“And how are you planning to lead them? What exactly do you think it is you’re going to do with these men, turn them into a military unit to fight off the locals?”
The monsignor smiled. “You don’t have any loose change on you, do you, Allon?”
“No, I don’t, why—” and, then, suddenly, Eli found himself hanging out the window, dangling by his ankles, being shaken up and down, ever so gently. He wasn’t certain what surprised him more—where he was, or what the monsignor said a moment later, after setting him back on his feet.
“Officer Pat Patel, NYPD, retired, at your service, Sir.”
Eli looked from Patel to Pritchett and back. “You have an idea of how to establish contact over there?”
Patel nodded. “We have one or two contacts already.” He smiled broadly. “In fact, you could say that we hired an expert on the subject of San Francisco and Kevin Anderson.”
The door to the office opened, to reveal a petite woman in a well-cut, trim business suit. She smiled pleasantly at the man from Mossad and said, in a pleasant soprano voice, “Hi.”
Eli blinked, staring at the young woman a moment. “Do we know you?”
“It's possible.” She shrugged. “I'm Amanda Rohaz. You can call me Mandy.”
Chapter 30: Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
Kevin Anderson knelt by the corner of the bedroom, right where a bed had rested, and reached down, pulling up on a corner of the floorboards. The laptop computer resting underneath looked like an old-fashioned machine, but it had more power than any terabyte tablet from MicroApple.
He took the computer out from beneath the hidden panel and turned it on. It had been well charged before its last use, and it still had enough power for him to use it now. He checked the time once more to make sure that he hadn’t duplicated the time period of his last log in. Being a natural paranoid, he had made sure to sign on at different times solely so that Kaye Wellering and her Hackers couldn’t ransack his computer via wireless modem. They couldn’t predict when he would be on, and it would take someone of supernatural speed and ability to even notice his transmission was open. Not only that, but he kept his uplink disconnected until the moment he was ready, so the wireless modem was only attached to the outside 'net for a few seconds at a time, and then only at random intervals. Not even Kaye and her people could circumvent that, and if they tried, they would need to be physically in front of his computer to plant a key logger program on it. However, any Hacker who tried to get that close to his computer would most likely be slaughtered by the security system.
There was also one last security measure that anyone was unlikely to break. An alphanumeric code: M-0-1-r-a, “Moira” with the first two vowels replaced with their numerical counterparts. It was a perfect password. There were many things known about him, but neither Kaye nor Kyle knew the name of his wife.
It almost physically hurt to type the password; after all those months, the pain hadn't lessened. Elsen occasionally wondered why both he and Kevin had managed to survive equally well, despite almost extreme differences in their style and manner of behavior. Kevin’s thought on the matter was simple—neither of them had anything left to lose.
Kevin was about to save and shut down for the night when, suddenly, he found a message on his computer coming from the uplink.
Kevin Anderson, you have been intercepted on the east coast. Nice job on Omega. Friends arriving in December, can you clear the road? Details attached.
Despite being wary, he opened the file that had been attached to the message. He blinked a few times. There were moments he thought he was going crazy, that maybe he wasn’t acting anymore, and maybe he never had been in the first place. He thought there were days when he had conceived of the strangest project ever imagined: to play Don Quixote in San Francisco.
Assuming this wasn’t a trick of the light, or a dream, he discovered that he didn’t know the first thing about strange projects.
*
Kevin Anderson walked along the hill that had once housed the University of San Francisco. It had been, at one point, a beautiful area, with a fantastic view of Golden Gate Park.
Now, however, he looked over the landscape and saw only collapsed buildings and a veritable wasteland of ruins. There had once been bodies littering the landscape, but they had been cleared away, one body at a time. Unfortunately, sometimes, it was one body part at a time.
He passed by a shadow and spoke, smiling. “Hello, Kyle. Coming in or going out?”
“Out,” Kyle replied darkly. “What do you want?”
