Shadow

by James Swallow

  Verbeke marched over to the cabinet and opened it. Inside, sheathed in plastic, was a machine that Van de Greif didn’t recognize, a cube with a glass core containing nozzles and tiny metallic manipulators. The big man grinned.

  “Good.”

  “I have the tools to take it apart,” Van de Greif began.

  “No need.”

  Verbeke put his foot on the frame and tore the door off with a single twist of his hands. Aged, tarnished brass buckled, and wood that had endured for two centuries splintered as the man ripped the casement to bits with his bare hands.

  On the open market, properly restored, the cabinet would have been worth upward of ten thousand euros. Van de Greif gave an audible groan as he watched Verbeke willfully destroy it.

  Axelle noted his discomfort and smirked.

  “Sometimes there is elegance in the obliteration of a beautiful thing,” she told him.

  Van de Greif almost replied with the words he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her that Verbeke was an uncultured thug with the self-control of a backward teenager. He wanted to demand they tell him how their plan was going to proceed. But he did none of that. It was his curse as an educated man to understand the nature of his own timidity. He had never challenged the power dynamic of this relationship, and he was not about to start now.

  He liked his money and his safety too much to ever overtly give voice to the hate in his heart. He loathed the refugee beggars on his streets, the arrogant foreigners in his gallery, the weakling politicians in his government—but not enough to sacrifice his comfort. Verbeke could do that for him. It was what he was good for.

  Duz came over and helped Verbeke carry the plastic-wrapped machine from the wreckage of the cabinet to the cargo van, slipping it into the rear compartment. Axelle checked her watch, and Van de Greif suddenly felt extraneous, as if he were no longer visible to them.

  “We can get it up and running in a couple of hours,” said the woman. “We’ll be ready for tomorrow.”

  “What about tomorrow?” Van de Greif felt the need to reassert his presence.

  Verbeke paid no attention to the question and posed one of his own.

  “On the way here, on the radio … I heard something about a demonstration taking place a few days ago. What do you know about it?”

  Van de Greif scowled.

  “Our spineless prime minister announced a partnership with an NGO this month. Something to do with that company, Rubicon. More refugees from Syria and Libya arrived.” He shook his head. “We don’t want them here! We should let them drown!”

  “Brave of you to say so,” said Axelle, meaning none of it.

  “It’s unacceptable!” he retorted.

  “No,” said Verbeke, walking to the van. “It’s perfect.”

  FIFTEEN

  Marc had expected the SR’s “house arrest” to be a dingy room in some ice-cold industrial park on the outskirts of Reykjavík, but it turned out he was way off. Instead, the Icelandic security services put them up in a two-bedroom suite on the top floor of the 1919 Hotel, a decent place near the harbor, a few doors down from the Art Museum. It was positively civilized.

  But as nice as the well-appointed, minimalist rooms were, they were also secure. To make sure the Rubicon operatives stayed put, two plain-clothes members of the Viking Squad stood sentinel out in the corridor, a pair of bearded, unsmiling muscular men, one blond and one dark-haired, whom Lucy had immediately nicknamed “Thor” and “Loki.” If anything, they looked more intimidating out of their tactical gear than they did wearing it.

  The early onset of darkness came rushing up over the sky, and for a while Marc sat on the bed in his room, killing time by hacking the hotel’s network through the wireless keyboard tethered to the suite’s smart TV. It was hard for him to concentrate on getting into the code. He ached all over, and the wounds on his chest were like steel bands constricting his ribcage.

  Lucy appeared at the door to his room, swaddled in a heavy toweling robe.

  “Bathroom’s free,” she told him.

  “All right.”

  He didn’t move, his hands clattering over the keyboard.

  “What are you doing, ordering pizza?”

  Her eyes widened as she saw the wall of computer code on the flat-screen TV.

  Marc shook his head. “I can get into the outer layers of the room service system,” he explained. “Access data on other guests, mess with the minibar settings, but not much else.”

  He blew out a breath and put the keyboard aside.

