“Harry was in a deep state of shock,” said Church. “He had a deep laceration on his scalp and some cranial damage consistent with having tried to shoot himself in the head at the wrong angle. The bullet crazed him and rendered him unconscious.”
“So, what’s that? Guilt? Remorse?”
“I think it may be something more relevant to this case, Captain. Please take your emotions out of gear for a moment and think it through. Harry, who we all trust, shot Violin during a mission to find one of the books Prospero Bell said were relevant to the creation of a God Machine. He then turned his gun on himself. What does that sound like?”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“Lilith has dispatched a team to find Ohan. I imagine they will,” he said. “They are highly motivated, as you might imagine. And Lilith herself is coming here, because the connection to what’s happening in America is undeniable.”
“Was there a God Machine there in the citadel?”
“None that was found,” said Church, “but many of the underground vaults have collapsed in. However, they did find the book. And the Arklight team also found some pieces of green crystal.”
“So?”
“Junie insists that is important. She’ll brief you.”
Before I could ask more, the line went dead. The plane carved a hole in the air on its way to Brooklyn.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
DAYS INN
LISBON, OHIO
Valen checked into an inexpensive motel, slipped out to buy takeout Chinese food, bottled water, and a bottle of vodka. He ate the food, washed it down with a third of the vodka, and spent half the night throwing up.
His cell phone rang eight times. All from blocked numbers. Gadyuka, probably going crazy wondering what was happening to him. She probably had a tracking device in his car, but his not answering the calls had to piss her off.
Fine.
He tried to go back to bed, got sick again, and eventually fell asleep on the floor of the bathroom, curled up between the toilet and the tub.
In the morning he woke, showered for nearly an hour, standing under the spray, scrubbing at his skin until it was red and raw, rinsing.
Weeping.
The death toll kept rising. Collateral damage. The unfortunate civilian casualties of any war.
He still had a long way to drive. And then …
Millions would die.
Millions.
Thinking that made him vomit again, though by then all that was in his stomach was half a cup of water.
He dropped onto his knees in the tub and pounded the porcelain until his hands began to swell.
“My God,” he whispered. “My God.”
An hour later he was back on the road. Heading west.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
OVER PENNSYLVANIA AIRSPACE
I never got to Brooklyn.
The pilot came back to tell me that he’d been ordered to land at a private airfield in Eastern Pennsylvania.
“Why?” I demanded.
“Doc Holliday wants me to activate an ORB for you,” said the captain. “Doc said the team has intelligence for you.”
“Where are we heading?”
“Vancouver,” he said. “That’s all I know.”
He returned to the cabin and locked himself in. Immediately the lights dimmed and a series of two hundred small lights blinked on, which made me feel like I was floating in outer space. This was one of Doc Holliday’s favorite inventions, and rumor has it that she’d cooked up the first prototype while in high school and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was her attempt to create a holodeck, where people could step into another place that looked entirely real, but which was illusion. Unlike in the Star Trek version, I couldn’t pick up the objects I saw. This was the twenty-first century, after all. But the 3-D holography was absolutely state of the art. It’s like wearing virtual reality glasses except that you aren’t wearing any goggles. The cabin of the jet became a conference room. Just like that. The name, ORB, means “Operational Resource Bay,” and personally I think the acronym came first and they retrofitted it because it sounded cool. This is teleconferencing taken to a weird new level.
The ORB flared for a moment and there was Doc Holliday in all her glory. Beneath the white coat she wore boot-cut jeans that looked to be a thousand years old and a silk blouse that was the same unnatural Maxfield Parrish sky blue as her eyes. Shocking red lipstick, too much eyeliner, and mountains of blond curls. I do not know how much of her is real or comes from surgery, makeup, and special effects; and I don’t much care. Doc Holliday looked exactly like she wanted to look, and was therefore the perfect example of herself.
“Howdy, Cowboy,” she said. If you tried to take the temperature of the day based on her exuberance and radiance you’d think all was right with the world and we’d all just stepped into the last, happy minutes of a Disney film filled with songbirds and bunnies. The truth is that she is at her happiest when the door to hell has fallen off its hinges and the demons are running wild. “Well, hoss, they did warn me that weird clings to you like flies on tree sap. What you’re not is boring.”
“Thanks?” I said.
“How’s your Russian?”
“Good enough,” I said. “Why?”
“’Cause you’ve won an all-expenses-paid, fun-filled trip to sunny Moscow.”
Doc raised a small clicker, pressed it, and suddenly Nikki Bloom was in the ORB with us. Not sure you could find anyone who is a more startling contrast to Doc. Nikki is a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, which made her a foot shorter than the scientist. She is built on a delicate frame and the only thing that seems to give her mass is a lot of wavy black hair. She wears shapeless sweatshirts without logos, and nondescript pants. Her one nod to color are Keds, which she has in every color they make. Currently, orange plaid.
“Um … hi…,” she said meekly.
“Oh, come on now, don’t be shy, sugar-lumps,” laughed Doc. “Tell Joe what you found, you being so gol-durned clever and all.”
