A Conspiracy of Ravens

by Terrence McCauley

  They didn’t know because they didn’t want to know. People liked to avoid the bad and awkward things to focus on the good. The banal. The next celebrity divorce. The newest series on Netflix.

  He envied every one of the oblivious bastards.

  He crossed the street and stepped to the side, next to an office building. He took out his handheld and called Jason.

  “I’m sorry about Tali,” Jason said when he answered. “I know you two were close. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  Hicks couldn’t afford sentiment. Not yet. “You can start by getting Demerest on the line. Make sure you scramble my location and listen in. He already knows I’m in Berlin, but I don’t want him tracing the call and leading him to the Penthouse.”

  Jason paused. “You’ve been dealing with him directly until now. May I ask why the change?”

  Hicks was too tired to be angry, so he was honest instead. “Because he was tracking the phone he gave me and I destroyed it. There’s also a good chance I might not make it through tomorrow’s meeting with Tessmer, and I want you to be able to brief my replacement on where we stand.”

  “You’ll survive tomorrow,” Jason said. “Whether you meet Tessmer or not. You always find a way to survive.”

  But after losing Tali, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “Yeah. Lucky me. Now get Demerest for me. I’m switching to my earpiece so I can check my handheld in case Tessmer texts me about tomorrow’s meeting.”

  Hicks tapped the icon for the prisoner’s phone and tapped out a text message while he waited for Demerest to come on the line. In English, he wrote:

  WHERE AND WHEN TOMORROW?

  Demerest came on the line. “I heard you lost someone today, son. I’m sorry.”

  Hicks shut his eyes. He hoped that was the last time anyone would offer condolences about Tali. He needed results and facts, not more grief. He knew grief would come soon enough, and it wouldn’t be pretty when it did. But he couldn’t let that genie out of the bottle yet.

  “Did your contact at the German security police get anything from the men Tali killed?”

  “Not a damn thing,” Demerest admitted. “None of the men had any cash or identification on them. All of them had their fingerprints removed. We’re running their DNA through INTERPOL and the FBI systems, but it’ll be weeks before they get back to us with a match, if they have a match at all.”

  Hicks was disappointed, but not all that surprised. The Vanguard had proven to be nothing if not efficient. “What about cell phones?”

  “Brand new burner phones on all three bodies. Activated earlier that morning, never used, paid for in cash at the same store. We tracked them via traffic cameras from the spot to the store. We’re still trying to trace them back further than that and that will take time.”

  “Time,” Hicks repeated. “The one thing I don’t have. I’m scheduled to meet someone from the Vanguard tomorrow.”

  Demerest was quiet for a couple of beats. “Delay it.”

  “No way. After what happened with Tali, I don’t even know if it’s still on. And if it is, then he’s going to look to end this thing. We’re too close to let him get away now.”

  “And you’re not stupid enough to actually meet him,” Demerest said. “Not like this. You burned through a hell of a lot of our good will with the Germans today, son. My contact over there has spent the better part of two days running interference for you, and he’s not happy about tagging and bagging the bodies you leave behind.”

  Hicks grabbed the device tighter. “Careful, Carl. One of those dead bodies was one of mine.”

  Demerest swore. “I know that, but I can’t keep going to the well empty-handed like this. I need a name, James. I need something I can have people work on to help explain this mess. It’s only a matter of time before someone in the alphabet soup ties you to all of this. If that happens, the Vanguard will be the least of your problems.”

  It was Hicks’s turn to be quiet for a moment. “I think you just threatened me, Carl.”

  “No, I just told you the way things are,” Demerest said. “No bullshit and no sugar- coating. I can protect you if you give me a name to run through the system. A viable name, not some asshole you killed in Angola twenty years ago. I know that game and it won’t fly with me. I need someone attached to these attacks. Someone vital and real. We’re past the point of being coy now, son. Forget about our seventy-two-hour agreement. We’re way past that shit. Give me a name. Now.”

