Harbinger

by S L Shelton

  Harbinger grunted his acknowledgment before leaning toward the driver. “We’ll need to find a butcher shop before we return to the keep,” he said.

  Butcher shop? “A butcher shop?” she asked in a quiet squeak.

  Harbinger placed his tree trunk of an arm across Frau Loeff’s shoulders. “These have been an exciting couple of days for you. Have they not?” he asked. His tone sounded gentle, reassuring.

  Like a bird that goes into shock as the cat wraps its paws around it, she surrendered to the false comfort—she was unable to resist. She nodded.

  “That’s alright. Things will calm down for you now,” he said, and then he began to remove his arm.

  As his hand slid across her shoulder, it stopped at the back of her neck. The surge of adrenaline did nothing to move her as his thumb rose to the side of her head. With a gentle flick of his wrist, she felt a sharp pressure at the base of her skull and a cracking, grating sound—followed by the sudden realization that she no longer had command over her body.

  What have you done?! she thought with the intent to speak.

  Something warm began to trickle from her nose as Harbinger removed his hand and extracted a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

  He lit one and blew a thin stream of smoke before leaning forward, looking into her eyes.

  “Just a moment more,” he said gently.

  Confusion and darkness began to close in on her as she noticed the driver shiver visibly.

  “Turn the heat on if you are cold,” Harbinger said to the driver. “And find me that butcher shop.”

  The driver nodded as Frau Racine Loeff slipped into unconsciousness. As if it were spoken from the depths of a well, she heard Harbinger’s voice in a quiet echo. “After the money is deposited, close our accounts and then tell Braun that Banti was severely compromised.” The next statement sounded even further away. “And tell him we suspect she attempted to use it as cover to steal from the Combine accounts.”

  That’s not true, she screamed indignantly, though she was only able to hear it in her own head. You forced me to transfer the money! I’ll call Braun and straighten it out as soon as I wake up. It was her last thought.

  **

  7:25 p.m.—Basel, Switzerland

  “Huh?” I asked, looking up at Kathrin and Hülya across the table. That was the third time in an hour I had been so preoccupied with the conversation I’d had with Wolf that I’d missed something Kathrin had said.

  “I asked if you are done with your dinner.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I replied absently and noticed Hülya shoot a worried glance at Kathrin.

  Kathrin and I had taken our hosts to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants. Kathrin had intended to make them dinner, but we had taken too long shopping for used clothing to get back in time to cook. Neither Kathrin nor I had more than two days’ worth of casual clothing with us.

  “It’s getting late,” Maurice said, almost as if running interference for me. “We should get back home anyway.”

  I nodded and began to stand from the table.

  “Scott?” Kathrin said, nodding at the dinner check sitting in front of me.

  I shook my head. “Right,” I replied as I reached for my wallet. “Sorry.”

  “Are you okay?” Kathrin asked.

  “Fine,” I replied again as I counted out bills to drop on the table. But I was lying. I knew I needed to find Harbinger and those missile cards. I was struggling to obey the orders that had been given me, and despite the troubling and somewhat disjointed relationship I had with my inner schizophrenia, I agreed with him that I should go now, drop Kathrin in Brussels, and then try to pick up Bellos’s phone signal again on my own.

  I absently followed Kathrin, Maurice, and Hülya out of the restaurant, hands shoved deeply into my coat pockets. The cold had abated a bit, but I was tired of living in perpetual chill…I was ready to be warm again. Again I briefly entertained the idea of taking Kathrin and fleeing to some tropical place, using our cover IDs to start a new life.

  I must have mumbled something aloud because Kathrin looked back at me before taking a step back and hooking her arm through mine. “What has you bothered, my love?” she asked sweetly, the warm breath of her whisper caressing my earlobe.

  I shrugged.

  She smiled thinly and rested her head on my shoulder. “Whatever it is, make sure you include me in the calculations,” she said softly, “because there is no way I’m letting you go now that I’ve so successfully seduced you.”

  I grinned in response, but I knew I couldn’t include her. Then it dawned on me: The only reason I’m obeying CIA orders and not going after those missile boards is that it keeps me here, with Kathrin.

  “I have to go tomorrow,” I said softly. “And as much as I want to, I can’t take you with me.”

  She abruptly stopped, unhooking her arm from mine. Hülya looked back to see we were no longer following them home.

  “We’ll be along shortly,” I said to her.

  She nodded before she and Maurice continued down the street without us.

  “What do you mean, you can’t take me with you?” Kathrin asked, overly loud for the public setting.

  I smiled. “I have to finish what I started, and I’m not certain I can do that with you there,” I replied.

  She shook her head. “I’m the best partner you’ve ever had,” she said, pleading. “You said so yourself. You can’t ditch me just because you’re worried I might get hurt.”

  She had looked right into my soul and seen my dilemma.

  “I don’t have any choice,” I lied.

  “No,” she said firmly. “I’ve seen too many good people isolate themselves for this work and never find their way back to being human. I want to be human—you made me want to be.”

  “Goddamn it, Kathrin,” I burst as my emotions began to overwhelm me, threatening to undermine my resolve and cave to her will. “I can’t do what I need to do and still be human.”

