Chapter 69: Arrested Development

THIS, JUST SO YOU UNDERSTAND, was not according to the plan. In the plan, we’d have a couple of weeks of training before we staged a kidnapping of two or three of the contestants and they’d have to all work together to rescue the others. It was a little on the cliché side, but the whole series was over the top.

Instead, I had my hands cuffed behind me and was being read my rights.

“What am I being accused of?” I asked.

“Suspected trafficking and illegal travel under forged passports. There’s a charge pending from the IRS as well,” the agent said.

“Well, thank goodness you got here instead of them. That could be serious,” I laughed. He didn’t think it was funny. He spotted my satchel on the desk and grabbed it.

“We’ll take this along as evidence.” I wasn’t worried about fake passports. I’d been traveling most recently as The Bob, and I no longer used separate documents when I had a different identity. I cast a ‘glamor’ on my passport so that it would look like and read as the person I was traveling as. But all the stamps were in the same little book. “The rest of you should consider yourselves under house arrest and will be questioned shortly.”

“Not without legal representation,” Doug shouted at him.

I saw Zhi and Artemisia move toward the display of weapons and shook my head. I turned and followed the agent with another on either side of me. I whispered a look-away spell and Avril fell in behind us. I hoped she and her drone could keep up.

Do you know how Roman Numerals came to be? This is bizarre, but I saw it happen during the time I was plying the waters of the Mediterranean almost eight hundred years before Caesar. Rome, under Romulus, was still in its infancy and war parties were often sent out for various purposes, including getting women for their mostly male inhabitants. They used various methods for this, including trickery. You can read all about the rape of the Sabine women in your history books and their story is as good as mine.

Anyway, one war party, under a particularly vicious lieutenant of Romulus, met stiff resistance and instead of pursuing the battle, fled. This was a shameful practice for the proud and warlike Romans, who were going home without spoils or women.

The lieutenant lined up his troops in a line to see how many he had once they regrouped. Keep in mind, we are not talking about legions here. We’re talking about a large war party which had run from its battle. The lieutenant walked down the row of soldiers counting them. When a soldier had been counted, the officer struck a vertical line down his breastplate. At every tenth soldier, he drew an X. When all had been counted, he had a row of soldiers marked IIIIIIIIIXIIIIIIIIIXIII ... He then told the soldiers next to the ones with an X to turn and kill that unlucky bastard. This, he said was punishment for all of them for turning to run instead of fight.

I should mention, the soldiers marked with an X did not go down willingly and it was not only those who died in the melee that followed. The next day, the lieutenant led his men into battle. His men sacked the city, ran off with the spoils, and kidnapped the women. It was interesting to note the lieutenant was killed in the battle.

Hence forward, the ninth soldier was known as IX, the tenth as X, and the eleventh as XI. The symbol V for five was not added until years later. The system for adding and subtracting the cumbersome numbers came mostly from the Etruscans.

It was three hundred years before a General exercised the punishment on an entire cohort and by that time it was already common usage to talk about something being X-ed out.

You don’t need to believe me. I use this as just another illustration of a leader of a trafficking circle being X-ed out himself. I had no intentions of joining that number.

I saw the drone enter the van in which I was transported. Avril didn’t make it, but I knew she’d figure a way to get close and maneuver the little bug to wherever I was. This would make some good television eventually, I was sure.

Once at the headquarters, I was led to a room and seated. I assumed I was here for observation while they looked at my belongings. I was still for an hour before two men came into the room to question me. They did not look nice.

“Where are your other passports?” one demanded. I remained silent.

“When were you last out of the country?” asked the other. Still silent.

“You are going to talk to us, you know.”

“The rights that were read to me indicated I had the right to representation. When my lawyer gets here, I happily answer all your questions.”

“You might be here a very long time before any lawyer shows up. Who knows what he’ll find left in your cell when he comes to talk to you? We might even forget we arrested you at all. So, no one will care a bit if we do some damage to that television face of yours.”

He came around the table with intent and one fist raised. I mumbled a spell and the cuffs dropped to the floor. He didn’t hear them hit before he swung and I grabbed his fist before it made contact.

“No!” I said. I was still seated and he was struggling to get his hand out of mine. I muttered another spell and the handgun the other agent was raising suddenly became too hot for him to handle and he dropped it. “I will sit here quietly and wait for my attorney. We’ll do this the right and legal way or I’ll consider myself free to go.” I released the agent and he found he couldn’t close his hand on the grip of his gun.

“You’re making enemies of the wrong people, buddy,” he growled. “I was only interested in your illegal entry and exit from the country. When Agent Dean gets here and starts asking about trafficking, things won’t be as comfortable. Whatever tricks you’re using won’t fly.”

“Then let me get my lawyer and we’ll have a nice conversation. You have my belongings, including my passport. You can check my visas and stamps.”

“Oh, we have. We want to know what technology you’re using to fake those stamps when you are traveling under a different name.”

I looked at him blankly.

“Let’s go, Jack. They should have that bag torn apart by now.” I blanched. That got his attention. “Yeah,” he grinned. “We’ll find whatever it is you’re concealing in there.”

