Bob Lorenzo was such an idiot, I thought bitterly. The damned fool thought it was still possible to work within the system, to effectuate positive change. After the incident in Quagmire, Nevada, he’d practically begged me to go with him. He talked about the “legitimate government” and called Majestic a “cancer.” What he failed to see is that Majestic wasn’t the cancer; Majestic was a symptom of a much, much bigger problem. He acted like his so-called legitimate government wasn’t giving materiel support and tacit approval to the operations of Majestic. Even shrouded in layers of secrecy like they were, none of it would be happening if they didn’t have approval from on high. One man wouldn’t be able to fix that problem. I doubted the problem could be fixed at all.
Hell, I’d given Bob all the info Colonel Hunter had given me on Project Heartbreaker, and he had gone public with it. He exposed Majestic to the cold light of day, and what changed? Nothing. They scattered, laid low for a while, but that was it. It had just been one more scandal out of dozens, whitewashed by the politicians and a compliant media. The whole exercise was for nothing.
Still, I wondered, what would have happened if I had taken him up on his offer. I probably wouldn’t have been captured by Majestic and sent to North Gap. Colonel Hunter’s last words had been about somebody named Evangeline, who was somehow related to Project Blue, and Silvers had drilled my mind into Swiss cheese trying to figure out who the hell Evangeline was. Maybe if I’d gone with Bob I would’ve been able to find out. I certainly wouldn’t have given him or Hawk up under interrogation. Hawk would still be alive and Bob wouldn’t be missing.
There was no sense second-guessing the past, not now, not here, alone in my room. I was exhausted, and needed to take a shower before my housemates used up all the hot water. After that, I badly needed a nap.
It was hours later when I awoke to someone gently knocking on my door.
I opened it to find Ling waiting for me. Her black hair was done up in a messy bun with a pair of sticks shoved through it. She wore a purple spaghetti-strap t-shirt and black yoga pants, and was barefoot.
“Did I wake you?” she asked, stepping inside.
“Yeah, but it’s okay. I need to get up anyway. All these stakeouts are hell on a sleep schedule.”
“You look like you got some rest,” she said. “I thought I’d come check on you.”
“We still need to sit down and have that hot wash.”
“Dinner, or perhaps it is closer to breakfast, is cooking now. And you are right, following criminals makes setting a reasonable schedule difficult. We will all sit down together and discuss what’s happened shortly. Since we are short on time, I have some proposals, but no matter what, I want you to know in front of the group that I will defer to your judgment. This is your operation.”
“Is it?”
“This mission is your doing. The group looks to you for leadership. It’s good to see. It comes naturally to you.”
“I’m glad one of us is confident in my abilities,” I said glumly. “Half the time I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, like I’m just winging it and hoping for the best.”
“To a large extent, that’s exactly what we’re doing. But it’s all we can do right now. This is unfamiliar territory for all of us.”
“I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you,” I said. I squeezed her hand. “You keep me sane.”
Ling leaned forward and gave me a quick kiss. “I’ve seen you at your finest, Michael. You have every reason to be more confident.”
“I’ve gotten too many people killed.”
Ling shook her head. “That is the nature of this business. People die.”
“I told Ariel that same thing before we left. But, I’ve been thinking, I really should have gone with Bob Lorenzo when I had the chance. None of this would have happened. Not like this.”
“You don’t know that,” Ling said. “Perhaps it would have worked out better, perhaps not. Bob would have been found out eventually, even without you being interrogated. There was no way a lone FBI agent could go up against an organization like Majestic without penalties. It was only a matter of time. In any case, perhaps this is selfish of me, but I’m glad things went the way they did.”
“Why is that?”
“Because now I have you.” Nobody ever accused Ling of being tender, but with me she tried. “And you have me. Things work out. They always do. The Crossroads ended badly as it was, but it would have gone even worse without you.”
I leaned forward and kissed her again, longer this time, more deeply.
After a moment, she moved to get up. “I need to get dressed.”
