“Peter is there for you. I mean that.”
“Peter was brainwashed into loving me, just like Marissa was you.”
I bit my lip before saying she was a mole. That wouldn’t help my case any. “What matters is the pretty boy loves you now. We were all forged by our circumstances into what we are.”
I didn’t believe that, but E might.
“Peter would kick your ass if you called him a pretty boy,” E said, looking like he was seriously considering my words.
“He should be the Letter then.”
“He might have been if circumstances were different.”
“Probably.”
Peter Starikov was a Russian homosexual model and a soldier, four things that hadn’t really gone well together in his life. He’d switched to information warfare as a focus and had been recruited by the Society after government pressures had forced him out of his job at the FSB. The Society hadn’t had to brainwash him to get his allegiance, but they’d done so anyway to bring him around. He’d been strong-willed, though, and I suspected his resistance to giving up on his employers was more out of stubbornness than anything else. Mother Russia made bulls out of most of its citizens, I’d found.
E looked down. “How much of what you were saying about us being clones or androids or whatever was true?”
“Too much of it, I’m afraid.”
E closed his eyes. “And you still think we can find happiness in this life?”
“As much as any human.”
“I’ll help you then,” E said, picking up one of the walkie-talkies off the ground.
Lucita was behind him now.
Just a few yards.
E lifted the walkie-talkie up to his ear and then contacted the Yakuza.
I held my breath for some sign of betrayal, but instead, he just said,
“Nechayev has sent his man to check out the location first. He’s a medium-sized Caucasian man dressed in a thick coat, blue jeans, and a t-shirt. Let him talk with Persephone.”
“Understood, sir,” the Yakuza on the other end replied.
“There,” E said. “I have sold my soul for love.”
“And an ass-kicking,” I said.
E snorted. “Anything else?”
“Just going to make sure you stay put,” I said.
Lucita proceeded to wrap the electrified chain around E’s neck as I grabbed his arms. He delivered a couple of nasty kicks, which I barely managed to deflect, as well as an enhanced blow to my groin. Thankfully, because I always expect combat, I’d equipped a cup down there, which was decidedly dented. E lasted longer than I did, though, thrashing about for several seconds before finally succumbing to unconsciousness.
I took a deep breath. “Is he dead?”
“No,” Lucita said, dropping him on the ground. “That much electricity would kill a normal man but seems to be the only reliable way to disable a Letter. I am curious, however, whether you intend to honor the agreement you made with him.”
“Afraid I’ll betray you?” I asked.
“That would be very stupid of you, but you’ve done it in the past.”
Lucita had a point. “No, I don’t intend to break the deal I made with him. When he wakes up, I’ll hopefully have this resolved and the New Society will have yet another super-competent assassin to carry out President Douglas’ bidding.”
“Will you be taking other clients?”
“It wouldn’t be a very deniable asset if we didn’t.”
“Did you ever consider retiring?” Lucita surprised me by asking.
I stared at her. “No, no I didn’t.”
“Why’s that?” Lucita asked.
I took a deep breath. “I honestly can’t answer that. The closest reason I’ve come to is the fact that I’m good at it.”
“That seems a poor reason to continue a life of murder,” Lucita said.
“It is,” I said. “On the other hand, it’s better to shove than be shoved.
On the inside of this little circle of conspiracies, syndicates, and murder corporations, we can influence things. Maybe we can even reduce the amount of damage done if we’re so inclined. Certainly, I know if it’s not me then it’s going to be someone else, and the next guy may feel inclined to be as precise.”
“And you think that justifies it?” Lucita asked.
“I don’t try and justify it,” I said.
“Good idea.” Lucita smirked. “I was just thinking about the fact that I am still in the game. I don’t enjoy it, but it is who I am, and I wonder if I could have ever changed that. Whether I was programmed to be this from an early age and can’t change it.”
“So, you decided to ask the person who is literally programmed to be nothing more than the world’s perfect killer?” Lucita snorted.
“And nothing less, yes.” I took a deep breath. “If you want, Lucita, I can try to help you get out.”
Lucita blinked. “What?”
“If that’s what you’re asking. One thing I’ve learned from my brief experience with Strike Force-22 is the US intelligence service is fucking terrible at finding people. They lucked out with Osama in my opinion. I know all their holes and weak spots. If you want me to find you a new place, new identity—”
Lucita laughed, really laughed. “Oh, G, if I need your help hiding from the US government, then that is the day I will retire.”
I paused. “Sorry, I misunderstood.”
“You did,” Lucita said, dragging E away from where she’d disabled him. “I was contemplating whether I had the moral fortitude to eliminate Hitoshi or let him go and potentially sabotage my new relationship with the United States. I’m aware I can’t simply let him go knowing what he knows.”
I blinked. “Yeah, Marissa brought that possibility up.”
“And what do you think?” Lucita asked.
I thought about how easily they both decided to kill someone who was technically their ally and wondered what it meant about both. “I don’t go out of my way to make up orders to kill people.”
