“Assume you’re captured and leave the country. I know.”
At least she remembered her training.
“Good.”
We separated once we were above ground. I turned off my holobuds and walked off in a random direction.
There wasn’t much blood on me. They looked like dark stains on a dark shirt, concentrated on the inside of my wrists. The great thing about limb cuts is that they don’t bleed too much. In a convenience store I bought a bottle of alcohol. Then, I ducked into a Starbucks and bought a bottle of water and with it, the password to the restroom.
Inside a cubicle, I doused the aethertool with alcohol and water, rinsing off the blade. The alcohol was so highly concentrated the aetherium began to dissolve. I wiped the blade off on toilet paper and pocketed the aethertool. Then, I popped the holobuds open, extracted the SIM card and broke the card in half. I flushed down the fake mole and SIM card pieces, washed my hands and sleeves and then left.
I tossed the blade and bottles into three separate bins and hailed a cab from a shopping center. Back inside the hotel, I changed into a fresh shirt, reloaded a fresh SIM card into my buds and reconfigured the IMEI number, and then I stuffed the shirt into a trash bag I carried in my luggage. Next, I grabbed my luggage and headed downstairs, handing the trash bag to a cleaner for disposal.
The concierge was surprised Mr. Anders was checking out so early. Mr. Anders mumbled something about a family emergency and needing to rush home, and the concierge nodded in sympathy. The concierge offered to call a cab for Anders. Anders demurred; there was already a line of taxis forming up outside the hotel.
I caught a cab to Phosphorion Station, making the emergency rendezvous with a half hour to spare. Security was tight. A pair of cops in tactical gear stood watch at the main entrance, carrying submachine guns in their hands. Inside the station, three more patrolled the grounds, accompanying a police dog and its handler. I carried nothing that tied me to the events at the Metro, so they left me alone.
Phosphorion Station was one part international railway station, one part intercity terminal, and one part museum. A hundred and fifty years ago it was the final stop of the Orient Express. Holographs and exhibits expounded the history of the train service. I slipped into a new persona, that of a tourist leaving the city soon and taking one last chance to soak in the culture. As I explored the station, I checked that I wasn’t being watched. Returning to the main entrance, I settled into a bench and waited.
At fifteen hundred a tall blond woman in a red blouse and dark pants swept into the station, a huge rucksack on her back. Her hair fanned out from her uncovered head, and her cheekbones protruded sharply from her face. She scanned the area, and I saw her eyes were a brilliant blue.
Eve was wearing her real face now.
At least, I thought it was her real face.
She reached up for her holobuds. I waved her over, and her arm dropped away. As she closed, she smiled. Only with her teeth; her eyes remained as cold as icebergs submerged in the Arctic sea.
“Hey! You made it!”
Now she spoke Anglian with an East Coast accent.
“Same here. You had any trouble?” I asked, reverting to my native New Haven accent.
“Nah. Did you?”
“No. Let’s go.”
We bought tickets to Thessaloniki at the ticket booth and takeaway gyros at the station cafe. We ate our lunch at the platform as we waited for the train.
“Any word from Cyrus?” I asked.
“No. I burned the number and card after I called him.”
“Do you have any other way of contacting him?”
“Yes. We have our internal message board and secure emails. He’ll message us when he’s ready.”
“Let’s hope so. Who’s next on our list?”
“I’m making arrangements. No replies yet.”
“I heard you speaking to Cyrus about your organization’s guns. You’re not going to check them out?”
“The guns we stored in Hellas are all Western. I don’t think it’s worth the risk inspecting them now. Not while the police are looking for us.”
“If there were a traitor, he would have sourced the guns from elsewhere.”
“If there were a traitor, he wouldn’t be Cyrus. He’s not a mass murderer, and he will not condone massacres. He hasn’t changed. You can hear the recording yourself.”
“Send it to me.”
The recording was a massive file, but we had time.
“How many covenanters are there in Hexenhammer?” I asked.
“Just me, as far as I know.”
“Psions?”
“A handful. Why?”
I filled her in on my discussion with Pete and O’Connor about the shooters. She frowned thoughtfully.
“They can’t possibly be regular people,” I concluded.
“Yes, I was thinking the same thing,” she said. “But it’s not something we will do. For one thing, we are not terrorists. We punish the evil. We do not harm innocents. For another, this is too high profile, even for our more… bloodthirsty types.”
“Don’t need the cops chasing you, huh?”
“Yes, exactly. Evil men—genuinely evil men, terrorists and gangsters and their allies—hate us. They suspect we are out there. Our anonymity is the only thing keeping us safe from reprisals. We don’t need the government after us, too.”
Eve’s idealism bordered on the fanatical. Or maybe it had already crossed the line a long time ago. On the other hand, she also kept herself and her organization grounded. If she were a regular civilian, she would have gone a long way.
“What do you do with members who are bloodthirsty? The kind who won’t bat an eye at slaughtering innocents to make a point?”
