by Abigail Roux
Whatever they did to him or threatened him with, it worked. Make no
mistake, Thiago was grateful for their efforts, he just didn’t like being left out of the loop.
He realized he was probably looking fairly morose as he sat and stared into
the fire, and he shifted uncomfortably, hoping he wasn’t being observed. He seemed to be the only one still suspicious of the others. They were all quite comfortable with one another. Thiago was desperately trying to trust them, but he simply couldn’t.
He’d lived too long without trustworthy allies to change his habits so quickly. He wondered how Shawn managed to find it in himself to trust Remy to the extent he
did. He wondered what transpired between ‘we tried to kill each other’ and what they were now.
As he pondered, he unconsciously took a count of the men in the room, as he
did every ten minutes or so, and was a little shocked to find Remy gone.
The little pajero was unnaturally quiet. Humans weren’t supposed to move
like that, even if they were trained to be silent. Thiago looked around the room
discreetly, turning around to check on Carl in time to see the man kick the stove in frustration. Thiago snorted in amusement and sympathy and returned his gaze to the rest of the room as Remy came strolling back down the hall wrapped up in a fuzzy
white blanket. It looked to be faux sheepskin or something similar, and Thiago
shivered as he looked at it. He hadn’t even realized that he was cold.
“You better take that off,” Brandt warned casually.
“Mais oui?” Remy asked in obvious amusement as he plopped himself down
gracelessly between Brandt and Thiago on the couch.
“If you know what’s good for you. The Kiwi in there might mistake you for
a sheep and try to do unnatural things to you.”
Remy snickered, and Thiago rolled his eyes, trying to hide his amusement.
“Fuck you, Wally!” they heard from the kitchen, followed by another clang
from the abused stove.
“Any time, Trigger!”
Thiago didn’t know when or where the little feud between the two men had
The Archer 45
Abigail Roux
started. He assumed it was due simply to their nationalities and their various
frightening similarities, but he didn’t really care all that much. It remained harmless enough, and at least it was amusing.
“I don’t see how Carl doing unnatural things to me would be at all bad,”
Remy mused. “I’d even ‘baaa’ for him,” he added, making a fair imitation of a
sheep’s bleating as he spoke. Thiago was once again struck by how skilled Remy
appeared to be at mimicking sounds and voices and he added that to his list of
observations. The talent probably came in handy.
“What was that?” Carl called from the kitchen. He sounded amused.
“You heard me!” Remy shouted back, adding another ‘baaa’ for good
measure and wrapping the blanket tighter around his body.
“Careful,” Brandt said in a deep, growling voice. “That’s turning me on a
little.”
Remy laughed, but Thiago noticed him leaning away from the big man as he
looked at him. “Baa means no, Wally,” he intoned with a wag of his finger in
Brandt’s face.
Before anyone could say anything else regarding sex or sheep– or, God
forbid, both– Nikolaus let out a little shout and looked at them all triumphantly.
“I’ve made it into the main files and disabled the detection system,” he
announced with a hint of pride in his voice. Thiago felt Remy’s body stiffen against his, but just as quickly as it happened he was loose again and turning around to peer back at Nikolaus excitedly. Thiago watched Remy suspiciously.
“The Organization’s main files?” Remy asked eagerly.
“Yep,” Nikolaus said proudly as he continued to click away. Thiago was
impressed by the feat, but distracted by Remy’s reaction. Why did he tense? Was it just a tic or did it mean something more significant? Did Remy have something to
hide in those files?
As he watched Remy, a little more intently than he liked to admit, Carl
thumped into the room, wiping his hands on a dishtowel and huffed loudly.
“Fucking stove,” was all he said.
“No supper then?” Remy asked as he flopped around and tilted his head back
to look at Carl.
Carl looked down at him in disgust and shook his head.
“Mind if I take a stab at it?” Remy asked.
“Be my guest.”
Remy got up, tossed his sheep blanket haphazardly over Brandt’s face, and
strutted into the kitchen.
46 The
Archer
Abigail Roux
Thiago watched him go and wondered how in the world the younger man
survived to this point. He seriously hoped the whole puppy-like attitude was an act the younger man just wasn’t accustomed to dropping, but he seemed genuinely
excitable, and that was dangerous as hell.
“And I have it,” Nikolaus announced smugly, and they all snapped to
attention. “I’ve found it already!”
Thiago and Shawn scrambled to their feet, and Remy hurried back into the
room as they all crowded around Nikolaus’s chair to peer at the computer screen.
“What do you mean you’ve got it?” Carl asked excitedly. “What’s ‘it’?”
“New Zealand grammar,” Brandt murmured wryly, earning a discreet jab in
the ribs. Brandt snickered and wrapped Carl up in his arms in retaliation. Thiago watched distractedly as they struggled and couldn’t help but grin.
“I mean I’ve found the drop spot. The file we use to communicate.”