I didn’t let go of her hand. “I don’t think so.”
A playful, mischievous smile appeared on her face. “Oh really?”
I nodded. “As a matter of fact,” I said, kissing her on the neck, “I think you’re overdressed as it is.”
“Is this how it’s going to be?” Ling asked, eyes closed as I kissed her neck and shoulder. “You use your authority to take advantage of your subordinate? Shameful.”
“Shameful,” I agreed.
Ling pulled away, her dark eyes twinkling. She gave me a gentle shove, pushing me back onto the bed, and climbed on top of me.
“Well then,” she said, straddling me, hands on my chest. “Let’s see who’s really in charge.”
Sometime later, Ling and I lay together, naked beneath a sheet. She had her head on my shoulder and was listening to me breathe, something she often did after sex. If you didn’t know Ling, and only judged her from the public face she wore, you’d think she was an ice queen. She tended to be standoffish and, often, needlessly formal. She’d lived a hard life. I knew full well why she put up the walls that she did, but that didn’t make it any less striking when they came down.
For someone normally so distant, when we were alone, she was very touchy. She liked to hold hands and cuddle. She was never one to engage in public displays of affection; a quick peck on the corner of the mouth was the most I would get out of her if there was any chance anyone would see. But behind closed doors, she was a different person: sweet, sensitive, passionate, enthusiastic in the sack. One time, we even watched Steel Magnolias, and I held her while she bawled her eyes out.
Other times, we talked about the bad stuff. She had seen as much combat as I had, and the horrors of the Chinese Civil War were well known. Cities burned, mass starvation, fields of bodies. I could talk to her about the bad days, about the things I’d done, about how I desperately tried to cling to my humanity, and she actually understood. I could talk to her about the friends I’d left behind, the people I’d watched die, the things I’d swore to lock away, and she didn’t just listen, she got it.
When I woke up in the middle of the night, soaked in sweat, reaching for a weapon to fight an enemy that wasn’t there, she held me until I calmed down. When she found me drinking myself stupid, crying, regretting the past and feeling sorry for myself, she didn’t judge, didn’t shame me for cracking, didn’t look down on me for not always being able to keep it together. She just wrapped her arms around me and told me it was okay.
Fate had brought us together, time and time again, against all odds. Ariel had insisted that Ling and I were meant to be, and even though I told myself I didn’t believe in such things, I was beginning to believe it with her. Ling wasn’t just my girlfriend, or my lover. She was my partner, my other half, my warrior, my beautiful angel of death. I couldn’t imagine life without her.
I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her so badly what she meant to me, how I’d be dead without her, how my heart skipped a beat when she smiled. I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the words, I didn’t know how to say it in a way that wouldn’t sound stupid.
“I love you,” was all I could manage.
“I love you, too,” she said.
Somehow, that was enough.
We sat around the dinner table, scheming. The house in Wels had a large dining room with a rou
nd dinner table, big enough for all of us. We six were all the manpower we had, and that included Ariel, whom I wasn’t about to take out on a mission. In fact, we’d gone over contingency plans over and over again covering what she was supposed to do if we were compromised in any way.
Our crew was small and our resources were limited. We were down two vehicles now, in the aftermath of the fiasco in Salzburg, limiting our transportation options. We had a small pile of cash, guns, whatever information we could get our hands on, and not much else. Against us was a crime family with limitless resources.
Sometimes it seemed hopeless, but I couldn’t let the team think I had my doubts. Ling had been right; this operation was my baby. These people had volunteered to follow me on this fool’s errand, and I owed it to them to not let uncertainty get the better of me.
If I was trying to seem upbeat, Antoine was dour. The hulking African always struck an imposing figure, even when casually hanging out at the dinner table. He was actually a very kindhearted, gentle man, but ferocious in his convictions, and not the sort you wanted to piss off. Shen was, as usual, quiet and unassuming. It was as if he wanted people to forget he was there. Skunky was a bit of a smartass, but he was damned smart. Shen and Antoine had worked with Ling for years. Skunky was one of my oldest friends, and we’d been in Switchblade together before he joined Exodus. Despite our challenge, I couldn’t ask for a better team.
