Hammer of the Witches (The Covenant Chronicles Book 2)

by Kai Wai Cheah

The handler had known this was coming. He trotted out his presentation, crafted this morning and rehearsed in the afternoon. At the end of it, Lin nodded.

  “Very well. We’ll get you what you need.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lin stood to go.

  “Remember this: there will be no second chances. You do not want me visiting you again.”

  “I understand.”

  2. Luke’s Gambit

  “Frank, tell us what you’ve found,” I said.

  The hacker smiled like a cat that had slain a nest of mice in a day. Around the table, the rest of the team turned their eyes on him.

  “I penetrated the Interpol task force investigating Hexenhammer,” he began.

  “It’d better be worth it,” Alex said.

  After bringing the Nemesis operators aboard, we had briefed them on the hackers’ activities. They were less than thrilled about it, but this was the only lead we had now.

  Frank sniffed. “Of course.”

  “You said the task force isn’t in the Interpol databases,” Alex said. “How did you get in?”

  “I dug around their internal email system and found references to a Task Force Opal. An international task force to coordinate the international Hexenhammer investigation. The emails told me who would be seconded to Task Force Opal.

  “One of them, Special Agent Jenny Martins from Anglia, had less than perfect security. We penetrated her phone and then piggybacked off it to access her Interpol-issue devices.”

  “It took you so long to do that?” Ricky said.

  Frank frowned. “I’m only telling you what worked, not what didn’t work. We had to search their entire message system, identify the agents attached to Opal, probe all thirty-two of them, map their vulnerabilities, breach their systems, and when we had access to an Interpol computer, we had to write new malware to defeat the security systems. If you think it’s easy, you’re welcome to try.”

  “Easy,” I said. “The point is, Frank and his team got it done.”

  It was impressive work for civilians. Our cyberwar team would have gotten results much faster. On the other hand, they had access to quantum supercomputers and the world’s most sophisticated cyberwar programs while Hexenhammer’s hackers were still relying on their devices and the hardware we had shipped aboard.

  “Fine,” Ricky said.

  “Frank, you did well,” Eve said. “Please continue.”

  The hacker nodded, somewhat mollified.

  “Task Force Opal is a decentralized network of field teams scattered across the continent. These teams liaise with the police and intelligence agencies of their assigned country to ensure a smooth flow of information.

  “Opal has two watch lists. The first lists suspected Hexenhammer operatives. When located, the nearest police agency will deal with these suspects. The second list has ‘priority targets.’ Opal is explicitly prohibited from sharing information about these targets with anyone else. Instead, they’ve been ordered to pass on intelligence to Task Force Onyx.”

  “Who’s Onyx?” Bob asked.

  Frank shrugged. “Who knows? Opal was told via email that Task Force Onyx is a joint Pantopian counterterrorist unit. But…” he shook his head. “I recognized the names on the second list. Mine was on it. So are my crew. And we know what happened to us.”

  Eve clenched her fists. “Show me the names.”

  Frank powered up his slate and slid it across the table. She stared at the holograms. The window was set to privacy mode; from my perspective I only saw a cool gray screen. But I saw her face turn pale, and I knew that one of the names must have been Eva Martel.

  “My God…” she whispered.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’m on the list on priority targets. Frank. Luigi. Mike.” She shook her head. “Gott im Himmel…”

  “What about the other list?”

  She scrolled for a few moments.

  “Cyrus. Some others, most of whom have been arrested already. Only one in five members are still active.”

  “That’s not all,” Frank said. “The watch lists were generated and sent barely an hour after the Chios attacks. Cops and spies don’t work that fast.”

  “There’s a traitor inside Hexenhammer,” Eve said. “There must be. There’s no way the police could move so fast.”

  “Who?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know. We need to flush him out. But at least we know who isn’t.”

  “We’ll find him,” I said.

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  Pete cleared his throat. “Looking at how things have played out, the giants and their handlers must be Task Force Onyx.”

