by P. R. Adams
Yanis said, “Nikos will take her.”
The giant carried her through the kitchen and out of sight while Yanis led me into a dark room filled with handcrafted furniture.
Yanis stood in front of an unlit fireplace, gangly arms crossed behind his back. The mansion groaned slightly. “Everything has been taken care of. She will be fine. I have dealt with such trauma many times.”
I nodded, and like that, he was gone, leaving nothing but the soft echo of his steps.
I sat in the darkness, barely aware of my surroundings for several minutes. A pale silver-blue glow from a set of white oak French doors caught my eye—moonlight off the snow slowly blanketing a hedge just beyond a brick porch. The place was warm, but I couldn’t stop shivering. Blood was a coppery film in my mouth.
When I started coming down, I wandered from room to room, listening to my footsteps and the steady beat of a grandfather clock.
Lights flashed across the driveway as I moved through the front room. I froze. The lights continued forward, advancing past the turn that wound around the mansion front and coming to a stop outside the living room. It was a car, dull and forgettable, the sort Nitin hated. Had hated.
Danny got out, then Heidi. Their coat collars were turned up, their hands gloved. They looked around, then headed for the back.
I brought them into the kitchen, ready for anything. Danny’s absence from the call when we’d been hit was fresh in my mind.
Heidi’s glare was pure venom, but she looked away quickly enough. Her heels clattered on the tile floor as she headed to the opening the giant had gone through. She was in jeans, I realized. “Clean yourself up, Stefan. You’ve got blood on your face.”
I had felt it there earlier, sinking into my skin. There was a deep stainless steel sink at the far end of a marble island that bisected the kitchen space. The water shot out hard, hot. I scrubbed with hand soap.
Danny stuffed his hands inside his jeans and leaned against the opposite end of the marble island. “Nitin’s body…” He looked at Heidi, who apparently wasn’t concerned with the details. “They have it—police, the security detail—but Chan got the scrub in. Nitin’s military records are as deep as they’ll be able to go. Nothing to trace him back to us. Same with the 750. Nitin was operating cash only at the time.”
Heidi’s heels scraped on the tile as she turned. “Who were they?”
I snorted into the towel I was drying with. “Who do you think?”
“You’re sure? You identified one of them?”
“No. I was too distracted by the hail of bullets and the dead body of my driver to identify one of them, Heidi.”
She groaned. It was the sound analysts made when their operation fell apart and the operational team explained they had to bug out because of bad intelligence: flabbergasted, offended. “Why didn’t you see them earlier? You didn’t think to bring along aerial surveillance?”
I shot a look to Danny: Your move.
He straightened. “Um…I redeployed the unit. We lost meaningful visual contact.”
Heidi shrugged that off. “How bad are her injuries?”
I said, “Superficial but painful. Scrapes, bruises, an ankle sprain. And a bullet lodged in her ass. Not deep. I’m mostly worried about how she handles Nitin’s death.”
“Yanis is working on her?”
I nodded at the dark hall behind her. “Him and Nikos.”
“They’re former military. Reliable. I’ll check on her. Do stay out of trouble, please.”
Her heels echoed off the hardwood, then a door opened and closed, and it was silent.
I turned on Danny. “We were counting on you.”
His hands went up, but he refused to look me in the eye. “I’m sorry, Stefan. I didn’t like the feel of it from the start. I was—”
“Counting on you.” I bunched the towel up and threw it into the sink.
He dropped his hands.
“We can’t replace Nitin,” I said after a few seconds. “Not this far in.”
“Replace…?” Danny finally looked up at me. “This is over.”
“Why? Because they killed one of us?”
“Abhishek cracked the device. Chan’s already confirmed Ravi’s former Agency. He worked for Stovall, just like us. This is some crazy angle he’s running. He’s been behind it from the start. Has to have been. Even Heidi sees that. She’s ready to pull the plug. You can hear it in her voice.”
