Sacrifice

by Dakota Banks

  Maliha arrived at Athens International Airport as naked as Aphrodite.

  Clothed in a one-piece jumpsuit of the type used by airport employees, Maliha was held in an interview room in the airport security section. Considered an intruder in Grecian airspace with no identification and no flight plan, she was suspected of numerous things, ranging from being a terrorist to staging some kind of celebrity stunt due to her exposed body.

  Facial identification software showed her to be one Marsha Winters, American writer of erotica. She was mildly insulted. Her Dick Stallion books had plots.

  She was allowed to call the American embassy. After much name-dropping, she reached the ambassador herself, who knew her well. Maliha used to visit her father when Anna was a toddler, but the grown Anna didn’t remember that.

  “Hello, Anna. Marsha here. How have you been?”

  “Marsha, what a pleasure to talk to you. Are you vacationing here? Researching?”

  “A little bit of both. Listen, I lost my passport. Could you get me out of a sticky situation here? I’m at the airport.”

  “I’ll send over papers for you.”

  “I could use a cell phone, too. All my luggage seems to have…washed out to sea.”

  “Poor dear. I’ll send a phone, a credit card, and some clothes by courier. Will you come over? I’ll send a car.”

  “Of course. I’d like to catch up on little Alexa. Would you talk to airport security?”

  She handed the phone to the impatient, glowering security chief who’d been questioning her. His expression gradually changed from intimidating to reluctantly accommodating. The U.S. ambassador went through channels with the Greek government, as she was supposed to, but it didn’t take long. Several hours later a car heading for the embassy swept Maliha away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dr. Mogue Kane strode across the granite-floored lobby of the Keltner Building in Washington, D.C., with the frustrated air of a man suffering an interruption of his valuable work. Located a couple of blocks from the International Spy Museum, the structure was a hulking presence with little of the gracefulness of the surrounding historical buildings. The Tellman Global Economic Foundation, TGEF, was Mogue’s destination. It occupied the first two floors—that is, its public areas did. The foundation also occupied other portions of the building.

  He stabbed the button to summon the elevator. His business took him to the top floor, a level that did not date from the late 1800s as the rest of the building did. Alone in the elevator, he inserted his ID card in a slot that opened an access door revealing a button for the top floor, a secure area that had been added to the original roof of the building. He pressed the button and waited impatiently as the elevator car ascended.

  He was here to report to the foundation’s council. Not the public board that ran the legitimate work of the foundation and arranged building tours to busloads of schoolchildren, but the private group few knew existed.

  The Tellman Foundation touted the benefits of having established economies reach out a helping hand to those that were emerging or still awaiting the spark of development. There were a large number of projects going in such countries, but somehow most of the projects never got up to speed due to underfunding. Donors were shown the slick annual report with color photos of newly thriving villages with deep-water wells and start-up businesses run by African women selling woven baskets or cloth, taken at a few token projects.

  That was the Tellman Global Economic Foundation’s public face, but its private mission was an ironic twist on its name. The secret council meant to change the current global economic foundation, the glue that held nations together economically.

  When he got off the elevator, Mogue faced three guards. Two of them stood apart carrying automatic weapons. The third operated an extended booth, more of a tunnel, into which Mogue stepped. He had a full-body scan, no privacy, but the guard was professional about it and Mogue was confident about his equipment even though most women didn’t share his enthusiasm.

  Must be they don’t like my idea of foreplay.

  The scan not only made sure Mogue carried no weapons; it also located and stored the identification information on the computer chip under the skin of his right forearm.

  Mogue’s ID record came up on the guard’s computer. Mogue wasn’t quite sure how the guard made a decision to let him pass through, but he figured it was facial recognition or the information on the skin chip, or both. Either the guard or the computer could lock the tunnel if there were discrepancies.

  The tunnel hissed open on the far side and let him into a hallway. The third door on the left was the council’s meeting room. Mogue never met the members in person. They conducted meetings via videoconferencing. The table, a polished wooden oval set on marble legs, had six chairs, each furnished with a computer station that folded away when not in use. For his meeting, each station displayed a monitor with a live image of the person who would normally be sitting in that chair. All except the fifth monitor at the head of the table, and that showed nothing but a blue screen. The leader of the council never showed his or her face. The other board members distorted their images and voices electronically to varying degrees.

  Rather than sit in the one empty chair intended for him, Mogue remained standing so that he could pace around as he talked. Disconcertingly, the monitors tracked his movements, so that the others, three men and one woman plus the secretive leader, remained facing him as he moved. He didn’t know if there were actually people viewing those monitors yet. The meeting didn’t start until the leader greeted everyone.

  Tiring of the game of making the monitors track him, Mogue finally sat down. The meeting was ten minutes late. Should he read anything into that or just assume the normal vagaries of business?

  Mogue smoothed the front of his perfectly tailored suit. His hair was clean and slicked back and his shoes polished. He almost reached up to stroke his beard before he caught it and suppressed the movement. He hadn’t had a beard for sixty or seventy years, but still sometimes had the sensation that it was there.