  She stared at me blankly. Her eyes suddenly reflected more brightly the glow from the streetlights as they began to glisten with tears. “So you have made your choice,” she said softly after a moment. “You have chosen the CIA over us.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I replied firmly after looking over my shoulder. “I will finish what I came here to do and then we can figure out what comes next for us.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” she said in a harsh whisper. “You never finish…not in this line of work. Each completed mission is just the lead in for the next.”

  “I started this with a clear goal in mind,” I replied defensively. “I’ll know when it’s done, and I’ll stop.”

  “What was that goal?” she asked with a suspicious, smug glare. “Can you tell me, now, what that goal was?”

  “I have to get the missile cards,” I whispered angrily, pissed that she would call me out on this while standing on the street…even if no one else was around.

  She raised her eyebrows and a mockingly confused expression slipped over her heart-shaped face. “Funny…I thought you discovered those after you arrived here.”

  I blinked at the refutation of my claim. “The same couriers who led me to Loeff also moved the component cards,” I replied defensively. “And the same mercenaries I’ve been chasing for nearly a year picked them up… It’s all connected.”

  “That’s what I mean,” she said with sadness in her voice and eyes. “You came to rescue Barb, not even a year ago. Everything you’ve done since then has been a long chain of evolving entanglement…and you aren’t even with Barb anymore.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She was right. I came here in May to save someone so important to me that I would risk my life to find her, and now we weren’t even talking. Every mission with the CIA had pulled me in deeper and separated me from my old life.

  But there is no way back now, I thought. I have to see it through if I ever want out.

  “It is what it is,�
� I said coldly. “I have to finish…and that’s all there is to it.”

  She shook her head as her expression changed from sadness to anger. “Then you will be doing it for the rest of your life…however short that might be,” she replied quietly. “Because it never ends.”

  She walked past me before I had a chance to second-guess my choice. I turned and watched as she first walked, and then jogged, away from me toward Maurice and Hülya’s building. The urge to chase after her was so strong that I had to physically distract myself, pulling the phone from my pocket.

  I did the right thing, I thought to myself, but I couldn’t help feeling I was only lying to myself.

  The weight of my iPhone in my palm seemed to anchor me into the moment, acting as the tiny bit of drag I needed to prevent me from running to catch up. But the ache in my chest seemed to grow more painful as she moved away from me.

  I went through the motions of connecting to Storc’s servers and manually entering the update address for the proxy server chain.

  Enter the numbers, I thought. Ignore her and enter the numbers.

  I checked the time at the top of the screen and saw it was eight o’clock—I still had another four hours of access with the current string, but it I didn’t want to take a chance on missing the turnover of the script—plus, I needed the distraction.

  I looked up as the proxy script spooled a fresh set of collapsible server addresses to my phone. Kathrin had already disappeared around the corner. I took a step forward, unconsciously, my body betraying my emotional turmoil and attempting to go after her without my permission. My phone chimed in my hand, letting me know the synchronization was complete. It snapped me back to my mission. I refocused my task and accessed the message server.

  Small steps…concentrate on what’s next, not what might be.

  I shook my head and pressed my lips together tightly. My heart ached as I refused to act out of emotion, plunging me into painful regret. Instead, I looked down at my phone—one new message. It was from Nick: “We don’t have anything on the trace, but we do have new information. Should have it compiled with a plan forward by tomorrow. Hang tight.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry Nick,” I muttered. “I’m moving out tomorrow with or without you.”

  **

  2:30 p.m. EST—Story “Storc” Carson’s house, Falls Church, Virginia (thirty minutes later)

  STORC rolled to his side on the couch in his basement server room. His brief nap was being interrupted by an intermittent tone, softly chiming from across the room at his workstation. He opened his eyes and rubbed them before the significance of the sound impacted him like a punch.

  “No,” he whispered, his eyes growing wide with awareness.

  He fell from the sofa, his feet tangled in the afghan that had been draped over him.

  “No!” he said more loudly, getting his feet under him and then lurching toward the desk.

  His hands came down solidly on either side of his keyboard as he leaned forward, blinking the blur from his eyes to read what had happened. As if it were going to fling itself through his ribcage, his heart began pounding impossibly fast.

  “No, no, NO!” he screamed as he began frantically pulling the network cables, first from his desktop system and then the server racks.

  He reached for the phone in his pocket but didn’t find it there. His mind raced, unable to focus. Where did I leave my phone?

  An image came to mind of making a sandwich at lunchtime. He turned away from his computers and fled up the stairs to the kitchen. But just as he rounded the corner, the back door of his house burst open, splintering the doorframe.

  He fell backward toward the counter as three men in black suits ran into his kitchen through the ruined door, weapons drawn and aimed at him. He glanced at the counter and saw his phone.

  “Get it,” one of the men said as Storc reached for it.

  The butt of a rifle smashed into the bridge of his nose as he made a grab for the phone, making his sinuses suddenly feel as if they were full of warm water. Darkness began closing in around him.

  I’m so sorry, Scott, he thought as he passed out. I should have put it in a sandbox.