I’ve been held in a dungeon before. Not a pleasant memory. Not at all like being locked up in the infinity room for seventy years. It was during my sailing years on the Mediterranean.

Most of the islands in the middle sea were inhabited by that point and ports were well-known to sailors. I docked at an island west of Italy, expecting to do a lively trade and hoping to uncover some manuscripts for my client in Alexandria. And, of course, for my own private library.

I have to say that I attach no mystic premium to the idea of a manuscript having been penned by a specific sorcerer or historian. If I can get an exact duplicate of it, I don’t care if the author ever saw that copy. So, I seldom keep the original. Even at this time, I was delivering originals to Alexandria for the library but was making a replica of each manuscript before it was delivered.

Nor did I make the mistakes of later booksellers. Sometime in the middle of the fifteenth century, a goldsmith alchemist in Germany started printing books, most notably, the Bible. He was a poor businessman and had his secrets. His partner was a thief, like many good businessmen are. Just before the project was finished, the partner sued the printer for embezzlement of funds and was awarded the entire operation, cutting the printer out of all profits from his invention and years of labor.

But, like many businessmen of that ilk, he schemed for a way to make the most profit from his product. He found himself in possession of somewhere between 150 and 180 copies of the book, a situation that would commodify it very quickly. His solution was to load a cart full of the uncut pages and drive off to France, where he felt the people were less sophisticated than those in Germany. Here, he attempted to sell the books as original manuscripts—a product that would command the equivalent of a five-acre vineyard.

Upon examining the books, the elders of one village noted that they were exactly alike in every detail. Their conclusion was that they had been created through witchcraft. They went out to capture and burn the bookseller, who escaped from France, missing a few of his Bibles, and made his way back to Germany. To our knowledge, he promoted the new technology from that point forward and Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages displayed in Frankfurt to promote the work and the new printing press.

I digress. I was inquiring about books to be purchased on this island when the local lord heard about me. He sent a detachment of his soldiers to search my boat for contraband and confiscate it. Upon finding nothing on the boat (all my goods were in the infinity room) he presumed I was a trickster and fraud. Better than a witch, I guess. He had me imprisoned until I could pay a hefty fine. His assumption was that I could pay no such fine and therefore he would confiscate my boat.

He was quite surprised when I demanded to be brought before him to pay the ransom on my boat and buy my freedom. I placed a sack full of Greek coins on his desk and demanded my freedom. He chastised his guards for having not investigated fully and invited me to dinner. The purpose became obvious. He needed to know if I had more coins to buy manuscripts.

I complained that he had already cost me my earnings and I would suffer great hardship to find things I could trade up for the price that was in that pouch. I told him a cockamamie story about my voyage and expeditions and having a small home on Crete where the rest of my wealth was secreted. He felt badly enough that he gave me half a dozen books from his library and sent me on my way.

Among those books, which I’m sure he considered worthless scrawlings, was a manuscript that included several spells for protection and defense that I’ve found useful ever since. One was the very spell for releasing shackles that I used on the handcuffs in the FBI interrogation room.

I was led to a private cell and locked in. They didn’t cuff me, and it was a different agent who led me to the cell. I wasn’t sure, but it might have been the janitor.

“Does it even do any good to lock the door?” he asked as I went into the cell.

“Not really, but it will help them rest better in their offices,” I laughed.

“Well, if you decide to raise Cain out there, remember I’m one of the good guys, okay?”

“Sure. But I’m really not who they need to worry about.”

“Yeah. I’ve been told the other agents have already been ejected from your mansion and some high-power judge is asking questions as to why we’ve moved to arrest you. Right now, it’s an argument between that judge and the one who issued the arrest warrant. I’d guess there will be a Senator or a congressman or maybe even the President of the United States involved. Video footage of your arrest has already played on a dozen television stations. Did you get anything to eat?”

“Uh, no. Don’t go to any trouble, though.”

“There’s a pizza shop next door. One with everything?”

“That’s always been my goal,” I said. He left and I glanced toward the drone that had entered my cell with me. I wondered how long before the footage from our conversation would be on television. I supposed, however, that as soon as pictures from inside the facility were shown, the agents would be coming through here with a bug sweeper and the drone would be found. I considered just revealing it.

I had no idea what was going on outside at the moment. I could feel all my women moving, but hadn’t figured yet where they were or what they were doing. My effort to contact Peninnah mentally had failed. We had always had the weakest psychic link of all my wives, just because she was the newest and it hadn’t grown so strong as the others yet. But the others were in Areola and would be unable to help unless I opened a gateway.

I didn’t think I’d left one open or the station would already be flooded with ninja priestesses of The Bob. It made me nervous, though, to think that they might literally tear apart my satchel. I wished Sally had progressed further in her research. Maybe she could open a gateway.

Or Nimia. Nimia had more comprehension of the ancient scrolls than anyone, but to my knowledge, she’d never worked a spell. And I wasn’t sure the spells would work in Areola. Spells seemed to be a means of affecting the natural world. In Areola, the magic was active all the time and specific spells weren’t required. And Nimia almost never came to the natural world.

I’d been pondering the nature of magic and the world for quite a while when my jailer arrived with a pizza and a large soft drink bottle.