by Jason Kasper
“So you’re a strategist, are you? Then tell me, how would you kill the Handler?”
I palmed my beard around my chin, delivering the response I’d contemplated many times in the past six weeks of isolation. “Poison.”
“The Handler has state-of-the-art medical supplies and a doctor on standby capable of treating the most severe and fatal of injuries, as a further prevention against assassination.” She managed a tight smile, continuing, “Therefore, your poison must not only be exotic enough to bypass the Handler’s cutting-edge security screening but also potent enough to cause irreversible death. You have any substance like that on hand?”
“No, but if you created a replica truck and faked my death with a body double, then you’ve got the means.”
“Assuming we came into possession of such a substance, how would you administer it?” She watched me closely, though I couldn’t tell if she was trying to determine whether I was a plaything, an adversary, or both.
“At the Executive Karoga. On the night I went, there would have been plenty of time to place something in the pot.”
“Wrong. The food is safeguarded on its way to and from the dining site, the bodyguards are present at all times, and the meal is shared, so you’ve just killed the entire executive staff needed to run operations. Next?”
“Then we hit him while he’s alone in his office. Remotely.”
“Brilliant. How?”
“Explosives.”
She cringed, giving a sad shake of her head. “The security screenings will detect the faintest trace of explosive long before it reaches the perimeter wall, much less his building. And since the Organization is involved in every facility that manufactures substances for high-level assassinations, trust that his security is on the very cutting edge of what’s available. But,” she added in an upbeat tone, “you’re on the right track with doing it remotely. Did you notice the red pipes on his office ceiling?”
I thought back to my view from the chair facing his desk, where I had observed the crimson cylinder snaking from corner to corner above.
“Yes.” I nodded. “A water or foam system? To extinguish fires in case anyone tries to kill him that way?”
“The pipes aren’t there to extinguish a fire; they’re there to ensure it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Instead of building a vault for his sensitive information, he built a vault around his office.” Her pitch was one of admiration, underscoring a begrudging reverence of this unconventional security measure. “Should the Mist Palace ever be attacked, the office serves as his safe room. And if the fort is overrun, the Handler can incinerate his office—and himself—with the touch of an eight-digit code.”
“Then we can hack it. Burn him alive while he’s inside.”
“The code is known only to him and his personal bodyguard.”
“So we turn Racegun into an ally.”
She seemed aggravated by my suggestion. “He has absolute allegiance to the office. It’s why he was chosen.”
“There has to be a way to turn him. Especially for a woman of your…abilities.”
“Don’t get cute. You don’t understand the loyalty this organization breeds. It is beyond a cult.”
“I got that impression by their use of the word ‘vicar.’” I drummed my fingers against one leg, trying to think. “What about hitting the Handler while he’s outside his building?”
“The grounds are monitored by motion sensors and thermal cameras. There’s also a curfew at the Mist Palace, and the Handler only travels outside when it’s in effect. And when he moves, his personal security detail is augmented by an exterior transport team armed with assault rifles.”
“Then where is he both unaccompanied and outside his office?”
“There is only one place the Handler or Parvaneh ventures alone, free from the immediate presence of guards.”
“Where?”
Sage shook her head, responding firmly, “You’re the self-proclaimed strategist, David. You tell me.”
I glanced about the cabin, mind flipping through what little I’d seen of the Mist Palace as I searched for the answer.
“The garden,” I said abruptly. “The fortress within a fortress that I saw after coming back from Rio—isolated by a wall, with barbed wire on top and guards at the entrance.”
“Precisely.” She seemed surprised that I guessed correctly. “But the garden perimeter is too heavily guarded. You’re looking for a simpler solution to assassinate him.”
“Let’s see,” I began, thoughtfully tapping my beard with an index finger, “vast bodyguard force with unquestionable loyalty, a curfew, advanced chemical sensors that can detect poison and explosives… Whatever the answer is, I wouldn’t describe it as ‘simple.’”
Sage shrugged unapologetically. “Simple doesn’t mean cheap, nor easy to acquire.”
“So it’s expensive and difficult to acquire—what’s your plan to overcome that?”
“I can manage the expense. The difficulty to acquire…well, David, that’s where you come in.”
“You need a shooter.”
“I might,” she admitted, clenching her jaw as if troubled by this potential requirement. “More immediately, I need someone with your psychological profile, screened for the ability to conduct violence and maintain secrets, which the Outfit has well established from your selection process. Further, you have the motivation to kill the Handler at all costs—which, by definition, means the Handler is aware of you and therefore safeguarded against your best efforts. As you found out after Rio.”
“Unless the Handler thinks I’m dead.”
“Which is why I went to great risk to feign your execution.”
I drew a breath and supplied, “And now you need me to recover something.”
“When it’s ready.”
“What is it?”
“An element integral to the assassination attempt. It’s not ready yet, but when it is, I’ll need you prepared to do everything I say.”
My voice swelled with assurance. “If it will free Ian, there’s nothing that will stop me.”
