by Terry Mixon
Brad accepted the incoming call. “Yes?”
“Zebra, Charlie, Alaska, Pluto, Sandwich, Sunshine,” a male voice recited an Agency recognition code.
“Mountain, Flower, Pudding, Massage, Arrow, Candle,” Brad automatically responded. “You’ve got my attention.”
“Set the com to vibrate and keep walking. When it signals, turn right and keep going until I meet you.”
Brad would’ve asked what he looked like, but the unknown man had already disconnected. He put the com back into his pocket and started walking.
“The missing Agent is a woman, but someone with her codes wants to meet,” he told the Colonel. “We’ll go forward until he signals me to turn right. He’ll meet us some point after that.”
“How do we know this isn’t a trap?” Saburo asked softly. “The Cadre could’ve tortured the codes out of her.”
“It’s possible,” Brad admitted. “All we can do is keep our eyes open.”
They went farther down the corridor than he expected before the com vibrated once as they were coming up on a cross corridor.
“Turn right,” Brad said.
The change in direction led them to a market where a number of small shops hawked their wares to a seemingly-jaded crowd. Still, they must do well enough to make ends meet.
As they were almost through the market, a shopkeeper with an outrageously waxed mustache called out to them. That wasn’t unusual. Every shop they’d passed seemed to have someone championing the wares within.
But this man was different. He led with an Agency recognition word.
“Armstrong wouldn’t be able to match the quality of my suits, sirs! Come in and get fitted for the finest garments on Ceres!”
Brad turned and walked into the shop while gesturing for most of the troopers to wait outside. The interior was larger than he expected. It had to go into the wall bordering the market. There were no customers.
The man moved a sign to indicate the shop was now closed. “Come with me.”
“Not until you explain who you are and how you’re connected with Ella Watson,” Brad said. “And how you know those codes.”
“Ella is my friend. My very, very close friend, if you know what I mean. She’s ill and I’m taking you to her. She gave me those codes.”
“How did she know that I was coming?” Brad asked, unmoving. “Why hasn’t she contacted the Agency?”
“I’d prefer to have her explain that,” the man responded. “It’s complicated and I don’t know the full story. She shouldn’t have even have shared the codes with me, but she needed my help in making contact with you. Please.”
Brad considered and shrugged. The man could’ve just blown them up. “Take me to her. Saburo, you’re with me.” He motioned for the two troopers that had followed them into the shop to remain where they were.
The man led him into the back of the shop and stopped next to a shelf holding bolts of cloth. He reached down near the floor and manipulated a catch. The entire shelf pivoted inward and revealed a narrow secret room.
It was obviously a safe room of some kind, but it had been converted to a sick room. A cot in the middle of the open area supported a frail-looking brunette woman with vaguely Asian features.
“I’ll return to my shop,” the man said. “If you don’t mind, could you bring your two men back here and have your other soldiers move away from the area in front of my shop? I don’t want to draw undue attention if anyone comes by.”
Saburo nodded and started talking on his com as Brad walked to the cot and squatted beside it. The woman was Ella Watson. He’d seen her image before they’d left Earth orbit.
“Agent Watson?” he asked softly.
Her eyes slowly opened. Her gaze was unfocused and her eyelids twitched erratically as she focused on him. “Madrid?”
“That’s right. What’s going on?”
“We’ve been betrayed,” she said, her voice weak. “You’re in great danger.”
“Can you tell me what happened to you?” Brad asked gently as he slid a chair closer to the cot. “Who betrayed us?”
“Poison,” she rasped. “I trusted the wrong person. I’m starting to think I might survive, but I wasn’t sure for the longest time.”
That would explain why she looked like death warmed over. He’d have to get her back to Oath so that Kirabo Terzić could examine her. He might be able to speed her recovery and perhaps mitigate some of the lingering effects of the poison.
“Why didn’t you contact the Agency for help?” he asked. “They must’ve told you or someone that I was coming to look for you. That’s how you knew my name, right?”
She chuckled dryly and that started a coughing fit.
Brad found some water and held the glass so that she could sip through a straw.
Once she was able to breathe again, she shook her head slightly. “I had no idea you were coming, but I had a list of ships connected with the Agency. Your name was in the file with it, along with a summary of how you’re connected with the Agency.
“If you’d been a direct Agency operative, I probably wouldn’t have had Fraser make contact. Someone in the home office betrayed me. Ordered me to make contact with someone that tried to kill me. Only, I was suspicious and got local backup. They got me out before the contact could finish the job.”
“Why are you so sure the home office betrayed you?” he asked. “They might not have known the contact was working for the Cadre.”
The woman smiled sadly. “I called for extraction when I was clear. That was before the poison really screwed me up. I got a hit squad instead.
“Fraser was there with me and made sure I got out a hidden back way before the Cadre commandos could find me. There was no way anyone could have known I was there. It had to have been someone in the home office. Added to the bad contact, it looks as if they wanted me out of the way.
“Remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that someone really isn’t out to get you.”
That was certainly true.
