Although my exhilarating dip in the Danube had destroyed them, I recalled that some of the documents I’d grabbed along with the maps detailed the North Korean presidential railway system and even included some blueprints of a special train. A series of times and dates were listed neatly along the eastern and western edges of the smaller-scale map and next to four points marked with Xs along the floor of the valley. One notation, which read 12/17/11 with an arrow pointing west, was written at the eastern edge of the valley, while 12/24/11 with an arrow pointing east was printed on the western side. Whatever it was for, it was going to happen either on December seventeenth or the twenty-fourth, less than six weeks out.
Given Elegast’s assessment and my assumption about the maps, I guessed that the dates and times were a schedule for the presidential train. The only reason the Hanner Brid would have them was because he intended to kill, or at the very least attack, the only human of political consequence in the entire country—Kim Jong-Il. To really stir things up, however, he would have to make it appear as if a Western power, most likely the United States, had carried out the attack. Equally frightening was the recollection of another set of blueprints among those now-useless papers I’d taken for a tunnel system beneath the Tishreen Palace in Syria. And if what I’d been told so far was at all correct, the Hanner Brid had a hand in what was already happening in both Libya and Egypt. That certainly would explain the chaotic and unorganized fighting we’d encountered in Sirte. He was trying to cause further destabilization in already-unstable regions. That could send the human world into war. But how would that benefit him? What really scared me was the realization that he was a mercenary, not a mastermind. So who’s pulling his strings?
Since I no longer had usable information on Syria, I would have to make the most of the North Korean intel I did have. If I couldn’t catch the bastard, I could at least stop him.
While I was making sense of what I had, Duma walked in, barefooted, wearing a plush white robe, and his long blond hair slicked back and wet. He stopped, glanced at me on the couch, strolled to the bathroom, grabbed a robe off a shelf, and threw it to me.
“This may be South Beach, but cover up, D,” he said as he flopped down with an audible sigh of contentment into a white leather chair that resembled a teacup open along one side.
“Sorry, I needed to see what we had to work with here,” I said, pulling on the robe.
It took me less than ten minutes to fill him in on what I’d figured out so far as we ate. “Based on other documents we found in Coronini, this is part of the Presidential Railway System, and I can only imagine that his intention is to somehow attack it,” I said.
“So you think this is where we’ll find him then?”
“Well, even if we don’t, I have no intention of letting him kill Kim Jong-Il,” I said.
“Isn’t that guy some sort of major jerk? Why not just let him do it? Your world would be better off without him, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, he’s a first-class balloon knot, but his death could cause all kinds of trouble if it appears as if the West did it.”
Duma smiled at me when I used his term.
“Supposedly, the Hanner Brid has already had a hand in furthering the discord throughout the Middle East and North Africa. We can’t let him start up trouble with an unstable nuclear power. Whatever his plan, we can’t let him succeed, and if this”—I pointed to the maps—“gives me a chance to stop or kill him, then I’m going to take it.”
“Assuming he’ll still go through with it now that we have these maps.”
“Trust me, the same thing occurred to me, but right now, this is the only actionable intelligence we have,” I said.
“Whatever,” Duma said, sitting back in his chair again. “Count me in. When do we leave?”
“The dates listed here aren’t for a few weeks, but we’ll need to gather our own eyes-on intelligence before the target dates, and I need to find out as much about the North Korean Presidential Rail System as possible before we leave.”
“So I have some time.” He waggled his eyebrows at me and walked back over to the window above the bar and pool, surveying his kingdom from on high. “And if it’s a few weeks out, Ab should be able to join us. Me-ow…” he said, once again focused on the activities below.
Chapter 31
I let Duma have his fun while I got some much-needed sleep—or at least some rest. The constant thump of music and dancing coming from outside my window combined with the fact the bed was only marginally softer than the marble floor made sleeping nearly impossible. And waiting it out proved useless. South Beach went from dusk till dawn and back to dusk again. Still, I was tired enough that I managed to sleep most of the night.
A day later, Duma got us new burner cell phones, and we began contacting sources that might have useful information about anything in North Korea. My first call was to the Metis Foundation. Before the phone rang three times on my end, there was a knock at the hotel room door, and a familiar tingle surged up my spine and into my skull. I wasn’t even remotely surprised Athena had chosen to show up.
“Just trying to call…” I said, holding up the phone as I answered the door. “But seeing as you’ve come all this way, please come in.”
“You seem none the worse for wear, Diomedes,” she said in a concerned tone while remaining otherwise completely stoic.
As usual, she was dressed in a well-tailored linen suit with a tight skirt cut right above the knee, only instead of her usual charcoal-gray pinstripe, the suit was cream colored. She wore her fiery-red hair pulled back into a heavy double braid. The light-colored suit somehow made her normally pale skin appear slightly less wan. Even without makeup, she would put the women of South Beach to shame if she ever decided to reveal her true form to any human but me and a few others. Unlike her Protogenoi brethren, she never cared about her appearance and never dallied with anyone or anything in our world. She took pride in her virgin goddess reputation, but I’d seen men lay down their lives for her on the chance that she might deign to offer her favors. I’d also seen aspects of her countenance that were equally as disturbing as her striking beauty. Despite her present appearance, those were the ones that kept me focused.
