Roaring 20s Part 6

[Amanda Dale]

Sorry for fallng behind again! (Unfortunately, the next one's going to be a while as I'm stuck in the middle of a scene that just doesn't want to work.) Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last few! Please keep on telling me what you think; I need the shove to get this finished.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this fic for fun and not profit and don't suffer from the delusion that I own any part of Gundam Wing. I have plenty of other delusions to keep me entertained.

Chapter 6


As Hilde and Relena were setting off on their outing, a hurried conference was going on in the most secure room of the Romefeller Embassy. The same four people Lord Darlian had greeted in Dover a few days ago had gathered around the Ambassador's huge mahogany desk. All, with the exception of Ambassador Khushrenada himself, bore the marks of too little sleep.

"Our enemy is not within the British government," Treize declared confidently, leaning back in his chair. As usual, his shirtfront was wrinkleless, and his tie knotted with mathematical precision. How he contrived to be so immaculate at such an hour of the morning was a secret quite a few of London's fashionable young men would have sold their souls for.

"Can we be sure of that?" Captain Marquis's voice matched his friend's for calm, but his eyes betrayed a hint of restlessness.

"Beyond a doubt. Would agents of the government blow up a building in the middle of London? No, they would march in, seize the "contraband" and make a great hue and cry over their success." A faint smile played across his lips. "Whoever destroyed that warehouse was well-prepared, well-informed, and willing to act ruthlessly to achieve their goal. And they managed to catch us almost completely off guard. Quite impressive, really."

"It was a thorough job," Zechs admitted. "Only one member of the unit we sent to watch over the place is alive and in any condition to tell the story."

"More of a challenge than we were expecting, isn't it my friend?" Treize drew a slim cigarette case from his coat pocket, politely offering it to the other members of the party before taking one himself. It was an elegant piece of enamelwork, midnight blue with a sprinkling of tiny gems. At first glance they appeared to be set at random, but a closer inspection revealed that they formed the constellations of a miniature Zodiac. The tiny stars winked, as if reflecting the amusement in Treize's eyes. "At least it will make our stay in London interesting. Zechs, I leave it up to you to run our unseen foe to ground."

"Sir-" interrupted Lady Une.

He turned the full force of his smile on his severe aide. "Don't concern yourself, my Lady. I have complete confidence in your ability to handle the other details of our mission."

Lady Une subsided, but the look on her face suggested she would still like to have her say.

"Sir, if I can be spared, may I assist Captain Marquis?" Noin spoke up for the first time. Seated in the corner, she had been watching the conversation with a keen eye.

"Of course. The two of you always work well together."

Zechs rose abruptly. "With your leave then, we'll be off to see what we can find."

"Good hunting, Captain," the Ambassador replied good-humoredly.

Once the pair was safely out the door, Lady Une could contain herself no longer. "Sir, I must ask: is it wise to send him out unsupervised?"

"A knight like Zechs is never happy without a battle to fight," Treize replied, taking a drag off his thin cigarette. "This little matter will keep him occupied and allow us to proceed without worrying that any of our plans might disturb him?"

Heero awoke decidedly stiff, in a room that contained only a bed, a table, and two small cabinets. It was fortunate he had managed to make it most of the way here before the blood loss overcame him. The brief spurt of energy he'd gained when the wound was redressed had been just enough to enable him to reach this safe house.

To call it a safe house was an overstatement. When they had first begun operations in London, Quatre had seen to the acquisition and stocking of a series of out-of-the-way bolt-holes in various parts of the city. Equipped with necessities like food, water, and medical supplies, they provided a place to lie low and avoid pursuit, or change a disguise?or rest and rebandage an injury. Quatre's foresight had proven invaluable.

Heero carefully unwound the bandage he had applied before collapsing the night before. Another reason to be grateful for the existence of these places: he would never have heard the end of it if he had returned to headquarters with what was obviously a woman's white silk evening scarf wrapped around his middle! He could just hear that maddening American now: "You've been holding out on us, Heero! Who's the lady friend? Is she pretty?" And he knew quite well Maxwell wouldn't rest until he had dragged out the entire embarrassing story and repeated it to anyone who would listen.

The wound looked considerably better than it had last night; the bullet had gone clean through and there was no sign of infection. But this was no particular surprise; he had always healed almost uncannily fast.

The pain hadn't even affected his sleep. The dreams had only been a natural consequence of blood loss and exhaustion, he told himself. That was all it had been?but they came flooding back, disturbingly vivid and immediate. Normally if he dreamed at all, he dreamed of war. It was all he had ever known, and last night had started out as no exception. Until the half-seen presence had started to interpose itself between him and the familiar scents of smoke and blood. He had wanted to make it leave somehow, but it was strangely persistent. Instead of gunfire, he heard a voice telling him he had to rest and regain his strength. The voice, and the golden-haired figure he glimpsed out of the corners of his eyes, were familiar.

Heero dismissed the memory angrily; it annoyed him that he could be susceptible to such an impression. Religion was something he had no use for, but it was something men turned to on battlefields, and he had been on enough of them to know the trappings of it. He had been starting to feel lightheaded and the last thing he had seen as his knees buckled under him was a girl in a long white dress, fair hair haloed by the streetlamps, with some kind of gauzy appendage trailing out behind her. Some deeply buried, superstitious part of his mind must have connected her with the angels dying men claimed to have seen.

Well, she had turned out to be a perfectly ordinary girl in evening clothes. An incredibly stubborn girl, he remembered with a frown, who had gotten too good a look at him and might be inclined to spread the story among her friends. He could only hope he had frightened her enough to prevent it. Ideally, he would have preferred a more permanent solution to the problem, but this wasn't wartime Europe, it was law-abiding England, where the disappearance of a girl who was obviously of the upper crust would cause a furor.

