Assassin's code jl-4

by Jonathan Maberry

  Ledger still sat on the floor.

  The sniper leaned back from the rifle and removed a small leather case from her bag, unzipped it, and propped it on the night table. The device was the size of an e-book reader but it was a very powerful portable computer with a satellite uplink. The sniper booted the device, entered her password, and activated the voice interface.

  “Authorize Arklight field protocol five.”

  The monitor flashed several times and then settled on a screen saver with the smiling face of the Mona Lisa.

  The Mona Lisa spoke.

  “Oracle welcomes you.”

  The Oracle computer had been designed by a man named St. Germaine but re-programmed by her mother; the voice was hers as well, though with a slight alien quality when composing unique phrasing. The sniper had added the animation of the Mona Lisa to give it a less threatening feeling. She loved her mother but, like everyone else who ever met her, was deeply intimidated by her. Even the other two Mothers of the Fallen deferred to her.

  “Access all data for mission coded Arklight eight-one-one-seven.”

  “Accessing. Do you want to update your field report?”

  “Yes.” She gave the computer a detailed report beginning with the phone call from Rasouli that morning and the resulting change in the mission for which her Arklight team had been contracted. At the conclusion of the report she said, “Collate data. I will want a set of probabilities.”

  “Collating,” said Oracle. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Yes. I want everything you can find on Joseph Edwin Ledger. White male, early thirties, American.”

  “There are ninety-seven unique instances of living people named Joseph Edwin Ledger; one-hundred and sixteen for deceased-”

  “Stop. Subject is likely military or ex-military. Possibly law enforcement.”

  “There is one instance of a Joseph Edwin Ledger with the Baltimore Police Department in the state of Maryland. There is also one instance of a Joseph Edwin Ledger with the United States Army Rangers. Personal identification numbers and Social Security numbers match.”

  “Open a file on him. I want everything. Ledger’s background. Service record, awards, citations, reprimands, psych profiles, his politics. Anything you have.”

  “There is already an active Arklight file on this subject.”

  “When was the file opened and who opened it?”

  The computer gave an open date from July of the previous year. “The file has an L1 code.”

  L1. Lilith.

  “My mother opened that file?”

  “Yes.”

  “Summarize the content of that file.”

  Oracle began reading out information regarding several matters of grave international importance. The Seif al Din plague, which coincided with the opening of Ledger’s file. There were others, all high profile. The shutdown of the ultrasecret vault in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania; the famous Jakoby-Mengele file; and others, leading up to the Seven Kings event last December. The records were spotty and included more speculation and unofficial information than hard evidence. As the Italian woman well knew it was virtually impossible to prove anything about the DMS. Very often files of this kind suddenly vanished from even encrypted hard drives. There were rumors of a DMS supercomputer called MindReader that had an aggressive search and destroy subroutine for ferreting out this kind of information.

  “Oracle,” she said, “have you been attacked in any way since this file was opened?”

  “No.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?”

  “There is a note in the file stating that any questions of this kind be directed to Lilith herself. Your mother does not permit additional speculative notes to be added to the file. Would you like me to pass along a request to your mother?”

  “God no,” said the sniper before she could stop herself. “No,” she corrected.

  “Shall I continue reading the subject’s service record?”

  “Yes.”

  Ledger reached out and pulled his dog toward him, wrapping his arms around the animal and laying his head on the dog’s shoulder. What an odd thing for a man like him to do, she thought. A strangely human act, totally at odds with the things Oracle was saying: that he was emotionally fractured, that he was utterly ruthless in a fight, that he had killed people with guns, knives, explosives, his hands. However, the way he held his dog and stroked the animal’s fur and spoke to it-even though she could not hear his words-made her smile.

  “Oracle, stop report,” she said. “How did my mother obtain the information for her file on Ledger?”

  “That information is in a subfolder marked eyes-only. Would you like to request temporary clearance to read that report?”

  The sniper took a breath, then let it out slowly. “Yes.”

  “That request has been forwarded to the Mothers.”

  “Continue report.”

  Oracle moved from the bland details of an unremarkable military record, through a moderately interesting though short police career. The sniper found nothing of real note there, however, except that Ledger had been scheduled for enrollment in the FBI academy. There were no records of his having actually entered the academy. What really caught her interest, however, were Ledger’s psychotherapy reports and transcripts of sessions with Dr. Rudolfo Ernesto Sanchez y Martinez. Ledger was a deeply damaged individual who had a minimum of three and possibly as many as nine separate personality subtypes living in his head. Dr. Sanchez’s records indicated that Ledger had found a way to balance these personalities and even put them to work, like a committee, within his fractured mind. It was not a unique occurrence, but it was very rare; and rarer still for such a man to be accepted into the police department and, apparently, the Department of Military Sciences.

  “Stop. Who recruited Ledger into the DMS?”

  “Unknown, though there is a high probability that he was recruited directly by St. Germaine.”

  The sniper’s pulse quickened as it did every time she heard that name.

  St. Germaine.

