The Initiate by James L. Cambias

Author:James L. Cambias [Cambias, James L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Action & Adventure, Urban, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781982124359
Google: 7C6ExgEACAAJ
Amazon: 1982124350
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2020-02-04T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Friday the twenty-third of October was a lovely day, and Sam spent most of the afternoon in a parked rental car watching the doorway of the Pythian building from his drone. The nice weather drew Zadith outside earlier than usual—the young man strolled out just past three in a lapis-blue wool suit with a jaunty yellow cashmere scarf around his neck, heading toward Central Park. Sam recovered the drone and stuffed it into his shoulder bag as he hurried after his target on foot, almost panicking when he couldn’t find him on the sidewalk ahead, until he spotted the blue suit turning south on Columbus.

Sam tailed the young man to the Tavern on the Green in Central Park, where he spent the next couple of hours at a table on the terrace, putting away a huge luncheon of grilled asparagus, smoked salmon, mushrooms, and a whole bottle of Vouvray. Sam sat nearby in the Sheep Meadow, keeping an eye on his quarry via drone and wishing he could grab a bite himself.

Zadith finished his meal by smoking a cigar in cheerful violation of every law and regulation, accompanied by a snifter of brandy. He strolled south through the park, taking such evident pleasure in a lovely afternoon that Sam found himself almost reluctant to go ahead. But he reminded himself that the man enjoying the afternoon was actually the leathery old mummy back in the Pythian building. The boy in the blue suit wouldn’t remember any of this pleasant outing.

At Columbus Circle his quarry hailed a cab. Sam carefully noted the number and got one for himself at almost the same instant. He told the driver, “I’ll give you two hundred dollars if you follow that car.”

The driver—a Cambodian named An Sem, according to the operator ID on display—didn’t need any magical encouragement, and Sam suspected he probably could have offered much less money. An Sem clearly enjoyed the chance to live an action-movie cliché for real.

Zadith rode south to Washington Square Park, where he walked among the students studying or sunning on the grass with the air of someone shopping at an open-air market. Eventually he stopped to chat with a much-pierced girl. The combination of the young man’s extraordinary looks, his obvious wealth, and the easy confidence born of being controlled by one of the secret rulers of the world made the use of magic unnecessary. In marketing jargon, Zadith “assumed the sale” and was not disappointed. Less than twenty minutes later the young woman led him up the steps to her apartment while Sam watched from half a block away.

He sat down on a fire hydrant to consider what to do. All his carefully worked-out plans had assumed Zadith would be in some quasi-public place—a restaurant, bar, or maybe a theater. Sam had spent several hundred dollars to have a strippergram performer waiting, ready to show up anywhere in the city as a distraction. He had no idea what to do if Zadith was snug in some young woman’s arms behind a locked door.

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