  I sat for hours listening to the meaningless ramblings of those who came to me for healing. I can sit through a council meeting.

  He used a technique he considered being two places at once. He kept himself on alert in the boardroom in case there was something traitorous being planned behind those blue screens. The rest of his mind he freed to spin through his memories and pick out ones to relive. This time it was sexual conquests: the women of the Russian Royal Court who came to him and offered their bodily treasures. Who among their husbands could complain when the women sought religious solace from Father Grigori, a renowned holy man? Even though it was no secret that Grigori Rasputin believed that it was necessary to sin first in order to be able to repent and achieve salvation?

  He still did, only he no longer worried about the repentance part. The Ageless had no need for such human concerns.

  The monitors came to life. Mogue gave his report, answered two questions, and headed for the door.

  “Hold.” It was the computerized speech of the sole female council member.

  With a sigh, Mogue turned around.

  “I wish to propose a final test.”

  They have the nerve to question my results?

  “The data would be redundant.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Your rationale?”

  “Fatality rates beyond the targeted area.”

  “There are no fatalities beyond the targeted area.”

  “You have assured us of that, but from examining your reports, I don’t see where data is included. Can you point me to the page and section?”

  Mogue remained silent.

  “Council members, your vote?”

  All four voted yes. The monitors turned toward the head of the table. It didn’t seem likely that the leader would overrule all of them acting together, but it had been known to happen.

  “I concur,” the leader said. His voice sounded as if it came
from deep underwater. “Another test will be performed.”

  Mogue’s mouth formed a tight line of disapproval, but then he nodded. It had occurred to him that if they felt they had all the data they needed, then they didn’t need him anymore, especially if he was going to be difficult. He’d violated one of his own tenets: never make yourself expendable.

  He’d done that before, in Russia, when he meddled too much in politics. Poisoned, shot, and thrown into a freezing river, Rasputin had met his death in 1916. When he rose from the icy depths and took his first gulp of air as a demon’s slave, his task was to make sure that he was convincingly dead. He located a man who looked like him, exchanged clothing with him, shot him in the forehead, and threw him into the same hole in the ice. Rasputin was among those who watched as the Mad Monk’s “body” was retrieved from the Neva River.

  His mouth relaxed into what he hoped was a convincing smile for their benefit. He wouldn’t make that kind of mistake again, especially with this group. Why complicate his work? They were unstable personalities and it wasn’t a good idea to appear too controlling.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  The inhabitants greeted Mogue and company with enthusiasm. They lived in an oasis, a stopping point for travelers, but those travelers generally weren’t doctors. In their remote location, getting health care was a once-in-a-decade event, if that.

  The convoy stopped at the perimeter and men brought across the border from Algeria began putting up tents for the medical staff, followed by a row of larger tents filled with cots for the injured. In the evening the Algerians were quietly rounded up, marched a mile away, and shot. Paying them with bullets conserved money better spent on ensuring the loyalty of mercenaries. Men like Long Shot bristled with weapons and the will to use them, but the laborers had nothing but their strong backs, and sometimes not even that.

  Mogue had been planning to wait until morning to begin medical assessment, but lines had already formed at the entrance to the hospital tent. Mogue began seeing patients by lantern light. A few doctors remained in the tent with him, and the rest fanned out into the settlement.

  Mogue retired to his private quarters after a few hours, leaving the rest of the medical staff to work in shifts through the night. He asked his aide—Mogue tried to maintain the illusion of academic research, even in environments that tolerated no pretense—to summon Long Shot.

  The mercenary came grudgingly.

  “What is it now? Better be fucking good. I was winning at poker.”

  Mogue smiled, even though he didn’t like the implication that playing poker with Long Shot’s buddies was more important than a summons from the boss.

  The money I’m paying this son-of-a-bitch should buy some respect as well as his trigger finger.

  “You’ll be compensated. I have a task for you.”

  “So what’s so important?”

  Mogue swiveled to reach the briefcase lying on his bed. Long Shot eyed the case with suspicion and took a couple of steps back, ready to bolt if the case held some nasty surprise.

  Mogue opened the briefcase. Three gleaming metal cylinders nestled in foam packing. Each about the size of a thermos, their contents were far more dangerous than coffee.

  Long Shot extracted one of the containers from the briefcase and held it up to the light of the lantern, as if he could see the contents that way. “What’s in these things?”

  “I don’t pay you to ask questions.”

  “I just mean, do we need gloves or masks? Is this shit nerve gas or something?”

  “Stop waving that around.” Mogue took the cylinder, replaced it in the briefcase, and closed the case. “No, it isn’t nerve gas. There are three wells here. Pour one bottle down into each of them. Be sure your men are using the bottled water we brought with us.”

  The mercenary took the case—gingerly, Mogue thought—and left without a word.

