Blades of Winter

by G T Almasi

  To hell with it. If the Good Lord wanted me to suffer like this, he wouldn’t have given me painkillers. I dose some Overkaine and immediately feel better. Even though the drugs make my fingertips and toes a bit numb, it’s worth it. My stomach is still jumpy, but the gorillas hammering on my head have vanished. I stand up and lean against the wall to watch the Med-Tech wave her sensor device around the rival agent’s body. The monitor displays more strange shapes. Dense things like bones show up brighter than soft things like muscles and organs, which are rendered in varying shades of gray. The Meddie moves her sensor over the guy’s midsection, and we see a small white hard-edged shape with a suspiciously manufactured look to it.

  “Ah hahh,” she exclaims.

  “Found something?” Trick asks.

  The Meddie answers, “Yeah, under his rectus abdominis. It’s his No-Jack.” A No-Jack module is a locator beacon and distress signal transmitter. It can be triggered manually or, if you get knocked out, it’ll activate by itself. Nowadays everybody in the field has one of these, including me and Patrick.

  The Med-Tech pulls out a scalpel. She slices the skin below Lousy Driver’s chest while Patrick uses wads of gauze to soak up the blood. She carefully cuts her way through the muscle until we can see into the competitor’s guts. It’s fascinating. I’ve examined the insides of people before, but not while they were still alive. How cool!

  There’s all kinds of activity: blood vessels pulsate, muscles twitch with each breath. But my unhappy tummy heaves again. It’s not in the mood for this grisly view. I look up at the ceiling for a moment and take some slow breaths to help my stomach settle down.

  The Med-Tech tells Patrick, “Spread that for me, will you?” Trick places one of his gloved hands on the incision and uses his thumb and forefinger to hold it open. The gross flesh-squishing sound makes my stomach start grumping again, so I turn my hearing down. The Med-Tech peers around inside the enemy with a little flashlight.

  Patrick spots it first. “There it is, near the fifth rib.”

  “I see it.” The Med-Tech uses a forceps to reach under our patient’s abdominal muscles and snare the module. She lifts out an inch-long lozenge. It’s about the size of the first joint of my thumb.

  “It looks like a big gnocchi,” I say as the Meddie deposits it into a tray. “What are we gonna do with it?” Trick tells me we’ll have one of Jacques’s agents carry the locator beacon out of town. They’ll transport it someplace quiet and wait to see who shows up. Meanwhile we’ll pump our captive for info right here in Paris.

  Or I should say Patrick will do it. He doesn’t trust me around prisoners anymore, so he keeps Lousy Driver under sedation until we return to ExOps’ Paris headquarters. I start bitching at my partner. Who says I’m a hotheaded kid who can’t control herself? As we ride across town, I review some of my old Job Numbers and realize that sometimes I am hotheaded and that I’m not always very good at controlling myself. Okay, fine, Patrick. You do the interrogation. I’ll take myself out shopping. I could use the fresh air anyway.

  CHAPTER 26

  SAME DAY, 12:30 P.M. CST LEFT BANK, PARIS, PROVINCE OF FRANCE, GG

  Now this is more like it. Paris is gorgeous! It’s a trip just to stroll the broad tree-lined boulevards, weave past the sidewalk art dealers, and peek into the shops. And the food! I’ve never had such good bread. The French complain that things have gone downhill since the war, but I don’t know what they’re talking about. This is great.

  The baking sun is directly overhead, so I pop into an air-conditioned department store called La Samaritaine to get a quick break from the midday heat. The store bustles with well-dressed weekend euroshoppers. Two women are at the register, paying for their stuff. One woman writes a check while the other holds a half dozen shopping bags. They turn and walk toward the door, but the woman with the bags doesn’t get any help from her companion. Some friend, I think to myself. The empty-handed woman gets to the door and waits for her overburdened pal to hold it open for her. Jesus! I’ve got half a mind to—

  The woman with the bags turns and backs into the door to open it. When she does, I see her face. There’s a big Star of David tattooed around her left eye. They’re not friends out shopping together. It’s a well-off German woman and her Jewish slave. The slave woman drops one of the bags, which gets her a slap in the face and a sharp rebuke from her mistress. The Jewish woman’s face remains neutral, like she’s trying to be invisible. I grit my teeth and make myself continue into the store, but I feel hotter now than I did outside.