Anderson turned to face the man in the shadows. “I need to chat with you. This shouldn’t take long, but the need for secrecy is so imperative I can’t even begin to enunciate it properly.”
A few moments later, they were in the ruins of the training area for the Assassin’s Guild. It had been a gymnasium for the University, and it was on the ground floor. It was the top floor of the Assassin’s Guild, and that was only if someone were being generous in the description.
“Have you ever heard of the Queen Mary 3?” Anderson asked. “It’s a ship, more precisely, a luxury liner. They call it a super liner.”
“I can only assume it was built more than three years ago?”
“Exactly. I’d heard about it when I was back home. The major problem was that after the bombs fell, it was useless, a floating white elephant. The owner also happened to be in San Diego on 'the Last Day.' The company was in debt and leaderless, so they sold it to the bank to pay their debts. The bank, which really didn’t know what to do with it, sold it for what was relatively little compared to how much it had cost to construct it originally. You are familiar with the Catholic Church?”
Kyle nodded. “This is San Francisco, Kevin. Before the Last Day, Catholics and Druids were the two major religious groups in the city. What does that have to do with a boat?”
“A ship…” Anderson sighed. “They’re called ships…my transmission about Omega, the whole transmission, got through, Kyle. Other people know we’re alive. The Church is sending an envoy, and they’re using the QM3.”
The assassin blinked in surprise. “How big is this ship?”
“Short version: the Queen Mary 2, ninety years ago, was 1,132 feet long, carried 2,620 passengers and 1,253 crew members. This one is about 500 feet longer, is about the height of a six-story building, and carries over 1,000 more people.” He paused a moment, catching his breath and letting the information sink into Kyle’s head. “However, that's the capacity as a luxury liner. If you took away the fancy dining areas, the dance halls, and didn’t mind using it as a great big cargo vessel with passengers, you could easily fit ten thousand people in its hull.”
Kyle appeared blank for a moment. “The docks would be so flooded by the time the ship pulled in,” the Assassin told him. “Anyone on board wouldn’t be able to get off.”
“It gets worse,” Anderson answered. “They’re bringing provisions—imagine several crates of paper. I mean crates that hold over a thousand reams.”
The assassin nodded slowly and carefully. “And what is the purpose? To make money?”
Anderson smiled. He had Kyle by his curiosity, which was probably the best place to have him. Any other part wouldn't be safe enough to hang onto. “No, that’s the starting capital. They’re bringing in priests so they can set up an outpost in San Francisco.”
Kyle had trouble believing this. He couldn’t imagine why anyone at all would want to come in to San Francisco, let alone a group of priests. “Why?”
“Usually missionaries are meant to bring the word of God into places that don’t have it.”
“They at least have that much right. Anderson, tell me the truth. Why are they coming? We know they’re not going to be staying around long unless they have a death wish. Priests are not trained for—”
He thrust a piece of paper into Kyle’s face. “Read it.”
Kyle glanced at the heading: Syllabus for the Holy Order of St. Patrick: Training Schedu
le (by day). There was prayerful meditation, mental processing and imagining, and… Tactical baton training, one hour? The Psychology of Hostage Negotiation, one hour? How to Convert the Newly Disarmed? Then more meditation, followed by Krav Maga?
Was this training for a group of priests, or lessons in covert operations? If they followed this program as rigorously as the syllabus suggested, they were halfway to being Assassins… Though Assassins generally never received training in diplomacy.
“These cannot be priests, Kevin. I know the Catholic Church, and they were never this disciplined.”
Anderson smiled one of those grins that made large numbers of the San Francisco population want to punch him. “The Catholic Church is not one monolithic organization, Kyle. We had a few Franciscans left over in San Francisco—hence the name of the city—but that’s about it. The rest of the priests in the city adapted to the situation… badly. As you can see, after the Last Day, the rest of the Church finally learned how to adapt better.”
