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by Genevieve Valentine

  “He left me behind.”

  She had the satisfaction of seeing him blanch. “Suyana, what happened?”

  “Nothing. All clear.”

  “Suyana.” He’d gone even paler, but he hadn’t blinked, and his fingertips were curling along the page he had marked. “You messaged me. You asked me to save video of nothing. Something’s happened. Just—be honest with me.”

  Her shoes were heavier in her right hand than her earrings were in her left; she felt like she needed her hands, but she couldn’t let anything fall.

  It would be easy. It would be so horribly easy to tell him. Grace was far away and could never know what was at stake, and there was no Daniel here, who so often knew where she was going and met her because she could never meet him.

  She needed allies. She could lay Ethan down in bed and leave him stupid and heartless, but there would be no fooling Margot, and Margot moved faster—Suyana’s enemies had gotten here first.

  Nothing in the world made more sense now than stepping close to Magnus and kissing him and letting him burn away his guilt with her until he was of use. Suyana couldn’t win this alone. She wouldn’t survive.

  But Magnus had never been honest with her. Everything he gave had been in trade or by accident, in moments of weakness. He said a lot of true things—he was her handler, his life was a clipboard of true things to tell her—but now, standing in front of him and longing to keep a hand free for the fight, she couldn’t tell him what she needed him to know.

  “I’m being followed,” she said instead. “Tell the Americans they can either drop the security insults or get better at hiding it. Up to them.”

  He frowned. “Why would they follow you?”

  “It’s been an eventful day for everyone, I guess.”

  She was moving quickly; she’d already reached her door when he asked, “And the footage?”

  She looked at him over her shoulder.

  “If you can give it to me with no questions asked, then I want it. Destroy it otherwise.”

  When she slid into bed, she checked her tablet and found nothing.

  She was still staring at it, blank-minded, two hours later, when the video arrived.

  9

  Dovrefjell was a nature preserve eight hours northeast of Bergen, a patchwork of color studded with animals that looked inflated with heavy winter coats. It all felt to Daniel like a meadow in a storybook, if the trees had been replaced by rocks and everyone in it wanted to kill him.

  “Reminds me of the moors,” Bo said as they got their bags from the backseat of the cars. “Margot visited Independent Scotland personally to escort their first Face to the IA session.”

  “How generous of her.”

  “She was mad at the UK. It was a lesson about how she’d reward the fracture of power.”

  “And you went with her?”

  “No. Li Zhao didn’t want any record of me there. She hired it out local.”

  “So you just looked at the footage when it came in? Did Dev let you? Must have been.” Dev operated under the assumption that sometimes it was best to let snaps see what they were curious about so they could shut up; he had a lower threshold for cruelty than Kate.

  “Don’t remember.” Bo hoisted his bag effortlessly over one shoulder as he turned, and Daniel ducked without thinking about it. He had Avoiding Bo down to a science.

  “If Margot likes countries that make independent decisions, you’d think she’d like the UARC a little more.”

  After a second, Bo said, “You’d think.”

  They checked in under the hyphenated fake names that had been arranged for them—“Happy anniversary,” said the clerk, and Daniel said, “Hopefully by the end of the trip it will be,” which got him a beleaguered glance from Bo—and set up shop in the room.

  “I thought I was the one who was going to explain we were on bad terms,” Bo said. “Why am I suddenly the problem?”

  Daniel stood at the window, where he could see through the sheer curtain across the yard to Martine, pacing in the shadow of the main building with a glass of wine in one hand and her cigarette in the other.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, as she flung some imaginary ashes to the ground. “I’m definitely still the problem.”

  × × × × × × ×

  He hadn’t even made it around the corner from Sessrúmnir before he’d opened the channel to Bonnaire.

  As soon as the comm picked up he was talking, so fast he worried it wasn’t even English, “Dev, Dev, tell me you heard what she said. We have to move.”

  “Oh,” said Kate, “you wish it was Dev.”