Yet a part of him was obscurely glad he hadn't been in any shape to take more drastic measures. Pure, disinterested kindness was something he had seen little of in his life (what he could remember of it). There had been no reason for her to help him, and quite a few in favor of her leaving him there. Little as he wished to admit it, he might not have made it to the safe house without her assistance.

Heero finished rewrapping the bandage and rummaged in one of the cabinets for a clean shirt. Quatre would have heard of the building's destruction already, but it was still necessary to report in. Once changed, he let himself out the door (less a door than a hatch that rather looked as if it led to a coal bin) and started off towards headquarters.

A brisk walk brought him to the shabby-looking building whose door bore the deliberately ambiguous legend "Consultations by appointment only." He found Quatre in his office, surrounded by reports, radio equipment, and maps. He was the organizer of the group, what Duo called the 'front man', who maintained the office, oversaw the gathering of information, and kept up communications among the five of them. A faint expression of relief crossed his face at Heero's entrance.

"Heero! I was rather concerned when you didn't report in last night!" Quatre's blue eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Did something go wrong? How badly are you hurt?"

Heero refrained from scowling. He knew perfectly well nothing in his posture or movements had betrayed his injury. Quatre had a peculiar knack for knowing things it shouldn't have been possible for him to know. While it had come in handy more than once, it could become annoying when he picked up on things you'd rather he didn't. "It's nothing. A division of the Specials was at the warehouse. They must have arrived after I did, or they would have prevented me from entering."

Quatre gave him a look that suggested the subject of his injury wasn't closed yet, but said nothing about it. "We knew we'd meet serious opposition sooner or later." He said ruefully. "But did something put them on guard, or are they just tightening security on general principles?" He looked down at the accumulation of papers on his desk as if one of them might come out with the answer.

"They were expecting trouble. Someone must have caught on to the break-in at the club." Heero folded his arms and leaned against the wall. His side was beginning to protest the long walk. "Most of the unit are dead, but one of them is still alive, and he got at least a brief look at me."

"Not good. But the operation was a success and that's the main thing. They'll have to restore their resources before they can try anything major, and that buys us a little more time. We have to make the most of the days before the other delegations begin to arrive."

"Hn." Heero would still like to know a few things about that encounter. If they had been expecting trouble, why hadn't they been on guard before he arrived?

"Now," Quatre began in his most maddening attitude of gentle persistence. "About that wound."

"It's a flesh wound, Quatre," he growled.

"You would say that," the blond man replied dryly. "Heero, you may choose to carry on as if nothing has happened, but remember if you ignore your own well being, it could be a danger to more than just yourself. Your adventure last night proved it. We won't have quite the free reign we've enjoyed now that they know we're there."

There was no way to argue with this, so he settled for ignoring it. Before Quatre could say anything else, the radio apparatus came to life with a shrill noise, followed by a series of signals that bore only a passing resemblance to Morse code. Quatre grabbed for a blank notebook and began transcribing rapidly.

When the unit fell silent again, he looked up, a distinct expression of satisfaction in his blue eyes. "Trowa reports two of the people we're most interested in have just left the embassy on foot and without fanfare. I rather think we should see where they're going, don't you?"

"I'll go." Heero informed him in a tone that brooked no argument. "You have to be here incase Maxwell or one of the others reports in."

"I am beginning to get very tired of this desk." The expression on his face, however, was one of wry resignation. "They're heading west from the embassy. You shouldn't have any trouble catching up if you take a cab."

"Understood." Heero turned on his heel and left the office. For a moment he contemplated taking one of the cars garaged behind the office. Taxi drivers might remember things you didn't want them to. However, they had the advantage of being inconspicuous, and he didn't need the delay of finding a place to leave the car. He stepped out onto the street in search of a cab to hail.

The two people who left the embassy by a back entrance that morning were a far cry from the Ambassador's uniformed attendants. Zechs had exchanged his rather noticeable scarlet and white for a quietly elegant suit of gray flannel, a tweed overcoat, and white gloves. The only thing that remained of the dashing Continental officer was the long fair hair. In his hand was a silver-mounted walking stick that only the most discerning examination would reveal to be a sword cane.

Lucrezia Noin had adopted a neat, tailored costume of blue linen with a matching cloche hat over her blue-black hair. "I presume the warehouse is crawling with English police by now," she remarked. "So where do you plan to begin?"

"The warehouse wouldn't tell us much anyway, and we can't afford to be spotted too close to it. The important thing is to find the saboteur. We know what he looks like, and we know he was injured before the explosion." Zech's eyes narrowed speculatively. "It's always been my experience that cities like London are never entirely asleep, particularly in the kind of neighborhood we're interested in. Unless our intruder had a place to go to ground very nearby, there's a good chance someone saw an injured man go by. Once we find that person, it shouldn't take long to persuade them to tell us what direction he took."

"London is a huge city," she protested. "Just knowing what direction he took may not do us any good."

"Possibly. Still, a man with a bullet hole in his side couldn't move quickly, or drive a car. He will have left traces of his presence somewhere."

Lucrezia refrained from sighing. She knew quite well by the stubborn set of his jaw that he would be deaf to argument. Zechs could be obsessively single-minded, and the goal his mind was set on right now was finding the man who had destroyed the weapons cache.

[aku_ryo]

sweeet a conspiracy at hand eh??

so wheres our green eye devil in all of this mystery??

akuuuuuuuuuuuuu