Breach

by Eliot Peper

  “Fuck you.”

  “Pixie’s more my type,” said Lowell with a lewd wink. “Plus, I hear bats carry some nasty venereal diseases.”

  “My family office never received payment for the kintsugi,” said Midori. “Does that mean the operation was successful?”

  So that’s where the delivery had originated.

  “From what I hear from my people in Addis, there was quite a kerfuffle at a prominent apartment building not far from the Commonwealth embassy,” said Barasa. “The police reports described a simple burglary, but I hear there may have been a body bag carried out through the back alley later that night. Rosa Flores hasn’t been seen in the gallery since.”

  So Barasa had informers in Addis who had either found witnesses or been near the scene themselves. Definitely a highlight for Emily’s debrief.

  “You killed her?” asked Barend, staring at Lowell incredulously. “Jesus Christ, get me the hell out of here already. What a bunch of amateurs.”

  “I want to make it extremely clear that we can have absolutely no exposure on this,” said Lex, frowning. “No one can know about our involvement, no matter the circumstances.”

  Lex was especially concerned with blowback, another tidbit that could be useful to Diana if they needed to outmaneuver him.

  “My dear Lex,” said Lowell. “There can be no exposure because none of you is involved in anything. You’re simply attending the party to end all parties”—Freja winced—“along with many other notables, I might add. Who could possibly fault you for that?”

  “Common-fucking-wealth,” said Jason in a tone that made Emily wonder where he might have built luxury bunkers for himself to wait out the apocalypse.

  “Who, even if they were willing to violate the sanctity of their precious feed, which would be a PR nightmare for them and a boon for us, would see exactly nothing because just like this conversation, this lovely little home addition never happened,” said Lowell. “Relax, loosen up, enjoy each other’s company.”

  Jason looked like he was about to fall on Lowell with his gauntleted fists, but Nisanur held up a hand.

  “Lowell,” she said with the slightest hint of a smile. “We are all so very delighted to attend your soirée. And I’m sure you can understand how eager we are to hear the update you must be dying to share. Freja has refused all our entreaties for information. Candidly, I don’t think she wants to steal your thunder. But now that we are finally graced with your presence, would you care to enlighten us?”

  “Ahh,” said Lowell, bending over to plant a kiss on Nisanur’s hand and meeting her condescension with magnanimity. “I knew that there must be someone with manners in this band of rapscallions. Welcome one and all to my humble abode. I hope you find the refreshments refreshing and the hospitality hospitable. If you ever find yourself at a loss for carnal delight, don’t you dare hesitate to raise your hand. Here at the Ranch, we are the animals.”

  Freja narrowed her eyes.

  “Aaaaand of course you want to hear the update,” said Lowell, plucking a fresh tequila off a passing tray and taking a swig. “I have good news, and bad news. If I ever write a business book, it’s going to be titled Shit Sandwiches Taste Like Shit. Y’all have too much experience to want to be coddled, so I’ll give the bad news to you straight. The kidnapping was a bust.”

  Midori blew air out through her nose. Jason shook his head in disgust. The rest took the news without affect. Emily followed Lowell’s lead and snagged a tequila for herself. She needed something to do with her hands while she ignored the disdainful looks from the assembled crowd that saw Pixie for exactly what she was: a vain indulgence.

  “Who could have guessed that an art dealer could have bested seasoned pros, right? Barasa is correct. One of our contractors left in a body bag. The other survived but sustained severe injuries. The upshot is that we don’t have Rosa. Without her, we don’t have leverage over Javier. Without leverage over Javier, well, even Jason is bright enough to fill in the blanks.”

  “Jason and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things,” said Barend coolly. “But he isn’t the only one who’s concerned. We aren’t going to stand around and let Commonwealth hijack our capital just because you can’t execute a basic op. I should have had our family do this in-house. We have people with actual experience.”

  Barasa turned down his lips in an inverse smile. “Forgive me, but do you mean experience sparking international scandals? Chile? Nepal? Geneva? Unless I’m wildly misinformed, the House of Orange has a . . . checkered history running covert-action projects.”