Athena gave me an odd once-over as she entered. It finally dawned on me that I was still wearing the robe because my only apparel consisted of dirty fatigues, boots, a grimy T-shirt, and my vest.
“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” I said. “Everything I have is a bit ripe and covered in either blood, mud, or both.”
She simply smiled in the same agreeable manner a mother uses when her child offers her a handful of tadpoles.
I sat down on the couch in front of the maps, and she eyed the funky chair opposite as if trying to determine the best way to lower herself into it. She chose to stand, arms crossed across her chest. Her mouth was little more than a soft slit across her face, but her eyes blazed intensely beneath the deep blue of her irises. That was my cue.
As usual, my debriefing with Athena was mostly perfunctory and a pragmatic exercise for my benefit. We were connected to such a degree that she knew not only where I was, but also what was going on in my mind at all times. She respected me enough, however, to stay out of my head. She sat and listened passively without batting an eyelash in response. After I told her everything I knew, she brought me up to date on everything I didn’t know in the same mechanical way she’d listened to me.
As if she were reading a grocery list, she told me the current situation in North Africa had escalated, leading to the murder of Gaddafi within the last few days, and that the underpinnings of an uprising had begun in Syria. Apparently, she and the Metis Foundation also had their hands full trying to assuage increasing tensions in the Gaza Strip and Iran.
A bounty had been placed on my head by the leader of the Hacky Yacky Barracuda thingy back in Japan, and the Li
untika Strigoi were grumbling about my recent uninvited visit. And while I was still wanted by the US government for acts of terrorism, the bounties offered by the Seelie and Unseelie Courts had been officially suspended. The small things in life make us feel special.
The only thing she told me that actually surprised me was that Belphoebe had orchestrated the blackout of most of Southern California that had complicated my original flight from the Cu Sith in order to make her pursuit of me through San Diego easier. City and county officials were blaming the power failure on simple human error, though locals weren’t buying it. It was kind of flattering that she’d found it necessary to go to such extremes. Apparently, rumors about green dogs and bears running around San Diego were rampant, along with conspiracy theories about the sonic booms that were heard across the city. Typical of videos of such nature, they all showed the glamoured Cu Sith as little more than an out-of-focus indistinguishable green quadruped of indeterminate size and shape, and were the butt of jokes and ridicule on morning radio and across the Internet. Unfortunately, there was still a BOLO out for someone sort of fitting my description with regards to attacking and kidnapping police and stealing a patrol car the night of the blackout.
After spending the better part of the morning debriefing, Athena left, promising to get me everything she could on North Korea while I figured out the best way to stop the Hanner Brid from attacking that train or, at the very least, keep him from killing Kim Jong-Il. Duma returned sometime after sunset with clothes, food, and a laptop, and I sat down to research North Korea.
There was damn little out there on North Korea. I did pull up satellite maps of the area south of Ch’ongjin but found next to nothing on the Presidential Railway System except rumors and speculation. There was one BBC news report of an explosion along the railroad near Ryongchon on the southern border with China back in 2004. According to the report, the disaster had led to extreme paranoia regarding presidential safety and prompted increased security measures around the train. Increased from what, I couldn’t tell.
Despite my best efforts and hours of searching, I found nothing of any real value, but on a lark, I pulled up weather conditions for December in that part of North Korea and practically froze while I read. Snow. Cold and snow. Really cold and lots of snow. Everything I read said it was a freaking winter wonderland—way up in the mountains, isolated, covered in snow, and perhaps as cold as ten below during the day.
Hoo-fuckin’-yah.
After another meal and another fitful night’s sleep, I was starting to feel somewhat normal though still dismayed about the dearth of information. I was back to searching when the room phone rang. No one except Duma and Athena knew where I was. On edge, I picked it up to find it was the receptionist at the front desk. I unclenched a bit.
“There is a courier here with a package for you,” said the desk clerk.
“Sure, send them up.” I hung up then pulled the Sig from my vest still lying in a smelly heap on the floor outside the bathroom.
I went into the bathroom to watch the door from a safe vantage point. In my line of work, it pays to wear a tinfoil hat sometimes.
I could hear footsteps echoing outside in the marble-floored hallway, followed by several sharp raps at the door.
“Leave it at the door, please.” I dropped to one knee, aiming about a foot above the doorknob.
“Steve!” a familiar female voice replied.
I stood up, holding the gun down at my side. “Um… Sarah?”
“Steve, yes. It’s me, Sarah,” she replied hoarsely. She didn’t come across as surprised at all.