“She won’t pull the plug. Five million’s too much to walk away from. She wants this as bad as I do.”
Danny combed back his hair with a sweep of his hand. “Four of us? No driver? Chan’s a basket case. Ichi’s not going to be much better. And you…” He shrugged uncertainly.
“And me. What about me?” I walked to the door and stared at the falling snow, shivering as if standing naked in it. “Broken? Not really up to it anymore?”
“You think it’s not obvious what’s going on between you and her daughter?”
“I’m getting us inside Weaver’s trusted circle.” It was hollow in my ears.
“You want Stovall so bad, you’d do anything. You’d risk any of us.” Danny lowered his voice, then came closer. “You’re not ready for this. That’s why they picked you. Stefan, just think about it. It’s a setup. It has to be. Two super-assassins. The Agency running an operation, fronting it with these Chamber of Commerce clowns. What else do you need to see?”
Danny was right, but I couldn’t let it go. “If Stovall’s involved in this, it’s my best chance of getting him. But I can’t do it alone.”
“This is only about Stovall?”
“Of course.” Another lie. They were becoming easy. I was becoming more uneasy with the idea of assassinating someone like Weaver, but I was even more annoyed by the notion I had been set up for something I still couldn’t figure out. The easy move would be to walk away, keep the cybernetics, start over fresh. I was never good at taking the easy move, and Stovall knew that.
Heidi’s heels echoed on the hardwood floor again. She entered the kitchen just ahead of Ichi, whose head was bowed. Her left cheek glistened where an adhesive sealed small scrapes, and bandages covered what had been a wound on her neck. She favored her right leg, but not so bad that a casual glance would catch it.
She bowed slightly. “Thank you for saving my life.”
For once, Heidi seemed to control her cynicism. She seemed almost sentimental and warm. “We’ll take her back to the hotel with us. You need to see Dr. Jernigan about those injuries. She should be in the office in a few hours. Yanis can tend to the bleeding wounds. When you’ve seen to all of that, we need to talk.”
“Are you pulling the plug?” I asked.
Heidi looked at the three of us, lips pressed tight. “We can’t afford to.”
A simple and perfect answer. “I need to get into the Agency’s systems.”
“Stefan, you’re being unreasonable.”
“If this is Stovall’s operation, we have to know their angle. If we’re just being set up as patsies, I want to see it coming.”
“Like you did in Korea?”
“I didn’t listen to my instincts in Korea. I’m listening to them now.”
“No. I won’t have it. We still have a chance to collect the money.”
“You think that’s the answer? That’s being reasonable?” I pointed at Ichi. “Because this is what we’re looking at if we don’t get ahead of them. It won’t just be me.”
Heidi brought a shaking hand to her forehead. “I—”
“They forced you to take me on, Heidi. They spent how much money and risked an international incident to pull me out of there. They probably spent as much to rebuild me as they’re offering for this entire mission. And you think there’s not some reason behind it all? Killing Weaver is just a pretense.”
She gave a slight shake of her head, a half shake. Wrestling with herself. A sigh: resignation. Acceptance. It was in her eyes, eyes that no longer burned with fury. “Just you and Chan.
No more assets put to risk.” She glanced at Danny, who opened the door for her.
As Ichi passed, I leaned close and said, “You did good work. Get some rest.”
When they were gone, I headed down the dark hallway until I could hear Yanis and Nikos muttering behind a door. I knocked, then let myself in. A bed had been converted into an operating table, covered in cotton-lined, pale green plastic. Ichi’s blood stained the plastic here and there.
I disrobed and laid face down, my chin resting on artificial hands. “Just the bleeding ones. I’ll get the rest fixed at the repair shop.”
Yanis let out a deep chuckle and began probing my wounds.