  His stomach lurched. He rallied. “Fine. Did you hear it? Is the boss there?”

  “I did. She’s on her way in. Daniel, there’s nothing you can do.”

  “You can put me through to Nicodema before Li Zhao gets there. I just need two minutes.”

  Kate exhaled, a static burst of disappointment. “Daniel, if you’re not sharing an assignment, you’re not in touch. End of story.”

  “Suyana could be in serious trouble.”

  “She could be,” said Kate, and Daniel picked up the pace, tried not to be more infuriated with her for agreeing than he would have been if she’d dismissed it. “But it’s not likely. Margot wouldn’t endanger her relationship with the States by trying anything that could affect Ethan.”

  “She’s already tried!”

  It was too loud—a few people stopped to look. He shook his map and muttered something in Korean so people would be reluctant to help, and kept walking until he was around the corner and safe from prying eyes.

  By the time he could focus again, Kate was talking to Li Zhao (she must live close by, then, and Daniel filed that away alongside the fact that she felt too safe in Paris to ever leave), and Bo was looped into the comm. Daniel could hear him packing over the line, the shuffle of fabric and the chirp of zippers.

  “Don’t touch my stuff, Bo. Li Zhao, what are we going to do about Suyana?”

  “Nicodema has had no problems so far. If she senses anything wrong around Suyana, she’ll report, and we can respond.”

  “How? By selling the photos of her corpse to the Times?”

  “Daniel, we have no imperative here. We’re press. We observe events, not influence them.”

  There was a moment of silence as Bo stopped packing. Daniel heard it for the admission of guilt it was.

  “Can you just tell Nicodema to look out?” Daniel managed at last. “We can at least warn Nicodema, right? She’ll need to be careful.”

  “The only careless recruit I employ is you, Daniel. Good night.”

  The click clawed down his skull; he walked the rest of the way in silence.

  Bo was sitting on the end of the bed, his packed bag waiting politely on the floor.

  “Kate’s already told Nicodema about the danger, off the record, so she’s prepared,” Bo had said, above the slam of drawers as Daniel threw clothes into his bag. “We take care of our own when we can. That’s all we can do.”

  Daniel looked at Bo until Bo looked away.

  After a little while, Daniel said, “Did they say whether our itinerary changed, since we won’t get within a mile of the site?”

  Bo hesitated, and for a second Daniel wondered if Li Zhao had actually decided to test Bo by asking him to disappear in the Arctic scrub long enough to get pictures.

  But Bo just said, “We’re going straight to Dovrefjell. Li Zhao says that if you’re going to announce yourself to all your targets, you might as well get whatever you can out of them while they still think it’s charming.”

  Daniel had thought about Martine’s drained face against the gray wall of the club, her features cast in blue and in darkness, and wondered what part of her shaking hands had suggested she was charmed.

  “You’re driving,” he’d said, and zipped up the bag so fast he snagged his finger. It didn’t stop bleeding until they were five kilometers out of town, and there was nothing ahead of them but the land. />
  × × × × × × ×

  The morning was a tourist outing, as Martine made up for being disinvited from the research lab by hiring a car to take her to the park monument, so she could get pictures standing in between the two towers of rock, which looked as if they’d split open neatly in the center to make room for a sacrifice.

  “Quick,” she said to the photographer, “before they slam back together and put me out of my misery.”

  Bo and Daniel stood behind a map and pointed this way and that way, their dummy backpacks pivoting around them like turtle shells. They pretended for half an hour that they were moments away from starting a meaningful hike before they gave up and realized the monument was as far as she was going.

  By late afternoon, even that pretense of business was over; Bo was standing sentinel at the north window and Daniel was standing sentinel at the east. Daniel managed to wait through two hours of nothing before he started scrolling through the news feeds.

  It was a slow news day out the window. Even Bo had started sneaking looks at the menu for the restaurant downstairs. “Order champagne for the table when we go,” Daniel said as he scanned headlines. “The clerk’s probably worried about our marriage.”