  “So you could order pizza?” she said.

  In truth, the Icelanders had already provided them with food and a change of clothes. Larsson’s people were being good hosts, and in a way that made the situation even more annoying.

  He shot her a weary look.

  “I was trying to reactivate the suite’s phones, but they’ve disconnected them at the switchboard, same with the internet connection on this floor. We can’t call out, and they’re not about to let us have our gear back.” Marc waved angrily at the door, out in the main part of the suite. “If I had my RFID pinger, I could override the locks in a second.”

  “And then what? Ask the Viking brothers for a dance?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, exasperated. “I can’t stand this. Stuck in here, falling behind.” Marc rose from the bed and winced at a jolt of agony from his chest. “We were on them, Lucy. We were close, and then I screwed it up. Now Verbeke’s vanished and we are back to square one.” He paced to the window. “No, actually, worse than that. Now we know less than we did a day ago.”

  “Hey, I don’t like it either, but that’s the way ops go sometimes. We have to play the hand we’ve been dealt, Dane. And that means waiting it out.” Lucy glanced around. “On the upside, this is by far the best accommodation we’ve had since we got here.”

  “How can you—”

  He didn’t finish his sentence. Another shock of pain constricted Marc’s chest and he choked off the words in a grunt, clasping at his sternum. He unbuttoned his shirt, and to his dismay the T-shirt he was wearing underneath was lined with streaks of blood.

  “You need to change those dressings,” Lucy insisted, switching to what Marc had come to consider her “Army Voice.”

  He half-heartedly complained, but still allowed her to lead him into the suite’s bathroom, where steam from the shower lingered and condensation collected on the picture mirror.

  Fresh, stinging jags bit into him as he cautiously stripped to the waist. Marc sat on the edge of one of the double sinks and let Lucy remove the soiled bandages, piece by piece. The shrapnel wounds were a gooey mess of congealed blood and ripped skin. By rights, Marc should have rested up for a week or two to let them fully heal, but his exertion and exposure to the elements had reopened the cuts. Thoughtfully, the SR had provided replacement dressings and a first aid kit, and together the two of them cleaned and redressed the wounds.

  Marc’s frustration ebbed, and his skin prickled as Lucy ran her dark hands over his chest, setting the bandages into place. He became aware of how close she was to him, and the abrupt intimacy of the moment. Barefoot and wearing nothing beneath the hotel robe, the visible slivers of Lucy’s athletic, ochre-toned body were suddenly very present in Marc’s thoughts, and he swallowed hard, forcing himself to look away from the swell of her chest.

  Lucy was staring right at him, and there was an expression in her eyes that was new to Marc. Something deep and needful, coming at him past that sleepy countenance she routinely wore.

  He was still trying to figure out what it meant when she leaned in and their lips met. The first instant of the unexpected kiss was an electric shock, but that faded, changed.

  Lucy tasted like cool, fresh water. Marc felt himself react, a flood of pleasant heat rushing to the surface of his flesh and down to his groin. His hand moved of its own accord, parting the robe to settle on the bare skin of her hip. Her body was warm, as if it was sun-soaked, still holding the heat from the show
er.

  He balanced on the edge of the embrace, ready to let go, ready to fall all the way into it. But knowing it was happening was enough to break the spell. He drew back, getting a last gasp of her breath in his as he disengaged.

  “What?” Lucy’s whisper was thick and husky. “We nearly froze to death out there on the ice. I want to remind myself I’m alive.”

  “How far are you going with this?” he asked.

  “As far as we want.”

  The ghost of a daring smile played on her lips.

  “I can’t.” He gave a faint shake of the head. “We shouldn’t.”

  Lucy’s smile vanished in a flash.

  “Okay.” She stepped back, flicking a look at his crotch. “Some of you sure seems interested.”

  “It’s not…” He slipped off the edge of the sink, his color rising, fumbling for an explanation. “Not that I wouldn’t…”

  She eyed him, her gaze cooling by the second.

