by Cate Dermody
“Because I remember my great-grandmother,” Cristina whispered. “Because I remember the stories of her childhood before the revolution. I should have been a tsarina, Ali. A grand duchess.” The words were romantic, but the hardness in Cristina’s eyes was not. “My family lost a birthright almost a century ago. I’m not foolish enough to think I can regain the one we lost, but there are others to build.”
“You’re completely insane, Cris,” Alisha said softly. Worse, she thought, her one-time friend might be absolutely sane. Sane, but married to an ideology centuries out of date.
Cristina’s gaze cleared of memory and she focused on Alisha again. “Not at all. Just dedicated. I grew up in the Sicarii. These ends have been the goal of my entire life. You could never understand the commitment necessary to the end game. Not without growing up with it. Now.” Her voice went cold and soft. “How did you do it?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Alisha repeated. “I really didn’t, Cris. But you know how gifted Brandon is with computers. You might have considered whether hooking my system up to Sicarii servers was a good idea, with that in mind. Especially with Erika out of the picture. You didn’t have your first line of technical defense handy, and you left an open window. Thanks,” she added brightly, judging the perky tone to be the back-breaking straw.
Cristina closed the distance with two long steps, threatening a blow to Alisha’s dominant side, the left, and faking it out with a short jab to the ribs on the right. Pain blossomed, taking Alisha’s breath, but she clamped her hand over Cristina’s wrist before the other woman drew back, and pulled her closer, smashing her forehead into Cristina’s nose. Blood spattered and Cristina howled, bringing a knee up. Alisha twisted, catching the hit on her thigh instead of in the groin, and yanked Cristina’s wrist forward and down, sending her stumbling. For a brief moment the blond woman’s kidneys were exposed and Alisha drove an elbow into the nearer one, earning another yowl of pain. They broke apart, Cristina gasping heavily, and circled one another again.
It shouldn’t have to come to this. The thought intruded on the usual blessed clarity of battle, a time when normally nothing but physical action mattered. It shouldn’t have, Alisha thought, but it was perhaps inevitable that it did. All the years that had haunted her in the last confrontation with Cristina seemed less distant now. Less devastating, with a day or two separating her from the shock of Erika’s betrayal and the numbness that had settled over her. Now that the first agony had faded, there were still things to be resolved. Shootings. Attempted assassinations. Dreams and lies. So many lies, Alisha thought, and brought the fight to Cristina, leaving no more time for reflection.
Their slow circling turning to a barrage of blows, knees and elbows flying. Alisha’s passion had returned, strengthened by Lilith’s suicide. She and Cristina tested one another more thoroughly than they had in London, neither coming from a place of weakness, as she had been then. It was no longer rage or hurt that drove her, but a decade of training and a lifetime of beliefs that stood opposed to the Sicarii. Alisha saw surprise and approval flash in Cristina’s eyes as she met blow after blow and pushed the offensive, no longer passive and waiting for attack as she had in London. They broke apart again in a burst of hard breathing, Alisha’s forearms aching from blocking hits.
“Someone’s not coming out of this alive, Alisha,” Cristina warned. Alisha smiled, grim, and nodded, then ducked to the side as Cristina spun with a kick. She came up under Cristina’s leg, catching the taller woman’s knee and slamming rigid fingers into the nerve cluster in her thigh. Cris’s leg turned into dead weight over Alisha’s shoulder and she let herself drop, bearing Alisha to the ground with her. Alisha clobbered her head on Cristina’s knee, swearing as the other woman shoved her off and brought her good leg back to connect her heel with Alisha’s jaw. Alisha’s head snapped back and she felt herself arc before hitting the ground. Cristina’s shell blouse hissed across the grass as she dragged herself away. Alisha shook her head, trying to push muzziness away, and lifted her head to see Cristina blotting blood off her lip. An overblown sense of satisfaction surged through her and she dove forward, not bothering to regain her feet before tackling her opponent.