  “I’ve never been to Angola,” Hicks said. “And you’ve got plenty of names on the laptop my people died to give you.”

  “The information on that hard drive is double encrypted. It’ll take our most advanced computers weeks to get everything. That’s why I need a name from you right fucking now. You’ve already lost enough for one day, son. Don’t add my good graces to the tally.”

  Hicks felt his handheld buzz, not from a call or an e-mail, but from a text message. He looked at his screen.

  Tessmer had responded.

  And for the first time in as long as he could remember, James Hicks smiled. He’d gotten his meeting. There was no reason to keep it from Demerest any longer. “The man who runs the German side of the Vanguard used to go by the alias Wilhelm Tessmer. It’s an old alias that’ll probably take you a day or so to run down. I don’t have a current name for him, so don’t bother pushing me for it. Now, if you want to make your friends in the German government happy, you’re going to listen to me very carefully.”

  Russischer Friedhof Berlin-Tegel Cemetery, Berlin

  The Next Morning

  HICKS PAID the driver, got out of the cab, and lit a cigar. As he brought his hand up to shield the flame from a gentle breeze, he said, “I’m on the street in front of the cemetery. Give me a SITREP.”

  Rivas’s voice came over the earbud. “Satellite confirms the cemetery is empty, except for one person standing exactly where they’re supposed to be. I’m not detecting any additional heat signatures in the immediate area, so I think he’s alone.”

  Hicks got a good draw on the cigar and pocketed the lighter. “Send me his picture.”

  “I would if I could,” Rivas said. “I had to hack into an old NOAA satellite to get an overview of the cemetery. The closest I can zoom in is about half a mile above the target.”

  Hicks couldn’t believe his rotten luck. “What about INTERPOL and NATO satellites?”

  “They’ve all upped their security, so it’ll take OMNI some time to hack them again. Probably in response to the Vanguard attack on New York. We’ll get them eventually, but it’ll take a couple of days. Probably not in time to help you.”

  Hicks almost bit into the cigar. “Demerest was supposed to help us after I told him about Tessmer.”

  “He did,” Rivas said, “but none of his satellites are in position yet. He lived up to his part of the bargain. Technically. All I can give you is heat readings until further notice.”

  Hicks checked the street for cars or vans, or people lingering where they shouldn’t. It was just another Tuesday morning in old Berlin. “Try accessing the security cameras inside the cemetery.”

  “I probably could if there were any,” Rivas told him, “They have an old system to watch the office, but that’s it.”

  Hicks cursed as he took a pull on the cigar. It was a mid-level Arturo Fuente stick and the draw was excellent. The infusion of tobacco into his system kept his frustration in check. It helped him focus.

  He let the smoke slowly escape his nose. “Any frequencies coming in or out of there?”

  “I’m using your handheld to see if it’s picking anything up. I’m just seeing a cellular signal coming from the target’s general direction. It looks like he’s alone.”

  Alone, Hicks thought, in a place full of corpses. The irony of two professional killers meeting in a cemetery was not lost on Hicks. He didn’t know why Tessmer had chosen a cemetery as their meeting place. He didn’t care either. He just wanted to get it over with. “My mi
c will be hot the whole time. Give me reports on Scott’s position as they happen, no matter what. Understand?”

  “Copy that. Checking in with him now. I’ll be in touch.”

  Hicks took another pull on his cigar. Showtime.

  It was just after eight that morning when Hicks finally walked through the back gate of the Russischer Friedhof Berlin-Tegel in the Reinickendorf section of Berlin. He kept his jacket open. The Kevlar lining made him warmer than he should have been. The Kevlar vest beneath his shirt added an extra layer of protection, but not comfort. If anything, it made him sweat even more.

  The only comfort he felt was the Ruger hanging just beneath his left arm.

  Since he couldn’t rely on technology, he relied on the skills he had honed long ago. Sight, sound, movement, and instinct. The hallmarks of his craft.

