“We all have our roles,” said pug-nose. “And on that note, I think we can wrap this up.”
* * *
The consequences of the inquest unfolded exactly as he had expected. The Bureau concluded that Booker, through negligence and poor planning, had been responsible for the total bungling of this investigation. He would be put on administrative leave for three months while the investigation continued, according to the email Booker got from Helen later that evening. It was brief and dispassionately worded. At the end, as if it were an afterthought:
Jane Baum passed away this afternoon.
Booker sat in his empty studio, letting the sun set and the room darken without bothering to get up and turn on the lights. He wanted to rage at someone. At the Bureau for cutting him loose like this. At Helen for selling him out -- a vague notion he couldn’t shake or support with any real evidence. At himself, for letting this all happen in the first place.
His mind couldn’t settle on someone to be angry with, so he decided to be angry with everyone. But it did no good. When you got down to it, he was still alone in this tiny apartment. If he started shouting, he’d only be shouting at himself.
When the shadows had spread to fill the studio and the only light came from the end of his e-cig and the city beyond his balcony, Booker stood up because it felt like the thing to do. He felt lost, amnesic, as if he had forgotten what he was here for. His stomach growled, so he turned on the lights and stuck a frozen pan of lasagna in the oven.
Booker removed his smart lenses for what felt like the first time in days and showered, though he didn’t really need to. Beneath the hiss of the water he could hear all the things he should have said, the magical phrases that might have made everything ok. When he closed his eyes he could see those polite faces in that conference room. He could see Helen looking disappointed and weary and coldly empty all at once. He could see Jane Baum, eating a disgusting tofu burger with mayo, probably facing down several decades in a prison but still glad to be alive.
It wasn’t until he smelled smoke that Booker realized he’d been standing under the water, doing nothing, for far too long. He quickly shut off the shower and scrambled naked to the kitchen, where dark plumes were issuing from the oven. He pulled it open and reached for the pan of what had been lasagna, swore as he burned himself, and dropped it into the sink.
Well, he hadn’t really been hungry anyways.
The smoke alarm began to bawl. Booker opened the balcony door and turned on the ceiling fan, then dropped into the sofa without bothering to get dressed. His reflection looked weirdly stretched in the dark glass of the wall-mounted monitor.
How the hell was he supposed to survive three months of this?
He hadn’t felt this lost, this useless, this -- call it what it was -- depressed since graduating with his B.A. in history of art. What should have been a triumphant day had instead been a sudden slap from reality. He’d had no idea what he was going to do next with his life, no idea how to make a living with what he’d just spent five years learning. After years of moving from milestone to milestone in pursuit of a single, clear goal, suddenly there had been nothing. His options had been endless, and in that there was paralysis.
There was no way he could go back to living with his folks, much as he loved them. Much as they would have been happy to take him. To him, it would have been an admission of defeat. Instead he’d rented a shitbox apartment and shared it with three of his friends from school. Their number had gradually shrunk to just three, then two, then one, as everyone moved on to better things and Booker was left in his minimum-wage library job.
Worst of all, that had been when he’d lost Estelle. While she went on to pursue her M.S. in data analytics and pick up an internship with Radical Dynamics, he’d puttered around aimlessly, revealing himself for the dead-end he truly was. Who could blame her for not wanting to stick around?
In the end, with no other prospects, Booker had joined the National Guard. A year helping flood victims in the CDZ had eventually led him to an FBI recruitment drive, where he'd been astounded to learn that he actually qualified for the Bureau, and then -- finally -- his life seemed to gain some true direction. Even if it wasn’t a direction he could recognize.
And now that was gone. It wasn’t final, technically, but Booker was under no illusions. The ACT had been floundering before this whole fiasco. Jane Baum and the crystal skull would likely be the torpedo that did them in.
Maybe he would get out of the country. He hadn’t had a decent vacation since joining the Bureau. Spend his time off doing some traveling, seeing the world -- anything, really, to run out the clock on his suspension. Go back to Paris, maybe. There were good memories there -- he could even get back in touch with Estelle. It had been years since they’d seen each other, but maybe…
The smoke alarm had finally shut up, the air in his apartment mostly breathable. Booker stood, looking around, half-consciously drafting his message to Estelle already, and noticed that his watch, which he’d left on the coffee table, was blinking softly. A notification. His lenses were in their case in the bathroom, so it could have come at any time since he showered. Booker picked up the watch and saw that he’d gotten an email. The subject line read: OPEN ME.
For a moment he considered simply ignoring it, just going to bed. But something in his gut decided against it, seized on the chance to actually do something. Setting his watch aside, he sat back down and booted up his laptop. A moment later he was at his inbox.
OPEN ME.
It had arrived five minutes ago. The sender looked like some dummy address. Probably spam, but then why hadn’t his filters caught it?
Booker opened the email. There were three lines of text:
If you’re receiving this, then I’m no longer able to pursue the truth.
I trust you to do a better job than I did.
Good luck, Booker.
