Mercy's Chase

by Jess Lourey

  “Mercy is okay? Mom?”

  Bel swiveled the phone so it faced the refrigerator and a crayon drawing of two broccoli-shaped trees with a rainbow joining them. Two people held hands underneath, one tall, one short, both with dramatically five-toed feet and five-fingered hands.

  “They’re great. Mercy said this is a picture of you and her under a lucky rainbow.”

  Salem’s heart melted. She and Mercy Mayfair had developed an unbreakable bond. When they’d first met, the child had been as skittish as a wildcat, fierce-eyed and bony, trusting only her brother, Ernest. During the cross-country journey to save Bel and Salem’s mothers, Salem tutored Mercy, bought her coloring books, and made sure she ate her vegetables. Gradually, the alley-cat girl had warmed to Salem. It had been nearly as hard to leave the child behind as it had been to abandon Bel.

  Salem retrieved a mental image of the mini-Stonehenge with mercy written on the extra stone, and her chest tightened. Coincidence, surely. One is a name, the other a plea.

  “Mercy seems happy?” Salem snapped open her laptop as she spoke and attached her phone to it via a simple USB connection. She propped up the phone so she could type while she talked. Bel had given her permission to test Gaea as needed during their conversations. One of its planned features captured background images in video calls, triggering an alert if they were of note: stolen items with visible serial codes, drug paraphernalia, illegal weaponry. She wanted to test how Gaea would translate the drawings taped to the refrigerator.

  Bel reholstered her own phone, a grin lighting up her beautiful face. She’d decided not to regrow her strawberry blond hair after Salem had chopped it on the run. The pixie cut suited her delicate features, eyes the sweet blue of a cloud-free sky, creamy skin, elegant nose, full lips. “Mercy is better than happy. That kid is a goddamned genius. You know how she picked up the math you taught her when we were on the run? She’s the same with physical training.”

  Salem’s face pinched before she could smooth it.

  Bel chuckled. “Good thing you’re not a poker player. You’d be flat broke inside of an hour. Yeah, in answer to the question your face asked, I train her. Wheelchair-bound me. Krav Maga, plus evasive moves. The top of my body works just fine.”

  Salem leaned toward her phone, eyes wide. “I didn’t doubt you, Bellie. I worry about her. She’s only seven. Do you really need to teach her to be afraid of the world?”

  “Not afraid of it. Able to survive it. And I want her to know she’s getting trained.”

  They sat in the silence, together. Bel spoke truth.

  It wasn’t only Salem who’d been tricked into working for the Underground. She and Bel had both been secretly groomed by their parents, Salem for codebreaking and computers and Bel for strength and spycraft. They had excelled in their fields. When their parents’ worst nightmare materialized and the Hermitage hunted Bel and Salem in the hopes of destroying the Underground, they’d had to call on all their training to survive, to save Gina Hayes, and to crush the Hermitage.

  The training had stuck. The betrayal as well.

  The sticky pain of being lied to by their parents, of being groomed for a life they had no say in, reared its ugly head. Salem needed to silence it. Two possible topics of conversation came to mind, neither of which she particularly wanted to bring up: Stonehenge and Lucan Stone.

  “I saw something in Ireland yesterday,” she blurted. “I went out there with another agent, Len Curson? I thought we were called out on a fool’s errand. There’s all sorts of them with the summit coming. The caller was a sweet old woman. Said she had something to show us.”

  Bel’s face lit up with interest.

  “You wouldn’t believe it, Bel.” Salem’s voice went high, fake-sounding even to her own ears. Her rational side was warring with her intuition, trying to muzzle it from voicing its ridiculous theory. “The woman had uncovered a little replica of Stonehenge in her backyard, right next to her grandmother’s grave. The word mercy was carved on one of the stones.”

  Bel saw Salem’s distress. She didn’t waste time on tangential questions. “Was it a code?”

