Free Robert Charrette - Arthur 01 - A Prince Among Men by Robert N. Charrette Page B

place where he could keep an eye on both the door and the unseen portion of the room, pulled a chair over to his chosen spot, and sat. There wasn't much you could do with whitecoats. At least not when you were under orders to protect and assist them.
    A whitecoat rounded the corner from the other part of the room. The stethoscope around his neck said M.D., and old-fashioned to boot. The frown of annoyance on his bearded face was old-fashioned, too.
    "What are you doing here? Let's see your authorization."
    Holger just stared at him. They didn't like that.
    The doc blustered up, armored in his importance. Holger let him blow. Well before he got on Holger's nerves, Spae noticed.
    "It's all right, Kevin. He's Department."
    "Oh," Kevin said.
    Bright boy, the doc.
    Naturally, it turned out that the doc had come to talk to Spae. About a patient named Lambe. Holger listened closely; Lambe was the sleeper they were supposed to be investigating. From the way Spae was talking to this Kevin, he knew almost as much about the Department as Holger did. Certainly more than Holger had known when he had requested transfer to the then newly formed Department M. Back then, all he'd known was that the Department was where all the hotshots in the European Community Special Services were headed. Supposed to be the fast track.
    Fast track to hell.
    He cut off the memories. This was no time to dredge them up. This place was too much like where he'd spent the last two years. Focus, he ordered himself. Focus on the current mission. There is nothing else.
    Like hell.
    Hell was where you lived when you died.
    You and all your friends.
    Friends die.
    And go to hell.
    Like hell!
    Do you like hell, Mr. Kun? Is that why you stay there? No, Doctor. I hate hell. Very good, Mr. Kun. We're making progress.
    On hell?
    Like hell!
    Focus! The mission! Nothing else!
    He pictured his orders, grabbing for the memory as if it were a rope and he was in water over his head. He hated water. He didn't think much of his orders either.
    Assignment: Dr. Elizabeth Spae, thaumaturgic theorist.
    Holger Kun to assist as resource specialist and expediter.
    And bullyboy.
    That part was never in the orders.
    But then, there was a lot that wasn't in the written orders. The Department was a covert group, which meant they put nothing in writing unless forced to. Paper trails made covering your ass more than usually difficult.
    The Department's putative mission was to investigate unusual phenomena. They were supposed to be a scientific inquiry operation. And they were that. That and more. The Department's whitecoats worked to gain an understanding of so-called magical effects. It was the expediter's job to acquire anything that the whitecoats confirmed for the use—preferably exclusive use—of the ECSS in specific and the European Community in general.
    All without letting anyone know what they were doing.
    Beyond all the usual reasons for secrecy, there was the issue of credibility. Who would vote for a politician who believed in fairies? Beyond that, or maybe it was just an extension of the credibility thing, was the issue of power. It always really came down to that, didn't it? The bosses of the ECSS wanted power in the EC, and the bosses of the EC wanted power in the world. And who would have more power than the saviors of the world?
    Holger listened to Spae and Kevin wrangle loudly over the validity of some of the tests the doc had conducted. The technical details were beyond him, but he knew an argument doomed by underlying disagreement when he heard one. Some saviors.
    When the shouting match was over and Kevin had left, Spae tamed to Holger.
    "You want to monitor the call?"
    "Of course." She would have to report her conclusions to the Department. It wasn't in his orders that he monitor her communications, but he wasn't about to refuse an offer. The more he knew about what she thought she was doing, the safer he'd be.
    Holger set up a tap feed from her console to piggyback the