Cloak & Ghost: Blood Ring

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “No,” I said, frowning. “But...I think I recognize him. He turns up on the news a lot.”

  “His name is Joseph Sulzer,” said Tarlia. “He is a former man-at-arms, a successful entrepreneur, and he is the current Congressman representing the state of New York’s 9th Congressional District.”

  “A Congressman?” I said. “Oh, so he’s a scumbag.” Tarlia gave me a pointed look, and I had a sudden memory of watching her on video executing the United States Congress during the Conquest. “Well...he’s probably a scumbag, isn’t he? I mean, no one goes into politics because they’re a good person. They go into politics so they can take bribes and lord it over people and grope their secretaries.”

  “Your cynicism is breathtaking in one so young,” said Tarlia.

  “I am a hundred and eighty years old, your Majesty,” I said.

  “By the standards of the Elves, that is young.”

  “I am human, your Majesty. And I was also Kaethran Morvilind’s shadow agent. If that does not teach cynicism, then nothing does.”

  Tarlia laughed at that. Talking to her was always a strange experience. Morvilind had never laughed, and he had always been annoyed when I had questioned him and had sometimes threatened me if I went too far. Tarlia, by contrast, seemed to relish conversation and didn’t mind being questioned, at least in private.

  So long as she wasn’t disrespected, of course. But I suppose a monarch could not tolerate disrespect if she wanted to keep her throne and probably her head.

  “But as it happens, your cynicism is quite correct in this case,” said Tarlia. “Mr. Sulzer is indeed, as you so eloquently put it, a scumbag. He is on his third wife and possibly his eleventh or twelfth mistress. His businesses skirt the law at every available opportunity, and he has friendly connections with New York’s organized crime syndicates.”

  I stared at Sulzer’s image on the screen. The High Queen had two different planets to rule. Why would she care about a corrupt US Congressmen? There had to be thousands of legislators and members of parliament and assemblymen or whatever in the various nations of Earth, and a substantial percentage of them were likely scumbags. Why would she waste her time talking about a relatively small-time crook like Joseph Sulzer?

  Then I figured it out.

  “And in addition to all that,” I said, “he was helping the Rebels, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Tarlia, her voice suddenly cold. “I can forgive many things, Nadia, but the one thing I cannot ever forgive is treachery.” She gestured at the screen. “The Sky Hammer destroyed most of the fighting force of the Rebels and annihilated their sanctuary in Venomhold. But their organization had many logistical branches and financiers scattered throughout the world. Mr. Sulzer was one such financier, and he helped launder money and funnel funds for the Rebels’ needs.”

  “And you want me to kill him?” I said.

  Tarlia blinked. “Of course not. If I wanted him dead, I would do it myself. Or I would contract the job out to your husband’s organization. Besides, I try to follow the local law whenever possible.” I blinked at that, and she scowled. “Don’t look so surprised. If the people were to see me break the law, that would justify breaking the law in the minds of some. Ruling is as much about symbolism, grand gestures, and persuasion as it is about results.” She paused. “Though results are also very important. Which, darling girl, is where you come in.”

  I frowned. “If you don’t want me to kill him...”

  Those eerie blue eyes glittered. “I want you to ruin him.”

  “Ruin him?”

  “Homeland Security has investigated him and been unable to find proof of his misdeeds,” said Tarlia. “You, however, are uniquely suited for spying on him. You’re going to find irrefutable proof of his crimes, and you will turn it over to Homeland Security. He will be tried, found guilty, and executed on a Punishment Day video for treason and Rebel collaboration.” Her eyes glittered the way Morvilind’s sometimes had. “We are going to make a memorable example of Mr. Sulzer. I want the people to see that video and know that not even a wealthy and powerful Congressman can escape justice for his crimes.”

  I didn’t say anything. She was the High Queen, and it sounded like this Joseph Sulzer guy deserved all the misery that was about to fall on him. And I didn’t like the Punishment Day videos. I didn’t like the way some people watched the floggings and the executions every week. I didn’t like how some schools showed them to students to scare them straight. I didn’t like how some people made remixes of the videos with upbeat music and put them on the Internet for laughs.