  Salem squished her lips together. “It was—” But the words didn’t come. Hey, I don’t know what mercy has to do with anything, but if you see the placement of the stone it was written on, guess what? Things fall into place, and you see that Stonehenge is a profoundly stationary version of something you and I carry in our purses every day. It sounded stupid in her head and would certainly crush her under in its silly weight if she uttered it aloud.

  Bel inhaled loudly. “You solved the mystery of Stonehenge, didn’t you?”

  If they were together, in person, Salem could maybe confess what she thought Stonehenge really was, and they’d laugh about it. She couldn’t bring herself to do it over the phone, though. She shoved an easy smile on her face and waggled her eyebrows. “For sure. And for my next trick, I plan to crack the Zodiac Killer’s code.”

  Bel studied her, squinting. Salem held her breath. This could go either way.

  After a long three seconds, Bel went with the laugh. “That’s my girl.” She drank the water she’d drawn from the refrigerator. When she set down the empty glass, she wiped her mouth with her arm. “In honor of our unbreakable friendship bond, I should tell you that your mom has a surprise for you.”

  Salem tensed. “What?”

  “If I tell you, it’s not a surprise.” Bel winked and pivoted. “Hey, don’t suppose you’ve found any sexy British women for me to date? I need someone who takes no shit.”

  The conversation continued for another ten minutes. Bel updated Salem on the freelance work she’d been doing. Salem shared as much as she could about her work at the Campus, which wasn’t much at all. After a promise to talk again soon, they hung up.

  It was 6:30 AM.

  That left enough time to work out.

  Salem finished lacing her shoes and snapped the elastic band that held her room key around her wrist. She bound her wild morning hair in a topknot and stepped into the hallway. The dormitories were housed on the west end of the building, the conference rooms and offices of the brass in the middle, and the codebreakers’ computer lab was tucked at the east end. The workout area was below it all, in the basement. She could reach the gym from either end or the center of the Campus, but the middle stairs were better lit. She trotted toward those.

  She was playing with the blue plastic band at her wrist when she heard a murmuring from one of the conference rooms. Cleaning staff? No one else would be in this early. She didn’t have a chance to reverse her course before the conference room doorway opened.

  Assistant Director Robert Bench stepped into the hallway. Other than a brief orientation when she was first assigned to the Campus, she had encountered her supervisor only when she’d tried to convince him to assign her more Gaea time. In those brief run-ins, he’d come across as a gruff man with a twitchy muscle in his cheek that made her think he was always chewing on a bit of leftover meat. His face was jowled, his hair more gray than black.

  He appeared neither pleased nor surprised to run into her at this hour.

  “Agent Wiley. Just the girl I wanted to see.”

  Salem stopped, flustered. “Yes sir?”

  He got right to it. “President Hayes is arriving tomorrow to attend the summit. She has specifically requested you on her cyber security detail. She wants you to deploy Gaea.”

  Salem flinched. That made no sense. The FBI hadn’t given her the time to develop the program, yet she was being asked to use it? For a moment, she wondered if this was a continuation of her earlier dream. With the president coming to London, Lucan Stone might also be near. “It’s not ready.”

  “That’s what I told Hayes. She said you’ll employ other means, as well. But she was very specific that it is you she wants running code interference for her while she’s here, and that she wants you to tes
t the new program in her presence.”

  Salem nodded.

  “One more thing.” He tipped his head toward the open door of the conference room he’d exited. “You have a new partner.”

  5

  Moscow

  “What would you like to drink, sir?”

  US Speaker of the House Vit Linder crossed his arms. “I don’t drink.”

  The Russian butler kept his expression serene. “Tea, perhaps?”

  “I’ll take a Diet Pepsi.”

  It was Vit’s second trip to Russia, and his first meeting with the Order. His staff had cleared the visit with the State Department, his spokesperson had lined up a press conference to spin the visit in the best possible light, and off they’d gone. The first and second day had been boring—shaking hands, feigning interest in the minutiae of Russian politics.

  Today, the Minister of Economic Development had invited him to a private engagement. His security detail had been allowed to sweep the mansion’s third floor for threats and then they’d been forced to stay in the foyer, leaving Vit to this meeting, where he’d been invited to the most exclusive club on the planet.