  The rising sun had begun to cast long shadows of the headstones across the grass. A warmish breeze moved through the cemetery, reminding Hicks that spring was almost over and summer was not far behind. He figured the odds that he might live to see it were fifty-fifty at most.

  Despite the odds he felt especially sharp that morning, as though he could see every blade of grass and hear every bird in every tree. Maybe it was because he was expecting to get shot at any second.

  He hoped Demerest’s friend in the German intelligence service was as good as Demerest had said he was. He hoped he’d listen to Scott and follow his lead. Scott had taken down Vanguard men before. The German probably hadn’t, at least not knowingly. One false step could turn a simple takedown operation into a full-blown gun battle on a Berlin street.

  Hicks looked for Vanguard members as he passed by crypts families had built as tributes to their dead. Some of the tombs were more ornate than others, marble as opposed to concrete. Some boasted plaques, others had stone statues or bronze angels looking toward the heavens in eternal solemnity.

  Hicks had never understood why people spent so much money to commemorate their own passing. Death was a final, ugly, and inevitable event. Some deaths were more peaceful than others, but the result was the same. No one escaped it. No number of marble stones or sculpted angels could change that.

  Walking among the dead reminded Hicks of Tali. He had thought of her several times an hour, each hour, since the moment Roger had confirmed she had been killed. Hicks had seen too much of this world to believe in quaint notions of a heaven or a hell, but he hoped there was another world where spirits received rewards for the sacrifices they made to keep people safe in this world. People like Tali and Al Clay and Colin deserved that much. People he had lost. People he had allowed himself to care about.

  As he walked deeper into the cemetery, more thoughts of Tali began to creep into his mind. He needed to focus on Tessmer and this mission, but for all his training and experience, he couldn’t help himself. The absurdity of it was just too much, even now as he walked to meet a man who had tried so hard to kill him.

  Hicks had loved a woman he had never really known. He knew her file, her skills, her specialties as a field agent, her fitness reports, and psychological evaluations. He even knew the groups-and-scores results from her monthly visits to the rifle range.

  He had known everything about what Agent Tali Saddon could do on the job, but nothing about the woman she was. He had been in love with a stranger. He had willfully forgotten she a professional manipulator who had led him to believe she was actually carrying their child.

  An idea he had been all too willing to believe. He hadn’t wanted to believe in anything so much since the days when he had been a boy, in a time when mornings such as these, of stark sunshine and warm spring breezes, weren’t clouded by fears of killing or being killed. When beautiful spring days held only the promise of the freedom of summer. A time when all the mysteries of adulthood lay over the horizon just beyond his reach, but grew closer every day.

  A time when dreams were important and worth having. When dreams like being in love and having a family seemed important and possible.

  A time before James Hicks had existed.

  But with each passing year, he found himself moving away from the boy he had once been, and even further away from the adult he had once hoped to become. None of the dreams of his youth had come true, and in their place was the man walking through a cemetery in Berlin to meet an evil man. James Hicks, a man his childhood self could not have envisioned and would have probably hated.

  He had succeeded in becoming a stranger to himself, yet another tragic death to mourn as he walked through a cemetery toward his fate. Alone.

  The comforting pall of grief and loss had settled around him. He quickly shrugged it off. He blinked his eyes and cleared his mind as though waking from a sleep. He took a deep pull on his cigar and exhaled it slowly as he walked. The tobacco brought him back. It anchored him in place. Cut this shit out right now. Concentrate on the mission, not on the losses.

  Sentimental nostalgia had no place here. Losing focus against a man like Tessmer would get him killed.

  Tali Saddon and Al Clay and Colin were all dead. So was the boy who had lofty dreams of true love and noble service. No amount of grief could bring back the past. No amount of killing could avenge the people he had lost. Only information could accomplish that. Information on the Vanguard that Tessmer possessed. Information Hicks was going to get from the man, one way or the other.