Cristina grunted with the impact and they slid across the grass, burns and stains working their way into skin and clothes. They rolled, Cristina’s weight advantage working in her favor. She slammed a knuckled hand into Alisha’s mouth, the impact snapping Alisha’s head back again, a harder hit than Alisha’s memory expected. She’s gotten stronger, the clinical combat part of her mind observed. Watch yourself, Leesh. With new strength, Cristina’s greater reach could be a deadly combination. Alisha dodged another hit, Cristina’s fist pinning her short hair to the ground for a moment. She squirmed one leg up, forcing it between herself and Cristina, and kicked with all her strength, sending Cris flying over her head. She skidded through grass as Alisha rolled to her stomach and pushed up, panting for air. Too long, the combat machine warned. The fight had already gone on too long. They were too evenly matched, too dedicated, faced with too many old grudges, to give ground even when they should.
Even as she thought it, Alisha watched something go dead in Cristina’s eyes, as if her soul had been wrenched away. It caught her off-guard, the emptiness more alarming than anything she’d ever seen in her one-time friend’s gaze before. She thought she knew Cristina’s range of emotion, those intimate thoughts that came in the moments before death. She remembered, so clearly, the things she’d seen in her eyes as Cristina’d allowed herself to fall from the Andes mountainside. Regret, maybe fear, determination.
Those were all gone now, nothing left but the intent to kill. Alisha found herself on her feet, eyes half closed as she reached for the resolve to finish the fight. Her stance was comfortable and straight and she inhaled a long slow breath that wiped away uncertainty and anger, leaving only the will to survive behind. The testing stage of the fight was over. The next few seconds would determine which of them would walk away, and which would die.
Cristina, Alisha thought abruptly, had a child.
The blond woman came to the attack at a run, lithe form beautiful in deadly action. Alisha dropped, sweeping her leg around to take Cris off her feet, but Cristina leaped it and turned her momentum into a roundhouse kick, low angle driving her foot into the side of Alisha’s head with such force, bone cracked, searing pain shooting through her neck. Raw animal terror surged in Alisha’s breast, tasting of bile and turning her extremities icy. She hit the ground on all fours, afraid to shake her head to clear it, and staggered to her feet in time to turn and fall under Cristina’s assault.
She’d lost.
The thought came from somewhere distant and astonishing, as if the idea of losing had simply never crossed her mind. But I’m the good guy. Alisha almost laughed in panicked confusion, another bubble of alarm rising through her as she lifted her arms feebly to block Cristina’s blows. I’m the good guy, she thought again. The good guy was supposed to triumph in the end, facing insurmountable odds to stand above the pack, perhaps broken, but never beaten.
She had to find it in herself to stand again.
Instead, a shout broke through the sounds of battle, someone’s horror at the fight on the Washington Mall. Cristina froze, her fist drawn back, face contorted with the intention to kill. Then she looked up, hair falling all around her face as a shield. “Fuck. Fuck!” She cast one furious, vengeful look down at Alisha, then jolted to her feet and ran, leaving Alisha shaking with relief and exhaustion. She closed her eyes, not ready to face her rescuers, and so was utterly unprepared for the soft voice that spoke above her.
“Ah, little bird, the trouble that you have gotten yourself into. Come,” Jon said more loudly. “Come, be careful with her, she is injured. Be careful. Trust us, little bird,” he murmured then, quietly again. “Trust us. We will care for your broken bones.”
Trust, Alisha thought wearily. Trust a crime lord who held her life in his large soft hands. She gasped as hal
f a dozen hands lifted her onto a stretcher, then whimpered as the stretcher was lifted and capable people carried her away.
Trust, she thought again, and let herself relax toward painless oblivion. Trust. Could she trust again?
Yes.
Darkness took her.
The aroma of a white sauce, rich and buttery, awoke her an indeterminable time later. Alisha turned her head cautiously, unsure if she’d be able to, and let go a quiet whimper of relief when stiffness and discomfort met the attempt, but no pain as she explored a full range of motion. A shadow crossed through her line of vision, and then Jon was there, kneeling beside a bed considerably more comfortable than the one Cristina’d dumped her on. “There you are, little bird. I knew the pasta would arouse you, hm? How do you feel?”