Kyle nodded thoughtfully. Anderson couldn’t tell what was going through the assassin’s mind, and his expression was still carefully neutral. His voice was the same. “And you say they want to bring God here?”
Anderson almost rolled his eyes. The quotes were practically visible around Kyle’s words. “They believe there's no place God-Forsaken, no matter what Foreman and his losers think.”
“You know this will cause almost uncountable problems,” Kyle told him. “No matter how well prepared these priests of yours are.”
Anderson sighed and nodded reluctantly. “It’s the Catholic Church—inconvenient since 33 AD. And you’re right, the amount of trouble…where does one even start? The Forsaken will be annoyed that there will be a counter-ideology in town. We won’t even start with what the Children of Thanatos will want to do when they learn the leading priest is called Jack.”
Kyle blinked at that. “Jack? Either those idiots will fall down to worship him, or they’ll make it their personal mission to kill him and his people as an offense to ‘St. Jack.’” The assassin snorted, continuing. “That, and they’re bringing in paper. The Corporates will do their best to steal the entire shipment, and possibly strip the bodies and throw them overboard before the ship ever even docks, Anderson…and, to ask a better question, where would they dock? The only docks the Brokers and the Corporates don’t control are owned by the Hackers and…”
Kyle stopped speaking mid-sentence. He raised an eyebrow and studied Anderson. “You want to talk with Wellering, don’t you? You can use the paper to purchase a guarantee their arrival will be kept secret up to the moment they pull into the harbor, rent a dock from her, and dispose of the paper in one sweep. No one would trifle with the Hackers, and Kaye is one of the few people in the city who could afford to buy all that paper. She’d buy it if only to keep it off the market—the more paper the people of this city use, the fewer computer files there are for her to hack into. The more information is written down on that paper and filed, the less of a profit she makes.”
Anderson nodded. “I figure that’ll keep most of the immediate problems away. The Mercs would only attack if someone paid them to, and no one will want to mess with someone under the Hackers’ protection. I figure if I talk with the Children of Thanatos, they’ll back away, at least for right now.”
Kyle considered that a moment. “Possible.” He nodded. “That may not work unless you move all of the priests into Chinatown, though.”
The spy laughed. “Nah, Kyle. I’ll just threaten them with you.”
Kyle blinked. “You would tell them that I would kill them and prevent them from reaching their pearly gates? You know I don’t believe in killing people for free.”
There was a change to the Exile. The eyes still glittered, the smile remained amused, but the glitter was darker and the tone of the joke had altered. This was one of the moments when Kyle could see the similarities between the spy from the East and one of his former colleagues. “Who said anything about killing them for free?”
Kyle nodded. “Point made. What about that new group, the so-called Burners?”
“The yo-yos that burn people alive?” Anderson shrugged. “I don’t know how their leader would deal with negotiation, and if they’re all a bunch of sadists, telling them to not burn people wearing black will be like painting a giant target on their backs.” He exhaled a long breath. “I guess that’s about it. Would you want to come along, just to see what all the fuss is about?”
The assassin nodded, curious. “When they arrive, certainly. One question, however. How will you make certain that the ship will not be under siege once it reaches the docks? The crowds wanting to get out will flood the area, whether the Hackers have it guarded or not.”
The spy waved it away. “I already have that covered, Kyle. I intend to be in charge of the mob scene. Look at it this way, the priests want to empty the ship, and load it up with people. No one will be able to tell the ship is coming—Kaye will make certain that it’s deleted from any systems that might detect it—and if ten thousand people are already there to help them unpack, and then they are given the chance at boarding, no one else will be able to get near the ship. It’ll be swamped, yes, but at least the swamp rats will be tame.”
Kyle shifted, staring at the spy. “And you’re going to guarantee that ten thousand people will keep a secret in San Francisco? You also expect they will all be sane enough so that the East Coast would not decide to exterminate us on a whim. There is no offense meant, Mr. Anderson, but I suspect that you have been taking your image of the madman of Chinatown too seriously.”