“The information Lorenzo presented is disturbing. It seems that we have less time than we thought,” Antoine said.
Nods and grunts of agreement came from around the table. Even Ariel was quiet. She chewed her food absentmindedly, seemingly zoned out, but I had seen her like this before. Her mind was racing, trying to process everything, account for every possibility.
“Varga says the pieces are in place, but if we just pop Kat, it’ll launch. So what do we do about it?” I asked. “How do we stop this when we don’t even know where to start?”
Ariel blinked hard a couple of times, swallowed her food, then joined the conversation. “I’ve been thinking this over. The answer is there; I just can’t see it yet. Elusive, you know?”
“No,” Skunky said. “Not in the slightest, scary computer brain girl.”
“We need more information. I need more if I’m going to be able to put it all together.”
“Yeah,” Skunky agreed. “I’m on board with you guys until the end. You know that. But I’m not gonna lie, bro, I’m pretty lost.”
“Perhaps,” Antoine suggested, “it would be helpful to start with what we do know. Katarina’s operation has moved west, and so must we.”
“Varga told Lorenzo that Katarina Montalban is in Paris, so that’s where we need to go.”
“Agreed,” Ling said.
“Yay!” Ariel cheered. “I’ve always wanted to see Paris. It’s the city of love.”
“I thought it was more the city of ham sandwiches myself,” Skunky said. “Seriously, they’ve got like a little bakery like every twenty feet there, and they’re all awesome.”
“I guess it could be both,” Ariel said, thoughtfully. “If you love sandwiches, I mean.”
Ling was not impressed by love or sandwiches. “Let’s stay on topic, yes? Operationally speaking, Paris is solidly Montalban territory. We have been able to operate with relative impunity over the last few months because we have been poking around the outskirts of the Montalban empire. Paris is the heart of it. They will have eyes everywhere and informants in the government and among the police. Any contacts we have with the criminal underworld can be assumed to be compromised.”
“Assume that anyone we speak with will immediately inform our enemies,” Antoine grumbled. “To find intel among Paris’ criminals will be difficult. That is something we could use Lorenzo for.”
“True that,” Skunky said. “We spent how many months tracking down this one Varga dude without getting caught, and your old buddy from Zubara found him in what, a couple of days after getting out of a torture dungeon?”
“Something like that,” I mumbled. Yes, Lorenzo knew the underworld better than anybody, but I suspected the reason he’d found Varga so fast was that he just didn’t care about getting caught. I’d seen it in his eyes in the van, he simply didn’t give a damn if he lived or died as long as he took his target with him. I recognized the look because I’d seen it in the mirror when I was after Gordon Willis. Maybe Ling had saved his life by putting Jill in his path, maybe not. Time would tell, but in the meantime I had people to take care of. I didn’t have that luxury of risking him dragging us down with him. “We’ll work with Lorenzo, but I’m not sure we can count on him for anything.”
“Because he’s traumatized,” Antoine said.
“More like kamikaze,” I corrected.
“We may be flying blind, but I have received word from Sir Matthew,” Ling suggested. This was probably the part she’d warned me about earlier. “He has made contact with another player who may help us, and believes he may be of use.”
“Could you be more vague?” Skunky asked.
“Oh, trust me, she can be,” I answered.
Ling scowled at me before speaking. “His name is Alastair Romefeller.”
“So who is this guy?”
“The chair of Romefeller Fund Management and head of the Romefeller Foundation, his philanthropic apparatus. He’s a hedge fund manager worth something like twenty billion U.S. dollars. He is also the sole owner of a think tank and private intelligence gathering firm called Romefeller Military Intelligence.”