  It was a coveted offer.

  He leaned back in the executive chair. It was a rich brown he’d never seen in his fifty-eight years. When he’d asked the butler about it, the man had informed him that the leather was pre-Revolutionary reindeer, discovered by divers on a sunken Danish brigantine. The chair was one of thirteen rimming the dark violet African blackwood table. Vit didn’t know what any of that meant except cha-ching.

  Probably the abstract paintings mounted on all four walls were priceless originals, too, and the liquor he sniffed in the air, Yamazaki fifty-year-old. Vit didn’t drink because it had been his father’s downfall, but real estate tycoon Ronald Linder had referred to the $140,000 whisky in reverent tones often enough that it had stuck. Ronald only spoke to his son when he was drunk, and during a particularly agitated bender, he’d mentioned the Order.

  “They run the world,” Ronald had said, pouring his fourth scotch.

  Despite his father’s apparent desire to connect with him, Vit remembered feeling guarded. Sometimes his father would tell him some real corkers and then make fun of Vit when he believed him. “They’re rich?”

  Ronald had laughed and then drank both fingers in a single swallow. “They’re not rich. They are beyond money. Do you understand?” White spittle gathered at the corner of his mouth. “They start wars and end them. They control the media, the internet, food production, and now, even the weather.”

  Vit had perfected an expression he’d employ when he wanted to look like he understood something. He slid it on then. His father didn’t notice, saying no more on the subject no matter how many times Vit asked.

  Intrigued, Vit had called in the private detective he used when he wanted to know what his sisters really thought of him or when he planned to ask out a famous actress and needed to make sure she’d say yes. The PI sniffed around, uncovering just enough to confirm that everything Ronald had said about the Order was true and then some.

  Then the PI had disappeared.

  Vit hadn’t thought much more about it in the intervening two decades. Until last week, when the invitation had arrived from Moscow. It was routed through his office, addressed to the Speaker of the House. He was to fly over and discuss trade sanctions, a trip that was beneath him and that he would have declined if not for one specific line:

  We understand you prefer the Four Seasons and have the presidential suite reserved in the hopes that you and your staff will join us to discuss …

  The reference was discreet. Maybe the author, the Russian Minister of Economic Development, didn’t know about the “incident” at the Four Seasons the last and only time Vit had traveled to Moscow. That had been before he’d considered a career in politics.

  Then again, maybe the minister did know about it. Maybe he even had video evidence.

  In either case, Vit considered it expedient to accept the invitation.

  And here he was, seated at a table with two of the world’s most powerful men: Cassius Barnaby, one half of the Barnaby brothers and co-owner of Barnaby Industries, a multibillion-dollar multinational corporation based in Missouri; and Mikhail Lutsenko, a Russian steel tycoon whose command of the Russian mafia was the country’s most poorly kept secret. They’d invited Vit because they wanted him to replace Carl Barnaby, Cassius’ brother, who was currently serving twenty-five to life for the kidnapping of Vida Wiley and the theft of millions of dollars of gold, jewels, and artifacts discovered by Wiley’s daughter when she cracked the Beale Cipher.

  “You understand what’s at stake?” Lutsenko asked Vit after the butler had returned with his diet soda. Lutsenko’s martini glass was sweating directly into the magnificent blackwood. “We have twelve on the board. We need an odd number.”

  “I understand,” Vit said. He was comfortable at a high-stakes table.

  “I don’t think you do, son,” Cassius Barnaby said, leaning forward. He reminded Vit of his own father in age and manner. In other words, he was a condescending prick. “We fart and an economy collapses.”

  Vit Linder smirked, hiding the surge of rage he felt at Barnaby talking down to him. Vit was the son of a wealthy man, but it wasn’t his father’s millions that had secured his own empire, though that had provided a hefty start. Neither was it his father’s connections that had gotten him elected to the third-highest office in the land, though they hadn’t hurt. That left charisma, brains, and looks—except Vit’s personality was a shallow pool, he’d barely graduated college even with a team of tutors, and his physical attractiveness had peaked at twenty-three and wasn’t anything to write home about even then.