“That seems an exceptionally bad life strategy,” Lucita said.
“Or an exceptionally good one,” I said.
Lucita was silent for a moment. “You should go. I suspect both of us are going to have a lot more in the way of problems should we fail to deliver Persephone and Nechayev. One or the other might win me the respect I need, but failure on my first mission will only bring death. I am, after all, a wanted criminal.”
“Yeah.” I turned around to walk away. “Please turn off your cyberlink. They can track you that way. We need to be prepared to extract Persephone if this goes south. We also need an escape plan after eliminating Nechayev.”
“Do you know how you’re going to do that?” Lucita asked.
I reached the glass doors to the outside. “Not a clue.”
“Great,” Lucita said, calling after me. “I think you’re wrong, though, G.”
“Oh?” I looked back.
“I think you stay a killer because, collateral damage aside, you enjoy killing predators.”
I smirked. “That’s a nice lie to tell myself.”
“Perhaps we can make it true.” Lucita smiled.
I doubted it.
Chapter Seventeen
The interior of the restaurant was tacky in the same sort of way Westerners parodied Japanese culture—waiters wearing cowboy and cowgirl outfits, Patsy Cline playing in the background, and peanuts spread across the ground for no apparent reason. Close to a hundred Japanese families were present with several Yakuza patriarchs. None of them seemed unnerved or unsettled. This was a family restaurant for them.
Persephone was in the middle of the restaurant, far away from any windows, and surrounded by potential innocent bystanders. She was wearing a gray and white business suit dress. A meal for two had just been put down with two more spaces ready, presumably for Nechayev and his bodyguard. I noted with some amusement that E had ordered a hamburger and fries.
Staying out of sight by usin
g waiters and customers to hide behind, I slipped into the chair in front of Persephone and picked up E’s burger before taking a bite of it. It was pretty good, and I had to give them credit for getting the texture of the beef just right.
Persephone, to her credit, didn’t react other than to blink a few times. “Hello, G.”
Persephone reached for her purse and I lifted my pistol under the table, poking her leg with it.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.
Persephone moved her hand away from the purse.
“I’ve blocked transmissions from her IRD implant,” Marissa said in my head. “She won’t be able to get any help.”
“Good,” I said aloud, keeping my gun trained on Persephone. “We’re going to have a chat, Mrs. Matthews.”
“You could have just called,” Persephone said, poking her steak with her fork. “I always have time for my favorite Letter, no matter how disobedient he’s been.”
“You going underground made that a bit difficult,” I said.
“I am saddened you decided to give up your chance at recovering your memories to serve the United States—”
“I know I’m not Daniel Gordon, the Letter project is made of robot-brain slaves, and we’re all going to die after ten to twelve years.”
Persephone held her fork in midair, a piece of steak on the end. “I see. I confess, I never expected you to learn any of that.”
“I figured that, yeah.”
Persephone ate the piece of steak and sat there for a moment, chewing. “What do you want?”
“To kill you? To torture you? To tie you to a chair, douse you with gasoline, and watch you burn to death slowly? I haven’t decided yet.”
“You could have done all of that,” Persephone said. “Also, despite your many, many faults, you were never a sadist. Believe me, I’ve known enough psychopaths and serial killers over the years to know the difference between those who kill for money and those who kill for pleasure.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re right. I just want to put the scare in you. A way to pay you back for all of the years you lied to me.”
“Would the truth have been better? You’re an android brain in a clone body made for the purposes of killing people?”
“I’m okay not believing in Santa Claus,” I said. “No need to tell me otherwise.”
Persephone snorted. “Yet you believe in God. I always found that strange for a machine.”
“I always found it strange none of us shot you,” I said.
I took a sip of E’s iced tea with my left hand, keeping my gun steady with my right. The latter was invisible underneath the tablecloth.
“President Douglas wants to offer you a job. She’d like you to assemble a new Society and have it work for her as well as her associates exclusively. In exchange, you get to keep all the money you’ve stolen over the years as well as not die horribly. You’ll also have to help track down the other two members of Tribunal.”
“All right,” Persephone said. “I accept.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That was anticlimactic.”
“I’m a businesswoman,” Persephone said. “When I was a member of Secret Intelligence Service, I was constantly cleaning up after the Americans’ shit, and it turned out to be the exact same situation when I went into the private sector.”
“Murder Incorporated,” I said.
Persephone snorted. “Where are you getting this moral judgment, G? You loved working for the Society.”
“Or maybe I was good at faking it,” I said.
“Marissa must have taught you that,” Persephone snarked.
I narrowed my eyes, preparing to put three bullets in her, regardless of whether the President wanted her alive or dead.
“Trouble in paradise, I see,” Persephone said, taking a sip of her water. “The fact remains I never wanted to become involved in the politics of the United States. Whether President Douglas wins her third term or is defeated by Senator Jackson makes not the slightest bit of difference to me. Both will need killers.”
“Why did the Society decide to turn against Douglas? I thought we—they—were neutral in these sorts of things.”
