Death and Conspiracy

by Seeley James

  One by one, the shops around us closed. The ranks of bikes and pedestrians thinned.

  “But it didn’t work.” I held up a hand to stop his story. “Does that mean Hugo’s part of it?”

  “No. He’s a hardcore anti-terrorist from the old school. The school that believes all terrorists are Saudi Muslims.”

  “He doesn’t count mass-shootings like the seventy-seven killed in Norway or the fifty in Christchurch?”

  “The cynical side of me says he’s a closet racist who secretly cheers those attacks. The realist in me says he’s blind to horrific acts perpetrated by people who look like him. But then, aren’t we all guilty of that bias? Most Americans paid more attention to the Pulse Nightclub attack than the Tree of Life synagogue. Whatever the case, Free Origins doesn’t fit in his world view. When I saw the video from Saint-Sulpice, I realized you were the answer I’d been looking for.”

  I checked my phone for updates from Miguel and Tania. Nothing.

  “What’s Arrianne’s story?” I asked.

  “She’s a chameleon now. Nema owns her, and she doesn’t see a way out.”

  We discussed theories about Arrianne and agreed the most likely scenario was that Nema had some kind of leverage over her. Zack had witnessed her split from Paladin and Free Origins. He’s also tracked Nema’s takeover of Arrianne’s operation. He summed her up. “Arrianne is a master manipulator who met her match in little Nema. Not that it’s any excuse. Nema might be the mastermind, but Paladin, Lugh, all of them are active participants in one of the ugliest conspiracies of the century.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “Where are you drawing the line between right and wrong?”

  “I saw where the road paved with hate leads. Right off the cliff of annihilation.” He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m doing my best to reform. The Quakers have a twelve-step program for racists. I’ve found it healing. My anger is subsiding more and more every day.”

  My phone buzzed. Miguel said, “We followed your GPS signal. It led us to Hugo’s car. We staked it out. You weren’t there. Then it was offline again. Hugo held a mini-press conference. He said some mean things about you, then left. We just found your new location. Why were you hanging with Hugo?”

  CHAPTER 41

  “My phone was confiscated,” I told Miguel. “It’s a long embarrassing story, and I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “You got caught by Nema’s people?” Miguel asked. “I’d rather not talk about it, either. I like to think of you as mildly competent, and that would blow the whole fantasy. Stay in that shopping district. We’ll be right over.”

  I pulled up Hugo’s impromptu press conference on my phone. It was in French with Dutch subtitles. Fake-Zack translated for me. Hugo went the long way around to tell everyone there had been accusations that Free Origins might be a threat to public safety. He had personally spoken to the members and found them intelligent, capable, hardworking members of society. He then went out of his way to reiterate his opinion that Jacob Stearne and a man posing as an American CIA agent were planning a terrorist attack of some kind. Working with Interpol, Europol, and several other “pol” organizations, he would bring the two maniacs to justice. He closed by distributing photographs of Fake-Zack and me.

  Mine was that very nice screengrab from the video the instant before I killed Ace of Free Origins.

  “Sorry,” Fake-Zack said, “I’ve dragged your reputation down. Hugo might’ve believed you if I hadn’t pulled the CIA-stunt in Paris.”

  I couldn’t disagree with him, but we were past the point for recriminations. We were now wanted men. Around us, the narrow lanes were nearly deserted. We weren’t worried about someone calling the cops on us.

  Mercury pedaled by on a wobbly bike. He crashed into the stone railing at the canal. Who invented these damn things, dude? Couldn’t have been a man, cuz there’s no place to put your jewels. And they’re no match for a chariot. Now, you ride your ass through town on a four-horse chariot and people get out of your way in a big ol’ hurry.

  I said, Are you bringing me a message?

  Mercury said, Never have been one for small talk, huh? OK then, here it is. Notice how Fake-Zack is ready to give his life for the cause?

  I said, No.

  Mercury threw his hands up. The man got your phone out of Hugo’s car before they could decrypt it, he snuck into your dungeon and blew the door open, he risked his life getting you out.