  It took him four minutes to find the flood of pictures of Suyana and Ethan shopping and dining and going to the theater. Those he scrolled through without much looking. He was numb to them, mostly, unless he was taking them himself. Without any investment in the angles or the light or not losing them in traffic, the pictures became one endless blur of the pair of them walking blandly arm in arm like they were glued.

  There had been times last year when Daniel had combed through pictures that never made it to the papers, looking for signs. (Dev let him spy on the feed every so often, with a mildly pitying, “Sure, man, I guess it’s yours,” and a twenty-minute disappearance to get coffee.) He’d watched for moments when Ethan turned calculating, moments where Suyana was looking for exits. He still looked for them. That was his job.

  But Suyana had gotten better at acting since he’d first seen her dealing with Magnus outside a little Paris hotel, because that mask never dropped anymore. And Ethan was either a better actor even than Suyana had become, or he was a dope who really loved her and didn’t realize the score. Daniel couldn’t tell which one he preferred. After a while of being unable to decide, he’d just spared himself and stopped looking.

  It was nearly an hour into the search when he saw the picture of them outside the Ecological Coalition research facility—a small picture, in some small-time Brazilian eco-journal reprinting an article from an IA newsletter with a new headline that seemed more excited about Ethan than their own Face and didn’t mention a word about where they were—and he lifted his finger off the tablet like it burned.

  “Shit. Bo.”

  Bo leaned over the chair and looked at Ethan and Suyana standing on the front porch of the research facility—

  or Daniel assumed it was, given that everyone else was cropped out and the building had no identifying markers except a wash of green through the windows on the far side of the lobby.

  Ethan wasn’t quite making eye contact with the camera, which was practically a hostage indicator coming from a guy who knew his angles as well as Ethan did, and Suyana’s hand was curled so tight around his forearm that her fingertips were haloed on his skin in bloodless white.

  Her face was calm. Her face looked like it had when she was talking Chordata into letting her go out on a mission that was actually a double cross, when she had lost blood and sleep and didn’t expect to come back.

  The photo was four hours old.

  “When did she get back from there?” Daniel asked, and his voice sounded stupidly tinny—of course she was fine, nothing could have happened if they’d put the picture up. If Margot was trying to get rid of her, then Suyana’s last photo would be her doing something frivolous, not standing like a martyr amid the quiet green forests of home. That was just bad press.

  But Bo was already moving for the computer, and Daniel asked hopelessly, “And where the hell is Margot?”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s not like she has to establish an alibi if anything’s happened—Norway’s her alibi. Don’t get distracted.”

  Daniel looked out the window. Martine wasn’t outside. He needed to know what the hell was going on—what were the chances Margot would make a play for Suyana on her home turf? Enough; enough to worry him. If she died at home, it was the UARC’s problem. They’d call up her spare as soon as the medics confirmed Suyana was really dead, and Magnus could bring the new kid right back to New York in time to get outfitted and fly to Paris to be introduced at session. Goddammit, where was Martine?

  “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Send me whatever you find.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need a drink.”

  Bo didn’t look up and didn’t stop him. Some excuses only needed to be good enough for the cameras.

  Martine was staying with Margot in one of the smaller buildings—they’d probably bought out the whole thing; they liked their privacy. She sat on the front steps, her forearms resting on her folded-up knees, looking younger than Daniel would have imagined.

  There was nothing he could do. He was under surveillance even if she wasn’t. He stood where he was and watched her stare out at the road, glancing at her watch every five minutes. Then every two.

  Margot’s late, Daniel thought, and the hair on his neck stood up. He messaged Bo, Is she all right?

  Margot arrived before the answer. Daniel knew she was coming a full minute before her car came into view on the path, because Martine lit up the cigarette and wreathed herself in as much vapor as she could manage before Margot’s car crested the far hill.