  Jason snorted. Emily made a mental note to have Diana cross-check for rumors of botched operations in those locales and link them to the Dutch royals.

  “Right,” said Barend. “Ever wonder what operations you might not have heard about? Or whether having a reputation for sloppiness might cause others to underestimate your capabilities? Your approach seems to be to not even bother to try anything clandestine out of sheer incompetence. That matador costume is apt—you’re a bull in a geopolitical china shop.”

  “The matador kills the bull,” said Barasa. “But maybe you need your intelligence officers to clear that one up for you.”

  “Hey.” Lowell raised a hand to stop Barend’s response. “Cool it, all of you. Do you remember what I said on Camiguin?” He looked around the room, making eye contact with each of them. “I told you that my goal with this project is to earn your trust. Rachel is dying. Change is coming. Sabotaging Javier’s plan is only step one. Now, does failure earn anyone’s trust? I don’t think so. Trust is based on one thing and one thing only.” He raised an index finger. “Results.”

  Lowell paused, letting tension build as the burble of the stream filled the space. Emily was as on edge as the rest of them. Any clues to Lowell’s next moves would be the intel jackpot they’d need to subvert his operation.

  “Which brings us to the first bit of good news,” he said with a wide grin. “And our guest of honor.”

  At that precise moment, something cold and hard touched the back of Emily’s head. She froze, quelling her immediate instinct to duck and disarm. Scenarios trampled through her mind like a herd of bison, but no matter what variables she considered, she couldn’t outmaneuver a point-blank bullet.

  “Don’t even try,” said a voice from behind her. “We’re the real deal, not Addis thugs. Do anything except for exactly what I tell you to do, and you get a soft point to the skull. Not even the baddest martial arts motherfucker can out-ninja a gun, and even if you somehow pull some voodoo shit on me, my colleagues have multiple lines of fire on you. This is the part where if I were an amateur, I’d say something like capisce. But I’m not an amateur, am I?”

  Silence. All eyes were locked on her with rapt attention. Emily had expected a violent death, but never summary execution.

  “Good girl. All right, I’m going to step back, and you’re going to get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head. Easy, now. That’s it.”

  Emily followed the instructions slowly and carefully. The sand was cool and coarse. Her mind was strangely empty.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Lowell. “I give you . . . Pixie.”

  Rizal would have envied Lowell’s dramatic flair.

  CHAPTER 29

  Lowell rubbed his hands together, and tiny pieces of glitter sparkled as they wafted away.

  “Pixie, it turns out, is a woman of many talents.” Lowell was playing the storyteller, drumming up his act. “Performing a coup de grâce with a champagne flute was just the flashy opening act. She’s also adept at spilling baijiu, fucking like a demon, murdering security contractors, and snitching. I mean, she even came here voluntarily hoping to dig up more dirt.” He blew Emily a kiss. “She’s the whole package, I’m telling you.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” said Jason.

  Lowell ignored him. “She nearly decapitated one of the contractors with a kitchen cleaver and gutted his partner with a chef’s k
nife. The apartment looked like a scene straight out of those classic Tarantino films. Serious carnage. The surviving idiot used the sedative intended for Rosa to dull his own pain, and when he came out of it, he went into shock. We had to do a full interrogation just to work out what really happened, but he had managed to record a snippet in his feed, and boy was I surprised when our favorite Camiguin street fighter made a cameo. It took me a hot minute to recognize her without the makeup, but the way she aced those two dudes, who else could it be? So she snatches Rosa and manages to evade our dumbass support team. Freja’s people are turning Camiguin upside down, and Pixie seems to have mysteriously disappeared. Doesn’t visit her apartment, doesn’t go to the gym, nothing. When we ask the fight-club owner, Rizal, about her, he gets all cagey. Meanwhile our analysts are reverse engineering feed transport data and give us a high-confidence estimate that Rosa and, now we’re pretty darn sure, Pixie hop on a private plane to Javier’s island off the coast of Washington State. Then—this is a little sketchier because Seattle’s a hub—someone, probably Pixie and Javier, put some flowers in their hair and take a trip down to, yes, you guessed it, San Francisco to meet some gentle people there.”