  I said, So?

  Mercury picked up the bike and looked it over. What’s it take for you to realize what this guy thinks is at stake?

  I said, Do you know his name?

  Mercury straddled the bike. Dude, he’s ex-CIA. None of the gods know his name. But I know this, he’s willing to kill people. What you want to know is who.

  I wasn’t sure what in the Orcus he was talking about. But I watched my unemployed god wobble down the lane, curse, throw the bike down, then fly off on his impossibly tiny wings.

  “Did you see something?” Fake-Zack followed my gaze down the lane.

  “Checking the shadows.” I started walking again. “So, you talked Hugo into sending me undercover because you couldn’t. Everyone at Free Origins knew you. You were willing to risk my life to stop them.”

  He shrugged. “I’m perfectly willing to risk mine instead. It just wouldn’t have been effective. We do what we need to do. You’re a soldier. You’ve made that choice before, who lives and who dies. It’s not easy. You make the best decision you know how then blow up ten people to save five hundred. Even if one of the ten is you.”

  That one stopped me in my tracks. That was what Mercury was talking about. I slapped his shoulder. “It was you. The Moulin Rouge. You planted the bomb. Nema recognized you, that’s why she was so shocked.”

  He faced me. “I did what had to be done.”

  The backpack had been a shaped charge. It was meant to destroy everything directly in front of it. When I turned over the table, it landed upside down and blew out structural beams in the ceiling. Fake-Zack was willing to kill me if it meant killing Nema and stopping ROSGEO.

  He read my face. “I asked you to help. You turned me down. Then you started falling for Nema. I didn’t see any downside.”

  What a thoughtful guy. Although, had the roles been reversed, I would’ve done the same.

  “What do you want out of this?” I asked. “Why did you rescue me from Pieterskerk?”

  “I have to stop them. I can’t do it alone. I don’t expect you to do any more than you already have. But, I hope you’re still in.”

  I understood his sentiment. Once you know what these people are up to, you can’t walk away. If you see something, do something. Zack did something. He sent me into harm’s way on his behalf. But he didn’t leave it at that. He’d been following Nema ever since, looking for an opportunity to wreck her day.

  I resumed walking. “Tell me something I can use to bring down Nema and Paladin. You can start with where they built their command center.”

  “If I knew that, I would have destroyed it by now.” Something spooked him. He glanced around.

  I heard it too. People talking is one thing. People talking about you is another. There’s something sinister in the attempt to disguise meaning that gives whispered words an evil cadence.

  Two old ladies approached under the cone of a streetlamp. They gave us the side-eye.

  Fake-Zack tipped a fake hat in their direction and said, “Bonsoir.”

  They picked up their pace and passed by.

  “They recognize us from Hugo’s pictures,” I said.

  “To blend in, don’t act guilty. Few people can identify you from a photo.” We picked up our pace. “Where are those friends of yours?”

  Tania and Miguel waited in a rental car parked on a tiny bridge three hundred yards ahead. Tania stood on the passenger seat, her head out the sunroof, aiming binoculars in my general direction. On her second pass, she saw me. Fake-Zack and I headed toward her.


  A bullet buzzed in front of our noses. We instinctively hit the cobblestones.

  Nema’s voice called across the canal. “Jacob Stearne, we need to talk.”

  CHAPTER 42

  I crawled across the lane toward the canal and peered over the stone balustrade. A suppressed round fired away from us. I snuck a glance down the canal.

  Nema’s people were shooting at Tania and Miguel. Which was a mistake on their part. Shooting at a guy like Miguel makes him forget his manners and shoot back. While charging forward at a dead run.

  Miguel’s boots slapped down the cobblestones. Tania, the former sniper, took up a position at the bridge’s parapet to cover him.

  Squeezing a look between the balustrade’s newel posts, I saw a man with an M20 rocket launcher, commonly known as a bazooka. While it was an outdated weapon on the modern battlefield, it could still blow up a small rental car. Which it did.