Nikki, now the color of a ripe tomato, cleared her throat and said, “I, um, have been going over the keywords you gave me, but I also added a bunch of my own, and I’ve been getting a lot of different kinds of hits. We’re putting together a profile on this Valen Oruraka, aka Oleg Sokolov. We think he is some kind of Russian agent.”
“Kind of figured that, Niks,” I said.
“No, I mean something special. Do you know anything about the Novyy Sovetskiy?”
“Sure,” I said. “The New Soviet. It’s a fringe group that thinks they can rebuild the Communist Party in Russia. They’ve been fumbling around for years, but no one’s been taking them very seriously. Why?”
“We’ve unlocked some of his e-mails sent from a server when he was at MIT, and there’s loads of political stuff on there. Long, rambling e-mails with friends back in Russia about how Stalin derailed the Communist ideal and corrupted it, and how a new pure Party would save Russia from itself.”
“Hate to break it to you, Nikki, but long and rambling political discussions are part of what college students do. I ranted a bit myself.”
“Sure, but what’s important is who he was ranting to.” Nikki raised her hands and spread them, and as if by magic a list of names appeared in the air. Holograms are kind of cool.
The names were all Russian. “Valen—and I’m calling him that because it’s what he’s calling himself now, okay?—swapped e-mails with eleven different people in Russia, and a few Russians living in Ukraine. Over a period of months, his e-mails got more intense, and it’s pretty clear that he was completely sold on the idea of this New Soviet thing. If he’d been in America we would have put him on a watch list because of the things he said. About how old structures needed to be torn down and how this was a war. That was the key right there, Joe, because it’s clear that he saw the Cold War as a real, declared war, and that the fall of the Soviet Union did not end that war. He makes references to partisans and how their fi
ght was never recognized as a declared war, but it was all the more honest because it was from the true heart of loyal Russians.”
“Yeah,” I said. “So where does that take us?”
“The names on the list are actually people he knew,” she said, but then she swept four names away. “We checked some out and dismissed them as ‘talkers.’ People who love to argue and wrangle about politics but really aren’t all that genuinely political. Not enough to try and bring something like the New Soviet into being if it meant pulling triggers.”
“Right. And the rest?”
“That’s where this gets really fascinating,” said Nikki, warming to the topic. “Of the remaining names, all but one are friends of his who were studying computer sciences in various schools. They all went into different related fields, including IT, information services, code writing, and public relations. I had a feeling, though, and kept drilling down into their lives. And … do you remember the list of Russians indicted a while back? The ones accused of hacking into voting records and also waging a disinformation campaign on social media? Well, all of Valen’s friends, the ones we didn’t eliminate from our list, were part of that.”
“Well … holy shit.”
“It gets better,” she said, and now Nikki was grinning as broadly as Doc Holliday. “The last name on the list was an old girlfriend of Valen’s who was probably the one who got him into politics in the first place. She was the granddaughter of a senior Party member during the old Soviet days and was in that group of very vocal radicals who were very open about rebuilding the Party and getting it right. By reading back through the e-mails, it’s pretty clear that she’s helped shape his thinking from when he was in high school. Maybe earlier, but that stuff isn’t on e-mails. There are references to ‘conversations’ they had, so it was probably in person. She and Valen stayed in touch for years even though they did not actually physically meet after he enrolled as a freshman in college; and then it all ended when she died in a skiing accident.”
“And…?” I asked, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“We deconstructed this girl’s life, and I think the person Valen was talking to via e-mails all those years was not that girl. Sure, she did die in an accident, but that happened right after high school. The e-mails went on all through college and then Valen’s graduate studies at MIT. Nearly seven years of constant e-mails.”
I frowned. “Okay … so if this girl died young, then who the hell has he been talking to?”
“I ran a syntax algorithm, and even though the fake friend did a pretty good job of pretending to be the old girlfriend, there are unique identifiers. Everyone has them. And I’ve found some hits that back me up on this. There are nine other people, kind of like Valen, who talk politics with ‘old friends,’ both male and female. All in cases where they aren’t able to see those old friends. Clever photo-manipulated pics are sent, but there aren’t any real-world encounters. I think they’ve all been talking to the same person. Maybe it’s a recruiter for the Novyy Sovetskiy. Certainly someone who understands psychological manipulation to an ultrasophisticated degree. Some of the verbiage from her political comments was cut and pasted into e-mails to the other nine.”
“So, this guy is cultivating talent?”
“I don’t think it’s a guy. Sometimes she pretends to be one, but the language structure is female.”
“You can tell that from e-mails?”
Nikki shrugged. “Of course I can.”
I did not ask how, because the explanation would take hours and I would sink beneath minute detail never to be seen again. I know this from experience.
“I also think I have an idea about who this woman is,” said Nikki. “Have you ever heard about a spy code-named Gadyuka?”
“The viper,” I said. “Sure. But she’s a myth.”
“More like a ghost. There’s a lot of crazy stuff about her floating around the intelligence communities. Like Professor Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes. Gadyuka’s supposed to be behind all sorts of crazy stuff, but there’s never any evidence that points back directly to her.”
“I know,” I said, “but I read a Barrier report that theorized that Gadyuka was a cover name for a whole bunch of different agents. A shared cover.”