  A few days later, the oasis dwellers all followed the same path to death. Abdomens caved inward, eyes turned to pulp. Noisome fluids leaked from the ears, mouth, and all other orifices. Medical technicians walked among the dying. They observed, filmed, and sampled, but offered no help to those who pleaded for it. People randomly chosen for autopsy included some who weren’t quite dead when they went under Mogue’s scalpel. The camera rolled as Mogue worked. Aware that he would not be the only viewer of the recording, Mogue kept the grin off his face and rarely let his scalpel stray in a non-businesslike manner.

  The team packed up to leave. The cleanup crew would burn the settlement, making it look like an accidental fire had taken off and spread by desert winds through the vegetation of the oasis. It would raise questions, but there would be nothing left to prove it was other than a natural disaster.

  Mogue’s team split in two, half following the caravan traffic east and the other half heading west. The council wanted to know whether deaths extended on either side of the oasis in unintended subjects, and if there were transmission vectors other than human hosts. That was the data they felt they needed before moving forward. Mogue could have told them the answers—no and no—and was reluctant to waste time on it at first, but now he was pleased with the opportunity to direct this larger-scale and elegant test.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hound and Amaro had arrived in Maliha’s absence, so it was a full house in her Chicago apartment. Slices of pizza from Brick’s were the center of attention and for a few minutes, food was the priority. Once they were sitting back, satiated, it was time for words.

  “Where have you been?” Amaro’s voice was both concerned and annoyed.

  Maliha glanced at Yanmeng. He was the one who’d declared the mutiny, but he shrugged. She’d been gone longer than the three of them expected. Travel time to the desert, a week in the pool, an unknown amount of time drugged on Lucius’s island, a trip home from Greece.

  I made a little side trip to a Mediterranean island, wrestled with an Ageless assassin, and almost pulled off his head.

  “You know I took a little time off after the Rainiers died,” Maliha said. “They were good friends.”

  In the world of computer hackers, Amaro was supreme. He could make the finest distinctions and pick up the most subtle intentions. Outside that world, he was sometimes a guppy in a pool of sharks, and occasionally he forgot to take into account others’ feelings.

  “What did you learn from the Rainiers before they got blown up?” Amaro said. Yanmeng winced and Hound elbowed Amaro. “What? Oh, sorry. I could have said that better.”

  What did I learn? So many things. Their devotion to each other and to science, Claire’s laughing eyes. That the joy in Ty’s face slipped only once in the time I knew him, and that was when his father passed away.

  Wordless images of their lives and deaths played through Maliha’s mind. She sighed. She was going to have to walk through all of it in detail, and she didn’t feel like living it again. But if Glass could relive her ordeal for them, that was the least Maliha could do.

  “When I got there, I could see that the lab had been searched. Papers and glass were everywhere. Ty was on the floor injured and Claire was still alive, tied to a chair. It looked as though she’d been questioned hard.”

  The broken glass bit into Claire’s neck and everything slowed down. The sharp edge reached her jugular vein and blood gushed, blood the peculiar maroon color of oxygen depletion. It arced across to the wall and splashed the hands of the man holding the glass. Maliha looked up from his guilty hands to his face. His eyes were fixed on her, not on his victim. He was sending a message to Maliha that Claire died not because of something she did, but because of something Maliha did. Maliha supplied the sample in the canteen and now both Ty and Claire knew too much to live.

  “She died right after that,” Maliha said.

  “Who was in the room?”

  “There were a couple of flunkies plus the evil-looking guy in a long robe. If I’d seen him elsewhere, I would have said he was homeless. In these circumstances, he was
clearly the boss.”

  “Can you do a little better than ‘evil-looking’ as a description?” Yanmeng said.

  “Tall, thin, white, unwashed appearance with greasy shoulder-length hair.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen a picture of Charles Manson lately and projected it on this guy?” Amaro said.

  “No. This man is older than Manson and his face even thinner, like skin stretched over his skull. His hair has gray mixed in it. He moved with an unusual grace, almost like a dancer.”

  “Ageless?”

  Maliha thought of Master Liu. The first time she’d seen him, he appeared as a naked old man washing his clothes at a forest stream. Seconds later she saw him as a muscular young man. Although she didn’t possess that ability, Master Liu was at least one Ageless man who could alter his perceived appearance to one earlier in his own lifetime. If the killer was Ageless and could do something similar, it looked like he’d chosen to show himself to Maliha as a ragged old man near the time of his death—exactly as Master Liu had initially done.

  “He didn’t do anything one way or the other that signaled he was Ageless, like moving impossibly fast for a human. I think he’s just what he looked like on the surface, an evil old man who thinks nothing of killing. He had the canteen.”

  “Shit,” Amaro said. “We still don’t know if that stuff’s dangerous then. I couldn’t find any communications the Rainiers made about it. Would have been nice if they’d emailed all their findings to Maliha. If they had any findings.”

  “I did manage to get into the lab,” Yanmeng said. “I went as an arson investigator.”

  “Cool,” Amaro said.

  “Nothing left. No notes, no computer files, no samples on slides. But if I could sneak in, so could Mr. Evil’s henchmen, so I don’t know if the place was cleaned out before I got there.”