  The flash from the explosion illuminated Tania for a second. She was already running from the blast. The car flew into the air, over the railing, and splashed into the canal.

  “Tell your friend to stop,” Nema called out, “or he gets the next one.”

  I didn’t need to relay that to Miguel. He saw the flash.

  “What do you want?” I called back.

  In the distance, sirens cranked up from several points. I checked our surroundings to assess the potential collateral damage. Most of the lower levels of our surroundings were brick or stone. Several storefronts were glass, the lights were out. Hopefully, no one worked in the back rooms.

  I moved laterally, keeping the origin point of her voice triangulated in my head. Fake-Zack was twenty yards away, doing the same thing. I popped up and aimed and fired. So did my new friend. A perfect crossfire in daylight. This late at night, it was hard to tell if the shadow I pinged was Nema or a potted plant.

  Mercury crouched next to me. Why are you shooting that poor ficus, brutha?

  I said, Can you give me a hint where she is?

  Mercury said, She was behind it. Fake-Zack has the angle.

  I ran to Fake-Zack’s position.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “We had her in a kill-zone.”

  Two bullets pinged off the stone railing an inch from our heads. I figured the origin to be another block over. I said, “Either they’re moving, or she has helpers.”

  He nodded. “Where did they get a bazooka?”

  “Same place they bought a cache of AR70/90s. They have someone in the arms business, helping them out.”

  “Jacob.” Nema’s voice crossed the canal from a different point of origin. “I’m going to send you a phone. You need to take it.”

  Fake-Zack popped up and fired two rounds.

  “Stop shooting, you idiot,” she said. “We need to talk.”

  “All we need to talk about is how you’re going to stop ROSGEO.”

  “You have it backward. We need to talk about how you’re going to lead ROSGEO.”

  Fake-Zack looked at me. I could feel Miguel and Tania looking my way from their position three hundred yards down the canal. For a moment, the approaching sirens fell into the background.

  “We registered that bazooka in your name,” Nema called out. “We sent videos of you training my liberation fighters to all the major media outlets. You need to come with me, Jacob. It’s time you took your place at the head of ROSGEO.”

  “Holy … She had you from the beginning.” Fake-Zack slumped to the ground behind the balustrade. “This is my fault. Oh my god. I am so sorry, Jacob.”

  Mercury slid up against the stone next to me. What’s he mean, homie?

  I said, He means Nema took me to Spain knowing I was undercover and planning to use it against me all along.

  Wowza, she really knows how to get things done, Mercury said. This might be a bad time to mention it, but she might make a decent Caesar. Think you can bring her into the fold?

  I saw movement across the canal. The shadow was small and quick. Peering through the newels, I calculated her movements. I rose and aimed but found only her shadow. She slipped behind a wall.

  “Stop shooting.” Her voice echoed over the stones. “We need to talk.”

  A noisy drone started up and floated above the cobblestones. It crossed the canal with a small bag attached to the underside. It came down our lane, veered a little before correcting and approached us. Fake-Zack aimed at it. I grabbed his arm and lowered his weapon.

  “It’s the phone she mentioned.”

  “Or a bomb,” he said. “You don’t know that woman like I know that woman.”

  I looked at him, unsure if he was referring to the biblical sense.

  He read my mind. He said, “No one’s had sex with her. She doesn’t have sex. She hates everyone.”

  “She mentioned that.”

  The drone approached within a few feet. It settled a foot above the ground, dropped its package, then flew up and away.

  Fake-Zack shot it down. When I glared at him, he said, “One less asset for them.”

  “Take the phone, Jacob.” Nema’s voice remained calm despite the approaching sirens. “I’ll call you in five minutes.”

  I jumped to my feet and looked down the alleys, aiming with my 9-mil. I found a target squatting a block to my left. As I tried to determine friend or foe, a bright flash erupted from his shoulder. The bazooka. The rockets fired by the M20 travel at 180 miles per hour. Which is fast, but much slower than a bullet. They’re so slow in terms of lethal weapons that a soldier has time to react. He can jump out of the way. That’s why they’re never used against people. They’re used against tanks and other large vehicles that don’t react quickly.