Agent Sarah Wright of the Department of Homeland Security, at my hotel hidey-hole door in Miami. What the hell is she doing here? How did she know where to find me? What am I supposed to say to her? After our last brief meeting and our recent phone conversations, maybe I would be better off jumping out the window instead of answering the door. My stomach started to flop, and my hands got all sweaty. As I wiped my hands off on my shorts, the sight of my gun shifted my thoughts from Sarah and me to the situation with the Hanner Brid again. Things were complicated, to say the least.
“Steve… Diomedes,” Sarah said again in a hoarse whisper, knocking a little more insistently. “Let me in.”
After what felt like an eternity, I finally discovered I could move again. “Uh, yeah,” I said, my voice cracking. “Hold on.”
As I reached to open the door, the paranoid part of me kicked back in. Medea, a particularly nasty witch, had used Sarah to try to kill me by sending her unexpectedly to my home in San Diego. The Hanner Brid had the ability to do the same thing. I avoided peering through the peephole because a skilled attacker would know exactly where I was when the light through the hole darkened as I blocked it. Instead, I stood as far to the side of the door as I could, unlatched it, then leaned back, ready to fire.
“Diomedes,” Sarah whispered as the door opened a bit. Then the door opened all the way, and she walked into the room, carrying a large banker’s box. Her eyes quickly darted around to take stock of the situation.
Unlike the last time she’d showed unexpectedly, nothing about her suggested she was under a spell or the influence of someone else, so I relaxed a bit against the wall and lowered my gun. The subtle movement drew Sarah’s attention, and she dropped the box and jumped with a start.
“You son of a bitch!” she screamed, hands on hips, trying to catch her breath. As soon as I was close enough, she hit me in the shoulder—the same one I’d been shot in. “Why’d you scare me like that? And what the hell is going on?”
The shock of the impact on my sore shoulder almost made me drop my gun. Grasping the wound, I put the gun back on safety and walked toward the couch, relieved it was really Sarah.
“Did you just safety that gun?” She slammed the door behind her, jarring the windows, and me, sending my maps and papers flying with the breeze.
“Well, after the last time you showed up unexpectedly, I thought it might be wise.” I dropped onto the couch with a sigh, followed by a loud grunt as my spine experienced the equivalent of a car crash. I dropped the gun next to me then set about gathering the errant maps and papers.
Sarah picked up the box, and I motioned at the chair across from me. She crossed to the table and dropped the heavy box onto it with a thud that sent the rest of the papers flying. She folded her arms and glowered at me with such force that I had to sit back.
Even in her agitated state, she was attractive. Her black pantsuit and white shirt were disheveled, from travel and probably irritation. Her brown ponytail was starting to come apart, and her gray eyes, while at the moment coldly boring into my skull, also offered an odd comfort and provided a fleeting instant of exhilaration as our eyes met. Her expression softened a bit when she saw the fresh bruises and injuries. It only lasted a second, though.
“What the hell have you gotten into now? You look like hell. And what’s up with this… place?” She gestured around at the room. “I was under the impression that you and Duma were laying low. And don’t tell me it’s a long story.” After a second of stark silence, she continued in a quieter voice. “No kidding.” She glanced around the room then down at the box and papers I’d placed back on the table.
“I’m sorry,” I said. My mind was a total blank except for her. And I suddenly found myself out of my depth. I had almost a hundred sixty generations of grandchildren, though none past my own children ever knew I existed, thanks to Aphrodite. I hadn’t allowed myself to care for, let alone have a relationship with, anyone in nearly two centuries. Personal relationships, romantic or otherwise, didn’t fit in very well with my job. But despite my immortality, I refused to give up my humanity, and that part of me craved contact no matter how much I denied it or tried to avoid it.
Her frown disappeared, and she let her arms fall to her side as if she knew what was going on in my he
ad. And then things became awkward again. I didn’t even know how to say what was on my mind, and she probably was afraid to say anything for fear I would shoot her down.
The silence between us was palpable, and I suddenly couldn’t look at her. I was embarrassed. Not only because I was awkward at personal relationships, but because I had treated her unfairly over the past few months. She deserved better. I prided myself on being an honorable man, yet I reacted toward her like a confused teenager.
I was about to say something when the door opened, and Duma entered in grand style, dressed as if he were going out for the night. Or, more likely, just coming back.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said, taking off his sunglasses and spreading his arms as he recognized Sarah. “If it ain’t Sarah, Warrior Princess! Still a hottie, I see.”
Sarah smiled at him and gave him a friendly, girlish wave with both hands, but then her expression turned dour again.
“Aw, come on,” he said, glancing between us. “Things would be a whole lot easier for me if you two would hop in the sack and get it over with already. This whole denial-avoidance thing is getting old.” He waved his hands around randomly as he spoke.
Sarah stared down and scratched absently at her neck. I could feel myself flush as I cleared my throat and sat up, pretending to focus on the maps in front of me. While Duma had no problems with casual relationships, they weren’t my style.
“No? Oh, well—suit yourselves.” He somehow managed to sit in the artsy chair without appearing ungainly, then put his sunglasses back on. “I can do every bit as weird as you guys can.”
Chaos Unbound (The Metis Files Book 2) Page 26