“Why trust me? I’m an Agent too. They sent me here.”
“You killed the Terror and blew up his base. I feel pretty sure you’re not in the Cadre’s pocket. I’m out of options and you’re the best shot I have of living. Of making the Cadre pay for what they did to me.”
Brad leaned back a little and considered the situation. Senator Barnes wasn’t a traitor; he’d stake his life on that. The very highest people in the Agency couldn’t be all bad either. They might have leaks in their staffs, but they weren’t traitors themselves. A good Cadre mole would never have sent him to look for Agent Watson at all. Not with his reputation.
He might still be in danger from poking his nose where it didn’t belong, but that was a risk he’d willingly take.
“Who was the contact that betrayed you?” he asked.
“Lily Khan with Crystal Clear Importing. She was supposed to be an expert on who does business here. I’m sure she is, but she also poisoned me at the meeting in her office.
“I managed to call for help and my people came rushing in the back, but she is definitely dirty. It makes me mad that she got away.”
Well, that was awkward, since she was the woman he was supposed to meet.
“Did you find out what the Cadre was up to before Khan poisoned you?”
“Not specifically,” she said. “We were still in the initial stages of getting to know one another when she made her move. I found out later that she’d sent her staff off on various errands so that they wouldn’t be there during the meeting. No doubt some Cadre bastards were supposed to take possession of me before her people got back.”
It would’ve been helpful if the evil mastermind had shared her plan before Watson escaped, but Brad supposed that was a little melodramatic. He’d have to figure it out for himself after he got Watson safely to Oath of Vengeance.
He turned to Saburo. “Any sign of interest in the shop? We need to get her back to the shuttle and on the way to Oath.”<
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“Not that the troopers have seen, but that hardly means much. Everyone will see us taking her out. Even if they don’t, they’ll wonder why we were in here. If, of course, someone was tailing us.”
“If Fraser brought you here, he made sure no one was following you,” Watson said. “Not successfully, in any case. Let’s just say he’s had a colorful career involving shady deals before he met me. He was the one that contacted the local muscle. He’d have done the same to get you here unseen.”
That was interesting. Brad made a mental note to talk with the man before he made his move on Khan. Having a few trusted men that no one was aware of might come in handy when confronting a Cadre mole. And with what the woman had done to Watson, it wouldn’t surprise Brad if the man wanted a little payback of his own.
“Does this shop have a secret exit?” he asked. “Since it has a secret room, that doesn’t seem that much of a stretch.”
She nodded tiredly. “It’s not very big, but it comes out into a business he owns in the next section of the city. It was once used to fence…ah, creatively acquired goods. The underworld probably knows about it and could link it to him, but it’s been closed since he retired. There’s no reason that anyone would be watching it closely.”
“I’ll talk with him about getting you back to my shuttle without too many prying eyes,” Brad said. “Once we make that happen, we’ll get you to my ship so that you can get treatment.”
He smiled coldly. “Then I’ll go see Ms. Khan and see what she has to say for herself.”
It took Malcom Fraser an hour to make arrangements to get Agent Watson out of his shop unseen, but the process was fascinating for Brad. The man hardly looked like a criminal, but he was adept at getting the different parts of their little charade in place. It was particularly amusing that Watson would be hidden inside a box marked “carpet.”
More interesting to Brad was how the man used different people for different tasks, and in such a way that no one other than him knew exactly what was going on: the people getting Agent Watson ready for transport had no idea where she was going, the people moving her up didn’t know where she was coming from, and the people making sure that anyone watching the shuttle was dealt with at the appropriate time had no idea why they were doing it.
Once all the parts were coordinated, and Watson was ready to move, the man motioned for Brad to accompany him to the front of the shop. Once they were in relative privacy, he dropped another surprise on Brad.
“I think it best if you not accompany her,” Fraser said.
Brad raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“The Cadre knows you’re here somewhere. I had some old friends block the people tailing you before you got to the market, but they were following you. They’re looking for you as we speak, though safely far away. If they see you headed for your shuttle again, they’ll probably try to kill you. That puts Ella in danger.
“It’s far better if you and your men leave here undetected and go to meet Khan. Someone will see you and the attention on the shuttle will relax. I even think the odds are good that the people watching it will relocate to bracket you, allowing Ella to board with no one the wiser.”
That plan wasn’t the straightforward kind of action Brad usually went for, but sneaky had its place. “I’ll need to let my pilot know to expect her. If the Cadre team is any good at all, they’ll intercept my call and know something is up.”
Fraser smiled. “I have an associate about the same size and build as your Colonel Saburo. He’s even of Japanese extraction. If they swap clothes, no one will likely be the wiser and your man can tell the pilot what is going on.”
That certainly wouldn’t make Saburo very happy, but if it worked, they’d get Agent Watson safely back to the ship. He could then gather a strike team and start bringing them down to the surface.
Or perhaps there was a better way.
“I’m given to understand that you have some familiarity with moving goods without the authorities becoming aware of them,” Brad said. “Does that include conducting things from orbit to the surface?”