“Why did we have to hack in?” Thiago asked, thinking he already knew the
answer but wanting to make certain.
“Well, the Organization has completely cut us off in order to weed out any
moles, but we can still communicate. They’ll leave whatever information they have for us in predetermined spots within the main files, and we do the same whenever we need to report in. It just depends on my getting into the system and finding the right file. Which I’ve just done,” Nikolaus explained with a cheeky little smile. “Now, we’ve been following the Archer’s communications,” Nikolaus began explaining.
“You know how he communicates?” Remy asked. Thiago tried to interpret
the tone, but all he could tell was that Remy was impressed.
“We have for weeks now. But we can’t decipher the code.”
“Oh.”
“Now, we know that the Archer communicates with his operatives through
an online chat room.”
“What?” Shawn said disbelievingly.
“Yeah. It’s very simple, and almost impossible to trace if you do it right.
Which he does.”
“What kind of chat room?” Remy asked curiously.
“Wait, wait, lemme guess,” Brandt said in amusement, releasing Carl and
holding up his hand dramatically. “An archery chat room.”
Nikolaus snorted and nodded. “Makes you think maybe he wants us to catch
him, doesn’t it?”
“How did he get the name, anyway?” Thiago asked curiously. The name
bothered the shit out of him for some reason.
The Archer 47
Abigail Roux
“Through the chat room, as far as I know. That’s where we first caught wind
of him. But he’s refused to change methods. The code he uses is apparently random, so I suppose he sees no need.”
“That or he’s got other methods and we just don’t know about them,” Carl
/>
corrected drearily. Thiago nodded his agreement.
“Well, yes,” was all Nikolaus said as he pulled up a file for them all to see.
“This is his last communication. We know they’re orders, but we don’t know what
for.”
Thiago leaned in and read the message as Remy continued to ask questions
about how they knew which messages were his and other things Thiago knew he
should care about. But the message itself was distracting him. It was a mixture of jibberish and seemingly random numbers.
“The hell?” Shawn murmured right next to Thiago’s ear.
“Exactly,” Nikolaus said in a frustrated voice. “It appears to be a stream
cipher but–”
“Wait, a what?” Brandt asked with a confused frown.
“A stream cipher,” Nikolaus answered as he pointed at the series of numbers
and letters. “You might know it as a state cipher?” he ventured. They all looked at him blankly, and he sighed. “Well, it’s a symmetric cipher where plaintext is
combined with keystream and converted one at a time, and the following plaintext
varies depending on–”
“Do it in English, you bloody Kraut,” Brandt demanded with a smirk.
Nikolaus huffed and looked at the computer screen, pursing his lips
thoughtfully. “Basically,” he finally sighed, “it’s a complicated form of encoding where the key varies every time. Which makes it difficult to crack without serious mathematical functions if you don’t know the key.”
“So each code requires a different key to read it?” Shawn ventured.
“That’s right,” Nikolaus nodded.
“And we don’t have any keys,” Remy observed in a flat voice.
“Correct,” Nikolaus confirmed.
“So we have to look at them from another angle,” Remy murmured almost to
himself. “The back door.”
“Right,” Shawn agreed. “Do we have an event to compare it with?” he asked
as he too leaned forward and read the message.
“What do you mean by back door?” Carl asked, sounding slightly lost.
“Well, if we have the event that this message produced, we can come at it in
reverse,” Remy explained.
48 The
Archer
Abigail Roux
“Use the answer to form the question,” Shawn provided.
Nikolaus typed in a command and brought up a list of dates, locations, and
names.
“These are all the hits on our agents in the past year,” he said.
“Jesus,” Thiago breathed as he looked at the list. It was longer than he’d
imagined, and Thiago was beginning to understand the fuss over the Archer. “Surely he’s not responsible for all these?” he asked weakly.
“Not all of them, I’m sure. But we’re not taking any chances by
underestimating him.”
They all nodded in approval of the reasoning, and Thiago scanned the list
again.
“When was that message posted? Can you take out all the events that
occurred before that?” Remy asked. Thiago marveled at the change in his demeanor.
He was all business now. Brandt and Carl were looking on in interest, but it was
obvious they were accustomed to simply being told where to point the gun or how
long to set the timer. They just waited for their orders.
Nikolaus did as Remy requested, and only one line was left on the screen.
The only hit to occur after the last order from the Archer.
“So there we have it. We just need to figure out how the two of them match
up, right?” Brandt asked hopefully.
“If this is indeed the hit the Archer was ordering in his last transmission,”
Shawn said grimly. “It could be from a previous communication, and the latest orders just haven’t been carried out yet.”
“Ah.”
“How many days between the message and the last hit?” Thiago asked,
squinting slightly at the screen.
“Looks like five,” Nikolaus answered after a moment.
“That’s not much time to elapse between order and hit,” Shawn murmured.