  **

  4:20 p.m.—CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  NICK HORIATIS looked up as Penny Rhodes entered his office—John Temple’s office.

  “Did Director Burgess leave an itinerary before he left?” Penny asked.

  Nick shook his head. “He’s only there to provide guidance for the Secretary of State,” he replied. “It’s off the books.”

  “Why off the books?” she asked. “It’s a diplomatic summit, not a covert hit…or is it?”

  Nick laughed. “No. The G8 doesn’t like overtly revealing that its foreign ministers and intelligence people are all together at the same time,” he replied. “It makes other countries nervous.”

  Penny chuckled. “Can’t really blame them, can you?”

  Nick squinted at her. “It’s talk like that, that makes people suspect you,” he said.

  A flush of red rose to her cheeks before she shrugged. She opened her mouth as if to speak when the phone on Nick’s desk rang. He held a finger up, pausing Penny’s retort, and picked up the phone.

  “Horiatis,” he answered.

  “Sir. I have Jo from TravTech on the line. She called to see if we were doing anything weird with the server connections,” analyst Ruth said.

  “Go ahead and conference her in,” Nick replied.

  “Jo? Can you please repeat what you just told me?” Ruth said.

  “Mahesh says there was a huge dump of data about an hour ago from the security server BRE installed. He was waiting for Storc to come in and do an audit, but he hasn’t come in yet,”

  “When was the last time you talked to Storc?” Nick asked, rising from his chair and grabbing the jacket from the back.

  “He texted us at about one thirty, saying he would be in around three,” Jo said. “But we haven’t been able to reach him by phone or computer since then… Storc is never more than ten feet away from a computer.”

  It immediately struck Nick that Storc’s personal servers were being used as the communication link with Scott. He put his hand over the phone as he moved toward the door. “Penny, call Dylan Pritchett with Internal Security,” Nick said. “Tell him I need an armed response unit at Storc’s house right now.”

  “What’s the address?” she yelled at his back as he ran down the hall.

  “Jo? What’s Storc’s address,” Nick asked into the phone.

  “Falls Church,” Jo said and proceeded to give him the address.

  “Ruth, did you get that?” Nick asked.

  “Yeah,” she replied.

  Nick turned and walked backward, Penny giving chase. “Give it to Penny and Dylan Pritchett,” he said loudly enough for Penny to hear. “Penny will have the order in his hand in less than five minutes. I’ll meet them there.”

  Penny gave Nick the thumbs up before turning and running back down the hall in the other direction. Nick was halfway up the stairs before he remembered Jo was still on the phone.

  “He’ll be fine,” Nick said for Jo’s benefit. “It’s just a precaution.”

  “Don’t waste time talking to me,” Jo snapped. “Go!”

  Nick snapped his phone shut and tucked it into his pocket just as he reached his truck. The big tires on his four-wheel drive squealed as he exited the parking garage, slowing down only long enough to flash his ID at the gate.

  Nick sped down the streets of Northern Virginia, cutting what would have been a normal driving time of sixteen minutes down to ten. As he turned off of Great Falls Street onto Storc’s street, he saw a van pulling out from the driveway.

  Nick pressed the gas pedal to the floor and braced. His truck slammed into the side of the van, sending it rolling as his truck ground to a halt, crawling over the edge of the overturned vehicle. Three men in suits exited Storc’s house, firing at Nick’s truck.

  Nick climbed out
of the passenger-side door and fell from the elevated height, hitting the ground hard. He rolled behind the overturned van for cover and peeked into the front window. Inside there was a driver who appeared to be unconscious, two men in the back trying to right themselves, and the skinny lump that was Storc, hands bound and laying on his side. Nick fired twice through the window, killing the two men trying to move.

  “Storc!” Nick yelled into the van. “Are you alive?”

  “Yes,” Storc gasped in reply. “Nick?”

  “Hang tight,” he said before rising to greet the descending assault from the house.

  His next shot found its mark in the head of the lead attacker. Before the other two had an opportunity to take cover, Nick had fired two more shots, one of them striking the leg of the second man. He ducked back down behind the front of the van.

  “You still okay?” Nick asked.

  “I think I’m bleeding pretty bad,” Storc said, oddly in a calm voice.

  “Stay with me,” Nick said before he rose to fire five rapid shots toward the front of the house. He dropped back down and ejected his empty magazine, leaving his one live round in the chamber.

  “I’m going to step away for a minute, but I’ll be right back,” Nick said through the hole in the window. “Okay?”

  Two shots impacted near Nick’s head on the undercarriage of the van.

  “Storc!” Nick called, not having heard an answer.

  “Yeah,” Storc said weakly. “I’ll be here.”

  A sneer formed across Nick’s face as he braced to end the battle. He couldn’t see Storc very well, but it sounded like he was fading fast. Nick stepped out after slapping in a fresh magazine and fired three shots at the front steps. But before he could target the next position, he felt the air leave his lungs and was falling to the ground.

  The pain hit him as he hit the dirt. “Mother fu—”

  He was lying on the ground, peering from beneath his wrecked truck. Two pairs of legs suddenly moved into his line of view as he gasped oxygen, trying to take a full breath.