A Conspiracy of Ravens

by Terrence McCauley

  But Hicks didn’t launch himself anywhere. He could only move his head. His arms and legs and the rest of his body were still dead.

  Roger gently eased Hicks’s head back in the chair. “I checked on her medical records when you told me she was expecting. Not just the records we had on her with the University or even those she had on file with the Mossad, but all the way back to when she was just another girl growing up in Tel Aviv. I found she had been in a serious car accident when she was eleven years old. Her reproductive organs were damaged and her uterus never developed properly, at least not to the point where she could bring a child to full term, if she could become pregnant at all. Her infertility was probably the reason the Mossad trained her to be a seducer of men.”

  Hicks lunged again, feeling more power in the thrust. His arms and legs were still dead, but now he could feel the blood flowing through his chest and shoulders. He knew he was tied to a chair, but this time put enough force behind it to make the chair creak from the effort.

  He leaned as far forward as he could against his restraints and glared at the man who was lying to him now. The man who was supposed to be his closest friend. The man who had injected him with paradise only to ruin it with lies. The man who had just told him the woman he loved was not only dead, but a liar as well.

  Hicks saw Scott appear in the doorway of the bedroom. “He’s coming out of it. Give him another shot.”

  “No.” Roger never took his eyes off his friend. “That will only delay the inevitable.”

  “Damn it, Roger. His strength is coming back. He’ll kill you if he gets loose.”

  “Get out,” Roger snapped. “Watch the prisoner. We’ll be out in a minute.”

  Scott slammed the bedroom door behind him.

  Hicks was still panting, feeling his strength returning gradually with each passing second. Scott. Roger. This room. All of it seemed real. All of it felt like it had when he’d left the Penthouse earlier that day, but nothing Roger was saying made sense.

  Hicks felt his breathing become more rapid. His rage building.

  Roger gently took Hicks’s head in his hands and thumbed away more tears. “I kept you sedated while Jason and Demerest pulled some strings to have the coroner examine her remains. I have a copy of his initial report for you to review whenever you’re ready. It confirms she wasn’t pregnant and could never be pregnant. You told me she called your child a miracle baby. Maybe that was because she knew how unlikely the odds were. I don’t know if she lied to you because she was afraid you were going to kill her over Jabbar, or if it was just wishful thinking on her part, but Tali Saddon was not carrying your child or anyone else’s.”

  Hicks felt the blood begin to pound through his veins, sparks of feeling returning to his hands and feet, portions of his arms and legs. But it was his chest where most of the feeling had returned. And his mind, his damnable mind, was no longer numb. It absorbed every word Roger was saying.

  And it was his mind that knew, deep within it, that every word Roger was saying was true.

  And when that pain and that truth and that anger and that frustration crashed together in the center of his chest, James Hicks let out a bellow that lasted for as long and loud as he could manage. He raged against his paralysis. He raged against the cord around his chest. He raged into the face of Roger Cobb. He reddened and strained and roared until whatever was in his stomach came up. And as was Roger’s way, he had a bucket ready.

  When Hicks’s stomach was empty, Roger took the bucket into the bathroom, dumped it in the toilet, and flushed. He returned with a towel and wiped the remnants of sickness from his friend’s face.

  “Everything I’ve told you is completely true and verifiable, James. What you do next is entirely up to you.” He finished wiping his face clean and set the towel aside. “You and I have seen what news like this has done to some people. To people better than you or I will ever be. You’ve just lost someone you cared about very much. A woman, a lover. The mother of the child you wanted desperately to believe was real, but knew deep down was not. That was then. This is now, and what you decide from this moment forward will decide the course of the rest of your life.”

  Somewhere deep inside himself, Hicks knew he was right. He also knew that, at that moment, he was too sore to care. “Not now, Roger.”

  “Yes, now, because this is important. We’ve both seen what happens to men in your position. We’ve seen them become blind to reality. We’ve seen them set logic aside and indulge in vengeance. Rage. And we’ve both seen how it ultimately destroyed them, turning them into liabilities that need to be mitigated by men like you and me.”