“You mean Nazis.” She scowled. “We drop them during the recruitment phase. If they remain underground, but reveal their true beliefs later, we expel and exclude them. There’s no room in our organization for people who cannot meet our standards.”
“Did you ever have to deal with them more permanently?”
“No. At least… not yet.”
“But you’ve had to expel Nazis, as you call them.”
“Yes. Vetting members is a full-time job.”
“What if those former members founded a terrorist group and used your group’s name?”
She chewed on her gyros. Remained silent. Swallowed.
“It’s a possibility I have considered,” she said. “But the ones we’ve dealt with are all talk and no walk. They just spout nonsense without actually doing anything.”
“How about covert Nazis who are inside the organization and feed intelligence to their friends on the outside, who then execute the attacks?”
She scrunched her forehead and lips into an ugly frown and muttered something dark under her breath.
“We vet our people very thoroughly,” she said. “Interviews, social media history, what they say on the darknet…”
“If they’re infiltrators, they’re not going to tell you upfront.”
“It’s true that our organization attracts a lot of fringe types. We do monitor our members for signs of undesirable behavior. We take internal security very seriously.”
“But you can’t rule out the possibility of an inside job either.”
Her eyes flared.
“Yes.”
“That’ll be tough to root out.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “I want to rule out the obvious suspects first before jumping at shadows.”
“Fair enough.”
We finished our meal as the train pulled into the station. As first-class passengers, we had the privilege of a window seat and a private compartment, complete with privacy curtain. As I sank into the padded seat, I stifled a yawn.
“Tired?” she asked.
My arms and legs had gone wobbly. My eyelids drooped. The last of the adrenaline had burned itself out.
“Parasympathetic backlash,” I said.
Smirking, she set her holoph
one on the table between us. “You can take a nap if you like. I’ll wake you when we arrive.”
“I’ll be fine. Still have a report to write.”
“Suit yourself.”
I turned on my holophone and booted up OpenOffice. I preferred typing long-form documents on a real keyboard, but the holographic one would suffice. It felt odd, pressing my fingers against the table. Touch typing didn’t work for me; I had to resort to hunting and pecking with two fingers.
“Hergott,” Eve whispered. Dear Lord.
“What is it?”
She was reading on her holophone. She flicked a control, turning the screen around.
“Read this.”
It was a news article from the Anglian Broadcast Corporation.
BREAKING: 17 arrested in Pantopia-wide terror crackdown
I pumped air into my lungs and scrolled down to the article highlights.
Interpol coordinated Pantopia-wide counterterrorist operation involving 200 officers from 8 countries.
17 individuals connected with Neo-right terrorist group Hexenhammer arrested.
Authorities expect additional raids soon.
“What the hell?” I said.
“Yeah. We just escaped the crackdown.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “My God. We were so close to being arrested. So close.”
The rest of the article didn’t have anything substantial. Just self-congratulatory boilerplate press statements.
“Are your friends all right?” I asked.
“I don’t… I sent mails. No response yet.” She swallowed. Hard. “They’re not like us. They don’t have our level of training or experience. If the police catch them…”
Her hands were clasped tightly together; her eyes focused on her knuckles. It was the first time I had seen her so shaken.
“Hope for the best; plan for the worst,” I said. “At least you’re safe with me.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
At the bottom of the page I saw two recommended articles. The one on the left said, Terrorists escape police dragnet.
“What the hell?” I said again.
“What’s wrong?”
I opened the link.
“We’re in the news,” I said.
EKAM, the Special Counterterrorist Unit of the Hellenic police, attempted to arrest a suspected female Hexenhammer terrorist before she could escape. During the arrest, a second male suspect, possibly another Hexenhammer member, ambushed the cops. The male accused the police of being members of the ultranationalist neo-Nazi political party Golden Dawn to sow confusion among witness as he assaulted the police. Both suspects fled on foot and are now on the run.
“EKAM?” she said. “They’re really going to hate us now.”
“At least they won’t find us.”
The police had released facial composites to the media. Neither picture remotely resembled our current faces.
I paused. The Hellenes were supposed to be our allies. We had sent six of their elite cops to hospital with crippling injuries. Likely permanent. Allies didn’t do this sort of thing to each other.
I searched my heart, looking for traces of guilt.
Nothing.
It was regrettable, but the Hellenes didn’t know who we were. Even if they did, they would continue to pursue Eve on general principles, and as a deniable operator, the Hesperian government wouldn’t go to bat for me. It was us or them. Simple as that.
But what kind of man did that make me?
“Hey, Luke, still with us?” she asked.
“Yeah. What is it?”
“You’re daydreaming.”
“Just looking at the facial composites. Don’t think anyone will recognize us for now.”
“Regardless, we can’t stay long in Hellas,” she said.
“Yeah. We need to go a country that’s not actively hunting Hexenhammer.”
Her phone vibrated. She had a new mail.