  I nodded. “Onyx kills the priority targets, and they leave the others to the regular cops. But why? What’s the difference between both lists?”

  “Seniority,” Eve said. “The ones on the kill list are senior Hexenhammer members and their cells.”

  “Capability,” Keith added. “Frank is a hacker. Luigi handles. Mike and Eve are shooters. They pose the greatest threat to whoever’s running Onyx. Onyx must take them out first.”

  “But why risk the exposure?” Bob asked. “Why not just hand off to the local cops?”

  “We have friends inside the local police,” Eve said. “They want to use outsiders to take care of us.”

  Keith crossed his arms. “So why not just kill everyone? Why go through all the trouble of initiating multiple false flag attacks?”

  “Narrative,” I said. “They don’t just want to destroy Hexenhammer. They want to discredit its ideology. They’re playing a long game, salting the earth against Hexenhammer’s successors.”

  “What do you mean?” Frank asked.

  “Every time we smash a terrorist group, a new one rises. That’s how we got Dawla Wahiyye: after Hesperia destroyed al-Ikhwan, the survivors broke off into a dozen splinter groups, and DW rose to fill the void.

  “I think they’re trying to prevent this. They want to paint Hexenhammer as monsters to discourage others from joining it or other affiliated groups and to prevent the survivors from starting up breakaway groups.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Frank said. “There are plenty of people who would celebrate slaughtering Afarit refugees. Hell, we even have some of them in Hexenhammer.”

  “These radicals will always exist. But if you deny them support, they can’t do much. The enemy is poisoning the well to prevent the radicals from gaining mainstream support.”

  Pete interrupted. “Before we go too deep into conspiracyland, I have to ask: what do they—whoever ‘they’ is—want? Why are they spending so much time and energy on this? How will it accomplish their goals?”

  I didn’t know. I don’t think anybody here did.

  “First, we need to find out who they are,” I said. “Frank, have you identified any members of Onyx?”

  The hacker smiled. “Special Agent Paul Brunner of the Osterian branch of Interpol. He is Opal’s liaison with Onyx, but as far as I can tell, all he does is shoot emails back and forth all day.”

  “We grab him, download him and find out who is inside Onyx,” Bob suggested.

  “No way,” Keith said. “He could be one of the good guys.”

  “And even if he’s not,” I said, “if he’s anything like the giants’ handlers, he might clam up and kill himself. No, I have a better idea.”

  “Here we go again!” Pete sang.

  ***

  “You want me to do what?” O’Connor demanded.

  “We find Brunner, we find who’s behind the giants,” I said.

  “Interpol is a law enforcement agency. How the hell am I supposed to justify acting against them?”

  “Nobody has to know.”

  He sighed. “I need to put my requests in writing. I can’t just call up the cyber team and say I need to hack into an Interpol agent’s computers out of the blue. Not for a team that’s just been benched.”

  “You can think of something, can’t you?” I s
hook my head. “No, that’s not what you’re really concerned about, is it?”

  “If Brunner disappears from the face of the earth or ends up dead somewhere… You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

  And me, he didn’t have to add.

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said. “If anything, we wish him a long and peaceful life.”

  “What, exactly, are you planning?”

  “A black bag job.”

  “And you’re not going to touch him.”

  “Of course. If we do that, Onyx will close up shop.”

  O’Connor sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Despite his apparent reluctance and what he said earlier, I was confident O’Connor would go to bat for us. He didn’t like us being on a target deck any more than we did.

  Frank had thoughtfully downloaded Brunner’s Interpol dossier. While I waited, I studied it for the umpteenth time.

  Brunner was a rising star. Recruited a decade ago, he had supported complex international investigations in Pantopia. He floated around the continent as a kind of generalist specialist, focusing on liaising between police agencies without restricting himself to any geographic location or type of crime.