He stared. It read like something out of a spy movie, and the personal use of his name only made it feel more surreal. Below was an attachment. A zip file, titled “Pattern.” Booker frowned at it, then the strange message. He selected the file and ran it through an antivirus scan. Nothing was flagged as dangerous. Just for good measure, he opened it in a sandbox.
There were five documents: London, Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, Houston. His eyes were drawn to the one marked Chicago. Pulse quickening, Booker opened it.
It was a series of screengrabs, and he knew immediately what he was looking at. A conversation, carried out via direct-message, under the banner of a website called “Club Nabonidus.” A dark-web message board. The conversation dated to several weeks ago:
>[Headhunter995] Chicago Field Museum. ID tag “MH0017443.” Delivery should happen around 8 a.m. 75k cc upon collection. Will cover expenses.
>[Rosic] This job sounds like a hit-and-run, which means we need to clear a few things up. First, there will be guns. No avoiding that.
>[Headhunter995] No bodies. No killing. This will already be high-profile. Murder means a manhunt.
>[Rosic] Understood. But you need to understand that things happen. Plans go crooked. If a security guard decides to be dumb, play hero, and it comes down to us or them, it’s going to be them.
>[Headhunter995] Museum security doesn’t carry firearms.
>[Rosic] No, but cops do.
>[Headhunter995] Avoid the cops.
>[Rosic] We will. But you need to be aware of the risks.
>[Headhunter995] We are. So should you. No bodies. If there’s a body, the deal is off.
>[Rosic] Fair enough.
>[Rosic] Good. We look forward to doing business.
“Holy shit,” Booker breathed. He swiped to the next screengrab, hand shaking. It came from the Daily Herald, and was only four days old, detailing the heist at the Field Museum. There were no names exchanged on Club Nabonidus or mentioned in the article, but in the bottom-right corner of the final page, someone had digitally inserted four lines:
Keillor Meacham
Jane Baum
Harlan Hu
ID:R-LGD1197
“Holy shit,” Booker repeated. His head was swimming, as if he’d just held his breath for too long. Where the hell had this come from? A part of him screamed to call Helen right away, but he resisted. It had been sent to him, was meant for him. Besides, he wasn’t an active agent anymore.
He opened London. This time, the screengrabs were from a different website. He had no doubt that it was another dark-web message board like Club Nabonidus. Another conversation, dated almost a year ago, another job being set up. Details of the target weren’t given clearly in the conversation, but Booker found them in the corresponding news article on the next screengrab. “PAGAN STONE PULLS VANISHING ACT.” Apparently a small stone monolith had been accidentally uncovered in White Chapel by a construction team demolishing condemned tenements. The local strata dated it to at least 30,000 BCE., which made the rudimentary carvings on its surface all the more exciting. According to some interpretations, it depicted a map of the British Isles. But before the archaeological team could finish their excavation, the stone slab had vanished overnight. Stolen, apparently, by this second team of professional thieves.
Booker swiped to final screengrab, somehow already knowing what he would find. “A GRISLY DAWN ON THE THAMES.” Two bodies, and this time the police hadn’t been able to hide the details of their condition, since they’d been discovered by a jogger. “ACID MANIAC ON THE LOOSE?”
Again, a list of names had been added, along with a strange sort of code or tag:
Suresh Paul
William Dinkle
ID:AM4095
Hong Kong and New York told similar stories: an illicit job set up online, a team hired to grab rare pieces of art and history (from Hong Kong, a plate-sized disc of jade that had been in a private collection at the top of a highrise; in New York, the journal of an 18th century French trapper who had lived briefly with the Tsimshian tribe, vanished from the archives of the American Museum of Natural History after the basement flooded); the thieves going dark for a period of days, sometimes weeks, only to turn up dead. The method of their murder was never clear, but in every case, liberal amounts of triflic acid had been applied to their identifying features. They were never identified in the articles -- only the strange, digitally-added follow-ups gave their names.
There was only one deviation. Houston. Booker found himself back on Club Nabonidus when he opened this document. The messages were only slightly older than those detailing the Chicago job:
>[24619] This is quite the ask. CDZ is no joke, especially Houston.
>[Ibis] Why do you think we’re offering so much?
>[24619] Good question. The Mughal flask is a nice piece, but I wouldn’t spend half of what you’re offering.
>[Ibis] Word of advice? Don’t make a habit of talking yourself out of a fat paycheck.
>[24619] Oh, I’m not complaining. Just curious. What’s the flask to you?
>[Ibis] You ask too many questions. If you’re not up to the job…
>[24619] I’m probably the only one who could get in and out of Houston alive, let alone with your prize.
>[Ibis] Then we have a deal?
>[24619] We do.
There were no news clippings attached to this one, no grisly murder, and the list of names included additional strange notes:
Richard Álvarez
Kaipo Villeneuve
Flask not R or AM?
Ethiopia??
And that was it. Booker searched through each of the files again, and even tried re-downloading the zip file, just in case something had been lost in the decompression. The original file was gone, however. Apparently it had been set up as a single-use transfer.
He had to take a step back. Clear his head, get some focus. Booker stood and began to pace. He went through another cartridge on his e-cig. Rain splattered the balcony window as the wind picked up outside. It formed a backdrop of white noise as he arranged his thoughts. After ten minutes he sat back down and returned to his laptop.