  That was one of the many names for a man currently using the name Church. St. Germaine was the name her mother used for the man. The sniper had never met him, but other Arklight agents told wild stories. She doubted most of them were true, but all of them were fascinating.

  “Oracle,” she said, “why might St. Germaine risk using a field operative with Ledger’s psychological profile?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Speculate. Access all known data on St. Germaine and cross-reference.”

  “There are one hundred and three separate field reports that include the man code-named St. Germaine under twenty-eight aliases. Twenty-six of those reports indicate a tendency to use agents with unpredictable or unstable personality types. Four of the six analysis reports uploaded by senior Arklight operators postulate that Mr. Church uses said unpredictable personalities to introduce random elements to missions.”

  “An X factor?”

  “That is the theory most commonly postulated.”

  “What is the probability that Mr. Church sent Ledger to Iran knowing that he would become involved in my current mission?”

  “There is insufficient data to calculate a complete probability model.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I am unable to perform that function, as you well know,” said Oracle in her mother’s dry voice. It was one of the messages Mama had added to the database. An attempt at humor.

  “What is the likelihood that Rasouli knew my team was associated with Arklight?”

  “Unknown, however the mission for which your team was originally contracted has multiple connection points to the Mothers of the Fallen and-”

  “What is Rasouli’s connection with Joseph Ledger?”

  “Unknown.”

  She processed that as she made some minor adjustments to her rifle.

  Why had Rasouli wanted to meet this man? Was he an intermediary? Or, more likely, was Rasouli trying t
o recruit him as a double agent? Despite the poverty most of the people in this country endured, the government was very rich, with pockets deep enough to tempt saints and angels. The sniper had seen that firsthand in the absurd amount of money Rasouli had paid to have her team provide security for half an hour in a coffee shop.

  “Oracle, give me a probability estimate on Ledger’s loyalty.”

  “That question lacks specificity.”

  “Based on Joseph Ledger’s psych profiles, can he be bought? Could Rasouli buy him away from the DMS?

  “Unknown.”

  “But we can’t discount it?”

  “That would be unwise.”

  She peered through the scope. Ledger was still sitting on the floor with his dog. Was he crying? The blowing curtains on Ledger’s window made it impossible to tell, but the American looked like he had something on his cheeks. Tears or dog slobber?

  “How dangerous is this man?”

  “To others or to himself?”

  The question did not surprise the sniper. She was more than half-convinced the marks on Ledger’s cheeks were not there because of his dog.

  “As a fighter and field agent,” she said.

  “According to psych profiles and all other available data, Captain Joseph Edwin Ledger should be considered a Class-A threat.”

  The sniper found that very interesting.

  There was movement. Ledger abruptly straightened and looked at the closed door against which he sat. Then he and the dog climbed quickly to their feet. Ledger reached inside his jacket but after a moment brought his hand away without a gun. It was clear that someone had just knocked on the door, and it seemed apparent from Ledger’s body language that the visitor was expected.

  But who was it?

  Rasouli?

  Another of St. Germaine’s agents? The Sabbatarians?

  Or one of those unholy bastards in the Red Order?

  “Oracle. Stand by.”

  “Standing by.”

  As Ledger reached for the door handle, the sniper leaned her shoulder against the stock of the rifle. Her slender finger stroked the cold metal rim of the trigger guard.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Golden Oasis Hotel

  Tehran, Iran

  June 15, 8:47 a.m.

  When the delivery man knocked on the door I nearly jumped out of my skin. I leapt to my feet and spun toward the door. Ghost gave a low growl and took up a defensive stance next to me. He was too tactful to mention that I spent five seconds scrabbling inside my jacket for a pistol I wasn’t carrying.

  I peered through the peephole and saw a teenage boy in a kufi.

  Before he could knock again, I opened the door and he handed me a package, accepted a tip, and departed without saying a word. He threw some cautious looks at Ghost, though, as if aware that this was a ferocious mankiller for whom a packet of goat strips would not assuage a savage hunger. Ghost apparently had the same thought and glared at his retreating back until I closed the door and told him to knock it off.

  Inside the package was a carton of Bistoon cigarettes, which I threw out. The other items in the paper sack were the battery and a cell-phone charger wrapped together with a blue rubber band.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed and slid the battery into the phone and was delighted to see that it was already charged. I should have given the kid a bigger tip.

  Our DMS phones have a USB port, and I fished out the flash drive and plugged it in. It did not look particularly damaged from the outside, but then again the outside was plastic. I was more than a little surprised-or maybe “suspicious” is the appropriate word-that Rasouli gave me the original rather than a copy. I was glad he did, though, because once I uploaded what I could I was going to find a way to get the flash drive into a diplomatic pouch for an expedited trip across the ocean. Once Bug got his sweaty little hands on it I was sure the drive would yield up everything there was to find.

  Could Rasouli have had that in mind? Did he know about MindReader? Sure he did, he knew Vox.

