Blades of Winter

by G T Almasi

  “Sorry about earlier …” I begin.

  Trick exhales very slowly, looks out at the city, and mutters, “It’s my fault. I should have had you leave the room.”

  “I just didn’t think. She made me so mad. It was like my gun leaped into my hand all by itself.”

  “I know, Alix, I know.” I can tell I screwed up because Trick is so quiet about it, which makes me feel worse. He continues. “But that’s the problem: you don’t think. Sometimes it makes it hard to work with you.”

  Whoah. Code Red. “What does that mean? Hard to work with? You want a new partner?” This sounds stupid even as I say it, but I can’t stop myself. “And how do you know I didn’t think?”

  Trick sips from his beer bottle and replies, “Because I didn’t have time to think, which means neither did you.”

  “Oh, you’re so fucking smart now?”

  Trick turns to me and finally raises his voice, “Yes, Alix, I am so fucking smart! That’s why we’re partners. I’m the brains, and you’re the … you’re …” He sputters, grasping for words.

  “What? I’m what?”

  He thinks. For someone who’s so fucking smart, he takes a long time to think of something obvious like “fabulous,” or “awesome,” or “amazing.”

  “You’re the hotheaded ass kicker who saves our butts all the time.”

  Well, it’s not “fabulous,” but I’ll take it—especially the ass kicker part. “That’s right!” I say as I throw my arm around his shoulders and clink my beer bottle into his. We watch a homeless guy stagger up the street and into a subway station. I think about what the girl said. My dad never drank Thunderbird, but she knew way more about me and him than she should have.

  I rest my head on my partner’s shoulder. “Trick, who the hell were those people at the hotel?”

  My partner swigs his beer. “Considering what we were doing, the most likely explanation is that they were CIA.”

  Patrick must be kidding. I slide my arm from around his shoulders and turn to face him. He’s not kidding.

  Oh, man, did we just torture and kill an agent from a sister U.S. agency?

  “How could they possibly have known we were there?”

  “I’d say Grey tripped a silent alarm, except that we were being followed before he was anywhere near the place.”

  I lower my face into my hand and rub my temples. All this thinking hurts my head despite the four beers I’ve had.

  Trick continues, “Harbaugh commed me half an hour ago, while you were at the liquor store. After we left for New York this morning, he picked up a familiar-looking burst of encrypted comm chatter in D.C. I told him about the girl on Bleecker Street, how you apprehended her, that she knew about your father, and how we evaded her backup team.” Patrick pauses, then says, “He thinks it might be XSUS One again.”

  My eyes bug out. “XSUS One is CIA?”

  “Harbaugh said ‘might.’ The encryption on these new comms was an order of magnitude more secure than the last batch, so it may not be possible to crack them. The depth of the encryption is what first caught his eye. Then, hours later, you and I have another adventure in Manhattan. We’d say it was the Blades of Persia again, but our competitors at the hotel all had American accents. That doesn’t fit what we know about the Blades.” Patrick runs his hand through his hair.

  I lean against him, and he puts his arm around my shoulder. I ask, “Why would the CIA follow us?”

  “Well, if they were CIA people, it’d be because we sneak around behind their backs, break into their offices, and steal their shit.”

  “Yeah, now we’re doing that.” I wave my hand in a circle. “But what about the Hector job?”

  “That damn Hector job …” Patrick mutters. He regards the dark city’s skyline. “Harbaugh and I talked about that. What happened on that job was so out of nowhere that it keeps breaking our theories.” Trick’s boss is certain that our investigation into my father’s last mission is clearly the right course. The deeper we dig, the wilder it gets. Harbaugh says the degree of interference we’ve met indicates that our XSUS One is way up the food chain somewhere.

  Flash! Corruption in high offices of government. Dozens stunned, film at eleven.

  What nobody has figured out is the obvious security breach at ExOps. Keeping our activities out of CORE should seal them within our small circle. So far, though, we might as well be publishing our mission briefs in the Washington Post classifieds. Chanez, Cyrus, and Harbaugh are all sniffing around the agency, looking for a mole. They’ve carefully reviewed the CORE files about my dad’s last mission. They appear to be legit except for the fact that they don’t jibe at all with what my father thought he was doing.