  I wander into the women’s section and let the cool air wash over me. I see a couple shopping across the main aisle in the men’s clothing area. The woman is piling things onto the man’s outstretched arms. I can see from here that the pants she’s choosing are way too big in the waist for the skinny guy she’s with. She leads him off to another department, and he turns his head to the side so he can see where he’s going. Around his eye is another star.

  “Guten Tag.”

  I jump at the sound of a man’s voice. It’s a nicely dressed older fella. His name tag reads “Pierre.”

  “Bonjour,” I reply.

  He instantly switches to perfect French and indicates the display of scarves I happen to be standing next to. “Pour vous, mademoiselle?” For you, miss?

  I say, “Non, m’sieur, pour ma mère.” No, sir, for my mother.

  The man helps me check out some scarves for Cleo. Washington, D.C., gets pretty windy, and Mom likes to wear something to keep her hair from blowing around. I find a turquoise scarf with thin white stripes for only ten marks. Cleo loves any piece of clothing from somewhere else, and this color will complement her dark red hair. Pierre rings up the sale and folds the scarf into a small shopping bag.

  We both say “Merci, au revoir” as he hands me the bag. I leave the store with my eyes down and think about all the Jewish people trapped in Europe. I’m not used to feeling so helpless about something. Once I’m outside, I try to distract myself by reading the signs and posters.

  Getting around Paris requires you to read two languages. Trick warned me about this on the flight. Most cultural communications are in French: things like billboards, concert posters, and restaurant menus. You see German written on anything official like road signs, news bulletins, and government vehicles. The Germans run the large institutions, but the small stuff is still très français. Of course, politically speaking, France doesn’t exist anymore. It’s all Greater Germany now, although the cities and towns have retained their French names and most of the genuine Frenchies still speak French. The only government-run part of Paris still in the original language is the famous Metro subway system. All the train directions and fares are listed in French. Maybe the Übermenschen are more romantic than we give them credit for.

  One thing the Germans are not romantic about is Europe’s population of Jewish people. The Krauts have kept them as slaves since the mid-1940s. I’ve read that the Jews are mostly used for heavy labor in factories and on farms, but the few slaves I’ve seen here in Paris seem to work as domestic servants for rich people too important to wipe their own asses.

  As I tour around the neighborhoods, I overhear a few old French dudes gripe about how their kids use slang that combines German and French. They talk about it like someone pissed in their soup. Being an American, I could give a damn. We don’t even bother to have our own language. We just mangle the one we got from England.

  You can sense the tension around here if you listen for it. The French are still pissed off, or maybe embarrassed and frustrated is more like it. I’ve heard the war referred to as “The Disgrace.” They blew it pretty bad. How many other countries have lost a major war in only six weeks? Trick told me that all hope for the United States to save their derrières got wiped out when the Germans invaded Great Britain. Without a nearby base, we were never gonna bounce the Krauts out of Western Europe.

  So we did what powerful states have always done. We signed a fistful of toilet pape
r, shook hands, and smiled for the cameras. Then we waited. Decades later, Europe still simmers with resentment and suffers the occasional minor rebellion because the Germans didn’t have the foresight to exterminate the native populations like us Americans did.

  The French, therefore, are still here. They still cook great and they still dress well. They also still gripe about their occupiers or, as they say, les Boches. Except for the whole sovereignty thing, I’m not sure what the Froggies have to complain about. Due to the lightning speed of the Wehrmacht invasion, France came through World War II relatively unscathed, unlike England, Wales, and Scotland, who all got the shit bombed out of them. If you’re going to lose to the Fritzes, it’s better to do it fast.

  I mull over the history I learned at school while I relax in a café overlooking the Seine. They have plenty of seats outside, but after nearly getting run over earlier today, I prefer to sit indoors. I watch an older French guy glower at a couple of German businessmen who are flirting with their young French waitress. The older guy leaves in a huff. A minute later, a girl about my age takes his seat. She picks up a menu, but I can tell she doesn’t read it. Her eyes move around the café. My spy senses kick in. Get ready. The chick looks my way and blinks at me with a pair of big dark lenses that cover her eyes and then retract back into her brow.