“You mean to ask if I was an excellent smuggler and fence before I met Ella?” Fraser asked with a smile, his jaunty mustache bristling with amusement. “Indeed, and I still have many friends in convenient places. What do you have in mind?”
“I’d like to get some troopers down without anyone knowing they’ve left my ships. Enough to give the Cadre an unhealthy surprise when they try to ambush me. Which they will.”
The man considered that for a moment and nodded. “It will be a challenge to get the assets into place quickly, but I believe it can be done. I’ll have another of my associates go up with your shuttle to coordinate the operation. I wouldn’t count on them being down to help you in less than two hours, though.
“Until they are ready, I can arrange for some people with talents in that arena to assist you. Ones that won’t know precisely who they’re protecting, of course.”
If he timed this right, he could have his troopers inside Piazzi to hit the Cadre forces while he made a run for the spaceport. Lure them into a trap for a change. That would be satisfying, if they could work the timing out.
“You certainly have interesting friends,” Brad said at last, extending his hand. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter Nineteen
Fraser snuck Brad and his troopers out the same way Watson had left, only five minutes later. The little passage between the two businesses dropped into the crust of the dwarf planet below the dome to make the connection. There was no ice in view, but Brad’s breath puffed in the frozen air as they walked the short distance.
The shop they came out in looked like a pawn shop stripped of all its goods. For all he knew, that was exactly what it had been. The fact that it wasn’t in use at the moment certainly helped in making sure no one was watching them as they departed.
The man dressed in Saburo’s armor didn’t really look like Brad’s friend, but to someone who didn’t know either of them, he was close enough. All they really needed to do was to fool those casually watching. After all, they knew who Brad was, and he was who they wanted.
“This way,” the man said as they exited the dark shop. “We’re about twenty minutes away from your destination.”
“Lead the way,” Brad ordered. “Everyone else keep an eye out for trouble.”
“You won’t see them, but we have scouts ahead of us and watchers behind,” the man said as he set off down the corridor. It was less populated and somewhat dingier than the one where the market had been. It looked just the slightest bit seedy.
“They’ll let me know if they spot anything unusual,” the man continued. “There are people also watching your original tails as well as our destination.”
Brad felt his eyebrows rise. “Just how well connected is your boss?”
The fake officer grinned at him. “Higher in the local hierarchy than you’d imagined, it seems. Let’s just say that he wasn’t the biggest fish in our little pond, but he wasn’t the smallest by far. Those in charge are grateful for his skills and advice.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how is it that the Cadre isn’t in control here?”
The man’s expression darkened. “It may not seem so from outside, but most of us do support the Commonwealth and despise the Cadre. Those people are fanatical monsters. Even the ones with a veneer of civility will slit your throat when it suits them.
“There’s a sort of balance in most places. For whatever reason, the Riggio family boss didn’t sign on with the Cadre the way most of that family did. The Cadre is too powerful to keep out of places like Piazzi, but there’s almost a truce between the boss’s boss and them. Only if they try to muscle in do they get their throats slit.”
The man pressed an earbud tighter in his ear, listening to something. “They’ve gotten word of us, it seems. The original team just started heading our way in a hurry. We’ll get to the destination before them, though.”
“What
about the people taking Watson to the shuttle?”
“No change there but…scratch that. They’ve just moved out, too. Our watchers will make certain they’ve all left before they proceed, but it looks as if the boss’s woman will get out cleanly.”
Brad smiled. It was nice when a plan actually worked the way they’d envisioned it. That seemed to be the exception rather than the rule these days.
“We’ll press forward to the office,” Brad decided. “What about our support team?”
“Already forming up near the destination. No one knows what’s going on, and only the woman in charge—a trusted associate of ours—has a com. If we need help, they’re only a minute away.”
A minute could be an eternity, but that was all part of the game.
“Good enough,” Brad said, lengthening his stride. “Let’s go talk to a traitor.”
They arrived at Crystal Clear Importing just ahead of their reported tails. That had to be infuriating for them.
The business looked prosperous enough. The lobby was very well appointed and seeded with comfortable chairs. The receptionist, a young man with an improbably large mustache, welcomed them with a wide smile. “How can I assist you today?”
“I’d like to speak with Lily Khan, please. My name is Brad Madrid.”
The man checked his computer terminal and his smile dimmed. “Is she expecting you? I don’t show an appointment for you, Mr. Madrid.”
“Commodore Madrid, actually. She didn’t know I was coming. Commodore Fields on Freedom referred me, and the matter is both urgent and confidential.”
The receptionist blinked. “I’ll check to see if she can make time for you. If you’d care to have a seat?”
“I’m good here, thanks.”
Nonplussed, the young man half-turned and whispered into a boom microphone attached to his headset. A moment later, he nodded.
“She can see you. Will…ah, your entire party be going in?”
Brad shook his head. “I’ll leave my men in the lobby. I assure you they’ll stay out of the way. Colonel Saburo will accompany me.”