  I did not react quickly. I was stunned. It didn’t make sense. Why would Nema give me a phone, then have me killed?

  Fake-Zack did react quickly. In one lightning-fast step, he mounted the railing and jumped into the path of the incoming rocket. His momentum took them both into the canal wall where the explosion blew him into two pieces.

  I looked up to see if they were going to fire again. Miguel’s large shadow rounded the corner next to the squatting bazooka man. Miguel stabbed the man with a dart and left him there with his warm bazooka.

  Miguel started trotting my way. On my side of the canal, Tania headed for me.

  I was still staring at Fake-Zack’s body in the canal. He was slowly sinking beneath the water.

  Mercury put an arm on my shoulder. Typical CIA, right homie?

  I said, What do you mean?

  He died for you, and you’ll never know his name.

  My friends converged on me at the same time the phone started ringing.

  I picked it up and clicked on. “Hello.”

  “Sorry about Caleb, Jacob,” Nema said. “He’s still pissed at you for that HALO incident.”

  “I thought he was sitting this out with Arrianne.”

  “After someone cut my ranks by significant numbers, I needed auxiliary forces. So I made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”

  “You have some dirt on her?”

  “I have dirt on everyone, Jacob. But ‘dirt’ isn’t the right term. I think leverage is better.” She paused with what sounded like a repressed giggle. “I have leverage on you too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Would you like to see Jenny?”

  CHAPTER 43

  Nema sent a prerecorded video clip. The camera focused on close-ups showing Jenny bound to a chair with her hands behind her back, her mouth gagged, and her feet tied to the chair’s legs. The worst part was strapped tight to her chest. A suicide vest thick with explosives. A radio activated device on her breast had a light that blinked green. She struggled and fought against her bindings. The video stopped.

  Miguel, Tania, and I jogged away from the incoming police cars. We made it to an alley just as the police set up barriers behind us.

  “You owe me,” Nema said. “You took Ace and Diego off the board. They were the tip of our spear. Everyone in Free
Origins looked up to them as our heroes. They were ROSGEO’s first wave. You stopped them cold. My people hate you with a passion. Do you know how hard it was to keep you alive in Úbeda?”

  Mercury pressed his ear to mine as if he could hear the phone straight through my head. She’s crafty, gotta give her that. But you can stop playing Mr. Nice and kill her. I’m sick of her shit.

  I said, Where. Is. Jenny?

  Mercury said, Kill Nema first, we’ll find your ex later. Or a new girl.

  I said, If Nema’s crafty, someone else holds the vest’s trigger. I’m sure her instructions were to press the button if anything happens to her.

  Mercury scratched his chin. That would be extra-crafty. I’ll bet you’re right. Ima go check.

  “You set me up from the beginning. You’re one hell of an actress, Nema.”

  “I tried being an actress. Can you believe they only gave me bit parts? All the speaking roles went to ‘people of color.’ People who don’t even speak English.”

  “Your hatred won’t work on me,” I said. “It won’t start a race war either. You’ll kill a bunch of people; then they’ll catch you. They always catch the masterminds.”

  “You haven’t been paying attention.” She laughed. “What happened after Christchurch? Sri Lanka. Around the world, people are tired of mixing with other races and religions. Call it populism, call it nationalism, it doesn’t matter. It’s nature’s law. Keep to your kind. When thirteen houses of worship go up in flames, the call for retribution will go out. People will flock to their kind to protect themselves. They’ll realize what they’ve always felt inside but never summoned the courage to do. They’ll throw off the shackles of political correctness.”

  “Political correctness? That used to be called the Golden Rule until someone made hate fashionable.”

  “You should listen to your messages,” Nema said. “You would’ve heard Jenny pleading for help.”

  I put the phone on mute when I said, “SHIT!”