  “You don’t approve of the Punishment Day videos?” said Tarlia.

  I hesitated. “It’s...not my place to say...”

  “Don’t prevaricate,” said the High Queen, her voice a little harder than before. “If I didn’t want to know your opinion, I wouldn’t ask for it.”

  “I...am not fond of them, your Majesty,” I said.

  “Nor should you be,” said Tarlia. “What would you have me do instead? The pre-Conquest American government maintained a prison system that cost billions of dollars every year, and the inmates frequently brutalized and tortured each other. Would that be preferable?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “A good answer,” said Tarlia. “Here is an unpleasant truth, Nadia. Justice is ugly. People like to think that justice is neat and tidy. The hero shoots the villain at the end of the movie, and everyone lives happily ever after. Justice isn’t like that. Justice is covered in blood and tears.”

  “I know that,” I said, voice quiet.

  Tarlia shrugged. “Of course, newborns are covered in blood and tears as well, and they are just as necessary for the future. If it eases your conscience, consider this. On the day Connor planned to destroy New York with the Sky Hammer, Congressman Sulzer was out of the city. He knew what was going to happen, and he was perfectly willing to abandon both his colleagues and the people of his district to save his own skin. And if left alone, no doubt he will do further harm.”

  My lip twisted. “Nicholas probably promised him a high rank in his new government.”

  “Precisely,” said Tarlia. “So, you have no problems with this assignment?”

  I looked her in the eye. “No. No, I’ll take him down.”

  “Splendid,” said Tarlia. “One advantage of working for me, darling, is that the information sources are so much better. Tythrilandria has a file for you. A great deal of useful information about the soon-to-be former Congressman Sulzer. Take that with you and bring me irrefutable proof of his crimes.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “Good luck, Nadia,” said Tarlia. “You may contact Exeter when you have news. Tell the others to finish their cigarettes and come back inside.”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” I said, turning to go.

  “Oh, and Nadia?”

  I hesitated and turned back. Those cold blue eyes regarded me without blinking.

  “I understand that things sometimes go wrong during this sort of work,” said Tarlia. “If in the process Joseph Sulzer should happen to get killed, I’ll be disappointed…but I’ll understand.”

  I bowed again and left the bus. Exeter, Tyth, the other lawyers, and Royal Guards stood on the sidewalk. I was amused to see that all of them, even Tyth, were smoking. Royal service had to be stressful, though I had never seen an Elf smoke before.

  “Your meeting is finished, Mrs. MacCormac?” said Exeter.

  “Yeah,” I said. “The High Queen said you guys should finish up your cigarettes and get back on the bus.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” said Exeter. He took one last draw on his cigarette, and I was amused to see that he put in in the concrete ashtray instead of just dropping it on the ground. The High Queen meant what she said about following laws.

  “The High Queen said you would have a file for me?” I said to Tyth.

  “Oh!” said Tyth. “Yes, that’s right.” She reached into her coat and produced a fancy leat
her folder, the kind held shut with a string. “Here you go. I hope it’s helpful. Good luck, Nadia.”

  “Thanks, Tyth,” I said.

  She grinned at me, put out her cigarette, and got back onto the bus.

  I headed back to the condo building, and a few minutes later I heard the rumble of the bus’s engine. I glanced back and saw the bus and the two SUVs driving away. I wondered how often the High Queen did this, traveling without fanfare through the human and Elven cities of Earth as she dealt with various crises. Maybe if I kept working for her, I was going to find out.

  I walked back to Riordan’s condo, but there was a new urgency in my stride.

  Despite my nightmare, the lack of sleep, and the task the High Queen had given me, I felt better.

  I was good at this kind of thing, and as dangerous as it could be, I enjoyed the work. I was what Morvilind and Arvalaeon had made me to be. I was a shadow agent, and I was a good one.

  It was time to get to work.

  And if this Joseph Sulzer had really been one of Nicholas Connor’s followers, he was going to regret it.

