again.
“You want me to get my Luger?” Midian asked.
“You two get back out of sight,” I said. Chogyi handed Midian a knife, nodded to me, and faded back into the kitchen. Midian stepped into the hallway where he couldn’t be seen from the door. I put my hand on the knob, took a breath, let it out, and pulled the door open.
The courier had already given up, the little red station wagon pulling away from the curb. A gray cardboard box squatted on the red bricks. I picked it up, still half expecting it to be a trap. The report inside was eighty pages long, professionally bound, with nothing on it to indicate that it was meant for me or produced by my lawyer. Everything about it was plausibly deniable. I went to the dining room table and sat down. After a couple minutes, I told Midian I’d read him the good parts if he’d stop hovering over my shoulder.
Randolph Eustace Coin was born in Vienna in 1954, son of a grocer. His family moved to America in 1962, taking up residence in an ethnically homogenous enclave in New York City. He attended public school without any particular sign of excellence, though he was supposed to have been a pretty good clarinet player.
I looked up.
“How does Coin put a curse on you in seventeen eighty whatever it was if he’s not born until the nineteen fifties?” I asked.
“He was in a different body at the time,” Midian replied with a shrug. “It’s not like your lawyer can track which flesh has who inside it.”
“Ah,” I said. “Right.”
In late summer of 1972, Coin disappeared.
The Randolph Coin who emerged six years later was a different man. While seen socially with members of something called the Zen Theosophy, he’d never espoused any particular beliefs in public apart from a general support for public education and a concern about overpopulation. A footnote pointed out that while they come from similar teachings, the Zen Theosophists weren’t directly associated with the Theosophical Society and accepted the teachings of Alice Bailey, which seemed to mean something to Midian, because he nodded when I said it.
Over the next two decades, Coin had appeared in the company of religious leaders, poets, cranks, and captains of industry and finance. A list of names was included, and I recognized about half. It was never clear how he made his money, though he was on the board of two political consultancies, an international aid foundation, and a scientific equipment supply company. As far as the world was concerned, Coin was one of those entrepreneurs whose lofty status made it hard to say what they really did. While he might have had some kooky friends, he himself was a man of no particular beliefs.
The report skipped a page.
The Invisible College was a fraternal society with its roots in the sixteenth century, when it was most closely associated with John Dee and the Rosicrucians. There had been some kind of violent schism within the College associated with World War II, but details were few and far between.
The membership role wasn’t ever made public, but rumor put the group’s size at between one hundred and six hundred people at any given time. It wasn’t clear from the references to it whether it was a religious order, a scientific lobbying group, or an internationalist think tank. Other members had apparently included Aleister Crowley, Harry S. Truman, and Alan Turing.
“Turing?” Midian asked. “Go back. When was Coin born?”
“Nineteen fifty-four,” I said.
“Yeah, but what day?”
I flipped back through the pages.
“June seventh,” I said.
Midian chuckled. It was a low, wet sound.
“What?” I asked.
“Turing offed himself the same day,” Midian said. “Probably just a coincidence. Keep going.”
“There isn’t much more in this section,” I said.
“What’s next?” Chogyi Jake asked.
I turned the page. The remainder of the report might as well have been printed on gold plate. It was perfect. Copies of Coin’s movements for the last week, including his visits to the warehouse where we’d tried to kill him, his home address (which to judge from the footnotes was a very big secret), descriptions of his cars, photographs of his bodyguard. He was the big guy I’d seen with Coin at the warehouse that first time with Ex. The report ended with an estimated itinerary of his movements for the next week and a half and a footnote explaining that all predictions in the report needed to be considered approximate. The apologetic tone of the note made me wonder if they were used to an expectation of clairvoyance.
An appendix had copies of original documents, including notes from a doctor’s visit last year. Coin had gastric reflux. Somehow that detail, with its sense of intimacy and vulnerability, reassured me the most. I felt like I was getting somewhere.
“Okay,” I said. “So we know where he is. We have an idea where he’s going to be. That’s a start, right?”
“Would have been nice to have someone who knew a little more about riders digging into these assholes, but on the whole…” Midian said. “So, kid. What’s your next move?”
HERE WERE the problems.
First, Coin knew we were out here, and that we wanted to kill him. The enemy was already on high alert. That was a bummer.
Second, the wards around the house were starting to fail. Chogyi Jake was doing his best, but even without his saying so, I could feel the air pressing in against the walls. Twice I’d half heard the sound of Coin’s monstrous wings. And Chogyi was only wearing thinner. The longer we waited, the less hope we had.
Third, Coin had a lot of people-many of them with freaky supernatural powers-around to protect him. We’d managed to get around that last time by making our attack when everyone was tied up with the big nasty ritual. That part had worked, but the rest of the plan failed spectacularly.
Which brought me to the last issue: Coin had a bunch of freaky supernatural powers himself, and could probably only be killed with the two magic bullets that he’d already shrugged off once.
That last one looked like the worst, so I put off thinking about it and started at the beginning, looking for ways to misdirect the Invisible College. My first thoughts didn’t go over all that well.
“Run away?” Midian said. “You’re serious?”
“We can’t do anything if he’s got the whole city locked down,” I said.
“You’re remembering that the last time, it took maybe twenty minutes between when you broke the wards and the assassination squad showed up,” Midian said.
“I’ve been out twice,” I said. “The gun and the lawyer, remember? So far, nothing.”
“Your protections don’t apply to us,” Chogyi Jake said.
“Ex went out.”
“Ex has resources that may help him,” Chogyi Jake said. “And…even then, we can’t assume he’s survived.”
“Okay,” I said. “So we don’t run.”
“We don’t run,” Chogyi Jake said. “You still can.”
“So let’s look at the second thing,” I said. “Coin’s minions.”
“It would be a good idea to get rid of them,” Midian agreed. “Either get Coin away from them or else spread ’em out thin enough that getting to the guy isn’t like wading across the beach at Normandy.”
“So how do we do that?” I asked.
Chogyi Jake’s sudden laughter was rueful and warm.
“We run,” he said. “When you’re ready with whatever else there is to do, Midian and I draw off the Invisible College by stepping out of the house and heading directly away from wherever the real drama is taking place.”
“Yeah, that’s a good plan,” Midian said, making it clear with his expression that he both agreed and thought we were doomed if that was our best strategy.
“But,” I started, then let it trail away.
But I need you. But you’ll get hurt. But I can’t face him alone. There wasn’t a way to finish that sentence that
