The GoldenCity

Hollis was out of Berlin before sunrise and stopped at a motorway service center near Magdeburg. At a little shop in the area, he bought a road map, a fleece blanket and a camper’s shovel. Sitting in the service center restaurant, he drank black coffee and ate bread with jam while the waitress kept yawning. He wanted to fall asleep in the back of the car, but he had to get out of Germany. The Tabula search engines were gliding through the Internet comparing his photograph to the images picked up by the surveillance cameras. He needed to get rid of the car and find someplace that was off the grid.

But the burial was his first objective. Hollis followed the map to a place called Steinhuder Meer, a nature park just west of Hanover. A descriptive plaque in four languages showed a pathway that led to Dead Moor, a low, boggy area of heather and brown grass. It was a weekday, not quite noon, and there were only a few cars in the area. Hollis drove down a dirt road a few kilometers, wrapped Mother Blessing in the blanket and carried her across the moor to a cluster of bushes and dwarf willow trees.

When she was alive, Mother Blessing had radiated a constant rage that people sensed the moment they encountered her. Lying on her side in the shallow grave, the Irish Harlequin appeared smaller than he remembered, less powerful. Her face was covered with the blanket, and Hollis didn’t want to look at her eyes. When he shoveled in the wet dirt, he could see two small white hands still clenched into fists.

Hollis abandoned the car near the Dutch border, took the ferry to Harwich and a train to London. When he reached the apartment hidden behind Wilson Abosa’s drum shop, he found Linden, the French Harlequin, sitting at the kitchen table, reading a stolen bank manual about money transfers.

“The Traveler has returned.”

“Gabriel? He’s back? What happened?”

“He was captured in the First Realm.” Linden pulled the cork from a half-filled bottle of Burgundy and poured some wine into a glass. “Maya rescued him, but she could not return to this world.”

“What are you talking about? Is she okay?”

“Maya is not a Traveler. An ordinary person can only cross over through one of the few access points around the world. The Ancients knew where they were. Now most of them are lost.”

“So what happened to her?”

“No one knows. Simon Lumbroso is still at the Mary of Zion church in Ethiopia.”

Hollis nodded. “That’s where she crossed over.”

“C’est correct. Six days have passed, but Maya has not reappeared in the sanctuary.”

“Is there a plan to save her?”

“All we can do is wait.” Linden took a sip of wine. “I got your email about what happened in Berlin. Did you leave Mother Blessing’s body in the computer center?”

“I drove north and buried her in the countryside. But I didn’t put up a headstone or any kind of marker. “

“Mother Blessing would not care about that. Did she have a Proud Death?”

Hollis was startled for a second. He remembered Maya using the phrase. “She killed six men and then someone shot her. You decide if that was a Proud Death.” He opened the metal carrying tube, took out Mother Blessing’s sword, and placed it on the kitchen table. “At the last moment, she handed me this.”

“Please be precise, Mr. Wilson. Mother Blessing gave you her sword or you took it from her body?”

“She gave it to me, I guess. So I’m returning it.”

“Perhaps she wanted you to accept her obligation.”

“That’s not going to happen. I didn’t grow up in a Harlequin family.”

“Nor did I,” Linden said. “I was a soldier with the First Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment until I had a disagreement with a senior officer. For two years, I worked as a bodyguard in Moscow and then Thorn hired me as a mercenary. Right away, I knew this was what I was meant to do. We Harlequins do not defend the rich and the powerful. We protect the prophets and visionaries, those Travelers that push history in a new direction.”

“You do what you want, Linden. I’ve got my own objectives.”

Linden waited a few seconds, as if he wanted to confirm what he had just heard, and then seemed to shut down one of the compartments in his mind. He flicked his fingers and that was it. Hollis left the room.

***

Feeling conscious of the hidden rifle, he turned right onto Ludgate Hill and took the first left onto Limeburner Lane. The Evergreen Foundation occupied a large glass-and-steel building about a hundred yards down the street. Black support beams and black granite panels framed the building’s tinted windows. From a distance, it looked as if a massive vertical grid had been dropped into the middle of London.

The building was guarded by an armed security staff. Pretending to be a bicycle messenger, Hollis had entered the building a few days ago and asked for directions. Anyone visiting the Foundation had to pass through a short “L” shaped corridor made of green glass which allowed a backscatter x-ray machine to look beneath their clothes.