  ***

  Chapter 2: The Club

  I walked back to Riordan’s condo, left the file on the dining room table, and went to sleep on the couch to clear my head.

  I got a good five hours of sleep, nightmare-free this time, and awoke a little before nine in the morning. To clear my head, I went to Riordan’s gym to get a good workout. Riordan had austere tastes in general, but he hadn’t skimped on his gym, and it had a full collection of free weights and exercise machines. I started with a five-mile run on the treadmill to warm up, and then did weight exercises, focusing on my legs and shoulders. After, I took a nice hot bath and got dressed in black jeans and a gray sweater.

  Then I took an enormous mug of coffee and my laptop to the dining room table, opened the file Tyth had given me, and got to work.

  The High Queen hadn’t been kidding when she said that working for her meant access to better information sources. There was a lot of information about Joseph Sulzer in the file. I could have found it on my own, but it would have taken days of work to gather it all.

  Sulzer was 59 years old, and he was the eldest son of the late Anthony Sulzer, who (surprise, surprise) had been a wealthy businessman and New York state senator with connections to the New York crime syndicate. Joseph Sulzer had served his mandatory six years as a man-at-arms in the forces of Baron Kaldmask of Brooklyn and Duke Mythrender of Manhattan. He had completed his term of service without any disciplinary actions, though he hadn’t reenlisted, and had gone to work for his father’s business empire. And it was a fairly large empire – the Sulzer family owned big chunks of Brooklyn and had controlling shares in several of the national chains that the Elven nobles allowed to operate.

  He had gotten elected to Congress for the first time at the age of 40, and he had kept his seat in all nine elections since. Shortly after his third reelection, old Anthony Sulzer died, and Joseph had taken over the family empire. Homeland Security had investigated him for bribery a half a dozen times, and the list of investigations against his holdings and companies filled most of the file, but thanks to his lawyers and his own native cunning, none of the charges had ever stuck. Sulzer was a terrible landlord, with his apartment buildings just barely adhering to code, and he was notorious for the grim sanitary standards at his restaurants and the sloppy bookkeeping at his retail establishments. The sloppy bookkeeping, one Homeland Security investigator believed, was a cover for embezzlement.

  It was that potential embezzlement that had drawn the eye of the Inquisition. Several very large sums had been moved out of the accounts of Sulzer’s companies and transferred to a shipping company called Expedited Wheels. Expedited Wheels, as it happened, had been one of the companies that Nicholas had used both for laundering money and moving armaments for the Rebels.

  It occurred to me that there was more than enough here for Homeland Security to act on, but with the aftermath of the Rebel defeat and the Day of Return, Homeland Security had too much on its plate.

  Which was why the High Queen had given me this job.

  After about two hours of reading, I got up, stretched, visited the bathroom to empty my bladder of all the coffee I had drunk, and paced the condo, thinking.

  I need irrefutable proof to bring down Sulzer. But that wasn’t the sort of thing he would just leave lying around. He hadn’t survived this long by doing stupid things. Sulzer would keep anything really incriminating close at hand. On his person, in his private office, or secured in a place no one else could access.

  That meant I was going to have to follow him for a while.

  My phone rang. I had left it next to my laptop, and I glanced down at the screen, wondering if Exeter was going to call me with new instructions.

  But it was Riordan’s number.

  I grinned, snatched up the phone, and dropped onto the couch. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Nadia,” said Riordan, his voice deep and quiet. I felt myself smiling. “How’s the condo?”

  “It’s way too damned big,” I said. “Honestly, it’s a good thing you married me because this is too much space for one person. How’s London?”

  “Rainy,” said Riordan. “The same way it always is. The food’s bad, but the tea is good. Our business trip is going well. I think we should be back in a week.”

  “That’s good to hear,” I said. We couldn’t discuss the Shadow Hunters or the High Queen over the phone. There were too many ways to listen in to a phone call. “I’ve got a job from my boss.”

  “Do you?” said Riordan, a note of caution entering his voice. “Not a bad one, I hope.”

