me to answer the question. My jaw clenched at the unfamiliar presence and I shoved it back with years of experience getting a handle on my emotions.
“Why?” I asked again.
Mrs. Davies blinked in surprise.
“You’re the ones who brought me here,” I told her. “You haven’t told me what this is about, you haven’t even mentioned the name of your organization, and you locked me in a room that’s dousing me in angel juice.”
Harry hissed in a sudden, sharp breath.
My interrogator looked as if I’d just slapped her.
“The reason I’m here is because I was under the impression that you were going to treat me as an equal,” I continued. “Not as another grunt that you usually run in the field. I might not be wise to whatever little operation you’ve got going on here. But don’t think for a second that I’m here for any other reason than to share information.”
Mrs. Davies composed herself after a long second.
Harrington stared at me like I was some kind of alien.
I’d hit a crossroads. I could press the advantage left by their silence, but I knew that it wouldn’t endear me to the British supernatural agency. I could stay quiet and give them the opportunity to regroup. I chose the latter and waited for my interrogators to get their bearings.
“You’re an observant one,” Mrs. Davies finally said.
“Wouldn’t be much use to anyone if I wasn’t. Any chance that you can turn off the chandelier?” I glanced up at the soft, soothing light source. “I assume you’re warded against it, right? Some kind of Contract that lets you lie?”
Mrs. Davies shook her head.
“Contracts like that are difficult to dissolve, unfortunately.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you know, then,” I said. “And we can go from there.”
I nodded to the bulging folder under her well-manicured fingertips.
Davies flipped over some pages until she arrived at a cluster of colorless photographs. I recognized them from London’s insanely-thorough CCTV network and spent two minutes flipping through them for any familiar faces. None of the people highlighted by the OGI’s network stood out to me.
My eyes fell on a picture of Cal.
He was sitting on a set of stairs out the front of some government building. A teeming crowd waving signs clustered around him. A wide variety of people young and old formed a circle around him. A simple leather-bound tome sat open in his lap. That serene smile of his crossed his face.
He was staring straight into the camera.
“He’s the only one I’ve seen,” I said. “But you knew that already. That’s why you pinched me, right?”
“We don’t have any records of your operations that involve him,” Davies said. “No personal affiliations in your old life, either. But we had to be sure that you didn’t know any of these individuals.”
The angelic energy pressed gently against my brain again.
I swatted its influence away with an effort of will and stared at Davies.
“Convinced yet?”
“I am,” she said. “Harry?”
“He’s not lying,” the OGI soldier said.
“Here’s the part where you tell me who they are and what you want from us,” I said. “Why does some preacher’s kid have you ambushing us in Scotland?”
“He’s got one of our people,” Harry said quietly. “The only one we sent in as undercover. She hasn’t answered her phone in a week, hasn’t gone through any of the channels. She’s not the kind to run off half-cocked, either. That’s what’s got us concerned.”
Chapter 4
Things were starting to make sense.
Davies and Harrington’s people were missing one of their people, and they needed her back. Cal’s little stunt in the pub in Scotland had put me onto their radar. They wanted to know if I had anything to do with her disappearance.
People in circles like ours were hard to replace.
Defectors were even more of a problem.
“And you thought that I had something to do with this,” I said. “That’s why we’re here. You’re wondering if the SIA is muscling in on your operation with these Family people.”
“We’ve done an admirable job of staying out from the US’s jurisdiction,” Davies agreed. “You understand the politics involved and what can happen once your people find out that we’re operational and didn’t ask for their permission.”
It was hard to miss the irony in her tone.
“I get it,” I said. “I hadn’t heard of you until now, though.”
“And now you have,” Mrs. Davies said. “Which means that we’ve got paperwork to do regardless of whether or not we want it. If I know anything about Bull, he’s going to want a piece of our network and our connections.”
“You’re right about that.”
She nodded.
“So you’re screwed no matter how you look at it,” I pointed out. “Taking me in just sets off alarm bells across the Pacific and lets the SIA know that you exist. You knew that I’d see you coming if you set up a surveillance crew.” I glanced down at the pictures of the Family again. “You must really like this lady if you reached out to me like this.”
“She’s the best at what she does,” Harrington said firmly.
“And you’re willing to blow the lid on your secrecy to get her back.”
“I was hoping that we could rely on your discretion,” Davies said.
“You and I both know the consequences of that,” I countered. “If Bull finds out that I’ve been poached by another crew and I’m running ops for you, he’s going to lose his shit. You might be staring down the barrel of Uncle Sam’s entire supernatural wing if I don’t say anything about it.”
Harrington and Davies exchanged a knowing look.
“I wouldn’t start thinking about me as a loose end,” I said quietly.
“We’re not,” Harrington replied. “We knew the risks when we set up in the airport, mate. You know what we need. Ball’s in your court now. What did he say to you?”
Mrs. Davies struck me as an experienced intelligence officer.
The kind that had cut her teeth in black-bag operations for a quarter-century.
She’d taken a risk on me, and I could tell that she wasn’t lying to me.
“Cal didn’t go into specifics. He knew that I was lying to him and saw straight through my cover. He kept talking about the forces beyond our control and joining the path of peace and light.” I frowned. “He also said that his people had been searching for me for a long time. I still don’t know how he managed to track us down in Scotland.”
Davies nodded encouragingly.
“If you’re hoping for a phone number or an email address, I can’t help you. I got out of there before he could keep spewing bullshit. He didn’t threaten me or my people, but the fact that he knows I exist is bad enough.”
“He got his information from upstairs,” Mrs. Davies said.
“I figured as much. My impression was that the demons were better for information than the angels were.” I glanced up at the chandelier again. “I know their technology is better. Healing, computers, stuff like that. I didn’t know they traded in secrets and locations.”
“That’s because they don’t,” Mrs. Davies said. “They deal in probabilities.”
“They’re clairvoyant?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. The Skylight has far more processing power than the Iron Depths, on the whole, but they’re far more interested in the future than the present or the past.”
I let out a low whistle.
“So they told you where we would be, not where we were.”
“That was just good old-fashioned gumshoe work, mate,” Harrington assured me. “Once you showed up in our neck of the woods, and we confirmed that you weren’t dead, it was pretty straightforward to figure out where you were headed.”
“But you’re saying that the Family has their own angelic sponsor. Someone who’s able to stay a step ahead of you.” I tapped the photograph of Cal. “He looks like he’s posing for the camera. Almost like he knew that you were going to have people there.”
“Everything you’ve told us we’ve heard before,” Mrs. Davies said. “The Family aren’t exactly hiding their presence. Their creed and their beliefs are all on a website. Their gatherings are peaceful, and their finances are impeccable. The Skylight very rarely accepts any kind of person-to-person Contracts with humanity.”
“And the OGI doesn’t like competition.”
Mrs. Davies peered at me for a moment.
“What makes you say that?”
“Don’t sit on your high horse about it,” I said. “You already know about my last two operations with the SIA. Both of those were about securing Contracts and ensuring that the SIA could keep their relationship with the Iron Depths exclusive. I doubt you’re doing this purely out of the goodness of your heart.”
Harrington grinned.