After a stern scolding from Dr. Jernigan, I had the car drive me around the city until the sun was a red sore poking through dark clouds that ran in from the horizon. Desalinization plants spewed white smoke skyward to the northeast. I circled Gillian’s block twice before taking a widening spiral out. No sign of the SUV. No sign of Agency stooges hunkered down on surveillance. The car’s heater didn’t seem up to the task of fighting off the cold. That was fine. I wanted the shivering. Fake limbs or not, it kept me awake.
There was only one good route from the apartment building to the hospital, and it provided a decent option to head into the Green Zone. I couldn’t imagine Gillian going any other way. I parked in front of a shuttered restaurant along the way and got out.
Steam trailed behind me as I walked. The morning air was fresh, unburdened by those who still slept. If someone followed me, they were inhumanly good. I jogged into Gillian’s parking lot, found her car, and slipped. As I got up, I stuck a tracer on the underside. I put some real drama into the slaps at my pants and coat and glared down at the ice. Video would only catch a clumsy man in dark coat and pants.
I returned to the car along a different route and downloaded the video from my eyes to the data device. My chattering teeth provided percussive accompaniment to the video of our surveillance outside Ravi’s apartment.
On the second play through, I spotted it: movement. Coming toward us even before Nitin braked at the intersection. Dressed dark, low profile, using cover. Three of them.
Agency. An action team, as they liked to call it.
It seemed an odd choice, the ambush and its execution. Why wait for Ichi to get into the car? We were most vulnerable while stopped at the intersection. Or while parked, before Ichi got out.
Something was wrong. I needed Danny’s surveillance video. I sent a request to Chan. A few minutes later, I had a link to the video.
I made a mental note to get on Chan about the weird sleep schedule and the drugs used to make it possible.
Danny’s video showed the apartment building and the surrounding blocks. I fast-forwarded to fifteen minutes before our arrival and skipped up to the point of close-ups. Ravi’s vehicle—tagged by Danny—came into view. It was the only vehicle visible. When the drone gained altitude, the only other vehicles it caught were moving away or parallel to Ravi’s.
He wasn’t being tailed.
I advanced until I found a clean shot of the surrounding streets. No black SUVs.
I reversed the video and searched for anything out of the ordinary, stopping when it popped up: a sleek black car, long, with smoked windows.
The FBI vehicle.
I pushed the view in until the image broke into grainy pixels. Slowly, I pulled out. Just as the pixels started to take on meaningful shapes, I saw what could be a form in the front seat. Someone had been inside. Maybe the agent.
I needed her name. Was she watching Ravi? Us?
Once again, I pulled the video out and began searching. I played forward until just before Ichi escaped Ravi’s room.
No action team.
I ran the video forward, stopping again when the drone was in position to give a clear shot of the surrounding streets. Still no SUVs. Still no sign of—
A flash of light.
I ran the video back and watched for the flash. It happened once, barely detectable. The second time, the source was in frame: a door opening on the building across the street from Ravi’s apartment building. Dark forms moved through the door.
The action team. Not from a vehicle. Not part of Ravi’s team. Across the street.
I tagged the building and texted Chan: What’s this building? What’s this entry?
Chan replied: Checking.
While I waited on Chan, I closed my eyes and pulled up another video. Gillian walked into her bedroom and slowly disrobed. I froze the image of her looking at me with her emerald eyes. I traced my fingers over her soft flesh, untouched by violence, pure and innocent, real and warm to my artificial touch.
The tracer beeped. Gillian’s car was approaching. I lowered my seat, waited for the second beep to warn me the tracer was nearly out of range, then pulled into the street. Her car turned north. The hospital. She wasn’t being followed.
I had the car follow at a safe distance, remembering her scent and her sighs. There had been a time where she would have just been another tool, a bit of pleasure in the line of duty. I had slept with prettier women. Killed them in terrible ways. The memories of those deaths left me aching, hating myself, feeling that my loss of humanity had begun before the Koreans had taken away my limbs, before the cybernetics.
She pulled into the hospital parking lot, turned into the private parking structure, disappeared. I took control of the car and circled the area until I spotted her heading toward the entry. Still no tail.