  “You don’t like coffee?”

  “No!” Marc shook his head. “Oh shit, no. That’s not it.” His face creased in a scowl as the frustration came rolling back in. “I don’t want to break … this.” He gestured, taking in the two of them. “You and me … There’s not a lot of people in the world I can trust, Lucy, and I don’t want to complicate this.”

  The words spilled from him, and he knew it was coming out wrong. Keyes was an incredible, striking woman. Marc couldn’t lie to himself and pretend that an attraction between them didn’t exist—but crossing this line would put them in unknown territory.

  He looked away, forcing himself to take a breath.

  No, he told himself, that’s not true. I know exactly where this would lead, if I let it.

  And she knew it too—he could see it in her eyes.

  “You know, technically speaking, my partnership with you has been the longest relationship I’ve had with a guy since high school. Less shitty dates at the mall but more getting shot at.” She sighed. “You and me, that could be fun. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. We’re both adults. We both know where we’re at and what kind of world we live in.”

  “That’s precisely why not,” he said, seizing on her words. “This ‘world’? It took away one person I got close to. I don’t need to go through that again.”

  He wanted to blot it out, but unbidden and unwelcome, Marc’s memory showed him Samantha Green’s face, her crooked and daring smile. In the clammy warmth of the hotel bathroom, he could smell stale canal water and burned flesh all over again.

  “That’s how it is?” Lucy stepped away, reading him like a book. “My mistake, I guess. You can’t go past that moment when you lost Sam. You won’t even take the first step down that road.”

  “Can you blame me?” he said quietly.

  “Yeah,” Lucy shot back. “I can. Because she’s gone, but you keep trying to save her, Marc, and you can’t.”

  “Not this again.”

  Months before, in the immediate aftermath of a near-fatal mission in South Korea, Lucy had called Marc out on his inability to move beyond the brutal events that had drawn him into Rubicon’s orbit. It had put a distance between them that neither wanted to acknowledge, and now that gap was threatening to widen.

  “Just let it go.”

  She wasn’t the type to let anything drop.

  “Before Special Conditions, you were a back-seater. The guy in the goddamn van. But not now. You might be cute, and fast, and you might be whip-smart, but you keep on throwing yourself at every long-shot risk like you have a death wish. And worse still if a woman’s involved!” Lucy shook her head disappointedly. “Do you even know what you’re trying to prove?”

  “You do not…”

  Marc was going to say understand, but then the telephones in the suite began to ring, and he lost his momentum.

  “Saved by the bell,” he muttered, and reached over to snatch up the handset near the toilet. “This is Dane.”

  Lucy walked out and picked up another receiver, as a familiar voice crackled over the line.

  “Marc? It’s me, Assim.” The young Saudi sounded hollow and afraid.

  “How’d you get through here? SR told us the line to this room was cut off.”

  “I had them reconnect us for this. I told them we were Rubicon’s legal department, so they were obliged to let me speak to you.”

  “Good call,” noted Lucy, from the other room.

  “Did you get the translation from the Korean text on Park’s note?”

  Mentally, Marc was already boxing up and partitioning away the unfinished conversation with Lucy, snapping back to the mission.

  “Yes, but that isn’t why I am calling…” Assim gulped audibly. “There’s been a development. Turn on the television. Turn on CNN.”

  “Wait one.”

  Marc hung up the handset in the bathroom and marched back into his bedroom, activating the speakerphone in passing as he walked to the TV. With a few keystrokes on the remote, the flat-screen switched back to normal operating mode and the news channel flickered into view, the sound muted.

  At first, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The streets of a tumbledown, war-scarred city in the Middle East filled the screen. A cluster of ambulances bearing the Red Crescent were parked in the foreground, and behind them Marc could pick out figures in white oversuits struggling with injured people. A chyron ticker at the bottom of the screen said the location was Benghazi in Libya, and Marc tensed. Less than a week ago they had been off the coast of that country as their mission against the Bastion League reached its conclusion.