  His latest assignment was simply marked as “Liaison Officer—Task Force Opal.” There was no additional information—not even a taste of his true scope of responsibilities.

  It all seemed benign, but if he were part of a global conspiracy, he was in a powerful position. He was the one man who knew everything everybody else knew about the investigation into Hexenhammer, the proverbial spider in the middle of the web. He could shape the investigation as he saw fit, passing on disinformation from Task Force Onyx and leading the cops away from the giants while feeding solid intel to his pet killers.

  In the early afternoon, O’Connor sent us another data packet, along with a note. Two days ago, Brunner had caught a flight from his native Osteria to Berlin and checked into the Grand Hyatt Hotel for five days. By the time we got there, we’d have two days to act. Maybe less.

  Not much time for a black bag job. But for the first time we were seizing the initiative, and I didn’t want to let that go.

  The cyberwar team had also gained access to the hotel’s security center. As the Kalypso headed for Berlin, we ran the security camera footage against biometric-identification software on my office computer. Armed with his dossier photo, the program identified Brunner from the hotel guests, studied his biometric profile and then automatically culled the footage where he was not present.

  The six of us scrutinized every second of the video. We watched his gait, his clothing, his patterns of life, taking copious notes. Everywhere he went, he carried his phone and slate with him. To the restaurant, the lounge, whenever he left the hotel on business.

  “We can’t remotely access his computer?” I asked.

  “I tried,” Frank said. “My malware bounced off his antivirus software.”

  “I thought you penetrated Interpol’s firewalls?” Keith said.

  “Martins’ phone was logged in to a private cloud app she uses for her Interpol work. I entered her devices from there. Brunner doesn’t have that vulnerability. Luke, can’t your cyber team help?”

  O’Connor had anticipated that question in his note.

  “Will said they won’t help us act directly against a law enforcement agent. Not without solid proof that he’s dirty. All they will do is help us locate him.”

  “Oh, come on,” Pete groaned.

  “Will told them that we just wanted to talk to Brunner. They don’t know what we’re really doing.”

  “Why do you keep your people in the dark?” Eve asked.

  “Because if they knew about Frank here, they’d shut us down.”

  She shook her head. “Hesperians. Trust you to shoot your allies before your enemies.”

  “That’s why we must make this unofficial,” I said.

  “Cowboys,” she said, her tone somewhere between amused and exasperated.

  “Going back on topic, we can’t touch Brunner directly,” I said. “We’ve got two approaches here. The first is to penetrate his devices when he’s using them.”

  “I can do that,” Frank said. “Let me go with you.”

  “No,” Pete said. “You are wanted dead on sight.”

  He seemed hurt. “So is Eve. It’s not my first time doing this. I just need disguises. And if he’s got multiple layers of security, you need someone who can defeat his protections in real time.”

  “I don’t see many other options,” I said.

  “He’s a civilian,” Keith protested.

  “Frank and the other hackers aside, who else aboard the airship can hack into a computer?”

  “That’s true.” Keith pursed his lips. “Frank, if you go into the field with us, you follow our orders. You do exactly what we tell you to do. No heroics. Understand?”

  Frank beamed. “Jawohl!”

  “What’s the other option?” Eve asked.

  “Brunner is a health nut,” I said. “Yesterday he hit the gym at five in the evening. The day before at five-fifteen. He works out for about an hour and then enjoys a fifteen-minute massage. It’s the only time he doesn’t carry his slate with him.”

  “So we penetrate his room and download his computer?” Alex asked. “Classic black bag job.”

  “He still carries his phone with him to the gym,” Pete said. “We need to access both devices.”

  “The wireless hack will be our primary option,” I said. “Gym for secondary.”

  “Do I get to go out?” Frank asked.

  I nodded. “Take another hacker with you. We’ll want to take the phone and the slate simultaneously.”

  His face lit up. “Got it.”

  Keith rubbed his temples. “Don’t make us regret this.”