Anderson looked Kyle straight in the eyes without blinking—something some of his old Assassin colleagues couldn’t do. “Yes, but remember, Kyle, I’m only in Chinatown because I come with the protective graces of the Children of Thanatos. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t even be allowed in after dark. You know how xenophobic the area is. Even you avoid it. Who exactly are they going to tell, if they wanted to tell anyone?”
*
December 1st, 2093
Kyle Elsen waited at the rear of the dock, standing off to the side. He wouldn’t admit being impressed, not even to Anderson.
The Exile stood at the end of the dock, next to Kaye Wellering. At the other end, near Kyle, was a large crowd of Chinatown’s citizens, lightly packed and ready to depart into the great unknown that was ‘civilization’ as soon as they were able to. It was only appropriate that the sane members of San Francisco society went to the sane part of the planet. These men had kept an outpost of civility in the center of a heart of darkness, and that was admirable to some extent, but theirs was a culture that was neigh impervious to change.
The really impressive part was that Kevin Anderson, this outsider, could execute a plan this large and complex utilizing all of the idiosyncrasies of all the combined subcultures of San Francisco. Even the Children of Thanatos had played along, ringing the crowd to make sure that anyone who decided to interfere with the arrival would go to meet their beloved St. Jack at the Pearly Gates a lot sooner than they had planned to.
Kyle wasn’t certain why they had decided to do that, but Anderson didn’t tell him about needing to use threats, and he had said something about having a “surprise” for Kyle, and had said it with that smile Kyle truly hated.
The other impressive thing was how this undertaking was a well-executed secret. No more than one-tenth of the people at the docks had known they would even be there. In most cases, the head of the household had been informed of the plan; they would go to their homes and announce to their families that they would be going to the East coast. There was no mention of a boat, or of priests, and certainly no details about how they would be leaving. It was almost military in precision: Anderson told the town elders and Shen Lo of the Tongs. Shen and the Elders decided together who would be staying, and informed the heads of the families who would be leaving, and precisely how many would be leaving with them.
Then the boat arrived. It
was longer than the height of any building in San Francisco, as though someone had dropped a skyscraper on its side and made it float. On one side of the ship was a set of stairs leading down to the dock. On the other side, another ship was busy unloading crates from the deck. While that happened, a group of men descended toward the dock while Kaye and Kevin waited for them at the end of the stairs, one of them catching the eyes of all. This was a man about five-foot-ten, but the way he moved, the way he looked, made him seem to be taller and bigger. His limbs were oddly proportioned, as though he were designed for combat. His hair was red and going silver, and his face was ruddy.
The man in black bent at the waist as he took Kaye’s hand and kissed it. With a loud, booming voice that instantly made Kyle suspicious, he said, “You must be the lovely young lass who has done so much to help us. I cannot imagine the trouble you must have gone through to get us here. I must say it’s a pleasure to see such a beautiful sight at the end of our voyage.”
Kaye giggled girlishly and stated some sort of pleasantry. The priest replied after a moment, saying, “I’ll be happy to come visit you and your fine men and women to thank them personally. You may even find that they’d like one of my men on staff.”
Kaye’s smile remained, but Kyle suspected that her smile was just a polite one. Shortly thereafter, Kaye made her excuses and left to go see to the transfer of the ship’s cargo. Kyle almost smiled. It was a rare person who could actually make her back away. And it was odd; he didn’t even believe it was an act on her part. Sincerity radiated from this man, and it wasn’t easy even for Kaye to give the brush off to someone who was genuinely nice.
The priest and Anderson watched Kaye leave, and once she was out of earshot, the big priest barked a loud booming laugh that rolled out over the dock. He slapped Kevin on the back and they strolled along the dock together side-by-side as the other priests continued busily working behind them.
Codename: Winterborn (The Last Survivors Book 1) Page 33