The Cardinal Rule

by Cate Dermody

  The alternative, then, was to outthink the machine. Make deliberate and irrational choices. Alisha snatched the gun off her hip, taking two purposefully wild shots in hopes of distracting the drone’s AI for a few seconds. She heard the crackle of the radio as her guards recognized weapons fire and came running, but there wasn’t time to wait on them. Rolling onto her belly and scrambling to her feet gave her the momentum to dive for one of the droid’s three legs. The trifold foot snaked out of her reach as she kept coming, clanking down against the concrete floor hard enough to mar its surface. Alisha took another two shots, the first ricocheting off the drone’s metallic ankle. The second hit, not shattering the bolt as she’d hoped, but wedging it in place, reducing the mechanism’s ability to rotate. Combat-trained preternatural hearing kicked in despite the ringing in her ears from the gunshots, a low buzz warning her the Attengee’s blasters were focused on her again.

  She flung herself forward again, rolling beneath the droid and coming up flat against the wall. The silver dome whipped around, weapons firing and turning the wall behind her to slag.

  Alisha was no longer there, already flinging herself at another leg. They had to be the weak points, had to be! She wrapped both hands around one, just above the ankle, and scrambled backward, ducking laser fire to haul the drone off balance with all her strength.

  It toppled with an ear-shattering clang against the concrete, legs flailing like an overturned spider, and for one blessed moment, lay still.

  Alisha scrambled out of reach, fumbling with the utility belt at the small of her back. Her hands shook, endorphins pumping through her system so powerfully she could hardly control her own movements. The buttons popped open and she slid the Attengee’s remote—the one advantage she’d thought she might have, in trying to bring the prototype army out of the base—free of its pocket.

  A ratcheting leg slammed into her diaphragm, throwing her backward across the room. Tears leaked down her cheeks, blocking her vision of the commands on the remote pad as she struggled for air. The drone swayed to its feet and lurched forward, reacquiring her as a target with another low whir. Alisha choked against the knot of breathlessness in her stomach, only succeeding in exhaling more of what little oxygen she had left.

  Don’t look up, Leesh. Just do it. Just find the right key combination. Her hearing wouldn’t let her ignore the whine of the lasers preparing to fire. She’d forgotten to ask Greg about Santa Claus.

  Gunfire splattered the room, as precious as the sound of a knight in white armor riding down the evil king. The drone whipped around, spattering the concrete walls with bursts of laser fire. One of the soldiers bellowed, “Hit the deck!” and Alisha wheezed a little laugh, a tiny gasp of air that felt like the first promise she might someday breathe normally again. She wiped her arm across her eyes, coughing another pathetic breath out, and finally, weakly, punched the disabling code into the remote.

  The drone folded down into its resting state, lasers settling back into place and leaving the AI’s silver dome unmarred once more. Alisha rolled onto her back, arms flung wide, and dragged in a painful lungful of air around the baseball-sized knot beneath her sternum. Another fit of coughing brought tears to her eyes, but she lifted a hand in triumph, the cardinal drawing still crumpled there. “Second objective accomplished, sir.”

  Meet me in Paris.

  The café spilled out its own doors and over to the riverbank, burbling with cheerful noise, umbrellas catching voices and echoing them down again. Students forgot their haute culture cool in favor of too much rich French coffee and passionate political arguments. A word or two spoken in English caught Alisha’s attention now and again, but largely the free flow of French spun by her, comforting babble.

  Alisha smoothed the wrinkles out of the cardinal drawing for the hundredth time, staring not at it, but through it. The heavy lines of the dome it perched on swam through her line of vision, bringing with them a sense of nagging familiarity, but she pushed it away. She ought not have come to Paris. Expecting Reichart to be there was unrealistic. She shook her head, smoothing the drawing again, gaze unfocused. Conventional wisdom said at best he’d set her up to look like a fool. That he wouldn’t be there. That disappointment was inevitable.