  “What are we looking at?” said Lucy, standing behind him. “Missile attack? Suicide bomber?”

  “No burned vehicles,” said Marc, shaking his head as he studied the images. “No bomb crater.”

  “The reports from on site are sketchy,” Assim noted, “but they’re saying that there has been a massive outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in the center of the city. The Libyan government has already sent in the military to enforce a quarantine zone. The World Health Organization has been alerted, but hundreds are already confirmed as infected.”

  The images on the screen shifted to a different point of view—footage from another place, shot earlier in the day. The camera moved through a makeshift hospital ward set up in a dingy shopping mall, past lines of people lying on folding camp beds or on the floor. Every face was swollen and sickly, the young and the old struck down by the same awful malaise. Tears of blood streaked their cheeks, and some were racked by brutal coughs. Far too many of the bodies were hidden under shrouds, patches of dull red soaking through the material and pooling on the tiled floor beneath the beds. Medical staff in masks and bloodstained scrubs moved like wraiths among the dead and the dying.

  “Damn,” whispered Lucy.

  The point of view switched again. Now it was out on the street, framing a group of young soldiers in the uniform of the Libyan National Army, clutching their assault rifles as they shouted at a crowd of fearful civilians, forcing them back past a line of barricades. Raw terror was writ large across the faces of the people. The camera panned up to an Mi-17 helicopter loitering overhead. More soldiers were visible on board, aiming heavy machine guns down toward the mob.

  The program switched back to the studio and a pair of presenters, both of whom looked visibly shaken by the horrible sight of the deaths in Benghazi. Inset graphics on screen showed a map of the city and the surrounding area, marked with rings of crimson to indicate the areas that had been isolated.

  “This is Shadow, isn’t it?” said Marc, in a dead voice.

  * * *

  Lucy’s gut twisted at what she saw on the screen, and her throat tightened.

  The grisly manner of death was identical to the horrors she had seen on that miserable winter day when she changed Ji-Yoo Park’s life forever. She knew that if she closed her eyes, she would relive it, recall the blood and the filth and the wretched victims she had witnessed.

  Lucy forced herself to stay in the
moment.

  “There’s nothing else it can be,” she said, answering Marc’s question. “The Lion’s Roar did this. They took the legacy Park spent her life trying to escape and brought it back.”

  “One fact is clear,” said Assim. “CNN, Reuters and the other reputable news services are talking about this incident as if it is a medical crisis. There has been no suggestion that this outbreak is anything other than a natural disaster.”

  “They don’t know?” Lucy took that in, the question tumbling into the churn of her thoughts. “But how would they—if no one takes responsibility for it? It could be months before anyone figures out this was a deliberate act.”

  Marc shook his head, trying to grasp the enormity of it.

  “But why? What possible reason would Verbeke have to strike a city in Libya? And do it in secret?”

  “I am afraid Lucy’s conclusion is probably the correct one,” continued Assim. “The writing on the paper was difficult to decipher, but the first part I was able to determine with a high degree of certainty. It is a location, a street in the An Mursalhq district of Benghazi, near the coast road.”

  “That has to be where they delivered the bioprinters.” Lucy followed the chain of logic, glancing at Marc. “They shipped in what they needed and made the weapon on site, like you said.”

  He rounded on her.

  “Why there?” He almost shouted the question. “The woman on the phone said four days, it hasn’t been four days yet! This makes no sense!”

  “No,” she told him, “it does.”

  In the weeks leading up to the Bastion League takedown, Lucy had been inserted into North Africa under her “Aya” cover, and there she had seen first-hand the realities of daily life in that strife-torn region. Blending into the groups of refugees desperate to escape the chaos, she understood why some would risk so much to flee. These were the people dropping like flies in Benghazi, the people that the Lion’s Roar and their kind considered subhuman and worthless.

  “Verbeke’s hitting his enemies where they live. He and his bullet-head Nazi pals, they hate them. They’re killing them for daring to cross the sea to Europe. This is an attack on innocent civilians, pure and simple.”