  So what had launched Vit Linder to the top?

  Canniness, he called it. In laymen’s terms? Nobody read a room better.

  Specifically, no one in business or politics could glance at a person and immediately sniff out exactly what would piss them off. He kept everyone around him off-balance, like a martial artist, and his power had never failed him.

  Not that he needed to call on it to get Cassius Barnaby’s number. The man was back on his heels. He was trying to keep his face smooth, and he mostly succeeded, but his eyes kept flicking to Lutsenko. Vit didn’t need a tutor to see that Lutsenko was at the top of the ladder and Barnaby barely hanging on to the bottom rung, likely because of the bad publicity he and his brother had brought to the Hermitage, the American branch of the Order.

  Always plant your foot on the neck of the bottom man, his dad had taught him. It makes you stand taller.

  Vit addressed Cassius Barnaby directly. “That may have been true before your brother was arrested with his hands in the Beale Vault. Tell me about the Order’s power now.”

  Vit leaned back, a deceptively relaxed gesture. He kept his eyes locked with Barnaby’s while registering Lutsenko’s body language. He was satisfied to see the Russian imperceptibly relax. Lutsenko had not been sure about Vit.

  Now he was.

  “This isn’t a pissing contest,” Barnaby said. The sweat that had formed on his upper lip put the lie to his words. “The regulations that come with the climate accord are going to cost us dearly. Is it a coincidence that we are losing assets while female-led enterprises gain them?”

  Lutsenko laughed. It was a dry sound. “It was luck that they decrypted the Beale train.”

  “You’d gamble everything on that?” Cassius Barnaby asked. “On luck? Because we’ve overcome regulations in the past. The accord will sting, but if the Underground uncovers the remaining trains before us, we are done. Women will realize how many resources they have at their disposal, how many they’ve always had. Our money? Power? Gone. What’s at the end of those trains will make what Wiley uncovered in the Beale Vault look like a waitress stealing tips.”

  “Enough,” Lutsenko said. Vit got
the impression the man didn’t put as much stock in the rising power of women as Barnaby did. He was also a vain man, straightening his hair and stroking his mustache, an observation Vit filed away for later. “We have our own men searching for the trains.”

  “Bring Salem Wiley and Mercy Mayfair in,” Barnaby argued. “Bring them in as insurance.”

  “We have made a deal with the Grimalkin.”

  Barnaby flinched at the name. Vit sat up with interest.

  “We let Wiley remain a free agent so we can learn from her,” Lutsenko continued. “We know where the child is. We can call them both in for an interview when needed. No earlier.”

  Vit sat back, disappointed. If he wasn’t making deals, he wasn’t interested, and there was no money to be had in this talk of a woman and a child. “I’ll let you gentleman handle that. My focus is on the United States. If I join the board, I get what I want?”

  Barnaby’s mood shifted for only a flash, distaste replaced by something that looked like humor. Vit didn’t like that at all, the feeling that he was being laughed at. He made a note to make Cassius Barnaby pay, sooner rather than later. He would make the man squirm in shame. In the meanwhile, the Order needed an odd number on the board, their covenant demanded it, and they wanted someone they thought they could manipulate, that much was clear. Vit would pretend to give them what they wanted because only they could facilitate his greatest desire.

  Revenge.

  Vit would join the Order.

  He’d use his position to have President Gina Hayes and Vice President Richard Cambridge assassinated. Next in line for the presidency of the United States of America?

  Speaker of the House Vit Linder.

  Who’s stupid now, Ronald?

  Vit’s head was thrown back in laughter when the secretary walked in. Vit was not an exuberant man. An occasional chuckle or snicker. Barnaby and Lutsenko wanted him to be a buffoon, though, and so he’d expose his neck. It’s not like anyone here was taking pictures. Besides, it was funny, their plan for keeping the American poor at each other’s throats.