  Hicks felt that all the feeling had returned to his head, to the point where he felt a dull ache settling in behind his eyes. The same dull headache he’d always gotten whenever things got tense. He wanted to rub his eyes, but still couldn’t move his hands. “I can’t do this right now. Tali’s dead. At least let me—”

  “Let you what?” Roger asked. “Mourn? Wallow in your loss? We don’t have the luxury of time, James. We’re on the verge of getting our first real grasp of who the Vanguard is and how they operate. We’re too close and have lost too much to allow sentiment to get in the way. You have to make up your mind as to where you stand, and you need to make it up here and now before you even leave this room.”

  He paused long enough for Hicks to say something, but Hicks had nothing to say. Roger went on. “I’ve done a lot of things for this organization, James. I’ve done a lot of things for you, too. I owe you. You’ve saved my life more times than you will ever know. You’re the closest thing to family that I have. I’m with you all the way no matter what you decide, even if I disagree with it. I just don’t want you to throw your life away to avenge a lie.”

  Roger took the towel as he stood. “The injection I gave you is a sedative of my own devising. The feeling will return to your extremities in a few minutes. You should have full range of motion within the next thirty minutes or so. At that point, you’ll be able to undo the rope I tied around your chest and sit up on your own. I’d wait a couple of minutes before you stand because you’ll be pretty wobbly for a while. When you’re ready, we’ll be outside waiting. Your Ruger is still under your arm. You can shoot me in the head for doing this to you if you want. Or you can dust yourself off and hurt the people who have cost you so much.”

  When Hicks spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Did Rivas make it out okay?”

  “He’s fine and he’s here, too. We’ll give you a full briefing when you’re ready.”

  Hicks watched Roger walk to the door. “One more thing.”

  Roger turned with a hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”

  “If you ever do that to me again, I won’t like it. And I won’t forgive it, either.”

  “Then let’s hope I never have to.”

  Roger quietly shut the bedroom door behind him, leaving Hicks alone with his thoughts. His damnable, miserable thoughts.

  More tears came, and he was unable to stop them.

  AN HOUR later, Hicks opened the bedroom door and stepped into the hallway leading to the main living area of the suite. He didn’t know what time it was, but judging by the view from the windows, dusk had already begun to fall over Berlin. He found Patel, Scott, and Roger huddled around Rivas as they looked at a laptop on the coffee table.

  For a split-second, he wondered why Tali wasn’t there…but only for a split-second. He felt dizzy and had to prop himself against the wall to keep from falling over.

  The sound caused all the men to look at him. Roger got to his feet and approached his friend. “I told you the sedative took a while to wear off. Come, let me help you.”

  Hicks pushed himself off the wall and fired a straight right hand, connecting with Roger’s jaw. Cobb stumbled backward, falling over the arm of an overstuffed chair.

  Roger smiled as he rubbed his jaw. “I’ll take that as a sign you’re feeling better.”

  Hicks readjusted the holster under his left arm. Th
e presence of the pistol made him feel closer to his old self. It gave him the clarity he needed.

  He cleared his throat as he looked at Scott, Patel, and Rivas. “We took a pretty big loss today. Tali meant a lot to the University, to this team, and to me personally. But none of that really matters right now. The best way to honor her memory is to stop the same bastards she was fighting.” To Rivas, Hicks said, “Glad you made it out okay.”

  Rivas looked down at the keyboard. “Wish I could’ve done something to help Tali.”

  “She killed three of the four men after her,” Hicks said. “I’d say she didn’t need your help.”

  He didn’t want to talk about Tali anymore. He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on what he had lost or what had happened. He had to focus on what was happening now and what would happen tomorrow. He had to be ready on the off chance that Tessmer kept their meeting.

  “Were we able to track the bastard who killed Tali?”