  Lowell whistled the song’s chorus, and Freja winced.

  “But my favorite part has to be that this backstabbing little cunt of a forest nymph has cojones ginormous enough to play hard to get with me and then actually accept the invitation to join us here tonight.” He raised both hands, fingers splayed. “Ahh, it’s just so good. I wish I had thought to set us up with a live band down here so we could have a drumroll.”

  Lex’s face was ashen. “But Pixie was there on Camiguin,” he said with an air of dawning realization. Emily felt his horrified eyes on her. “She’s seen our faces. Are you telling us that Commonwealth knows about our involvement?”

  “You bet,” said Lowell in a chipper voice. “But before you suffer a nervous breakdown, remember that this is good for us.”

  Barend rubbed his eyes as if he could wipe away this revelation. “You’re insane,” he said.

  Lowell barked a laugh. “Well, I can’t argue with you there. But those of you having panic attacks should be wondering why the smarter half of this prestigious company don’t appear to be spiraling down into wormholes of self-pity.”

  Everyone looked at everyone else.

  “Well?” asked Lowell.

  Nisanur stroked her feathers. “My own people inside Commonwealth are reporting that the progressive-membership initiative has been delayed indefinitely. They don’t know the details, but apparently there is friction on the board.”

  “Friction.” Lowell let the word roll around in his mouth, relishing it. “My fellow collaborators, friction is exactly what we set out to create. That’s the beauty of our position. We don’t need decisive action in our favor, we just need to jam the gears. Having Rosa in hand would do just that, but it turns out that whispers of conspiracy can sow discord just as effectively. Nisanur, my dear, did your ever-so-well-informed contacts happen to mention anything about the state of Rachel’s health?”

  Nisanur shrugged. “She’s dying. Hard to know when, but it’s coming.”

  “Death comes for us all in the end,” said Lowell. “And in Rachel’s case, discord in her inner circle can be cultivated. When it’s time for succession, those fault lines will crack Commonwealth apart at its foundations, and we’ll be there to patch things up and take the reins. And with our capital and Commonwealth’s infrastructure, who’s going to stop us? That’s the real prize. Not a temporary reprieve. A global empire. We don’t play to draw, we play to win.”

  “But Commonwealth knows our identities,” said Lex. “They can pursue retribution, legal action, who knows what else.”

  “So can we,” said Lowell. “Our capital doesn’t respect borders any more than the feed does. If they want to wrestle, let ’em get muddy.”

  “Fuck this,” said Jason, throwing up his hands. “I’m out. This is a goddamn train wreck.”

  “I don’t think you can back out now,” said Midori thoughtfully. “None of us can. They know who we are and what we were planning. They’re not going to forgive or forget. That means we’re committed to this path, to each other.” She looked up. “To Lowell.”

  Lowell bowed. “Lines in the sand, baby. I said my goal was to earn your trust. Would you really trust anyone who gave you a choice in the matter?”

  Barend swore under his breath.

  Barasa shrugged. “To be fair, he did promise results.”

  CHAPTER 30

  “How about we consecrate this partnership with blood?” asked Lowell brightly. “Don’t worry, not your own. The gods only know what hematological contagion we’d pick up from Jason. I’m talking about our guest of honor.”

  The weight of everyone’s gaze brought Emily back to herself. Grains of sand pricked her knees. She was a spy turned sacrificial lamb. Or an unsuspecting double agent? She almost laughed. She’d managed to rescue Rosa and play right into Lowell’s hands at the same time.

  Friction.

  She remembered the fraught debate in Analog. Whoever Nisanur’s spies were, their intel was good. By sharing her story, Emily had doomed Javier’s initiative and underwritten Lowell’s ascension. She couldn’t have left Rosa unprotected. She couldn’t have avoided telling Javier the truth. She couldn’t have avoided winding up in this hellish cavern.

  Death comes for us all in the end.

