LONDON CALLING

Jack followedd them watching where he stepped so not to fall threw the floor or knock something and make it fall on anyone. He walked with them to the basment and heard Robert curse at its condition. Jack looked at both of them when they talked of what to do with the burned man out on the lawn. " wow, crispy I can handle, but if hes squishy inside." he held up his hands in a nope sign.

After more jibbing he sighed " alright, give me the tarp, one buritto boy comeing up with all his bits." he said taking the tarp and heading back to the body and spread out the tarp beside it. Carfully he lifted it being gentle so not to break off any toes or fingers as he lay it down and wrapped it tight. Seeing some rope he wrapped it tight enough that nothing would fall out.

Robert left Michael and Jack to deal with the corpse for the moment while he took a walk through and relaid the protection spells. He didn't see anything else that was out of place, nothing new that hadn't been there before, and nothing missing that had been there that wasn't there now. He walked outside again to see Jack just finishing tying a rope around the tarp.

"Thank you, Jack. Nicely done. Take our friend to the farm and straight down to my lab in in the sub-basement." He got out a key to his potions lab at the farm and handed it to Jack. "Don't let anyone else in but Michael or me. They don't need to be exposed to this. And stay with him til I get there. Michael and I will be right behind you. I want to be certain that this little mess is all cleaned up."

Michael understood exactly what Robert meant. Jack needed to get the body out of the way so that Robert could erase any trace of a body ever being on the lawn in the garden. He didn't want questions from the French magical authorities. He would fill them in later, as he usually did, but they had come to trust that he was a man who could and would do the right thing. And because of that, they largely left Robert alone to run his organization without any questions. They wanted Tom Gelding out of business as badly as Robert did, so they all but ignored the dealings of Robert's organization. They wanted Gelding's crimes to stop, and Robert had the manpower and the skilled agents to make it happen, so it served their purpose to leave Robert's operations alone. He didn't want to give them any grounds to reverse that decision.

Jack looked up and saw Robert and Michael walking out of the building. At Robertd words he nodded and wipped his hands on his trousers. " okay, don't be too far behind." he said " or Im comming back." kneeling down he outsted the body now in the tarp onto his broad shoulders making sure it would not shift as they ported and headed back to the farm.

Once there he headed straight down to the lab placing the boy biritto on a metal table still in his tarp wrap. Now he moved to the door and locked it before moving back to the table and sit on a stool waiting for Robert and Michael to return.

"We wont' be more than half a tick," Michael had told Jack before he left. Then he stepped in to help Robert erase every trace of any body ever being there. When they were both certain everything had been erased, they followed quickly to the farm.

At Khaat's, while she was helping Jess to prepare lunch for the big group that was now at the estate, Kate felt a bit of a disturbance in Robert's energy. It usually meant Robert had run across something dark. She didn't necessarily feel it was dangerous, but whatever it was had a certain air of death around it. It was an odd feeling, really.

"Jess," she paused, looking at her, "do you feel that? Suppose they're in trouble? Do we need to go find them, do you think?"

Michael and Robert ported into the farm, and they went down to the sub basement where Jack was waiting with the body.

"Well done, both of you," Robert told them. "No word of this if we don't have to. I'll do this as quickly as possible, and then, I hope to know more. That will determine what we end up doing with the remains. Can one of you put the kettle on? This job might call for a cup before its finished. Most likely, I'm going to have to deliver him to the French magical authorities..."

"And you'll need our help to get him transported there," Michael said.

"Unless I bring them here," Robert said.

"Nah. That makes for sticky business. They don't like their corpses buggaring off. We'll deliver the burrito to them. Won't we, Jack?"

Jess stopped what she was doing at Kates words pausing to feel if she could find what Kate felt and she did but it was subdued, suptle in nature so she shook her head. " I don't think we need to, I don't feel any thing from Jack, no worry or anger." she said then looked up and to Kate " besides Robert and Michael just arrived and there not worried." she said softly then continued to prepare lunch for every one.

Jack breathed out seeing Michael and Robert arrive. He stepped away from the table so they could get closer and put the kettle on. At Michaels words he shook his head in disbelife "yeah we can, but your carrying him this time." He said and pulled a face." I swear I felt something run down my back" he said with a shiver that ran threw his whole body.

"If I'm carrying him, I'm shrinking him," Michael told Jack as he watched Robert's enchanted tea kettle try to nip Jack. "Watch the kettle. It's rude--it bites unless you set it straight on whose boss. Robert will be done with Burrito Boy by then, so it shouldn't matter if I shrink him."

"Thank you, Jack, for making it a cleaner autopsy by not disturbing the evidence by shrinking him," Robert told Jack. "You do realize, Jack, that Michael is the git that gave me that snarky kettle, right?" He paused and then replied to Jack's question. "I didn't feel anything," Robert said. "But I did catch the scent of Kate's perfume for just an instant..."

"You both slipped something funny in your tea, didn't you?" Michael scowled.

"No," Robert said. "When you're married to a seer, all sorts of whackadoodle things happen. Maybe the girls were just checking on us. Maybe one of them is a worrywart. I hope they're okay over there. I presume if it weren't they'd be sounding an alarm, though. If it happens again, I think you should go check on them, Jack."

Jack looked at Michael and chuckled as the kettle tried to nop at him " quit it or you'll be a pile of plastic on the floor" he snapped at it. When Robert spoke he chuckled and nodded " might have guessed as much." he nodded as he looked towards the door.

"sure but it was probably just Jess checking up on me...well us." he looked at the kettle and gave a low growl hoping it would now back off and do what it was suposed to do.