  I sigh. “Have you talked to Cyrus about this?”

  “I left him a message while you drove us here. He and Chanez are in their monthly Executive Meeting.”

  Executive Meeting means President Reagan. Cyrus will be stuck there for hours. He always grumbles about how much our current president likes to talk. Cyrus refers to him as “our current president” because after all those years with Nixon, he likes to imply that this country’s highest elected official is some kind of temp.

  My partner tilts his bottle up and finishes his beer. “We need more intel. Whatever happened to your dad is out there, no matter how mysterious it seems right now.”

  Mysteries. I hate mysteries.

  We watch the city rot for a while. Eventually, sleepiness drapes over me. “All right, Tricky-Trick, let’s go to bed. I need to relax.”

  My partner smirks. “It’s my turn to relax first.” He runs inside and leaps onto the bed so energetically that he bounces off and crashes into the nightstand. The lamp on the stand falls over and breaks, pitching the room into complete darkness. I burst out laughing, and I have to hold on to the terrace’s railing to stay on my feet.

  When I catch my breath, I call, “Trick! You okay?”

  He doesn’t answer, but I can hear him on the floor, alternately groaning and giggling into the carpet.

  Later, we’re curled up together in bed. Trick has his arm across my chest, sleeping like a baby, while I lie on my back staring at the ceiling. Damned Post-Stimulant Sleep Disorder. I finally fall asleep a couple of hours later, thinking how lucky I am to have someone who loves me because I’m a hotheaded ass kicker.

  CHAPTER 24

  NEXT DAY, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 8:00 A.M. EST MANHATTAN’S CHELSEA AREA, NEW YORK CITY, USA.

  The next morning I find a whole new way to be freaky with people. I’m in line at a coffee shop down the street from our safe house in Chelsea. Some dickhead right behind me tries to strike up a conversation, like this is a good place to pick up women. I finally turn around, look this fool in the eye, turn on my infrared vision, and unleash a barrage of my dad’s favorite expletives. Dick-head drops his charming smile, spins on his heel, and runs away. I guess he’s never been confronted by a foul-mouthed red-eyed devil chick. The Med-Techs didn’t tell me that my IR vision would make my eyes turn red, but it’s a nice side effect to use on people who talk to me before I’ve had my coffee.

  While I wait, I inhale the fresh-baked, fresh-brewed coffee shop smells. A small TV on the counter runs a news story about the brutal murder of a young woman in the East Village last night. She’d been tied up and then tortured to death in her hotel room. We see pictures of cops milling around, pictures of paramedics milling around, and pictures of neighbors milling around. The suspects are three Cuban terrorists, each with a prior criminal record. Their angry-looking mug shots are displayed so New Yorkers know who to be afraid of.

  I finally get to the counter. “Two large coffees with cream and extra sugar and a half dozen of your chocolate glazed.” Mmm, doughnuts. I carry the breakfast loot back to the room we stayed in last night. Patrick glances over as I open the door. He wiggles his eyebrows up and down to acknowledge my successful doughnut safari.

  I put our coffees on the nightstand. Neither of us is a big talker in the morni
ng, especially when we’re on a job. He’s sprawled across the bed, conference comming with his Information Coordinator and Director Chanez about what happened last night with the bug-eye girl. I sit on the edge of the bed with my coffee and turn on the TV news. Maybe the cops have already caught those three dangerous Cuban dudes.

  I click around the channels until I find a semicircle of suits blowing hot air out their asses. It’s a discussion panel about current affairs, and the covert community’s point of view is being presented by none other than Jakob Fredericks. He’s in the middle of a long and pompous harangue about the importance of maintaining good relations with Greater Germany. After he runs out of breath, the camera angle switches to a wide view of the group. Fredericks’s seat is on the far right. As the show’s host talks about what else is on the agenda, Fredericks turns and beckons to someone from off camera. The person walks into the edge of the picture. She’s a young female, about my age. The girl leans down to hear what Fredericks says, like she’s his assistant. She’s got big bug-eye lenses.