“Good,” she said, checking her watch, “because I have to go. My absence can’t be noted for too long. I’ll never be fully beyond suspicion.”
“Until the Handler’s dead.”
“Until the Handler’s dead,” she agreed.
“Who will take the throne when he’s gone, and what do you get out of this?”
She ignored my question. “I’ll be back as soon as the item is ready for you to recover. If that takes longer than a month, I’ll come by to bring you some provisions and check on your sanity.”
I briefly wondered how much of what she had told me was true, then said, “Come back to me soon, Sage. It gets lonely out here.”
Her body stiffened at this comment, but she said nothing as she slipped out the door, casting me a final rearward glance that found my eyes locked on her in quiet desperation.
6
Three Months in Isolation
May 12, 2009
By the arrival of my birthday I was a professional camper.
In contrast to my early weeks at the cabin, the white-noise hum of my depression had subsided while in the wilderness. I now knew my surroundings from long hikes that ranged farther and farther from the cabin, gradually extending so far that I pushed the bounds of my ability to return by nightfall. These trips yielded no traces of human presence beyond the ATV trail continuing much farther than I could cover on foot. Instead I was met with only elk sightings, bear scat, or bald eagles and the occasional osprey watching me from treetop perches or while soaring between blanketed patches of mist. Once I crossed cougar tracks by a streambed, the muddy impressions betraying the passage of a mother and two cubs.
Now, my twenty-sixth birthday was commemorated with a dinner little different than any other I’d had in the mountains: a ration supplemented with a two-pound trout I’d caught while stream fishing that afternoon.
I was preparing my food, the sun setting over the Cascades, when I heard the faint noise of Sage’s ATV. By the time I’d left the cabin she was already stopping her vehicle outside, and I approached to unstrap the supply boxes as she killed the engine.
I watched the movement of her body as she dismounted the vehicle. After a month in the wilderness, any woman with a slightly feminine physique would have looked incredible. But after crossing my hundredth day in isolation—an event that transpired the previous morning—a road cone would have looked pretty good.
“Is it time?” I asked, sliding my gaze up the curves of her figure to meet her stare.
“Our item isn’t ready yet—we must continue to be patient, David.” She stopped abruptly, her liquid gray eyes scanning mine. “You’re looking much healthier. Vibrant, even.”
She was right, I knew. After a few weeks out of my sling, I was taking tentative jogs on flat ground. After a month, I was able to execute uphill scrambles to my mountaintop lake. By now, I could even swing the heavy ax to chop firewood with relative ease.
“Bonding with nature, I suppose.” I hefted a stack of boxes and transferred them into the cabin. Once inside, she unslung her backpack and handed me two photographs from within.
“Do you recognize these two, David?”
I scanned the faces in the photos. One was a nerdy-looking man, the other a woman with long frumpy hair who could have passed for a librarian.
“How could I forget? They were waiting when I returned from Somalia.”
“Did you learn what was in the case that the Handler sent you there to get?”
“A billet of highly enriched uranium. Jais said it was sold in Ukraine but went missing as it crossed the Black Sea. It came up for sale in the black market of Yemen just before our mission.”
“All correct. And these two”—she took the photographs back from me, replacing them in her bag—“are nuclear engineers. They were present to take control of the case and verify its contents.”
“So?”
Setting her backpack on the floor, she hoisted herself atop the stack of boxed rations, stretching her long legs from the ATV ride. “They were flown to the Mist Palace last week.”
“Jais said the Handler was buying the uranium to get it off the black market. You’re telling me he’s turned it into a weapon?”
“He’s turned it into a potentially valuable resource for the war in South America, but he’s refusing to employ it. And the Organization loses legitimacy with each day that passes without defeating the opposition, particularly when any possible configuration of players could be uniting to defeat us.”
Weighing her words in my mind, I took a seat on the boxes opposite her. “Killing the Handler will help the opposition to succeed, not suppress them.”
“Wrong,” she corrected. “The Handler is growing soft. Listening to prophecies, failing to retaliate properly when his daughter was almost killed in Brazil. The person taking power will be more suited to deal with insurrection than the Handler is. The new leader will restore order, starting with a global message that will assure the Organization’s legitimacy for another century.”
I found myself shaking my head in disbelief. “Who is more brutal than the Handler?”
She smiled, neatly crossing her arms under her breasts. “That’s not your concern at present.”
“So what happens to Parvaneh when your assassination plot occurs?”
“Don’t get sentimental. She lacks the resolution to carry out the position she seeks to inherit.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I persisted.
Sage nearly rolled her eyes at me. “As much as I would love to eliminate that snowflake altogether, we can’t do so without being overrun with retaliatory assassination attempts. We’ll employ Parvaneh in the modernization efforts befitting the legitimacy she so desperately seeks to create, and she in turn has no choice but to maintain the reputation of the Organization.” She breathed a sharp sigh of resignation. “And I must admit, she has the makings of a fine negotiator. You can never have too many of those on your side in this business.”