“What if it’s not, Joe? What if there really is a master spy, and this is her? I mean, what if she’s really behind the earthquakes and all of this?”
“I’d be more enthused about that possibility if we had even a smidge of evidence. That Barrier report gave eight or nine different physical descriptions of her, including one that said she was a slim man pretending to be a woman. No one has any idea who she really is, what she looks like, or … well … anything.”
Nikki did not look frustrated by that. If anything, she seemed intrigued. A new puzzle to untangle. “Mr. Church asked that everything we have on Gadyuka be sent to Lilith via the Oracle uplink. I think that means Arklight is hunting for her.”
“Sucks to be Gadyuka, then,” I said. “I wouldn’t want Lilith dogging me. Not after what happened to Violin.”
Doc spoke up. “Whoever this Jezebel is, I think our mystery woman is cultivating the zeal for the next generation of New Soviet party members. Valen is one, and he’s a geophysicist and seismologist. The others are specialists, too. Epidemiologist, meteorologist, botanist, geneticist. Like that. All very dangerous professions. All very skilled experts in those fields. Frankly it’s making my ass itch, and whenever my ass itches there’s trouble in the tall grass.”
Nikki nodded. “When we widened the search we found that, like Valen, some of the friends of each of these experts have likely been recruited, too, with a bias toward anyone with deep social media or hacking skills.”
“The new battlefield,” observed Doc, “isn’t tanks and bombs. It’s weird science and the Internet. Anyone who says different isn’t paying attention.”
“Well, this is scary as all hell,” I said, “but it doesn’t tell me why I’m flying to Russia. Valen is here.”
“Yeah,” said Nikki, “I haven’t gotten to the scary part yet.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXPORTS, LTD
ISTANBUL, REPUBLIC OF TURKEY
“Pull the blinds, Adina,” said the older woman.
This was done, and the lights in the small reception area were turned out. Adina followed Qadira and the other Arklight women into the back room. She was careful to step around the bodies instead of over them. A superstition that persisted among the sisterhood. She was also careful not to step in the pools of blood.
The women gathered in a half circle around the man seated on the chair in the middle of the room. He was short, fat, hairy, trembling, and naked. His arms and legs were lashed to the chair with many turns of strong electrician’s tape. He was not gagged, but one woman stood with the tip of a long-bladed knife resting on his flaccid penis. The man kept his mouth shut, though terror sweat coursed down his body.
Qadira pulled over another chair so that it faced him. She sat down, crossed her legs, and rested her hands in her lap.
“Tell me,” she asked mildly, “do you know who I am? Who we are?”
“You are insane, is who you are,” gasped the man. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” said the old woman. “Your name is Volken Çalhanoğlu. You own this business, and many other businesses. You are very rich, very powerful, and very influential.”
“Then you know what will happen to you if you hurt me,” he snarled.
Qadira smiled. “You haven’t answered my question. Do you know who we are?”
The man did not answer, clearly afraid of what the consequence of a wrong answer might be.
“My name is Qadira. This girl is Adina. Isn’t she lovely? Very smart, too. Very tough. These other women are my sisters. Not blood kin, but sisters all the same.”
“What is this all about? What do you want with me? Why did you attack my people? Are you insane?”
“It is
very likely that I am insane. At least by certain standards. Adina is quite mad in her way. She would have to be, considering what she’s been through in her life. What we’ve all been through.”
The man looked suspicious. “I … I don’t have anything to do with that.”
“With what? With slavery and sexual subjugation? Oh, please, we both know that you do. Oddly, though, that’s not why we’re here. Mind you, we would have paid you a visit eventually. Your name is on our list, and has been for some time.”
“List? What are you talking about? What list? Who are you?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard of us, Mr. Ohan.”
The name seemed to burst in the air, and it made the man recoil. “O-Ohan? I do not know this name. You … you have the wrong man.”
Qadira flicked a tiny glance at the woman with the knife, who made the slightest motion. Not to destroy, but to draw a thin bead of blood from the helpless man’s penis.
“That was the only lie we will allow you, Ohan,” said the old woman. “Lie again and my sister will do more than prick you.”
Ohan’s jaws were locked shut with terror.
“Now,” said Qadira, leaning slightly forward, “you sent a team to Syria to recover a book. One of the Unlearnable Truths. No … shhh … don’t speak yet, because you don’t know what I’m going to ask, and you really do not want to give the wrong answer, do you?”
The man glanced around at the faces of the women. He saw no flicker of pity or compassion or mercy. He looked at the girl and tried to appeal to her with his eyes.
Adina smiled at him, which made Ohan return the smile. An ally. A friend. A hope.
Then she held out her hand to the woman with the knife. That woman glanced at Qadira, who nodded; then she handed the blade to Adina, who took it and slid the flat of it under Ohan’s testicles with such delicacy and skill that the scrotum was lifted but not cut. The steel was so cold it felt like a burning brand, and Ohan had to bite back his own scream. Adina’s smile never faded, never even flickered.
“We are the Mothers of the Fallen,” said Qadira, and when that did not register on Ohan or break through his terror, she added, “but you will know us as Arklight.”
Deep Silence Page 30