  My gut turned over. Every time I thought I had a grasp on how much damage-past, current, and potential-that could be laid at Vox’s feet, something came along to broaden my perspective. MindReader was an ultrasecret system and part of its strength lay in the fact that the bad guys didn’t know about it, or if they did they didn’t know what it could do. Vox did. That meant that anyone he told, every government or terrorist organization, would be scrambling now to upgrade their computer-security protocols. Common knowledge of MindReader’s intrusion properties could easily create a new spike in security technology for computers. Grace Courtland once told me that the whole Chinese GhostNet program was their response to rumors that something like MindReader existed. And Vox himself had clearly financed some big-ticket research because he had provided the Seven Kings with the only cellular phone system that MindReader couldn’t trace or crack. Bug, the DMS computer hotshot, said that designing such a system could not have been done by accident, it had to have been created specifically to thwart our computer.

  I plugged the flash drive into the USB port on my phone and immediately got a bunch of read-error messages. The thing had been in someone’s stomach, so that was no surprise. However, I went through the steps to do a forced upload of bulk data and soon images were whipping across the screen too fast for me to see. Damaged or not, there was a lot of stuff on the drive. The upload failed twice and I had to repeat the steps, but eventually I got the UPLOAD COMPLETE message.

  I scrolled back through the contents at a slower speed until I found a series of JPEGs, one of which was the picture Rasouli had showed me. It looked so innocent, so nondescript in its metal case. And though I know that machines have no personality, I could not help but ascribe the word “evil” to it, as if the malign intent of its creators had been somehow transferred to the device during its construction.

  I took a breath, engaged the code scrambler, and punched a speed dial. The phone rang three times.

  “Go,” was all Church said, which is more than he usually gives when he answers a phone.

  “Boss, I have a Firehall One situation.”

  “Is there a finger on a trigger?” His voice sounded as calm as if I asked him who pitched for the Orioles last night.

  “Unknown. But… from the vibe I got from my source I’d say this is something coming at us rather than already here.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I just uploaded the contents of a flash drive to the server. It’s damaged goods. It’s filed under my name and coded for you, eyes only.”

  I could hear him tapping keys on his laptop as I spoke.

  “Okay, I have the data. Where did this originate? Who’s your source?”

  “You’re going to love this,” I said, and told him everything. He did not interrupt once, and I hoped that he was alone because this was going to really test his Vulcan calm.

  After a short pause, Church asked, “Were you able to verify his connection to Vox? Could Rasouli have simply thrown the name at you to win your trust?”

  “I don’t think so. Vox told him to tell me that he vetted Grace and she was clean. He said ‘She wasn’t one of mine.’”

  There was a longer pause. “Interesting.”

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  “Rasouli made no move to arrest you?”

  “Just the opposite,” I said. “Rasouli teased me by saying that one of the devices might be in the U.S. He couldn’t have been more vague if he’d spoken in code, though.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “I’m not sure I’d believe him if he said the desert was made out of sand. But…”

  “Where are you?”

  “My hotel room.”

  “Bug might be able to salvage more of the damaged files. I’ll reroute a local asset to pick up the flash drive. Wait for his call.”

  “I don’t think I should leave the country while-”

  “You’re not. You’ll be taken to a safe house you can use as a s
taging area. We’ll evaluate the situation so be prepared to go after that device in Iran. I’ll have Echo Team rendezvous with you there.”

  “Speaking of my team… did everyone make it out okay?”

  “Everyone but you. Safe and sound and over the border.”

  “Outstanding. What about the packages?”

  “The three young people are with their families. They’ll go to London for a thorough physical, and we’ll have them home in forty-eight hours.”

  “Not seeing anything in the news.”

  “Iran hasn’t acknowledged the incident. There’s some question here about how they’ll play it. Fifty-fifty split between them producing dead soldiers and claiming that we launched an illegal attack that resulted in casualties; or they reach out to us on the sly and agree to a public statement that they worked with us to insure the safe release of suspected spies who have since been cleared. My money is on the latter. State is prepping a variety of responses,” he said.

  “Be nice to have the good guys win. Those three kids were pretty tough. They didn’t break, and we both know the Iranians didn’t go light on them.”

  “Admirable,” Church agreed, and that was about as sentimental and weepy as he ever gets. “What do you need, Captain?”

  “I’m equipment-light. I need weapons and gear. Can your asset drop that stuff off?”

  “I can arrange weapons, but he won’t have a field kit. Echo Team will bring the party favors. And I’ll have Bug send you the latest disarming protocols.”

  “Once last thing, Boss,” I said. “Do you think this is the return of the Seven Kings?”

  “Impossible to say at this juncture,” he said. The line went dead.

  In my best impersonation of Church I said, “Why, thank you, Captain Ledger, damn fine work.” Ghost gave me a look and went back to his dried goat.

  I studied the picture of the bomb. Jesus. Someone wanted to nuke the entire Mideast oil fields.

  Understand, I gave just about half a warm shit about the whole oil wars thing. I cared even less about the politics of it. But there were hundreds of millions of people in the region. I thought of all the people coming and going in the cafe. Their families, their kids. All of them. Working, eating, sleeping, loving, and living on top of four, maybe six, nuclear bombs. Maybe more.