“Conscience,” Persephone said.
I stared at her.
Persephone stared at me. “Sarah Douglas has plans for the world. Plans involving Black Technology that scared even the Tribunal. She had plans to release a small fragment of Black Technology and upend the world order. They didn’t see, as I did, just how well she played the game or how hard it would be to take her down. They should have gone after her directly. A or S could have killed her and made it look like an accident even to the country’s best forensic experts.”
I ignored the subtle insult. “Well, we’re going to leave here quietly and get into the car outside together. I’ve been given a broad amount of latitude in dealing with you and am perfectly willing to bring you in dead rather than alive.”
“I’ll cooperate,” Persephone said, before giving a half-smile. “Though I don’t actually trust your ability to deal with the other Tribunal members before they send one of their pet Letters to eliminate me. Douglas’ people are riddled with traitors.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“You could be one.”
I chuckled, disbelieving. “You offering me the chance to defect back?”
“Not at all. Once bitten, twice shy,” Persephone said. “I am, however, offering you a chance to free yourself from all masters but your own.”
“G—” Marissa started to say.
I made a mental “shhh” at her.
“Go on,” I said. “I’ve got to hear this.”
A female waiter with bangs in front of her eyes came to check on us, to which we both said we were fine, before departing.
“You’re an emotional child,” Persephone said. “Innocent in a lot of ways. Which is part of why the Letters were created. The emptiness you have removes the sense of danger which bystanders notice, allowing you to pass through customs and get closer to targets than you might normally be able to. Your lives are short and you never get to experience anything but a fraction of their value.”
“Yeah, we’re like tears in the rain,” I said, not at all happy at being called a child. I’d lived more in five years than most humans did in a hundred.
“You need memories,” Persephone said.
I almost shot her there. “Not this song and dance again.”
“It’s not a song and dance. Think about what it would be like. Daniel Gordon was thirty-five when you were created from him. It would be like having five times your lifespan added to you in a day. Sex, joy, love, parenting, friendship, and all the wonderful as well as terrible things that make life worth living.”
I shook my head. “First, I’m not Daniel Gordon so his memories mean nothing to me. Second, if you had his memories, then his mother would have uploaded them to me. Rebecca Gordon wanted to resurrect her son.”
“That’s assuming he’s dead.” Persephone gave a half-smile. “You were still part of the Letter project, G. Your memories were going to be returned to you after you completed your ten-year contract. As for them not being your memories, where do you think you got your personality? Your beliefs? These weren’t programmed into you. You have a partial imprint of Daniel Gordon’s personality and skills. Enough to give you a basis for who he was and to drive you to want more. I knew the man while he was ‘alive’ and you’re already him reborn. Every bit the ass in assassin. You are a bit less… well, batshit insane, but that’s not saying much.”
That was a good one. Still, I wasn’t buying what she was selling. “Bullshit. You cannot copy someone’s brain completely.”
“Why so skeptical?” Persephone asked.
“Aside from the fact that you’re a pathological liar?” I asked.
“Yes.” Persephone didn’t take my comment personally.
“Because you’re claiming the Society has the fucking secret of immortality and is using it to make assassins.�
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Persephone wrinkled her nose. “Brain copying is the Diet Coke of immortality. It’s like making a physical and mental duplicate of yourself only to give them everything you own. Humans already have that kind of immortality—it’s called children.”
She had a point there. “Still, I’d wager a lot of billionaires would be willing to mortgage their souls for something like that.”
“And they have,” Persephone said. “Part of the reason the Society hasn’t been eliminated despite the world’s once-most-powerful nation hunting it. It’s another reason why President Douglas wants us taken alive.
She doesn’t have access to the research or know where we’ve moved the scientists who’ve developed it. She could change the face of the world in exchange for this.”
I shook my head. “Not buying it.”
“I have a portable database with every Letter’s memories uploaded onto it in my purse. Amazing how you can fit twenty-six entire lifetimes on a single Black Technology artifact the size of a cigarette pack.”
This was getting too ludicrous to believe. “Why in the world would you have something like that in your purse?”
Persephone raised an eyebrow. “Because of the possibility that I’d eventually run into a Letter such as yourself? I suspected given my personal relationship with every one of you, I had a better than even chance they’d want to confront me before killing me. I figured having something to barter with would be good.”
“Huh.” I found myself starting to believe her, despite myself.
“You killed the dictator of Libya, G. Surely, you can figure out I’m telling the truth.”
“You guys really didn’t expect me to track him down,” I said, stunned.
“No, we didn’t,” Persephone said. “Especially not as your third hit.”
“Can you believe this garbage?” I asked Marissa, thinking about the possibilities.
In fact, I couldn’t help but find myself tempted to believe in it. It was a ludicrous proposition, but the temptation to have a normal human life was there. Even worse, she was saying I really was Daniel Gordon, after a fashion, with the potential to gain all his memories. If what she was telling was true, I wouldn’t be him—not really—but I’d be close.
Agent G: Saboteur Page 12