The kettle seemed to settle, and Robert took his leave from them to go do the autopsy. It took him a couple of hours to complete it, but it didn't gain him as much as he hoped. He wasn't happy with the results. He rewrapped the remains for transporting, but he wasn't certain that Paris would actually want the remains. He wrote up his report and made reduced sized copies of the report, put them in his shirt pocket, and then went back upstairs. He poured himself a cup of tea.

"Well?" Michael asked.

"I found this on the victim," Robert said. He drew, from his pants pocket, a small clear plastic bag and handed it to Michael. Michael looked at it, and then, frowning deeply, looked back at Robert, handing the bag to Jack.

"That's one of our medallions," Michael said.

"It certainly is," Robert said.

"So is he one of ours?"

"Not one I know, but the victim has a pretty singular looking tattoo on his back in between his shoulder blades. It's an ancient rune that means shadow. Looks a bit like a muggle's backslash marking with a dot over it. Not something we use much, and not something a muggle uses at all, not like that, anyway."

"So, do we have a mole in our midst?" Michael asked.

"We very well may have had one," Robert said. "I don't know. But I am not aware of any of our blokes having a tattoo like that."

"You aren't as familiar with some of our operatives anymore, and neither am I. Perhaps we need to talk to Brian and see if he knows anyone meeting that description."

"I think I probably will. If he's one of ours, I'll have to alert officials there and here of the death. That is never a fun task because someone always wants to meddle in our organization, and I really get tired of having to steer them off. Still, if we have one of Gelding's agents under our roof, that would answer a lot of questions."

"Except perhaps one," Michael said. "I want to know if there's more than just one."

"Indeed," Robert said.

Jack loked at every one and frowned he didn't know who it could have been as everyone he knew who had a medallion were still living and breathing. "Yeah, who could it be?" he asked " we all have our medallions, could it be an old member, some one who left or disapeared, but then don't you ask for them back?" he questioned some what confused.

He looked at Michael and sighed " if he was a current member , you think he had family that we brought here?" Jack asked hoping it was not the case. Picking up the kettle he made thre cups of tea and handed them out. He could not help wonder now if he might have even known the man.

"If someone leaves," Michael said, "I deactivate the operative's medallion."

"Michael wasn't originally responsible for making the medallions, but he is the one who creates them now for us," Robert said. He uses a specific charm on each one."

"It is, to a given extent, tapered to the user," Michael explained. "If that member leaves or loses the medallion, I can remove the charm on it, by severing the magical link between it and the user. It would be easy for someone to try to transfigure something into a doubloon and then to try to pass it off as one of our medallions, so we had to do something to make some sort of failsafe to keep all sorts of people from running around with these things. I can even deactivate them all and force everyone to get entirely new medallions if necessary, but I don't think that actually would help us in this case."

"Not really," Robert agreed.

"I think we're still looking for an operative that Gelding planted amongst us," Michael told Jack. "I think Robert is right. I think our next move is going to Khaat's. We need to talk to Brian or Angus or Owens, and maybe all three. Someone has to know which one of our operatives would have had this large and specific of a tattoo."

As he was speaking, he and Robert heard the sound of apparating. Robert went out to the back porch and saw Angus had arrived with a basket.

"Kate sent lunch in case you three were hungry," Angus said.

"Thank you," Robert told him. "Come in for a moment. Perhaps you could be of some help."

"Certainly, Anything for a good cause," he smiled. He brought the basket and came in and put the basket on the table.

"I smell lunch," Michael said.

"You do," Angus said. "Portions of your large steak salad, and Kate made a large kettle of steak and ale soup, made with one of the best dark stouts I've ever tasted. Not sure where she got it, but it's wonderful."

"She got it from a shelf of growlers of the stuff that I have down in my cellar," Robert laughed. "I got it from an old friend in Ireland, and he sends me more whenever I ask. It really is a good brew."

"Top notch," Angus agreed. "And there's fresh soda bread in there--still warm from the oven, and some generous slabs of fresh strawberry pie."

"I didn't think I was hungry, but I might be changing my mind," Robert said.

"Angus," Michael said. "have you done a head count of our operatives? Is there anyone missing?"

"Well, we haven't required every single operative to report in," Angus frowned. "Is that necessary?"

"I don't know yet," Robert said. "I'm looking to identify one of our operatives. It would be a man with dark hair, stands about 5'10", average build, and he has a very distinctive tattoo between his shoulder blades of a rune that looks like a diagonal dash, like a backslash, with a dot. Do we know someone with that sort of tattoo?" Angus hesitated, and Robert saw a look of concern on Angus's face.

"What is it?" Michael asked.

"I only know of one person with that sort of tattoo, but it isn't a man. It belongs to a woman. Haven't seen her in a couple of days. Why?" Angus said.

"What can you tell me about her?"

"Her name is Phoebe Sharp," Angus said. "She's been with us for the last five years."

"How well do you know her?" Robert asked.

"Well enough," Angus said, starting to unpack the basked. Robert wasn't entirely sure Angus wasn't avoiding looking at Robert eye to eye.

"Angus," Robert called him. Angus looked at him, and Robert knew. Angus was somehow involved with Phoebe. "How close are you to her?"

"Enough to know she hasn't been home in the last three days, and it isn't like her to be gone that long without telling me," Angus replied. Robert was beginning to think that Phoebe Sharp was perhaps a man using a polyjuice potion or some sort of spell to conceal himself as a woman. And perhaps the man in his basement was the same person Angus knew as Phoebe Sharp. He was also strongly suspecting that Angus had been romantically involved with Sharp. He was not looking forward to hurting Angus if his hunch actually proved right.