The taxi's brakes screamed and they lurched to a halt for the fourth time in as many minutes.
Jude looked up from his phone. "Is London always like this?"
"More than half the journey, minimum," Constantine said. "Today's actually light. You should see it on a normal morning."
"Wonderful."
"Welcome to London."
They got out eventually — past the half-hour mark — and Jude looked up to find himself standing in front of something genuinely monumental. Dozens of Greek columns ran the full width of the facade, supporting a triangular pediment that caught the grey morning light with the calm authority of a building that had never been asked to justify its existence. The whole thing radiated the specific confidence of an institution that had been very powerful for a very long time.
"What is this?"
"The British Museum." Constantine's expression was the particular brand of self-satisfied he reserved for things he found appropriately absurd. "Imperial treasury. The world's foremost collection of items that used to belong to other people."
Jude laughed. "You mean the place where Britain keeps everything it liberated from countries that hadn't adequately secured it?"
"Egyptian mummies. Parthenon marbles. Roman vases. Chinese porcelain — Yuan dynasty, blue and white, museum-quality. Ten volumes of the Yongle Encyclopedia." Constantine started walking. "You've seen Indiana Jones? These are the real Joneses. Explorers, they called themselves." He paused to hold the door. "Though to be fair to us, the French were just as thorough. When it comes to aggressive curation, we're all equals."
"The friendship between Britain and France," Jude said. "Truly timeless."
They went inside.
Jude kept his expression neutral and his opinions to himself, which took a degree of effort.
The scholar Constantine wanted was in a back office — past the public galleries, through a corridor that smelled of old paper and institutional carpet — a man somewhere past fifty, slight and precise-looking, with the particular stillness of someone who spent most of their time with objects rather than people. He took the sketch from Constantine, held it under his desk lamp, and said nothing for a long moment.
"Professor?" Constantine prompted.
"Remarkable." He adjusted his glasses and looked again. "Yes, I have seen markings like this before. In South Sudan, some years ago." He set the paper down and tapped the edge of it. "There is one tribe — a branch of the Dinka — that still performs this kind of ritual. This specific tattoo pattern is used for binding. Containment. The methodology requires living flesh, which means the person carrying it functions as a vessel — and therefore as a sacrifice. Whoever cast this was working in natural magic. A practitioner of real ability."
"Sacrifice," Jude said. Not a question — he was turning the word over.
"That's the correct term, yes."
Outside, on the museum steps, Constantine glanced at him. "You heard all that."
"I heard it. What do you want to say?"
"Africa. South Sudan. We need to go, and you should start on your visa now."
Jude considered the trajectory of the last several days. Japan — twenty-odd years. Gotham City — nearly two. London — a handful of days, during which he had encountered an infestation of supernatural insects, paid ten thousand dollars in consulting fees, and watched a man describe a child's death with the affect of someone recounting a mildly inconvenient commute.
"Two years," he said.
"Sorry?"
"Nothing. I was just noting that I've lived in two countries. Japan and Gotham. And now apparently Sudan."
"Hold on." Constantine stopped walking. "You said Gotham. The one in America."
"Yes."
"Two years." Constantine stared at him. "You survived two full years in that city and you're still worried about ethics?"
"Do you have a specific objection?"
"No. No, I genuinely don't. Carry on."
Jude withdrew the look he'd been giving him, and Constantine accepted this as sufficient reconciliation.
"Anyway," Constantine said, lighting a cigarette, "you're the one who wanted to investigate. So you can come to Africa with me — or you can stay here and relieve Chas of babysitting duties while I go. Your choice."
"I'll come."
"Wear a hat. It'll be brutal."
He already had his phone out, dialling as he walked. Jude caught the name he asked for — Midnight — and placed it. Papa Midnight: Haitian practitioner, significant power, substantial collection of magical artefacts, and a self-appointed father figure among the criminal occult underground. The kind of man who remained carefully neutral in all disputes, which was either principled or cowardly depending on your situation and whether you needed him.
"It's Constantine. Has anything strange been happening on your end?" A pause. "A restaurant? In New York?" Another pause. "Right. Give my regards to your skulls."
He hung up.
"The good news," he said, "is that Mnemoth hasn't found a second target yet. We have time to work with." He drew on the cigarette. "I don't know if it's a Haitian thing or just Midnight specifically, but the man has no sense of humour at all."
The visa question resolved itself faster than expected. Constantine travelled on documents Jude chose not to ask about. Jude's global citizenship passport — a fact which appeared to surprise Constantine more than anything else had — required nothing but a booking.
"You had this the whole time?" Constantine looked at the passport with genuine respect. "So you went to Gotham first? Of everywhere?"
"It didn't go exactly as planned."
"I can imagine."
In the cab to the airport, the driver listened to them discuss their destination, then slowly turned around.
"Where in Africa, exactly?"
"Sudan."
"South Sudan, specifically," Jude added.
The driver looked at them for a moment. "That's... going to be a bit beyond my meter, gentlemen."
The flight from Heathrow landed in Juba the following morning, and the heat was waiting for them on the tarmac like something with a personal grudge.
Constantine emerged from the terminal, immediately produced a soaked towel from somewhere, and applied it to his face with the expression of a man whose suffering was both genuine and someone else's fault. "Yesterday I was freezing in London rain," he said. "Today I'm being cooked alive in Africa. Life is genuinely, specifically, terrible."
Jude took a bite of watermelon — he'd bought it inside, on the way out — and looked at the landscape: wide, brown, baked flat at the edges, rocks breaking the surface of the ground in jagged rows. A country that looked like it had been arguing with the sun for a long time and was behind on points.
"Hot?" He considered. "Not really. I'm fine."
Constantine looked at him the way a man looks at something he finds personally offensive.