“He’s Illuminati,” Ariel said flatly. “One of their power-hungry overlords who imagines himself ruling the world. You can’t trust him.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a sec,” Skunky said. “The Illuminati? That’s conspiracy theory bullshit. It’s just a bunch of rich bastards who like to do favors and pull strings for each other. The Montalbans belong to that social club and you want to talk to them?”
“It is not ideal,” Ling said, “but there’s a mutual interest here.”
“The Illuminati are real, and they have always stood in the way of Exodus and the work!” Ariel protested.
I couldn’t let this degenerate, and ultimately, I had to make the call. It may have sounded crazy, but I knew there was something to it. Gordon Willis had me assassinate Rafael Montalban as part of the secret war between Majestic and the Illuminati.
“Bob Lorenzo said that Project Blue was Majestic’s way of destroying the Illuminati. We know both sides are assholes, but let’s back up. Everything I’ve heard about the Illuminati comes from pop culture, a bunch of wealthy elites who secretly run the world, and all that. If anybody is actually running the world, they’re doing a terrible job since it’s falling apart, so I know that’s nonsense. What’s their actual deal, Ling?”
“We don’t know everything,” Ling said. “Much of the truth is buried in layers of misinformation. This conspiracy theory bullshit, as Jeff calls it, helps obscure their real objectives. As soon as someone starts talking about the Illuminati, he’s immediately dismissed as a nut.”
“But the actual conspiracy is real,” Antoine said.
“Yes, they’re very real,” Ariel said. “Once you get past the lies and legends and bullshit, they are basically an alliance of descendants and heirs of European aristocracy. Their leadership all comes from several powerful families. The Romefellers are one of them, as are the Montalbans. The different families’ influence goes up and down over the years.”
“Well, I checked Google,” Skunky said as he placed his phone on the table. “Wikipedia says that the Illuminati were founded in Bavaria in 1776.”
Ariel rolled her eyes. “That’s not true. They go back way further than that.”
“Like I’m going to trust you over Wikipedia.”
“Older than Exodus?” I asked.
“Exodus and the Illuminati share common origins, according to the lore,” Ling said. “Both were products of the Crusades and, later evolved during Enlightenment. Both were fo
unded with the goal of bringing justice to a base and, at times, unbearable world. Exodus chose the path of direct action, fighting evil wherever it showed itself. The Illuminati chose . . . well, another way. Manipulation through the levers of power. They do not seek to combat injustice so much as they wish to implement order and control.”
“With themselves in charge, of course,” I said.
“Obviously!” Ariel said. “And that’s why you can’t trust them! They think that people can be managed. They don’t get probability. They freaking started World War One!”
“What? How?”
Ling just shook her head, but Ariel went off.
“Well, not started, but made it spiral out of their control. Their attempts at manipulation, gaming the system, were at an all-time high. They thought they could manage a regional conflict to gain more power, and bring about a tide of internationalism. It backfired. They got their League of Nations, but they didn’t predict the rise of communism or fascism. This took away the base of their power for a while, so they watched, and waited. They were key players in the founding of the United Nations and, later, the European Union. They are, I think, more powerful today than they’ve ever been. They are rivals of Majestic.”
I scratched my head. “Why would a secret U.S. government organization want to attack the Illuminati? Jesus, this sounds crazy just talking about it. Majestic was formed, originally, to fight communism. That’s what Hunter said.”
“The Illuminati long supported communist expansion—that’s just another kind of lever to them—but that made them natural enemies of Majestic. After the Second World War, Europe had lost its power base. The United States emerged as the superpower, so the power shifted, but Majestic kept the Illuminati from getting their hooks in. It was a turf war. So the Illuminati did their best to help the Soviet Union along as a hedge against the Americans. Ultimately, they wanted a unipolar world with themselves at the top. In the meantime, they settled for a bipolar world on the brink of nuclear war. When the Soviet Union collapsed, and then China fell apart, the Illuminati saw a chance to reshape the world. The Illuminati never wanted the United States to be the military and economic power it became. They’ve funded efforts to counter American supremacy for decades.”
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six Series Book 3) Page 11