  So this was how death would come for her. A 9 mm to the back of the head. Blood leaking out onto the sand. Body cremated and disposed of with grim professionalism. She could almost see the glint on the reaper’s scythe. This had been what she had wanted, what she had chased all those years on Camiguin. Too ashamed to face her friends, too cowardly for suicide, she’d stepped into the ring again and again, circling closer and closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. She had sought to wash away her sins with pain, but death was the only cure for her self-hatred. That’s why she always kept her memento mori close at hand. She saw the world through lenses that were proof of her mortality, a hair’s breadth from sweet relief.

  “Pixie, Pixie, Pixie,” said Lowell. “I really wish we had gotten to know each other better. You’re definitely my kind o’ gal. A total mindfuck. You asked for a sacrifice and, to be perfectly honest, I never had much dignity to lose in the first place, so I figured I’d just make one of you instead. Oh, and you’re absolutely right about the fact that the more you have to lose, the better it feels to win. I’m feeling like hot shit at the moment.”

  Now that she knelt on the threshold, Emily no longer wanted to face what lay beyond. A month ago, a year ago, a decade ago, with nothing to live for but abnegation, she would have welcomed oblivion. But now . . . The weight of Rosa’s head on her shoulder as the stars wheeled above them. The dry warmth of Javier’s hand. The quiet glow of Dag’s contentment. The bewildered look on Rizal’s face. Even Nell’s reassuring touch. These bittersweet threads bound her to the living, bound her to life itself.

  For the first time in thirteen years, Emily did not want to die.

  “Please,” she said, her voice raw and husky. “Please.”

  It was all she could manage.

  Lowell sucked his teeth.

  “Eeesh,” he said, grimacing. “Begging, really? Honestly, I really didn’t see that one coming. It doesn’t suit you. Maybe you’re not my type after all. Damn shame.”

  Emily shifted her gaze to the tuxedoed guards, but the eyes staring down the matte-black barrels were hard and unforgiving jewels mounted in silver filigree. The stream babbled. The cave smelled of minerals and primeval stone. She was a flame rekindled, only to be snuffed back out.

  “Unwittingly or not, Pixie here has done us all a favor,” said Lowell. “And this is a party, after all. So I’m going to let her go out with more of a bang than a bang. It’s only fair, and it’s a hell of a lot more fun.” He waggled a finger. “Let no one call me ungrateful.”

  Lowell clapped three tim
es, and one of the security goons took off up the stairs.

  “Ten years ago, something odd happened on one of my Arctic oil platforms,” said Lowell. “This was after my fall from grace, after Commonwealth destroyed my fossil fuels business. As Midori alluded to on Camiguin, my net worth was shedding digits like a sick dog, and I was doing what I could to pick up the scraps. One of those scraps was an ex-lobbyist of mine who’d betrayed me and helped Rachel screw me over. I had him detained, and we were holding him on one of those abandoned oil platforms for safekeeping. Nobody’s around to ask questions in that frigid wasteland, right? Well, apparently someone was. Long story short, they drugged the guards and made off with my lobbyist. And when I say drugged, I mean drugged. No, not poison. This was a high-dose psychedelic aerosol. Probably quite a lot of fun under the right circumstances. But these were not the right circumstances. Suddenly the only people running around on the rig were a bunch of assault rifle–toting paranoid ex–special forces motherfuckers tripping balls harder than any human has tripped before. The feed footage is . . . out of this world. Let’s just say that if we ever wanted to produce a true-crime horror serial, we’d have prime source material. Only one of these unwilling psychonauts made it out alive, and he’s never been the same since.”

  Lowell’s face brightened. “Ahh, speak of the devil, and I mean that quite literally. Vasilios, how kind of you to join us this fine evening.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Vasilios. Emily’s mind raced. She recognized the name from somewhere, but where? It had been on Camiguin, maybe even in the fight club. That was it—Rizal had been chattering about a fighter on the international circuit. People called him the Greek, and he’d earned a vicious reputation. Emily hadn’t paid much attention. She didn’t follow the rankings because she didn’t care about her own. She never traveled to fight. She was in hiding—fame was the last thing she wanted. That was why she only fought the low-level grunts like Niko who made their way to Rizal’s. Emily’s distaste for celebrity was probably how she’d survived as long as she had given her relative age and inexperience.