  I leap out of my seat, knock my table over, and send my coffee flying. I’m halfway across the café before the girl even starts to react. Li’l Bertha loads up with little bullets—we are indoors, after all. I’m right on top of Mystery Girl when she disappears—poof!—like someone turned off a TV. There’s a trail of tipped-over furniture and pissed-off café patrons that leads directly from my chair to where I stand in front of an empty table with a big gun in my hand. The waitress shrieks. It’s time to skadoodle.

  I zip back to my table, grab my La Samaritaine bag, and run out into the street with my vision and audio Mods at full strength. I try to see and hear everyone around me, searching for threats. There isn’t anything unusual. Well, except for me. The regular citizens on the street are understandably alarmed at the sight of a hopped-up girl brandishing a big-ass firearm in broad daylight. I put Li’l Bertha in her holster and make myself walk normally so I’m not so conspicuous.

  What the fuck was that? Am I imagining things? That couldn’t be my hangover. Have I done too many drugs? Maybe I hit my head extra hard and don’t remember it. I should see a Med-Tech, but I remember my father used to tell me that if they thought you were slipping, they’d take you out of the field. With all the biotic shit I’ve had installed on my person, I can’t do a desk job, cooped up in some crappy office all day. My Nerve Jet glides some Kalmers into me, then Patrick comms in.

  “Hey, Scarlet, where are ya?”

  “Oh, hey, Trick,” I try not to sound freaked out. I do not want to tell Patrick that I’m seeing things. “I’m near the Louvre. What’s up?”

  “Our bird has sung quite a tune. Come on back here. I’ll tell you about it as you go.” I jog along the Seine toward our Paris HQ while Trick fills me in. The assassin I caught at the Eiffel Tower is named Pavel Grigorevich Tarasov. He’s got other handles, but this is the one Extreme Operations calls him. As we thought, Tarasov is a pro, despite his panicked driving.

  He’s one of the retired Russian Levels who freelance for the Blades of Persia. Once you’ve become a Level, you’re not suited for any other work, and the Levels who hit retirement without enough money saved up enter the private market. There are more Russians in these positions than other nationalities because the Russkies don’t pay their agents squat. Tarasov revealed that the KGB lets him be a freelancer as long as he sends them any intel related to Russian security. He’s also forbidden to pull any jobs in Russian territory.

  Tarasov started blabbing as soon as he woke up in Jacques’s ancient reeking cellar. He’d already been shot at, wrecked his car, BASE jumped off the Eiffel Tower, a maniac girl tried to tear his collarbone off, and he’d undergone stomach surgery in the back of an ambulance. Resisting interrogation was the last thing on the poor guy’s mind.

  Our captive is familiar with Winter, although he’s never actually spoken with the man. Tarasov said that Winter speaks only with a few lieutenants. It seems that the reclusive leader has trust issues with foreigners, perhaps because so many of them have tried to kill him. Tarasov received his assignment through one of those lieutenants, Kazim Nazari, but he knows that the contract on me came from Winter himself.

  I comm to Trick, “So this confirms that the Blades of Persia is mixed up in all this.”

  “Right,” he answers. “It links your mother’s kidnapping and the attacks in Baghdad directly to Winter.”

  “Wow.” I cross the street in front of Jacques’s safe house and walk down the alley to Jacques’s hidden car elevator. “Do we know why Winter is after me?”

  Trick comms back, “Not yet, but we’ve got our next step. Tarasov gave us Kazim’s location, his comm code, even a picture of him.”

  “Where is he?” I check that nobody can see me, then I open the bulkhead door to Jacques’s safe house.

  “He’s in Riyadh. But check this out. I jumped on the jackframe and plugged Kazim’s comm code into our signals-tracing program. I cross-referenced Kazim’s code against the two unknown subjects in the comm calls we decrypted in May.”

  Jesus, next he’ll tell me about the fucking algorithms.

  I comm, “Can we skip to the good part, please?”

  “Kazim’s comm code came back positive as the person who sent Hector to New York.” Trick pauses. “Kazim Nazari is definitely XSUS Two.”