She took her phone, sent me her recording of the meeting with Cyrus and tapped away on the desk. I returned to mine, accessed my mail and composed an email for O’Connor. For operational communications, I left messages in the draft folder. He would check them at regular times and reply in the same mail. Without any emails being sent, there was no way to trace or intercept communications.
Eve and I are fine. Police almost caught us, but we got away clean. We are currently leaving the country. Attached file contains Eve’s recording of her meeting with Cyrus, the head of the local Hexenhammer cell.
I heard about the latest round of arrests. We need the names of the Hexenhammer suspects who were arrested earlier.
A longer report could wait. I attached the recording and set the phone aside. Looking up, I saw Eve’s face turn pale.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“My friends are in danger,” she said. “They’re being targeted by the police, and they need help.”
“Where are they?” I asked.
“Germania.”
Beta: The Handler
The handler reclined in his seat and lit his cigar. Michelle hated cigars, forbidding him to smoke almost anywhere at home. But today was an exception. He’d earned it.
Phase One was complete.
He drew the smoke into his mouth, savoring the taste. The cigar was a Cohiba Magnifico, the only brand worth smoking. The dark, oily cigar was the richest on the market, combining premium leaves from three countries and a blend of turmeric, cinnamon, pepper and other spices, carefully calibrated for maximum flavor. It wasn’t a beginner’s cigar. It was a man’s cigar, the kind reserved for triumphs.
He puffed away, blowing streamers into the air, letting the scent infuse the air of his den.
Intuition and adaptability. That was the key to success. A man might plan for contingencies, but the world was fundamentally chaotic. The key was to go with the flow and to listen to your intuition.
And it had paid off magnificently.
Hexenhammer had been a fascinating project. It had accomplished a great deal in its short life. Naming and shaming politicians who allied themselves with organized crime. Attriting the Camorra clans that ran narcotics and sex slavery rings throughout Pantopia by turning over evidence to the police or by killing key figures. And, of course, striking down members of Dawla Wahiyye, the current bogeyman of the West.
He hadn’t expected Hexenhammer to come this far. In truth, he had expected them to flounder the first time they encountered truly evil men. But a little voice, deep and cold and calm, the one that came from the depths of his heart, had said, Pay attention. Support them.
Hexenhammer had exceeded his wildest expectations. And now they were fattened calves for the slaughter.
But it wasn’t over yet. The authorities had simply plucked all the low-hanging fruit—the targets he had carefully profiled over the years for this moment. Phase One was the easiest phase; the only difficulty was in selecting the right time to initiate.
Phase Two was going to be challenging. Fortunately, his superiors—his true superiors—were generous. And remarkably proficient at selecting talent. After seeing Chios with his own eyes, he was sure the Gigantes would perform as expected.
All he had to do was to point them at the right target.
Setting the cigar aside, he returned to his computer. Hexenhammer was on the run, but he knew their boltholes. The question was, which ones were his targets running to now? He stilled his mind, concentrating on the question.
The voice came again.
Draw them out.
He had never questioned his intuition, and he did not intend to start now. He simply turned his energy toward the question of luring out the surviving Hexenhammer operatives. The ones who had to die.
Identify weakness; apply leverage. Shape perception; drive behavior. Control information; control wills. That was the art of manipulation. He touched his fingers to the keys and…
“Papi, I can’t sleep.”
Gretchen stood at the doorway in her pink sleepwear, clutching
a teddy bear to her chest. The toy was almost as large as she was.
Children grew up so fast. It wasn’t so long ago that she was learning how to totter around and speak. Given his age, the doctors were concerned about Gretchen’s development, but she was hitting all her milestones. The aetherium tonics must have helped. So had the money his true bosses had so generously provided.
The father smiled indulgently and set his cigar aside.
“Give me a moment.”
He turned the computer to standby mode, padded to her and patted her on her head. She wrinkled her tiny nose.
“Papi, you stink!”
He chuckled and knelt, bringing his eyes level with hers.
“And you should be in bed.”
He swept her up in his arms. She squealed, still holding on to her bear.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Work could wait. For now.
8. The Road
“Back up,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“The police are coming for our hackers,” Eve said. “They’re spread out across the continent, but the cell leader is a German. Call him Frank.”
“What’s your plan?” I asked.
She rubbed her temples. “I… Our first step is to get our people underground. We’ve prepared a safe house in Germania. Our hackers are going to congregate there.”
“Safer to disperse. If the police know about the safe house, they can arrest everyone in one fell swoop.”
“It’s not so simple. They…” She sighed. “They’re hackers. Kids fresh out of school. Nerds who live in basements. People with day jobs. They’re not Krakens. They don’t have the training, discipline or resources to just disappear.”
“They don’t have contingency plans?”
“This is the contingency plan. The only one we could get them to agree on. Not all of them are as committed as we are to… Well, what we do. But we can’t leave them in the wind either. This is the best we can do.”
Not for the first time, I had to remind myself that Hexenhammer weren’t pros, merely civilians with more enthusiasm than skill or actual commitment.
Hammer of the Witches (The Covenant Chronicles Book 2) Page 10