  Well, look at that.

  I reach across the bed and tug on Trick’s sleeve. He turns his head, and I point at the screen. He squints at the TV, then shrugs at me with one of his eyebrows up.

  “Look at that!” I hiss.

  He looks again, and this time he sees what I mean. He presses his mouth into an upside-down crescent and nods his head. He holds up one index finger and whispers, “Hang on, I’m almost done.”

  I tune in to Trick’s conversation.

  Trick is comming, “Yes, sir, the competitor’s gear and Mods indicated that she was a Protector. Very much like the Hector job, sir.”

  “And Scarlet captured her alive, Solomon?” It’s Chanez.

  “Yes, she did, Director, but the Protector expired before we got any intel out of her. As we left the hotel, we heard her backup team coming to check on her.”

  “And these were Americans?”

  “They sure sounded like it, sir.”

  Harbaugh comms, “Stand by, Solomon,” and mutes his commphone. Most Info Operators are young, like Patrick. If you remain unkilled, like Bill Harbaugh did, you eventually come out of the field and work as an Info Coordinator.

  Harbaugh returns to the call. “Solomon, be advised that all intel related to this Job Number shall be classified at Level 12 and your submissions must be approved by Director Chanez.”

  Chanez had Cyrus put us on this mission, and so the Director himself will oversee our progress and review all the intel we gather. That’s the only reason a puny Level 8 like me can work anywhere near this job, which keeps getting bigger and bigger. The classifications aren’t meant to prevent junior agents from harvesting supersensitive material. They’re meant to dictate how much oversight we need while we’re doing it.

  “Roger that, sir,” confirms Trick. Their discussion shifts to a special shorthand the Info people speak, so I tune out. I’m eating my third doughnut when the ache in my knees reminds me it’s been a couple days since I did any maintenance on my joints.

  I pull my travel tool kit out of my backpack, then take off my pants and open up my kneecaps. Oh, yeah, definitely some abrasions. That five-story drop I made last night was not a good idea. I rub oil into my knees to lubricate the mechanized joints and synthetic fibers. While that soaks in, I field strip Li’l Bertha. As I work, I wonder how much time my father spent doing exactly the same thing in some crappy room somewhere all by himself. I’m glad I have Trick with me.

  It sounds like Patrick is soft-pedaling my impulsiveness last night. If Cyrus finds out why we didn’t get any intel out of that chick, he’ll clobber me. I rewind my Day Loop to what the bug-eyed girl said last night.

  “Your girlfriend’s father went rogue to buy himself a bottle of Thunderbird.”

  Going rogue, switching sides, and anything else colloquially known as leaving the reservation are among the few cardinal sins in this game. I can’t imagine my dad doing that. He was always so dedicated and used to go on about how lucky we were to live in the United States.

  Trick taps my shoulder and says, “Grey hit the jackpot. My boss is setting up a meeting with the CIA stringer, and we’re gonna do the interview. Let’s get packed.”

  “What’s the stringer’s name?”

  “Imad Badr. He’s an Arab businessman and philanthropist.” Trick tells me that like a lot of self-made businessmen, Badr used to be a smuggler. He’s been legit for a long time now and has built up the largest Arab-owned group of businesses in Greater Germany. Rumor has it that Badr is also a buddy of our man Winter.

  “What’s his angle?” I ask.

  “You mean why does he pass intel to people like us?”

  “Yeah.”

  Trick starts packing up his stuff. “Basically, he rats out his business competitors to the Americans and Germans.”

  I stuff another bite of doughnut in my mouth. “Why does the CIA listen to him, then?”

  “Well, a lot of the people Badr competes against spend their spare time running terrorist cells.”

  “But not all of them do.”

  “Nope.” Trick shakes his head as he carefully arranges his gear back into his bag of tricks. It’s a black leather doctor’s bag he found in a used-clothes shop here in New York. I’ve never understood how he can fit so much stuff in it. I swear the thing is bottomless. After he bought it, we added a long black leather strap so he can sling it over his shoulder. He’s cleaned most of Bug Eye’s blood off of it, although there are still some stains near the bottom.