  CHAPTER 27

  THREE DAYS LATER, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1:05 P.M. ST RIYADH, PROVINCE OF ARABIA, GG

  Our mission to trace my father’s last assignment has been expanded to include harvesting intel about the Blades of Persia, their leader Winter, and the Darius Covenant. All three of these mysteries run through our one concrete lead, Kazim Nazari. We’ve received clearance for this high-level mission because the Front Desk has signed on as the principal agent. He’ll personally monitor everything we do. He’s really stuck his neck out. If I screw up, he’s toast. No pressure, though. Just the fate of me, my partner, my boss, and whatever ghosts of my father we find along the way.

  Patrick and I are traveling into Riyadh to meet our Greeters. Our ride is one of those fucked-up ancient buses crammed full of sweaty villagers sweating their sweaty asses off. Yelping kids, grunting goats, clucking chickens, the works. You’d think it was a ride at Disneyland if it weren’t for the stench.

  The Germans don’t ride buses. They drive like jerks in their gigantic Krautmobiles with the AC cranked and their horns blaring. One of them cuts us off, and our driver has to lock the brakes to avoid a collision. We all slide off our seats and land on the floor like a bunch of pumpkins. A few chickens tumble all the way down the aisle and make a squawking feather pile next to the driver.

  We pick ourselves back up, and I mutter, “Asshole,” to Trick.

  “True, but our driver did the right thing, avoiding that car.”

  “He should’ve pushed that Düsseldork off the road.”

  “He probably knows better than to mess around with the Germans,” Trick whispers. The Germans’ rules for this region are transparently biased. If there’s a traffic accident involving a German person and a local person, it’s never the German’s fault.

  I’m dripping sweat. One of the side effects of the drugs I use is that my body constantly tries to flush itself out. My abundant quantity of Exoskin doesn’t help. I’d kill for some air-conditioning right now. I’ve killed for a lot less.

  “Christ, this must be the hottest place in the world.”

  “Actually, it is the hottest place in the world,” proclaims Trick. “Well, it’s the hottest city. Next is Baghdad, then Phoenix.”

  “Arizona?”

  “Yeah, we have the third-hottest city in the world. How about that?” Trick is such a nerd sometimes. Like I giv
e a shit about Phoenix. But even when I’m a sweaty, pissed-off mess, Trick can make me laugh, because he knows so much more crap than he needs to.

  He sees my grin and reaches over to take my hand. It breaks my heart how nice he is to me despite what a Bitchzilla I can be. I don’t deserve this person. I wrap my arms around him and give him a kiss on the mouth. He leans against me with a big smile on his face as I rest my forehead against his cheek. We stay snuggled up as a cloud of chicken feathers and body odor chases our bus into the city center.

  As soon as we arrive in the main plaza, half the people on the bus try to force their way off first. This sparks a raucous storm of shouted threats and universally intelligible hand gestures. After a minute the knives come out. We decide we’ve had enough of this rolling circus and exit the bus by jumping out a window. Another advantage of our under-tall statures.

  We walk around the plaza and look for our Greeters. They’ll be two men, we assume, but they might be gals. The Germans brought relatively equal rights for women. The old-timer locals hate it, but the Fritzes have made it abundantly clear that if their subjects don’t like the new rules, they can go fuck themselves.

  Patrick scans the faces while I scope the vicinity. It’s a generally rectangular space, about half a city block, surrounded by shops, garages, and houses. The buildings are short, three stories at the most, but they all have lots of windows and doors. Plenty of places to hide. Lots of people scurrying to and fro. Buses groan their way in and out of the plaza while a few German policemen try to keep everyone in line by pushing them around. There’s a permanent cloud of dust settling on everything. The people wind up the same sandy color as the buildings. You can tell them apart because the people are sweatier.

  I spot two big men across the plaza. They sit at a small table and sip out of little espresso cups. Behind them is a large garage door, and over their heads is a sign with a picture of a car being pulled by a tow truck. Besides the fact that they aren’t scurrying anywhere, these two stand out because one of them is wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap, the kind with a flat top. They’ve got to be our Greeters. They were told that we’d approach them, so it’s natural that they ignore us for now. I nudge Trick and tilt my head in the direction of the garage. He glances at the guys, then looks back at me and nods. We dodge traffic across the plaza in their direction.