“Alive,” Alisha said hoarsely. “Confused.” She pushed up gingerly, putting her weight on an elbow. “I thought you never left Europe.” It struck her she had no reason at all to believe that, and managed a weary chuckle at her own assumptions.
“Rarely,” Jon admitted. “But in special cases, yes.”
“Yeah.” Alisha trusted herself to sit up, but the room spun once she was upright, and she pressed her eyes closed. Special cases. Lilith’s loss meant her debt would go forever unpaid—or that the enormous information broker would find another way for her to make up the favors he’d provided. His presence in the States, his people rescuing her, suggested he had already thought of something. Something delicate enough to require a personal touch, rather than orders being sent through secondary parties. “All things considered, I’d rather not be a special case. I’m sorry, Jon.”
“Are you hungry?” Jon got up, silent for such a big man, and padded to an out-of-sight kitchen. “There is nothing to be sorry for. The task I set you was a great one. A few days’ delay in delivery was to be expected.” He reappeared, a massive bulk bearing a thoughtful expression. “I did not know, little bird, if you would be able to bring me the artificial intelligence. I wondered if your loyalties to your lovers might be stronger than your fear of me.”
“Lovers.” Alisha focused on that word, the rest of Jon’s easy chatter too difficult to understand for the moment. “I thought it was bad enough when it was one love story, Jon. Now it’s more than one lover?” Her eyebrows drew down and she put a hand against her forehead carefully. Her fingers were cold. “I am hungry,” she said distantly. “I don’t think I’ll get sick if I eat, but I’m not sure. You have…the AI?” The last question was cautious, Alisha trying not to feed too much astonishment into it.
“Si, yes, for three days now. She is extraordinary,” Jon said expansively. “Though the program name I learned from my sources was not correct. Eve, not Lilith. The first woman, no? It is an appropriate name for the first sentient artificial intelligence, I think. With Eve’s help I have achieved inside information on clandestine groups that will serve me very well for a very long time.”
“Eve.” Alisha formed the name without speaking it aloud. Eve, Lilith’s successor. Tears of relief and gladness stung Alisha’s eyes and she forced herself to echo, “Three days,” aloud, putting thoughts of the resurrected—or twinned, or daughtered—AI aside.
Jon, from the kitchen again, repeated, “Si. Frank Reichart contacted me on your behalf, little bird, as you asked. Did you doubt him?”
Alisha’s heart missed a beat, then slammed into her ribs so hard her breathing hitched. “You can never tell what Frank’s going to do,” she said, voice too high. Jon chuckled.
“He passed on your request, that I not use her to learn more of the Fas Infitialis. That their numbers are so reduced they cannot afford to lose anyone to my…” He cleared his throat, sounding pleased with himself, and a moment later appeared in the kitchen door again, holding two plates of pasta. “Seductive financial offerings. Oh-ho,” he added, a smile growing. “That was his part of the bargain, hm? The delivery man’s price. You didn’t know.”
Alisha shook her head, pasting a smile on over what was clearly a too-readable expression of surprise. “It’s nice of you to honor it, though.” Reichart, her mind whispered to her. Reichart had stayed behind to cuff the officers while she’d helped Brandon out of the Heathrow train station.
She hadn’t seen the officer who’d left the scene carrying the laptop. Only assumed, when Reichart announced it missing. Only concluded that the police they’d fought were really agents for someone else. Only inferred their reasoning for not using deadly force was to keep Brandon alive. Dammit, Leesh. She should have known better. Yet another betrayal from a man she should know not to trust.
And yet. And yet Reichart had taken the hard choice of whether to betray Brandon herself away from her. Protected her from it, in his way, and in doing so had kept her on Jon’s good side, protecting her from the folly of reneging on that deal.
Alisha looked up at Jon, smile still in place. “Dinner smells fantastic.”
“There is wine,” Jon said happily. “We will eat well, drink too much and you will tell me your love story, little bird.”
“It’s a deal.” Alisha chuckled and scooted to the edge of the couch, wincing as bruised muscles and her aching neck protested. “I don’t suppose you asked Eve to hack into the Sicarii servers and got their informant details and genealogical records.” She wasn’t even sure it could be done, given that Lilith had needed the back door provided by the Sicarii themselves to infiltrate those records.