  Hicks was still smoking his cigar when he crested the hill, and saw a lone figure standing in front of a tall crypt in the middle of a row of graves.

  Hicks brought his hand up to his mouth as if to adjust his cigar and said, “I have eyes on Tessmer.”

  “And I have eyes on you,” Rivas responded in his earpiece. “Scott reports six men are staging outside the cemetery’s front entrance. Our people are in place, ready to intercept. I’ll keep you apprised of major developments. And remember, Hicks, whatever you do, don’t kill Tessmer.”

  Hicks let the cigar smoke drift from his nose. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He began walking toward his enemy.

  SCOTT PEERED through his binoculars as he crouched behind the dense shrubbery at the cemetery entrance. He watched six men get out of three vans parked at various spots along both sides of the street. They gathered to smoke in the doorway of an abandoned storefront with windows that had recently been painted white from the inside. They were all wearing long coats or bulky jackets. From what he could see, each one of them appeared to be concealing an M4 under their coats.

  People walked past the six men without paying them any notice.

  Mueller, Demerest’s contact with the German federal police, crouched next to him. He observed the scene through binoculars of his own. “These people are armed to the teeth on a busy public street. My men are ready to move in now.”

  “My man in the cemetery is wide open and exposed,” Scott said. “We don’t go until I give the order.”

  Mueller lowered his binoculars and glared at the American. “I give orders to my men, Mr. Scott. No one else. And I have no intention of allowing the streets of Berlin to be turned into a Wild West show. I want to take these men down immediately, while they’re bunched together in the same place.”

  Scott kept watching the men through the binoculars. Some had lit cigarettes. They weren’t going anywhere for a while. “The name’s not Mr. Scott, Hans. Just Scott. And we’ve only got eyes on six Vanguard men so far. They usually roll in teams of either five or ten. Let’s wait and see if more show up. Let’s see if there are more of them in the vans. No reason to allow more of them to escape by moving too early. If they move on our position, we open fire as soon as they pass through the cemetery gates.”

  Mueller lifted his binoculars again. “Name’s not Hans.”

  Scott ignored the correction. “There are six of them and ten of us. If your people are as good as you say they are, this will all be over in one squeeze of the trigger.”

  He heard Mueller say something in German that was undoubtedly a curse. Scott smiled
. He tapped his throat mic. “Team Two, this is Leader. You boys have eyes on the prize?”

  “Copy, Leader,” Patel whispered from behind the painted windows of the vacant store across the street. “Six men gathering right in front of our position, blocking our camera’s view. Holding for your orders.”

  “If you can’t see them, you can hear them,” Scott said. “Cobb’s German is better than yours. Can he hear what they’re saying?”

  “Copy, Leader. Hold on.”

  Scott shifted his weight from one knee to the other while he waited for a response. The men lined up on either side of him were just as uncomfortable as he was. Waiting for something to happen was bad enough. Sweating under all that gear while you waited made it even worse.

  Roger’s voice came on the line. “Leader, this is Two. They’re complaining about how this is a stupid idea. They’re angry about the men they’ve lost. They’re going to kill the American the first chance they get, no matter what the boss says. They haven’t referred to this boss by name. I’ll let you know if they do.”

  Scott was surprised by Cobb’s straightforward report. He had expected him to add some commentary to what he’d heard. He was glad he didn’t. “Continue listening for information on how many they’re expecting to join them. Point out the shot-caller if you can. We go when they go.”

  “Copy,” Roger said. “Team Two out.”

  Scott gripped his binoculars tighter as he watched the men kill time. “Come on, you sons of bitches. What are you waiting for?”

  He had a feeling he’d find out soon enough.

  THE MAN standing beside the crypt looked completely different than the face Hicks had seen in the mug shot in the Bonn police report.

  That photo had been of a pale, bald man, painfully thin, with dead blue eyes and no chin. Wire-rimmed spectacles perched on a long, thin nose had given him a particularly harsh look.