  Bullshit, she mouthed. She pushed the drawing aside, picking up her coffee cup in both hands to blow on the hot liquid. Reichart never disappointed. He betrayed, he lied and he endangered, but mere disappointment was too blasé for him. Alisha huffed a breath into the coffee and sipped before putting the cup down again. And yet she’d be disappointed if he didn’t show up. “Bastard.”

  “I think that’s my cue.”

  Alisha turned her head to the side, lips compressed to hide a smile tinged with dismay. Five years, and his nonchalant arrival, always with the perfect line, could still make her heart jump. In spite of everything. Bastard, she thought again, and turned her gaze to him. Reichart sprawled in the chair across from her, long denim-clad legs crossed at the ankle and hands folded behind his head. “It’s good to see you, Alisha.”

  “You’ve seen a lot of me lately.”

  “Glimpses stolen in the midst of flight don’t count.” Reichart leaned forward, snaking a hand out toward Alisha’s coffee as familiarly as if they were still engaged. She pulled away, stifling the impulse to smack his knuckles, and he withdrew, looking injured. “It’s been a long time.”

  “The Russians, Frank?” God, she fell right into the old patterns. Trying to understand the motivations of a man whose base desires were diametrically different from her own. Asking questions she already knew the answers to, in hopes of hearing something other than the words she knew were coming. Asking questions she knew the answers to, because he wouldn’t answer the other ones anyway.

  Reichart shrugged, a lazy action that shifted his whole torso. He wore a white T-shirt under a thigh-length soft leather jacket, more fashion model than Fonzie. “They pay in Euros.”

  Alisha let go a breath of humorless laughter and looked up at the café umbrella that blocked the gray Parisian sky. See? she asked herself. Did you really expect anything else? He never disappoints. “You’re a greedy son of a bitch.”

  “Some things don’t change.”

  Too much didn’t change. Alisha picked up her coffee cup, frowning over its edge. “You said we had a lot to talk about.”

  “We do.” Reichart’s voice dropped. “We never talked about it, Leesh.”

  Ice formed in Alisha’s lungs, chilling her voice. “There was nothing to talk about.” Hairs lifted on her arms, and she fought back a shiver, her expression cool as she met Reichart’s eyes.

  “Did it ever occur to you that it might’ve been Cristina?”

  Rage spilled down Alisha’s spine, wiping out the cold. Just like always, she thought. If there’d been any room left in her for laughter, she might have let it come, but there was only the shadow of past mistakes. “Yes. Obviously. Years later. Was it?”

  Something dark flickered in Reichart’s eyes before he looked away, deliberately. Alisha tightened her hands around her coffee cup, wishing the mug was smaller, less sturdy, so she might shatter it with her hands. So that hot coffee might spill over her, shards embedded in her hands: any excuse to walk away from the man sitting across from her. She shouldn’t have come. Five years wasn’t enough to wipe out old emotion. Maybe a lifetime wouldn’t be enough. And Reichart’s failure to answer—she’d known better than to ask.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, working to keep her voice steady. “This is how talking goes with you, Frank. This is why there was nothing to say.” Once upon a time his reticence had been enticing. Once upon a time it had been mysterious, exciting, a challenge.

  Once upon a time.

  “Then why did you come?”

  Pain jolted through Alisha’s heart, like a contraction around a knife. It zinged upward, lingering just below her collarbone before it faded again. She pressed her eyelids closed, clutching the mug hard enough to turn her knuckles whi
te. “Because you asked me to.”

  “Is that all it ever would have taken?”

  Cords stood out in Alisha’s neck as she lifted her gaze to him. “Don’t. Don’t do this, all right, Reichart? It’s over.” She could hear tension making her voice tremble, the frustrated amusement of his arrival dissipated. “You’ve played your get out of jail free card. This isn’t a date or a reconciliation. I’m here because you said we needed to talk and I thought you might have something to say that I needed to hear.”

  Reichart’s expression, never easily read, shuttered further. “Fine. Where’d you hear about the Sicarii?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Frank.” Alisha put her cup down again. “Interrogating me isn’t talking, either. We can go on like this for hours. Flat statements and answering questions with questions. I don’t have time for it, and if that’s what you’re going to play, I’m out of here. I don’t want to see you again.” She shoved her chair back from the café table. His hand flashed out and caught her wrist, then let go so quickly it barely left the impression of warmth against her skin.