“Saying so would be indiscreet,” Jon admonished. “Besides, their servers are very secure, my people tell me. It would take a very long time, or a knowledge of someone else’s security paths to retrieve that data.”
“Someone else?”
Jon made a big motion with his hands, graceful. “If Eve had, for example, intimate knowledge of your friend Erika Swanson’s Agency computers, she might have found a way in through them. It is only hypothetical, of course.”
“Not my friend. Not anymore.” Alisha’s heart leaped at the hypothesis, though, and she got to her feet, stiff muscles creaking with objection. “You know the Sicarii servers got wiped yesterday?”
All the laughter fell away from Jon’s eyes, leaving deadly cold interest. “I did not know. How?”
“Someone died to accomplish it,” Alisha said after a moment. “You might be the only person holding all the data on their personnel. Hypothetically speaking.”
That same cold glittered in Jon’s eyes, then disappeared into another smile. “Hypothetically. How fortunate for me, if that is so. Come, sit, drink, talk. These are the things that make life worth living, little bird. Drink with me now.”
“It’ll be my pleasure.” Alisha tottered to the table, sitting down gingerly, and let herself forget about the world outside for a while. Pain and exhaustion made her eyelids heavier more rapidly than she would have liked, earning laughter from Jon as dinner ended.
“Am I such dull company, little bird? Once a beautiful woman would not have dared look sleepy in my presence, for fear she would be swept off to bed and kept awake all night.”
“It isn’t you,” Alisha promised with a laugh. “Cristina beat the hell out of me, that’s all.”
“Yes,” Jon murmured. “Why is that?”
“The lost databases were the final straw,” Alisha said with a shrug.
Jon pursed his lips, nodding. “You are certain of their destruction? You truly believe if I were to happen on such information, I would be the only one with it?”
“If you were to happen on it,” Alisha agreed.
Jon’s mouth pursed again. “Then I have something for you,” he said after long moments. “Wait here.” He stood more fluidly than a man of his size should be able to, lumbering toward the apartment’s bedroom. Alisha slid down in her chair, sipping wine with her eyes half closed, only turning her head when she heard Jon’s soft footsteps approaching again. He slid a CD in a jewel case onto the table at her elbow.
Sleepiness fled, Alisha sitting up straight to put her fingertips on the case. Her ey
ebrows asked the question, quirking at Jon. He smiled. “No. It is not the Sicarii database.”
Alisha’s shoulders dropped in disappointment, but Jon shook his head. “Watch the footage when I am gone, little bird. I think we are more than even now, you and I. Perhaps we are something like partners. I hope I will see you again.” He bowed over her hand, then took an expansive swallow of wine and left her alone in the apartment.
Chapter 26
Alisha watched the door close, mouth curling with curiosity, then got to her feet and slid the disc into the living room’s DVD player, crouching in front of the TV as she switched it on.
Rome blossomed before her, scarlet and orange sunset coloring the basilica that capped the Vatican. Alisha caught her breath, rocking back on her heels to get distance from the screen.
The camera angle was wide, with St. Peter’s dome on the left-hand side of the screen and the Egyptian obelisk to the right, in the center of the square the camera looked down into. Alisha closed her eyes briefly, heart once more beating too hard, then focused on the square itself, knowing what she would see before she saw it. Details leapt out, things burned into Alisha’s memory that an ordinary viewer might never notice.
An older woman, hair graying at the temples in the enviable Mediterranean way, crossed the square, her chin held high and regal. A much younger man, easily twenty years her junior, turned in admiration, watching her. A group of nuns flocked together like black-headed birds, their conservative dress at striking odds with teenagers in hip-hugging jeans and navel-baring T-shirts.
Among them, a young woman with tawny curls tied back in a ponytail. Waiting for the disturbance in the crowd that she knew would come. Alisha forced herself to watch as a thin man in the red robes of a cardinal made his way against the flow of traffic. Ripples spread around him as people created space for the holy man. In a moment he would be at the young Alisha’s side, brushing against her. Neatly folded papers would be slipped into his palm, and then he’d be beyond her, one step. Two. No more.