“Does anyone else think maybe we’re overreaching here?” Carl asked. “I
mean, they have their best techs on this code, am I right? I don’t think any of us is going to have some sort of Indiana Jones epiphany and suddenly figure it out.”
Remy snorted and stood up to look at Carl over Thiago’s back. Thiago was
jostled a bit as the younger man grabbed Carl around the shoulders and pulled him closer, saying, “We’ll just find you a nice whip, non?”
“We’ll start somewhere else then,” Shawn said with a sigh as he watched
Carl struggle to extricate himself from Remy’s grasp.
“Where?” Nikolaus asked, his fingers poised over the keyboard.
The Archer 49
Abigail Roux
“Is that all they’ve left us in the drop?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn. Okay. Do we have a list of agents we know to’ve turned?”
“Yeah.” Nikolaus repeated as he typed in the commands to bring up the
requested list. This list, too, was longer than Thiago would have supposed. The
Archer had been a busy boy according to the Organization.
“Now, can you bring up lists of the agents these have worked with in the past
year and cross-reference them?”
“Ooh, nice,” Remy said appreciatively, and Thiago couldn’t help but to
agree.
Nikolaus busily typed away, and when he finished he said, “It may take a
while.”
“I’ll be kicking the stove then,” Remy said almost immediately, and he
turned to head for the kitchen.
“I think I’ll help him,” Brandt said in an eager voice, but Shawn grabbed him
by the front of his shirt to stop him.
“No fireworks,” he said in a stern voice.
Brandt put his hand over Shawn’s hand at his heart and looked at Shawn
innocently. “You wound me,” he said pitifully. Shawn simply rolled his eyes and
released the bigger man. “I made a promise,” Brandt sniffed haughtily as Shawn
shoved him almost playfully toward the kitchen.
Thiago watched him creep up behind Remy and grab him, and he wondered
if the younger man was playing the same game with Brandt as he had with Thiago
that morning. Thiago knew Remy wasn’t as inept as he made out to be, but it was
damn difficult to tell which reactions were genuine and which were affected. Remy rewarded Brandt with a little squawk, as if he hadn’t heard him coming, and the two of them snickered and playfully shoved one another back and forth as they jostled for space in front of the stove.
Despite his suspicions, Thiago couldn’t help but smile at their antics.
“Okay,” Shawn said quietly, and he gestured for them to gather around him.
Carl and Thiago exchanged wary glances and leaned forward to listen as Nikolaus
tore his eyes away from the computer screen.
“I’ve struck a deal with Brandt,” Shawn told them, getting right to the point.
“I was going to keep it quiet, but there’s really no point. He doesn’t seem the type to care one way or the other.”
“Is that why nothing’s blown up today?” Carl asked distractedly. He was
watching Brandt and Remy out of the corner of his eye, and Thiago thought perhaps he secretly hoped they wouldn’t be able to get the stove working, either. It was
50 The
Archer
Abigail Roux
probably a matter of pride.
“Yes.”
“Wh
at sort of deal?” Thiago asked.
“Bribery,” Shawn answered with a slight flush.
“What are you bribing him with?” Thiago asked pointedly.
“To put it bluntly?” Shawn questioned wryly. Thiago nodded. “Myself. And
Remy. And whoever else is willing,” he said, giving them each a second’s stare from clear green eyes before glancing back at Brandt warily. Shawn’s eyes were truly
unique, Thiago decided. The only problem was that you couldn’t read them.
“You mean sex?” Nikolaus asked, sounding thoroughly scandalized.
“Yes. It was the only thing I knew he would give up his explosives for. And
really…,” Shawn smiled at them and shrugged. “Brandt’s quite a bit of all right, isn’t he?” he said with a wink. Carl laughed, and Thiago smiled a little. He couldn’t argue with that, and Thiago had used his body to ensure the success of missions in the past.
He had no problem with this arrangement.
“Count me in then,” he offered readily enough.
“If it keeps my ass from being blown up,” Carl added with a nod, “I’m in.”
Nikolaus looked at them with wide eyes when they all turned their attention
to him. “I’m not really qualified for that sort of thing,” he protested in a hoarse whisper.
“I think the four of us should be able to keep him happy,” Shawn responded
with a grin, giving Nikolaus a comforting pat on the back. Nikolaus looked back at his computer screens, relieved.
“What do I have to do to be bribed with sex?” Carl asked with a huff.
“I don’t think you’ll need to bribe anyone in this group,” Thiago muttered
wryly.
IX.
SHAWN finished filling them in on the details just as there was a shout from the
kitchen and a gusty whoosh of air and heat.
“Well,” Shawn sighed in a flat voice, “he’s blown the stove,” he muttered as
they all turned toward the kitchen.
There wasn’t much smoke. The flames had simply leapt up and then receded
back into the burner, but Remy hopped around the kitchen trying to rid his hand of a flaming oven mitt as Brandt danced around him comically, trying to grab hold of him.