No one answered that, since the “your lot” she mentioned almost certainly were not the booksellers, but some other much more normal part of the secret world, like MI5 or SIS.
“Bend your head a bit, don’t need to crouch,” shouted the crew chief. “Follow me.”
She led them to the open body of the helicopter, where two benches ran lengthways back-to-back down the middle of the main compartment, with net webbing to lean against between the benches. There were comms headsets on some of the seats, their cords plugged in above.
“Two this side, one the other!” shouted the crew chief, pointing to the benches. “Headsets on, seat belts on!”
Vivien went first, going around to the other side. Merlin and Susan sat down together. When they were in, the crew chief slid the door shut, lessening the noise from deafening to merely annoying, before she went back to a higher, forward-facing seat next to the left door. She would have a good view out, but the others wouldn’t.
It was a bit quieter once they got the headsets on. Susan noted the crew chief had a proper harness while the passenger seats down the middle only had lap belts, and fairly basic ones at that. As she was tightening her belt, her headset crackled, followed by the voice of another woman, but one who had the laconic drawl of pilots everywhere.
“Good afternoon. As we have been instructed that this is a no names, no questions flight to London, I will not be introducing myself or the crew, other than to say you are in good hands with Mel back there. Please study the card she will show you on safety procedures and ensure you follow her instructions at all times. Flying time today will be approximately one hundred and ten minutes; we will be landing at RAF Northolt shortly after thirteen hundred hours. It is drizzling and gray in the capital, but apart from making everyone depressed, we should have no problems with the weather. Tea and biscuits will not be served, unless you brought some with you. Sit back and enjoy the flight.”
There was a click as they were cut out of the comms circuit, the turbines whined higher, and the rotor blades began to spin faster. The crew chief handed Susan a safety card that was mostly pictures.
“Read the card and pass it on. Stay seated and belted unless I tell you otherwise.”
Susan had only flown once before, a short flight with her Mum to Dublin for a brief holiday when she was eleven. The passenger safety card for the helicopter was much the same as the one she’d studied so carefully then, on the VC-10. She looked at the pictures, checked her belt, looked at the door to see how it opened, then passed the card to Merlin.
The helicopter lifted off, climbed quickly, and circled to the south as Merlin studied the card. With the helicopter banking, Susan could only see sky out her window, but looking over her shoulder past Vivien, who was directly behind her, back-to-back, she saw Coniston Water gleaming below. Something inside her felt the comfortable, secure glow of knowing “that’s mine,” but it was at odds with her higher mental processes, which were in something of a state of anxiety as she processed what had happened, and worried about what was going to happen.
As a child, she had daydreamed about finding her father, making him a composite of all the nicest fathers of her friends at school. She’d imagined her dad returning as a long-lost sailor finally rescued, or as a recovered amnesiac like in the film Random Harvest, coming to his senses and returning to his lover, to be delighted to discover he had a wonderful daughter as well.
Her wildest imaginings had never gotten close to what her father actually was, and his reception of her did not match any of those childhood dreams. Susan felt this as a kind of dull ache, a weight of disappointment. He hadn’t seemed to care very much that he had a daughter, and he hadn’t asked about Jassmine at all. In fact, he seemed to consider Susan as a kind of offshoot of himself.
“My daughter will go with you to bring the cauldron back,” she whispered, forgetting she had a microphone off the corner of her mouth.
“What was that?” asked the crew chief. “We’re all one comms circuit back here, and I don’t want to know anything I’m not supposed to, okay?”
“Sorry,” said Susan.
Merlin looked at her, smiled, and made a zipping motion across his mouth. Susan nodded. She didn’t want to talk anyway. She leaned her head on Merlin’s shoulder and back against Vivien. Merlin reached into his yak-hair bag and pulled out a book.
Susan started to read over his shoulder, recognizing the character of Harriet Vane, though she hadn’t read this particular one of Dorothy Sayers’s books. Merlin kindly tilted the book to make it easier for her, though she thought it irked him a little—she didn’t like people reading over her shoulder herself—but she found her eyes very heavy and her head started to roll forward and before Merlin had even turned the first page she had fallen sound asleep.
She woke rather groggily sometime later—Susan wasn’t sure how long—to hear the pilot’s voice again, crackling in her ears.
“Hi, back there. We’re coming up to RAF Northolt, but we’ve been instructed to land you a little over to the east at Totteridge Green in Barnet, we’ve received ATC clearance for that, I’m told the LZ will be secured by police and LIBER MERCATOR elements, whatever they are. I also have a message to relay, which is as follows: Southaw locus is Totteridge Yew, Barnet. I say again: Southaw locus is Totteridge Yew, Barnet.”
“Copy that,” said Merlin. “Uh, did they give you a particular approach, pilot? We’ll want to avoid flying over or near the . . . uh . . . locus.”
“Uh, no information on that.