  “Ever?” The question came and went as rapidly as his grasp. “I’m not playing a game, Alisha. The Sicarii’s outside your realm of expertise. You’re too straight.”

  “Straight.” Alisha snorted with disbelief. “Nobody with my day job is straight, Frank.”

  A smile flickered through Reichart’s dark eyes, warming them. “Some are straighter than others.” Me, for example, his tone said. Alisha spread her fingers, granting him the point. “This isn’t the best place to talk.”

  “You said Paris. Where else but here?” Alisha shrugged at the café in general, carefully not looking across the little restaurant to the riverbank tables. Reichart did look, and for a moment Alisha could see memory play itself out across his features. Memory of the man getting down on one knee at the end of a muggy Parisian evening, fog starting to roll in off the river and giving the light the misty blueness that seemed to haunt old paintings and romantic movies. Reichart, always so circumspect, deliberately raising his voice and speaking fluid French, the better to gain attention from the lingering crowd at the café. Alisha, laughing, her hands cupped over her mouth, knowing what was going on but almost unable to believe it.

  The ring was a round-cut diamond set directly into gold, so that there was nothing to snag or catch on. Yellow topaz, Alisha’s favorite stone, hugged the clear center jewel. Subtle, discreet, beautiful: the perfect engagement ring for a spy. Alisha hadn’t needed to ask to know Reichart had designed it just for her.

  The café patrons had erupted into applause and cheers when Alisha, embarrassingly tearful, had flung herself into his arms, whispering, “Yes, of course I’ll marry you.” Someone bought them a bottle of wine older than the two of them put together, and everyone had a splash, just enough to taste the rich old flavor in celebration.

  Reichart pulled his gaze back to Alisha, looking almost guilty. “Yeah, where else. Look, Leesh…” He reached for her hand again, more cautiously. Alisha curled her fingers around her coffee cup, holding it tightly enough to turn her knuckles white. Reichart pressed his lips together and pulled his hand back, drumming his fingers against the table. “Yeah,” he said again. “I don’t think I ever told you I’m sorry.”

  Old anger burst inside her chest, becoming weariness. Alisha slumped back in her chair, shaking her head. “For which part, Frank? For choosing cash over country? For selling me out? For shooting me?” She stilled her hand, refusing to allow herself to rub the scar between her collarbone and her heart. It was faded now, careful surgery blurring the edges away, but she could still feel it. Especially now, another sharp pang that felt like it cut through her heart. “There are a million things to be sorry for. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It does.”

  “No.” Alisha straightened, shaking her head. “No, Frank, it doesn’t. I don’t understand you, I don’t like you and I don’t trust you.”

  “I didn’t sell you out.”

  “Which time?”

  “This time.”

  Alisha’s cheeks burned hot, anger flooding through her. “I don’t believe you. The timing’s too pat.” There was no doubt in her tone, though a modicum remained in her mind: Brandon might have known all along. But why bother with the charade, then? Unless he was working for the Americans and Reichart’s presence had forced his hand, somehow. Alisha curled a lip, pulling her thoughts back into order. “Do you have anything useful to say to me, or am I wasting my time here?”

  Reichart raked a hand through his hair, disheveling it into slicked-back curls. “Sicarii’s a conspiracy theory, Leesh, that’s all. Secret organizations, trying to take over the world. I didn’t think you were into that kind of thing.”

  A faint smile broke through Alisha’s rancor. “I thought that was the Illuminati. Come on, Reichart. Conspiracy theories?”

  “I’ve just heard the word bandied around, Leesh. It’s crap.”

  “And I haven’t heard it because…?”

  Reichart performed another loose shrug. “Because people on the legitimate side of this business don’t waste their time with conspiracy theories. There’s enough scary shit to follow up on in the real world without adding layers of monsters in the dark to it all.”

  “Do you ever miss it?” Alisha regretted the question as soon as it was asked. Reichart’s gaze came up, meeting hers, then flickered away again. Back to the table at the riverside.

