Read Online Faust Among Equals by Tom Holt - Free Book Online

theth—’
    â€˜Yes, but I checked it before . . .’
    The leader winced. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Just synchronise them, okay?’
    â€˜Yeth, but thkip, mine theth nine thorty-thickth and hith theth—’
    â€˜Yeah, skip. What does yours say?’
    With a gesture of suffering fools, the leader looked at his wrist, only to see the sleeve of a black pullover and nothing else. Dammit, he’d forgotten his watch.
    â€˜Nine forty-five,’ he said. ‘Now, can we please get on with it?’
    The brief: break into King’s College, Cambridge and comb the archives to see if there was anything there which might shed some light on where Christopher Marlowe, sixteenth-century dramatist and graduate of said college, had got his information from. It was, the leader decided, absolutely typical of the bloody stupid, pointless . . .
    â€˜Shit,’ observed Number Two, looking up at the gatehouse. ‘It’s like a damn fortress. How are we supposed to get into that ?’
    â€˜Through the door,’ replied the leader, mercilessly. ‘They haven’t locked up for the night yet.’
    â€˜Oh. Right.’
    â€˜That’s the whole idea. We go in, we hide till everyone’s gone to bed, we frisk the place and bugger off. Now, when you’ve quite finished . . .’
    â€˜Hey thkip, that’th pretty neat thinking.’
    â€˜Thanks, Vernon. Come on, follow me.’
    Hiding till nightfall in a Cambridge college during termtime is easier said than done. Particularly if you’re distinctively dressed in black trousers and pullover, black balaclava and black face-paint. Acting natural and inconspicuous takes just that bit more effort than usual. Stanislavski could have managed it, but not first time out.
    â€˜Thuck thith for a game of tholdierth,’ observed Number Three eventually, after they’d been politely requested to leave the boiler room for the third time. ‘I thought you thaid—’
    â€˜Well I didn’t,’ the leader replied. ‘Just count yourselves lucky this is a university. Here, the weird is commonplace, so we should be okay. Let’s go and have a drink in the bar.’
    â€˜Have they got a bar, skip?’
    â€˜They’d bloody well better have.’
    They did. Huddled in a corner of the Junior Common Room over three pints of Abbot Ale, just under the dartboard, they looked totally inconspicuous.
    â€˜Real bummer, Howard getting run other like that,’ observed Number Three, wiping froth from the mouth-hole of his balaclava.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜You’d have thought they’d have warned uth.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Maketh you thick, thometimeth.’
    â€˜You are already, Vernon.’
    â€˜What, thick?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    Number Three considered. ‘No I’m not,’ he replied, puzzled. ‘I had a headache thith morning, but . . .’
    The leader cleared his throat with a semblance of authority, before the whole bloody thing degenerated into farce. ‘According to the plan,’ he said, ‘the library is up the stairs on our left as we came in, keeping the hall doorway to our right. Got that?’
    â€˜Sure thing, skip.’ Number Two finished the last of the salted peanuts. ‘What is it we’re looking for, exactly?’
    â€˜A lead,’ replied his commanding officer, with wasted irony.
    â€˜What thort of a lead?’
    â€˜Any sort of a lead.’
    â€˜Only,’ Number Three continued, ‘there’th a lead coming out of the back of thith computer game thing, if that’th any help. It goeth right acroth the wall and back into the—’
    â€˜A clue. Something to go on. A material fact.’
    â€˜What sort of a material fact, skip ?’
    One of the minor tragedies about being a spectral warrior is the fact that, being inhuman, they can’t settle down and have children. Just now, the