“If you succeed,” I began, examining the calluses on my right palm, “I want my role in her father’s death to be kept secret from her. I’ve hurt Parvaneh enough. Just free Ian, send me to the Complex, and keep me in combat.” I met Sage’s gray eyes, framed by long lashes that required no makeup to accentuate her beauty. “Deal?”
“Deal,” she agreed without hesitation. Then she lowered her voice and continued, “But take the ‘if’ out of this plot—I don’t want to hear you express doubt ever again.”
“Let’s face it: even if you succeed in assassinating the Handler, you’re probably going to be killed. There are too many bodyguards for anyone to get close enough and then survive.”
“Bodyguards protect the Handler’s seat, not the individual. If an assassin bypasses their efforts, they’ll protect the victor.”
I almost laughed at this revelation. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“To the contrary—since the Organization’s inception, power has changed hands many times in exactly this way. Including by the current Handler.”
“But what if someone unqualified succeeds?” I countered. “The Organization would collapse.”
Sage’s critical glance indicated I’d missed some vital element that explained this seeming contradiction. “No, David. Order would soon be restored by another assassination conspiracy.”
I leaned forward on my box, nodding slowly. “So that’s the reasoning behind the insane level of security at the Mist Palace…”
“Yes.”
“…the handcuffs, blacked-out goggles, bodyguards stationed all over the compound…they’re not worried about an outside attack. They’re worried about an inside one.”
“Exactly.” She flashed me a wide smile, her approval eliciting a warm rush of emotion within me. “Welcome to the arena, David. Why did you think the Handler is never referred to by a birth name? Or seen by anyone outside the highest levels of power?”
I shrugged. “I assumed it was because he’s a giant asshole.”
“It’s to maintain international legitimacy. The Organization has eclipsed every barrier of language and culture to unify a global network of criminal groups. That alone requires a single organization at the top that observes no borders, no criminal fealty other than its own.” Then she shook her head solemnly and concluded, “No kingpin or cartel leader is above the Handler, whoever that may be at the time.”
“But that criminal network dissolves into chaos if the Handler’s position is known to be compromised.”
“Not just the criminal network, David, but the legal one.”
I scrutinized her face for a possible explanation. “What’s legal about any of this?”
“Only the Organization’s investors—legitimate executives and politicians. The Organization offers a fully laundered return on their investment at rates that, like the cocaine trade, transcend all economies of scale.”
“I wasn’t under the impression that major crime moguls were hurting on cash in the first place.”
“The Handler doesn’t need their cash,” Sage answered pointedly, “he needs their knowledge. Investors are chosen for their ability to inform us on government initiatives that will affect criminal endeavors—infrastructure, railways, maritime routes, trade agreements, even legislation that will take years to impact illegal operations.”
“So that’s how the Organization stays ahead of the game, how they’ve never been dismantled…”
“By incentivizing industry conversion to things like synthetic drugs, appeasing policymakers, and negotiating between politicians and criminal groups worldwide. Whoever occupies the Handler’s throne pulls the strings to order which loads of narcotics will be interdicted, what kingpin will be arrested, and which corrupt politicians will be exposed, all while keeping the real players on both sides of the legality fence safe.”
My thoughts swept back to the Ha
ndler’s daughter, unable to reconcile her perceived role in the dark underworld she stood to inherit. “I don’t understand how Parvaneh believed she could ever legitimize any of that. On our way back from Brazil, she told me that once she took over, she’d use her power to help people.”
“The Organization exploits the fracture lines of weak governance—oppressive regimes, corrupt intelligence agencies, under-administered regions. In poverty-stricken areas, the network can provide economic prosperity—legitimate jobs in shadow corporations, manufacturing facilities run legitimately to provide money laundering and a front for the movement of illicit products. You understand now?”
“No, I don’t. Because if that’s true, why couldn’t Parvaneh succeed in legitimizing the Organization, at least partially?”
Sage seemed frustrated at my inability to grasp her point. “Because the ensuing loss of profit would upset the wrong people. She’d be assassinated, and order restored. And this fairy tale inside her mind is one of many reasons that she is an unsuitable successor.”
“So why do you want the Handler dead—is it just about power?”
“Why do you want him dead, David?”
“For enslaving Ian.”
She tilted her head, her tone unrepentant. “That’s the consequence of Ian’s assassination attempt. Ian went head-to-head, and he lost. Fair play. Why else do you hate the Handler?”
“He killed my entire mercenary team,” I pointed out. “And Karma.”
“Which was an elegant solution.”
I shot off the box, rising to my full standing height over her. “What does that mean?”
“Langley is the Handler’s granddaughter. Langley’s father was Roshan.”
My pulse quickened as I shot back, “Boss’s team thought that—”
“It doesn’t matter what they thought,” she began, completely unfazed by my sudden change in disposition, “it matters what they did. And they killed Roshan. The Handler didn’t find that out until your team was close to eliminating his domestic opposition element, the Five Heads. The Handler was, as always, facing a wide bevy of internal and external threats to his reign.”