  ***

  Kalypso held some sentimental value, but I was beginning to appreciate the advantages of airplanes.

  By the time we arrived in Berlin, it was late afternoon on the fourth day of Brunner’s stay in the city. We hit the ground running. Bob and Ricky checked into the Grand Hyatt Hotel, armed with a suite of espionage tools, including a slate patched into the hotel’s security system. The rest of us mapped the area around the hotel, scouting the terrain and human environment.

  In the evening, I entered the Tiergarten, Berlin’s largest and most famous park. I’d been here once, when I was six years old. My parents had taken me here on a vacation, back when we could afford such things. The Berlin I remembered was bright and lively and clean. One evening we had explored the Tiergarten by ourselves. Streetlights painted every road in splashes of amber, pointing the way to the Victory Column. The surrounding woods were soft and dark and deep, a haven from the bustle of night-time Berlin, hiding ponds and monuments and gardens just waiting to be found.

  Perhaps my childhood memories were colored by nostalgia, or maybe I was no longer the boy I once was, but as night fell, the shadows offered concealment to roving predators and unwitting prey. The streetlights along the roads still offered the illusion of sanctuary, reinforced by the security cameras mounted on their heads. But waves of young men had invaded the park, driving out the families and couples I had seen as a child. Once people here spoke mainly in German; now I overheard conversations in Turkish and Afarit.

  There were no street lights along the footpaths. At least none that were still functional. The lights I encountered had been shattered so many times the authorities had given up trying to fix them. I kept my flashlight at the ready, following the street signs to the Neue Partie pond.

  An owl hooted softly among the trees. By the light of the moon I saw dead leaves floating on the placid waters. I breathed deep, filling my lungs with the scent of the earth. I circled around the pond, making my way to a statue of some noble long dead and buried. His clothes suggested he lived in the Renaissance, but it was too dark to read the sign.

  A man loitered a few feet from the statue. As I approached
, he called out to me in broken German.

  “Hallo! You looking for good time?”

  “Nein,” I said.

  He came closer. I swept left to right, glancing behind me. We were alone. This wasn’t an ambush.

  “You want good time? I give you good time. Only ten pans.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  His hands danced in the air in front of his face. The only reason I hadn’t moved in on him yet. That, and I had no idea what diseases dwelt in his blood.

  He came closer, nonetheless, pleading, his accent jumbling his words.

  “You gil, ja? You want blase? I give you blase.–”

  I lit up his face with two hundred lumens.

  “Gah!”

  He flinched, holding up his hands against the light. I saw dusky skin, an overgrown beard, thick, bushy eyebrows. An Afarit. He wore a dirty green windbreaker, a pair of old jeans and worn sneakers. His was unarmed, as far as I could tell, but I wanted him to keep his distance.

  “I am not interested,” I said slowly. “I am a Polizeibeamte.”

  He swore in Afarit. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know! I can–”

  “Halt’s Maul,” I said. Shut up. “I’m off-duty today, but my friends are working the night shift. Want me to call them here and arrest you?”

  “Nein, nein! Please, don’t–”

  “Then leave. Now.”

  “Eh?”

  “Leave,” I repeated. “Quickly. Before I change my mind.”

  “Danke, danke–”

  “Raus!”

  He sprinted away.

  I sighed, shaking my head. These days a man can’t even recover a dead drop in peace.

  I found the tallest tree on the other side of the statue. Kicking away a blanket of dead leaves, I found a small cubbyhole formed from the tree’s roots. Inside the cubbyhole was a plastic bag.

  There were two items inside the bag. A keycard and a handwritten note. Checking for witnesses, I read the note.

  I’ve cloned a maid’s keycard. It should give you full access to the rooms. B has a telltale on his door. A hair taped at ankle height. Be careful. – Cowboy

  Brunner wasn’t a complete idiot. It had to happen someday. I shoved the bag into my pants pocket and left the Garden of Beasts.