  “Not it,” he said. Alisha folded her thumb across her left palm, rubbing it against her ring finger, then closed her hand into a fist, compulsive actions as betraying as Reichart’s glance. He saw it, and offered a faint smile.

  “It wasn’t all bad, was it?”

  “Not at all.” Alisha looked down at her hand, feeling the missing weight of an engagement ring she hadn’t worn for years. She would never admit to Reichart—or anyone else—that the ring lay in a strongbox in a Parisian bank, along with a journal so full of pain the scrawled words were almost illegible. The ring was gone, but not irretrievable.

  Like the feelings she had for Frank Reichart. “I’ve got to go.” She stood, digging in her pocket for a coin or two to throw down on the table as she scooped up the wrinkled drawing.

  “Is that Rome?”

  “What?” Alisha looked down, catching Reichart’s nod at the piece of paper.

  “The dome. It’s the Basilica dome, isn’t it? St. Peter’s Basilica’s dome on the Vatican. It would’ve been the last thing you saw after—”

  Alisha pressed her eyes shut, the black lines on the parchment leaping into sunset-stained color in her mind’s eye. The memory of astonishing pain exploding in her left shoulder hit her, crushing the breath out of her. Body memory, physical memory: her right hand, working of its own will, touching the spot of agony and lifting into her line of vision. Hot blood trickling down her fingers. Her hand falling away, leaving her gaping in disbelief at the Vatican’s dome, blazing golden and red in the sunset, like God’s own holy light.

  Then blackness, fading in around the crowning globe atop the dome, and nothing at all until the bright white light of a hospital room.

  “After you shot me.” Not the words Reichart would have chosen, Alisha was sure. “Yeah.” She crumpled the drawing again, pressing the rumpled paper against her shoulder as if it would stop the wound from five years earlier. Look behind you. The Latin phrase and the drawing itself suddenly seemed layered, filled with far more portent than the simple warning she’d taken it for in the bunker. It was that, certainly, but a sense of confidence settled into Alisha’s bones. It was a warning, but it was also an invitation. Sent, she was sure, by Brandon.

  Reichart’s low voice drew her back to the moment: “I have nightmares about it.”

  Alisha studied him briefly, then folded the cardinal into her pocket and shook her head, walking away. “I don’t.”

  Chapter 12

  Alisha stood in the midst of foot traffic, shifting her shoulders enough
to allow passersby to sweep past without jostling her from her place. There was no bloodstain on the stones, no dark spot to say she’d fallen there, almost dead, five years earlier.

  Five years, and she’d never come back to this place. To Rome, yes: it was like getting back on the horse, and she knew it. But she’d avoided the Piazza San Pietro without consciously realizing it.

  Now sunset flared around the Vatican’s dome, the long shadow of its crown bending and stretching down toward the plaza, just as it had then. Shadows that matched the cardinal sketch Alisha held tightly in her hand. Look behind you. She fought the impulse for another moment or two, still watching the colors gleam and fade off the dome.

  The scar under her collarbone throbbed, insistent bump of discomfort. Reminding her, she thought, that she was still alive. Reminding her how close she’d come to death.

  It was easy to replay, standing there under the same light. Like a dream unwinding in her waking vision, the faces around her changed, becoming the visages of other strangers burned into her memory. An older woman with the enviable Mediterranean graying at the temples, chin held high and regal. A handsome man twenty years the woman’s junior, turning to watch her with admiration. A bevy of nuns, flocked together like black-headed birds, at odds with breathless teens wearing jeans cut low and shirts cut high. Five years after the fact, if any of them walked by Alisha on a city street, she would know them all with a pang of recognition that cut just above her heart.

  Disturbance in the crowd: a thin man in the red robes of a cardinal, making his way against the flow of traffic. Ripples spread out, an opening and closing of the waters as people created space for the holy man, adjusting to his presence, then resuming their normal course as if nothing had bothered them. In moments he was at Alisha’s side, brushing against her: papers neatly folded into his palm slipped into hers instead, and then he was past. One step. Two steps.