  “No,” Patel answered. “We know they took the mirroring laptop from her, and we tracked the equipment for another two blocks north before the bleaching program kicked in. Since they didn’t take her handheld, the program activated automatically. They’ll get nothing off the device.”

  Rivas added, “Demerest’s people have the laptop now. Probably going through it as we speak. Since there was no obvious connection to OMNI, the system is still secure. Jason’s monitoring it for hacks, but coming up empty.”

  “How much of the Vanguard laptop were we able to upload to OMNI?”

  “About sixty percent before the bleaching program activated on the ghost computer,” Scott said. “We didn’t get everything, but we still got some pretty impressive stuff.”

  Hicks pointed to the large television screen as he took a seat on the couch. “Show me.”

  Rivas tapped a few keys and the television screen showed the same view of his laptop. “The amount of information on the laptop was enormous. They’ve got a secure cloud set up that’s not all that unlike OMNI, but doesn’t appear to be as powerful. It’s double encrypted and OMNI’s having a hard time breaking the code. From what we can see, the Vanguard is made up of two completely different factions.”

  “Chinese and German,” Hicks said. “Jason told me that already. Give me something else. What about Tessmer? Anything on him?”

  “No,” Rivas admitted. “I was searching for information on him even as I was uploading files to OMNI. Nothing came up.”

  Hicks wasn’t surprised. Tessmer had admitted the name was an old identity. He doubted the Vanguard would have anything like an official organizational chart, but he had hoped the information could tell him something about their leadership.

  “What about the Chinese faction of the Vanguard?”

  “Just as foggy as the Russian side,” Patel said. “Their financial files are by far the largest and therefore the hardest to search through at this point. We’ve asked OMNI to avoid the spreadsheets and financial files altogether and focus on the emails instead. Even then, OMNI has only been able to search roughly five percent of the financial data alone, but has come up with one common phrase.”

  Rahul pointed at the television and saw one name pop up from all the thousands of emails OMNI was currently scanning:

  Laoban

  “My Mandarin isn’t what it used to be,” Rahul admitted, “not that it was ever very good in the first place. However, this word, roughly translated, means ‘the boss,’ or even more roughly translated, ‘the man.’ It’s not a term of reverence, like chairman, but more of a term of status, where one fits in the order of things.”

  Hicks blinked away a bout of dizziness. Probably the after-effects of Roger’s injection. “Thanks for the sociology lesson. I don’t give a shit why they call him whatever they call him. I want to know who he is and where he is.”

  Rivas said, “We’re already looking for him, but that’s going to take a little time. The Vanguard isn’t big on leaving stray details in their files, so finding him is going to take some doing. I hate to say this, but we might need to rely on the Barnyard to help us with the remaining information.”

  Another delay. Hicks’s headache began to spike. He asked Roger, “Did you get anything out of the prisoner?”

  “A few useful items after some gentle coaxing,” Roger said. “They had about fifty men here in Berlin in various capacities. All of them ex-Russian Army. Even a few old Stasi hands from those heady days of the Berlin Wall are still lurking about, though largely in a leadership capacity.”

  Hicks caught that. “Did he tell you the name of their boss?”

  “He called him Sasha, though he’s German-born. Around seventy years old or so, which means he’s probably ex-Stasi, too. I asked him about Tessmer, of course. I even showed him the old mug shot from Bonn. He said he’d never heard the name before and never saw the man in the photo, either. I believed him and so did the polygraph.”

  “So what? Tessmer admitted he was using another name when I talked to him.”

  “Not only another name,” Roger said, “but possibly a completely different face. He’s probably had extensive plastic surgery since that photo was taken. He could look like anyone by now.”

  Hicks should’ve understood that before Roger laid it out for him. He wasn’t thinking straight. He decided to blame it on Roger’s injection rather than the grief over losing Tali.

  “What else did you get from him? Names? Dates? Locations?”