  Suyana wouldn’t let herself be seen as a threat, Daniel decided. Not until she’d told Chordata whatever they needed to know.

  Margot back at hotel. Is Suyana all right?

  He stepped around the corner of the main building, so he could see only a sliver of the stairs down the way. Margot said something to Martine on the way up the stairs, and Martine made a great show of waving the vapor away from the steps as she stood and headed across the yard toward the bar.

  He watched Margot moving back and forth behind the sheer curtains of her room for three minutes before he confirmed to Bo, She’s packing. Back to NY early? Can we confirm?

  Bo’s message came back with a buzz that sank right through Daniel’s hand.

  Message received. Kate looking for alterations on tickets. Li Zhao changing our itinerary. Nicodema has visual on Suyana, all clear. Advise if Suyana will return to NY early?

  Once he was sure he was well out of sight (he’d had enough conversations with Martine, no point pushing his luck), he wrote Bo back: Don’t know—can’t tell mental state until I see footage/talk to Nicodema.

  If Margot wasn’t actually packing to head back to New York—if she was just sick of looking at Martine and planning to drown her sorrows back in Bergen—he’d be in trouble for jumping to conclusions, but he wasn’t above using the benefit of the doubt to his advantage. He needed to see Suyana, and he didn’t care what he told people in the meantime.

  Strange to think about being the authority on Suyana. It happened, he knew; Kate sometimes called Bo to ask if Margot would be more likely to go to a state dinner or meet with the Committee on a pressing vote. Bo was a big game hunter, and it was his job to know. But Daniel had never forgotten the way Bo looked at Margot when she stood in a cramped little museum in Paris, being no one in particular. Was that how Daniel looked at Suyana, when no one was watching?

  As soon as his phone rang, Daniel picked up and said, “Nice to meet you, Nicodema,” because of course it was—he’d had leverage. When he said, as if tallying numbers, “How much is she looking over her shoulder compared to yesterday?” and Nicodema answered, “I thought she’d made me and was going to tell her handler, that’s how much,” Daniel guessed she had less than a day left until the
meeting with Chordata. She’d stop casually looking around after that, since then it wouldn’t matter who was watching.

  He tried not to let it tire him, how much he knew about her. That was the advantage Daniel brought to the position.

  So he told Nicodema, “She got like that in Paris, too, when she was trying to meet friends under Magnus’s nose and he was making it difficult for her to go off itinerary. He’s such an asshole—well, you probably know,” and Nicodema grunted. “She’ll probably sneak away in the next day or two, and once she’s got a little rebellion in, the nerves should stop. If she’s still nervous two days from now, then something’s wrong and you should get backup and run for the airport. Otherwise just keep your distance, and watch out for Magnus.”

  “What about Ethan?”

  He’d assumed Ethan had his own snap—he was A-list, and Daniel just figured Li Zhao had made plans for coverage and not told anyone else. (Hiring freelancers for an assignment this big would be weird, but Daniel couldn’t fault Li Zhao for avoiding whatever grief he’d give anyone she hired in-house.) But Nicodema was covering them both, and he wasn’t going to waste a gift.

  “Oh. Well, if it comes down to choosing, follow him. She’s not going to do anything to risk that contract, but he’s better off. He might have something going on the side. If he does, we should know.”

  Lying directly was so much more productive than being relayed through techs. No wonder Li Zhao forbade it.

  Somewhere behind him, Martine was drowning her guilt and waiting for the morning, when Ansfrida would pick her up and they’d drive away from the mountains and the scrub and the facility Martine hadn’t been allowed to even see.

  She wasn’t used to being denied admission. She must be furious. If he approached her now, when she was half-drunk and angry, she might tell him anything. But Martine wasn’t his problem, and he didn’t dare look away from Margot. It had surprised Bo that she was changing her plans. Nothing about Margot should have been able to surprise Bo. Something big had changed. Whatever she was going to do, she’d decided, and there was no point waiting around.