I parked and got out, keeping her in view. When she entered the building, I hurried to the same door. She would take the elevator; I took the stairs.
Gillian had looked at the eighth or ninth floor; that’s where Weaver was. I popped the door open on the eighth floor, watched the elevators. The rising elevator car kept going. Ninth floor. I took the steps two at a time, slowing as I approached the door. I opened it just enough to get a look at the elevator. Gillian stood in front of it, doing something with her data device. A man in a business suit approached her.
Security detail. One of Ravi’s team. Not Agency.
I headed back down, heard steps echoing from below. On a hunch, I exited on the next floor and watched down the stairwell.
Ravi climbed up the stairs from below, eyes sweeping ahead and behind.
I let the door close and walked around as if I belonged. I checked each floor for any sign of an Agency presence—people who looked out of place, surveillance equipment.
Nothing.
There hadn’t been any vehicles out of the ordinary around the hospital, either.
It wasn’t adding up. Ravi had daily access to Weaver. If the Agency wanted her dead, she should be dead. What value did I provide by killing her or being around when she was killed?
There was something I was missing, a critical piece, a piece that would explain how I figured into this.
My data device vibrated. Chan.
Apartments. Door leads to exercise room. Closed. Renovations.
Renovations. An action team. Agency surveillance. And FBI surveillance. Of whom? For what? I knew it all pointed to Stovall somehow. He was out there, pulling the strings, driving us all toward his own ends.
The only way I was going to find him was getting into the Agency’s systems.
Chapter 18
It was early evening when I made my way to Abhishek’s shop, crossing through the alley’s shadows and dim spaces. The haze of cigarette smoke made the interior seem even darker than the alleyway. He looked up from a pile of circuit cards and components, hissing soldering iron in one hand, cigarette in the other. Sweat stained the sides of a pale blue, long-sleeved shirt and beaded on his forehead.
I stopped a few feet shy of the counter and said, “I don’t know what smells worse, the solder or the cigarettes.”
“Not the solder.” He pointed the hissing tip down at the card. It was light brown traced through with gold. “This is an old card, coated in some particularly bad chemicals. I had to use pretty toxic stuff to deal wi
th the coating.” He took a drag on the cigarette and shook his head. “Nasty business last night. Could never do that sort of work.”
“You do whatever gets you good enough money.”
He went back to soldering. “Some things, I draw the line. You’ve reached that line.”
“Not yet.” I picked an old camera up from the table, pressed the button, listened for the mechanical shutter, then set the camera back down. “I will now, though. I need some weapons. Flash-bangs, pistols, submachine guns if you can get them. Preferably American.”
He set the soldering iron back in its station and took his glasses off. “Weapons I don’t touch.”
“You know people who do. What matters is, you’re not typically a channel. No one will be watching you.”
He dabbed sweat from his brow with the cuff of his shirt. “Your friend gets killed, and you want to buy weapons. Is it a war you’re starting? Hmm? When you disappeared, I heard you were dead, you and Norimitsu. I felt very sad. Quite sad. But I knew it was your inevitable fate. You live a dangerous life. Maybe you kill a lot of people, but one day someone will kill you. This is something I want no part of. None.”
“This isn’t about Nitin’s murder. Not directly.”
“Your eyes tell me it’s about revenge. For you? For Norimitsu?”
“Fifty thousand. Plus the cost of the guns.”
Cigarette smoke coiled around him. “One hundred.”
I slapped a piece of paper on the countertop. “Contacts. Specs. I’ll be back tonight around midnight. Can you have a duplicate of that device ready by then?”
Nicotine-stained fingers plucked the paper from the counter. His head moved as he read, then he stuffed the paper into his pocket. “Midnight. These had better be reputable people. I won’t have them dirtying up my store.”
“What about the device?”
“Midnight.”
When I opened the door, the wind pulled me into the alley. I had some time to kill.