  “He worked mostly out of the facility we raided today, which is frequently visited by his boss, who we should refer to as Tessmer for lack of a more accurate name. He spends a couple of days a week there reviewing the financials before calling someone on the phone and speaking Russian, surprisingly good Russian for a German, to someone overseas. Our friend assumes it’s overseas because they frequently have to shout to hear each other, probably due to a bad connection. Could be that our Tessmer is speaking to Rivas’s Laoban.”

  “What about locations? Where his boss might be now? Anything like that?”

  He checked his watch. “We’re due to begin another session soon. I’ll make sure I ask him then.”

  “Just make sure you keep him alive,” Hicks said. “He’s my bargaining chip with Tessmer.” Hicks felt another bout of dizziness come over him, but shook it off. “Something came up right before everything happened with…Tali. While I was out, I used the Operators to reach out to Tessmer thanks to the phone Mike ghosted from the prisoner. He wants to meet tomorrow morning.”

  None of the men looked at each other, but all of them, even Scott, had the same mixed expression of surprise and eagerness. No fear or hesitation. Not even after what had happened to Tali. Hicks took that as a good sign.

  Scott asked, “Do you think that’s still on? Even after what happened outside the coffee shop today?”

  “Let’s proceed under the idea that the meeting is still taking place. I’ll make a couple of phone calls and see what I can find. In the meantime, I want everyone to get something to eat and get some rest. Rivas and Patel, you can monitor OMNI’s progress on the data via your tablets from your rooms. No sense in wasting time crouched over a laptop when you should be getting sleep. Trust me, I have a feeling we’re going to need every second of rest we can manage.”

  “That goes for you, too,” Roger said. “You’ve had a horrible day. I can give you something to…”

  Hicks found his jacket across one of the chairs by the elevator and put it on. “It’s seven o’clock now. I want all weapons cleaned, locked, and loaded with lights out by eight thirty. Pack extra heavy because we’re going to see some action tomorrow. Set your alarms on your handhelds for five in the morning. If we need to make it earlier or later than that, I’ll change them remotely.”

  Scott stepped forward as Hicks keyed the elevator open. “Where are you going?”

  “To make a couple of phone calls.”

  “You need someone with you?”

  Hicks ignored the question as the elevator doors slid sh
ut. He’d said enough for one day.

  ALTHOUGH HE was fairly certain OMNI’s integrity hadn’t been compromised, Hicks still walked three blocks away from the Penthouse before calling Jason. The Vanguard had proven to be incredibly technologically efficient. The bleaching software on the mirroring University laptop should have wiped out the hard drive, but the device had still been linked to OMNI. He didn’t want to take any chances by putting the Penthouse at risk. He’d already lost enough people for one day.

  It was a pleasant spring evening and the streets were full of people enjoying a gentle night. He overheard some of them talking about the shootings that had occurred earlier that day. Wasn’t it horrible? Was it terrorists? Some cursed the chancellor for letting so many foreigners into the country. Others said it was a bank robbery gone wrong.

  But as he walked amongst them Hicks heard most people talking about their own lives. Dinner dates they were running late for, how much they hated their bosses and, as everywhere, many of them were lost in the digital world of their handheld phones.

  It was a completely normal evening, yet to Hicks nothing seemed right. The woman he had loved had been killed only a few blocks from where he was standing. No one in the ancient city of Berlin gave a shit. Tali was dead. Life went on. Their lives went on, completely oblivious of the fact that people in their own city were dedicated to ruining their way of life.

  Hicks stopped walking when he reached the corner. He didn’t move out of anyone’s way. He didn’t excuse himself or try to shuffle off to the side of the street. He just stopped and stood where he was. The crowd simply moved around him. He drew a few awkward looks, but was quickly forgotten within a few steps.

  People didn’t know about organizations like the University or the Vanguard. They cared even less about those who worked for these organizations. Those who dedicated their lives and deaths so they could enjoy an easy walk through old Berlin on a nice spring evening.