  “Nah,” I said. “Just a lot of research, and then some legwork. I’ve done way worse things.”

  “Nadia,” said Riordan, “considering some of the worse things you’ve had to do, that’s not reassuring.”

  I laughed. “I suppose not. But by my standards, this is tame. Hell, by the standards of anyone with my skill set, this is tame. You don’t have to come rushing back from the UK to rescue me.”

  “I could,” said Riordan, “if you needed me to.”

  I felt both touched and a little guilty. Riordan would come if I asked him. I knew how far he would go to help me because I had seen how far he had already gone. And that did make me feel guilty. I mean, we were married, and I knew he took that as seriously as I did, but I wondered if he could have done better than me. I’m a complicated and abrasive and sometimes unstable woman, and maybe he could have married someone better-natured and taller…

  I shoved that thought out of my head.

  “I know,” I said. “But it will be okay. I don’t think this is going to be a complicated job. Besides, I wish I had come with you to London. You could probably have used my help.”

  “We could have,” said Riordan. “Not many people have that skill set of yours, Nadia.”

  “Well, thank God for that.”

  We chatted for another ten minutes. I mentioned that I would have to buy some more coffee, and Riordan told me about this enormous pantry cupboard in the kitchen that I hadn’t realized existed. Then he told me that he loved me, and I told him that I loved him, and we ended the call.

  I let out a long breath and stared at the ceiling for a minute. I really missed him – but the call had made me feel better.

  Back to work, then.

  If I wanted damning evidence on Sulzer, I needed to get it from him. And to get the evidence from him, I would need to follow him, get to know his patterns.

  I sat back at my laptop and started checking some things. Congress wasn’t convened after the extraordinary sessions following the Day of Return, which meant that Sulzer was probably back in New York. I found his official website, which featured his smiling face beaming from the banner graphic on the top of the page and located an official schedule. Congressman Sulzer was indeed in Brooklyn today. Right now, he was touring a new plastics factory. Then he had meetings with various important locals, a
nd at 8 PM tonight, he was going to have an informal fundraiser and party at a dining club and bar charmingly called the Cattleman’s Pride, located in a refurbished warehouse in the old meat-packing district of Brooklyn. It wasn’t one of the restaurants that Sulzer or one of his companies owned, so I assumed it belonged to one of his chief supporters. Or maybe the local syndicate.

  On my laptop, I looked up the club’s address, and then its official website.

  Hoo boy.

  I was greeted by a picture of a waitress wearing a skintight pair of shorts and a belly-bearing T-shirt with a very low neckline, winking at the camera as she held a tray of beers and cardboard cartons of onion rings. A quick perusal of the club’s website revealed that it was a “dining club” that offered a variety of “entertainment and relaxation” experiences for the “discerning gentleman,” which was a polite way of saying that it was a strip club. And if the place had links to the local crime syndicate, that also meant some off-the-books prostitution and drug dealing took place there.

  A classy guy, Congressman Sulzer.

  Still, if he was going to a strip club for a fundraiser, he was probably going to drink a lot, and that meant his guard would be down. That would make for an excellent opportunity to go through his briefcase or to copy the memory card of his cell phone.

  First, I needed to do some reconnaissance.

  I had driven Riordan to the airport, so the vehicle he used in New York was still in the building’s subterranean garage. He preferred a pickup truck, but that was an unsuitable vehicle for Manhattan’s cramped streets, so instead, he kept an SUV here. (The pickup truck was still in Milwaukee, where we had left it before flying to Arizona for our honeymoon.) The SUV was older and unpretentious, which I preferred. It wasn’t the sort of vehicle to draw attention.

  It was about noon by then, so I forced my way through the lunchtime traffic (a quarter of the surface streets were still damaged and closed after the Rebel attack) and made my way across the East River to Brooklyn’s meat-packing district. Or the “historic meat-packing district” as the tourist commercials liked to say. These days it’s mostly fancy retail stores and restaurants, though I think some actual meatpacking plants still operated along the river. Guess it’s easier to move cows up the river in a boat than to drive a trailer through the streets.