He pulled up the Chicago file, going over it more slowly, trying to absorb and process every detail. Even with the scrim of anonymity, there could be no doubt that this conversation was referring to what had until recently been his case. Everything was there, right down to the serial number that had been attached to the Mitchell-Hedges skull. But the person who had compiled this dossier seemed to be slightly behind the times -- there was no mention of the bodies found in the flooded tunnel. That information had only been released in the last twenty-four hours, meaning this file must have been put together before then.
So why had he only just received it?
Booker went to retrieve his lenses, then cast the files to them so he could pace his tiny apartment and still view them. “Pattern,” the folder was titled. The meaning was clear enough: five thefts of historical artifacts, four of which had resulted in bodies. Definitely went beyond coincidence in his book, but he needed to be sure.
He ran a search for each of the clipped news articles. It quickly became clear that this wasn’t some elaborate hoax. The crimes really had taken place -- both the original thefts and the subsequent murders. Booker trawled the reports, carefully following the investigation for each case. Here he found another pattern: after the initial excitement of the robbery, progress stalled, at least until the bodies were found. After that there came a renewed burst of effort to locate the killer and the still-missing item. Eventually, however, all the investigations ran into dead-ends and fizzled out.
It was depressingly familiar, and it didn’t give him great hope for his own efforts. But these individual investigations lacked the perspective he was now granted. They hadn’t known that something larger was afoot. Perhaps with that insight, Booker would be able to get some real results.
He wanted to run the names provided through the FBI’s databases, but with his pending suspension such activity would almost certainly be flagged. For a moment he considered sending them to Hollis, seeing what the CPD could turn up -- but he felt certain the detective was feeling less than charitable to him right now, after how things had turned out.
Instead he turned to several commercial background check services. The results he got back were scant, and some of the names didn’t turn up anything at all. Like Jane Baum, these people had taken a professional pride in remaining off the grid.
So where the hell had the names come from? They weren’t anywhere in the news articles or the forum transcripts. Booker had little reason to doubt their authenticity, since Jane and her partners were accurately listed. The only conclusion he could draw right now was that whoever had put these documents together was somehow involved, and so privy to inside information. Involved with what, exactly, he couldn’t yet say.
He filed it away to a corner of his mind where it could unfold in its own time, and moved on. The stolen artifacts. There was nothing connecting them that he could see, except for the strange ID tags -- he had to assume that’s what they referred to, anyway. Again, these were a mystery. They weren’t mentioned anywhere in the messages that set up each job, so they couldn’t have been some in-house cataloging system used by the thieves or their clients. Neither did ID:R-LGD1197 correspond to the museum’s serial for the crystal skull. A Google search gave him nothing, even when paired with terms that described the corresponding artifact. So had his anonymous source made them up for their own convenience? If so, why not provide an explanation? Why include them at all?
Once more Booker had to conclude that he was glimpsing the internal workings of something much larger, leaked by a whistleblower. The phrase global conspiracy floated to the fore of his mind. Almost reflexively he shied away from it. Yet when the pieces of this thing were examined objectively, Booker had to admit that it was an apt descriptor. Individually, a theft and murder wasn’t all that strange. Even the application of acid, while certainly bizarre, didn’t indicate anything other than an isolated event. But when the same components were re
peated over and over and over and over, around the world -- Well. What else would you call it?
He knew what Helen would say. You’re seeing what you want to see. This fits your theory about Baum’s death, has been presented to you in a manner just spooky enough to put you on edge. You’re chasing water bandits.
Maybe. It was easy enough to think that, to hear it said in the voice of the mental caricature of Helen Martinez that he had conjured as a sounding board. But would the real Helen still be so obstinate after reviewing what he’d seen?
There was, of course, one way to find out. It was going on midnight, but that only meant that Helen, as a career insomniac, would be reaching her peak right about now. He could call the office, forward her the documents, get an outside perspective. And then…
What? Have his suspension reversed? Not likely. Jane Baum was still dead, and if the inquest had told him one thing, it was that the Bureau was determined to absorb the blow of her death with the least-essential limb. That meant him and, by extension, the ACT. Even if Helen sided with him, would either of them be allowed to follow up? Or would it simply be taken out of their hands? Booker felt he knew the answer.
In his lenses he returned to the original email. I am no longer able to pursue the truth. It was clear that whoever had sent this had done so at great personal risk, in their own estimation. He sent a reply anyway, almost as short as the original message, simply asking for further contact. He didn’t expect any.
Booker then switched to the Houston file. It was the most recent of the five jobs, according to the dates of the transcript, and here, it seemed, his source was at something of a loss. The Houston job arranged between this Ibis and 24619 actually bore little resemblance to the others.
Flask not R or AM, his source had noted. Ethiopia?? The first seemed to be commenting on the lack of an ID tag, which indicated they were being taken from an actual catalog, one in which the Mughal flask didn’t appear at all; the second appeared to be speculation. But what did Ethiopia have to do with anything? Why had this job been included at all?
A Covenant of Thieves Page 20
