Death of an Adept

Peregrine's gaze turned toward the two blanket-draped bodies laid at the foot of the ruined altar, awaiting transport to a police mortuary. One of them belonged to the defrocked priest who had been slain at the height of the Black Mass; the other was Francis Raeburn's. Two more lay dead from SAS gunfire, and Harry and Kinsey were bringing in two additional bodies from the helicopter crash site.

But three of Raeburn's henchmen had been rounded up and were now in military custody awaiting the arrival of the police, two of them with minor wounds - clearly hirelings with little or no grasp of what had really been going on.

Of more concern was the tact that, somewhere in the midst of the confusion, a further unspecified number of Raeburn's associates had managed to escape in one of the Land Rovers. Among those thus far unaccounted for, three were known to Adam by name: Klaus Richter, Dr. Derek Mallory, and Angela, his "Christmas Samaritan." And he had never gotten an accurate count of how many men Richter had altogether. But that was a matter which could be safely left to the conventional police - at least for the moment.

Cochrane, meanwhile, was securing the crime scene for the inevitable police investigation, though at least three items of evidence retrieved at the scene would not be handed over to the police. Adam's Adept ring and the two wedding rings, rescued from the dregs of the profaned chalice, were tucked away in a secure pocket of Peregrine's duffel coat, wrapped in a silk handkerchief, to be delivered to Philippa later for appropriate cleansing and purification. The recollection of the rings brought Peregrine back to the thorny problem of how to minimize adverse publicity.

"You don't suppose the general will be able to help you put a lid on this thing, do you?" he asked McLeod as the distant whuff of helicopter blades announced the imminent return of the SAS chopper.

Chuckling, McLeod shook his head. "Certainly not directly, but he'll do what he can. He wasn't here, of course, so he doesn't have personal explaining to do, but Ian Duart is well enough placed to run some heavy-duty interference. He did mention that Gordon had gone so far as to suggest hinting at a breach of national security, if all else fails."

"And to think that I used to be a simple struggling artist," Peregrine retorted, as they turned to watch the chopper touch down. "How to you plan to square all of this with the department?"

"Oh, Duart's support will certainly help - and we did resolve two kidnappings and a whole raft of crimes involving Raeburn - not that most of them can be proven. I'll have to do a lot of fast talking to explain things back at headquarters.

"On the other hand, it could have been a whole lot worse - and very nearly was. We were all very, very lucky."

"Adam is going to be all right, isn't he?" Peregrine asked quietly.

"Ximena says so - and she's the one who would know. She wants to admit him to hospital for a day or two, of course, but Adam himself seems confident that they'll still be able to make their wedding date."

Duart had already arranged for Adam to be taken to a military hospital where no questions would be asked. Peregrine was just about to ask McLeod if they would be allowed to know the location when he caught sight of Harry Nimmo's neat form jogging their way.

"Duart's getting Adam and his brave lassie loaded on board the chopper," he reported when he arrived. "And that young Druid bloke, McFarlane - he's regained consciousness, but he doesn't seem to have much recollection of any of this. It could be he's the luckiest of any of us; I know I'm going to have nightmares. Anyway, I expect they'll check him in for observation and a thorough going-over, just to be on the safe side. Oh, and police and ambulances are on their way; we saw them a few miles up the road."

"And about time," McLeod grumbled.

Harry shrugged. "Hey, middle of the night and middle of nowhere. What do you expect? Anyway, we'll be lifting off in a few minutes now. But before I go, there's something I think I ought to give you."

"What's that?" McLeod asked.

For answer, Harry reached into the inside pocket of his flying jacket and brought out a folded handkerchief wrapped around a small object. McLeod took it and opened it up. Inside was a man's gold ring set with a blood-red carnelian. The carnelian bore the cartouche of a lynx's snarling head.

"Well, well, near mate to the one I took off Raeburn," the inspector said, grizzled eyebrows rising above his aviator spectacles.

"Oddly enough, the bodies from that downed chopper were relatively intact," Harry explained, glancing at the ring. "This came off that blond Nazi-type who's been turning up everywhere we looked since Callanish. He had one man with him, also dead, but no ring on that one. Hired help, I'd say. If there were any more, the remains have yet to be recovered. In the meantime, I thought the ring might tell you something."