  “All right.” Patrick zips his bag shut. “Here’s what we’ve got.” He holds his hands in front of himself, palms up, like they’re supporting a big open book. “Our competitors have been female Protectors or they’ve been groups of Russian mercenaries. The comms we intercepted in Manhattan show that XSUS One was running Jackie-O and her backup team, so that accounts for the Protectors you’ve faced. They also revealed that XSUS One knows XSUS Two, who we’ve tentatively identified as Kazim Nazari based on the stuff you got from Rashid. Your dad discovered that—at the time—the Blades employed a lot of former KGB Levels who reported to Kazim. So Kazim’s possible involvement could account for the Russian mercs you’ve faced.”

  Trick pauses and purses his lips. “Fortunately, neither One nor Two seems to possess sufficient resources to overcome your performance index.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean you kick their asses every time they jump you.”

  “Right! Yes.” I bounce off the bed. “Ass. Kick!” I punt my empty backpack across the room and hold my arms over my head. “Score!”

  Trick smiles and says, “Did you notice that the Thackery girl last night had an American accent?”

  This reminds me. “Oh, hey! That chick on the TV. Did you see her?”

  “Chick? I thought you were pointing at Director Fredericks.”

  “No, his assistant. She looked like Jackie-O and Thackery Girl.”

  Trick tilts his head to the side. “So?”

  “So maybe Fredericks is XSUS One.”

  Patrick cracks up.

  “What’s so funny?” I throw a pillow at him. “I’m serious!”

  He blocks my fluffy missile and exclaims, “Oh, come on, Alix! Do you expect anyone to believe that the pussiest Front Desk in ExOps history would take out a murder contract on an agent from his own country?”

  “Why not?” I put my hands on my hips. “You saw that girl.”

  “Oh, my God, Alix. Fredericks could barely stand to order hits when it was his job.” My partner grabs his toothbrush and heads for the bathroom. “Besides, everybody at his pay grade gets a security detail. Washington is crawling with Protectors.” His voice echoes from the tiled bathroom. Water runs in the sink, and then I hear him brushing his teeth.

  I’m not ready to give up. I stomp over to the bathroom door. “How many of those Protectors are young women?”

  “Well, yeah, that’sh a funny coincidensh, I guesh.” He spits out his toothpaste a
nd wipes his mouth. “Most officials get jumbo-size Protectors to soak up their bullets for them. You ever see those two hulks that drive Director Chanez’s car for him?” He kisses me as he walks back into the bedroom. “But who knows? Maybe ol’ Jakob has a thing for the ladies.”

  “Especially ladies named Alixandra Nico!”

  “Hey. Enough.” Patrick gives me a long look. “We are not gonna charge the Director of the Strategic Services Council with high treason.”

  I frown and cross my arms across my chest.

  “At least,” he says quietly, “not until we have a lot more to go on.”

  “Hah!” I bark. “You think I’m right.”

  My partner holds his hands up. “Whoa, there. Fredericks could be XSUS One. But it could be a lot of other people too. If we jump the gun on something like this, we’ll spend the rest of our careers shoveling shit in Crapville, USA.”

  Patrick figures XSUS One is either an official in another country’s covert community or he’s a mole in one of our many intelligence agencies. Obviously, he’s one shady goat planker, but beyond that we’re stumped.

  I drop the Perry Mason bit and get myself packed up. I dump my tools into my backpack, then scoop my clothes off the floor and cram them in on top of the tools.

  We walk downstairs and catch a cab to the airport. Once we’re under way, I take one of Trick’s hands in mine and lean against his shoulder. He tilts his head so his cheek presses lightly on my hair. I hold his hand up and slowly kiss his fingers, imagining that we’re an old married couple going home from a Broadway show. I wonder if Trick will want kids. I’m not sure if I do, but that’s okay; there’s plenty of time.

  We ride quietly for a while, and then I comm to Trick, “Thanks for talking last night. I’m really sorry about icing that girl.”

  Trick comms back, “That’s all right, Alix. We’ll get to the bottom of all this one way or another.”