The Cardinal Rule

by C. E. Murphy

  She burst through her hostel room door yelling, "Go go go go go!" and was left gasping in surprise to find the room empty but for the flash drive sitting on the bed. A sticky note with a smiley face was pasted to it, lit by the sun rising through the open curtains. More time had passed in meditation than Alisha had realized, and for an instant she gave in to a breathless, grateful laugh.

  Brandon slammed through the door behind her and Alisha snatched her gun from the dresser, whipping to face him, the weapon lifted and cocked.

  He came up short, shockingly pale in the warming gold light, and lifted his hands. "Back up," Alisha snapped. "Other side of the hall. Now."

  "Bitch," he said incredulously. Alisha grinned and gestured with the gun.

  "Now."

  Brandon snarled with anger as he stepped back, hands still lifted. Alisha saw it before he moved: the quick glance down the hall that promised he'd run for it. She wasn't prepared to fire a weapon inside a hostel, so there wasn't much she could do without tackling him and risking getting hurt—or worse—herself..

  Not much she could do, maybe, but she could at least get in the last word. Her grin grew even more edged. "I'll see you in Moscow."

  Brandon gave her a look of scathing fury and ran down the hall, disappearing from sight.

  Chapter 27

  Alisha took the train out to the Zurich airport, not because she couldn't be tracked on it, but because it was fast, and she wanted to leave Brandon Parker well behind. Besides, she had phone calls to make, and the train's noise masked most markers about where she might be. She put the battery back in her phone again and called Greg, putting relief in her voice when he picked up. "It's me."

  "Alisha?" A combination of relief and anger made the soft edges of her name sound sharp. "Alisha, where the hell are you? I thought you were going to San Jose. I thought you were coming in."

  "I know. I know." Alisha pressed her eyes closed, keeping her voice pitched low. No one else on the train even looked her way, the rumble of engines and the persistent thrum of wheels against the tracks going a long way in drowning out her quiet conversation. "I tracked Brandon to another storage facility. I got the software, Greg."

  "What?" Her handler sounded dumbfounded. Alisha searched the solitary word for depth, wondering if she heard distress or merely surprise. "It's you," he said an instant later. "That software sale I saw on the boards. It's you. My God, Alisha, what are you trying to do?"

  I saw you in Beijing. I'm trying to learn whose side everyone is really on. Alisha bit the words off, hunching her shoulders up and pressing her chin to her chest. "A copy is on its way to you," she answered, avoiding the question he'd really asked. "I didn't know what else to do, Greg. I couldn't compromise Brandon, but we needed that software. If I make myself look rogue, we might be able to get a lot more information about the…" she took a deep breath, exchanging that for the word Sicarii. Even hidden by the noisy train, she didn't want to voice it aloud. "…than we've got now."

  "And you didn't go through me." Ice filled Greg's tone.

  Alisha winced, pulling her knees up toward her chest. "You wouldn't have let me, Greg. It's a bad situation—I can feel it—and you wouldn't have let me go into it."

  "I want you to get off that train at the next stop and stay there," Greg said harshly. Despite the turmoil in her stomach, Alisha found a little smile. There was nothing subtle about the sounds a train made, but the fact that Greg had recognized her mode of travel still amused her. "I'll meet you in twelve hours. We'll figure this out from there."

  "In twelve hours my auction time will have passed," Alisha said with a shrug. "I can't. I'm sorry, Greg."

  "Alisha." The commanding note slipped from Greg's voice, leaving concern behind. "You're going blind into what you think is a bad situation. We've got the software, we've got the prototype. You've done your job. Leave it alone. I don't want to see you get hurt."

  "I haven't finished it yet, sir." Alisha pulled out the honorific deliberately, knowing it would blur the line she walked between truth and lies. "I still don't know whether he's a clear and present danger, and if he is it's my responsibility to stop him. And, sir," she added regretfully, "you told me yourself that this operation came from above you. You don't have the authority to pull me."

  She heard the click of his teeth setting together, and could imagine his single short nod. "I'll talk to Director Boyer," he said after a few long seconds. "I do have the authority to instruct you to report in before you go charging into this hash. That's an order, Cardinal."

  "Yes, sir." Alisha hung up and took the battery out of the phone again. The train seat's headrest smelled faintly of old cleaning solution and older sweat, a sting that made her nose prickle. She'd laid two lines in her dangerous, ugly game now. The careers and even lives of people she cared about would depend on what she learned and how she used that knowledge.

  And the lives and well-being of hundreds, perhaps thousands or millions, of others she would never meet depended on her playing that ugly game, and making decisions she would have to live with, so that they could.

  "It's not about my ego, E," she whispered, knowing her friend would never hear, and might not understand even if she could. "It's about caring for something so much bigger than yourself you can hardly see it."

  A minute later, she got off the train at the airport, and began her circuitous route to Moscow.

  #

  Boyer was right. The safe house was derelict, empty for at least a decade, probably more. More, it had been badly used, in its day. Someone, most likely the KGB, had discovered it and shredded it from the inside out, searching for cameras and listening devices. The walls were raw now, pipes and electrical wires laid bare, and the floor was weak in spots, sub-flooring swollen with water under the torn-up carpet.

  But it would do. No one would be there for the decor, only for the software she promised to sell. Alisha wrapped her hand around the tiny flash drive, then slid it into her purse. There was already a weight in the handbag, suggesting a larger hard drive might be carried there. Brandon would know better, but no one else would.

  Alisha turned her wrist up, glancing at her watch. Four hours. No one would be fashionably late; there was no such thing in a world of espionage and illegal sales. A few might be early, but not this early. She slung her purse with its heavy cargo crosswise against her torso with her elbow pressing it to her ribs. It was hard to pull a bag carried that way off of someone, and the flexible steel cable in its slender strap made it almost impossible to cut easily. She locked the door behind her, more form than function and making a show of leaving the premises. If her bidders came early, a locked door certainly wouldn't stop them from accessing the old safe house, and if they were watching now, they would think she'd left.

  She called for a ride-share and a beaten-up Kia arrived a couple of minutes later, driven by a woman who looked like this was her only chance to escape four screaming children. Alisha paid her to drive almost an hour south, all the way back to Moscow's central square, but got out of the car under a gas station canopy less than a mile from the safe house. She worked her way back on foot, admiring the block of buildings the safe house was part of. They'd been elegant homes once, swooping roofs and tall windows that in some still had signs of people living in them. She slipped through alleys between those that didn't and found her way up to the rooftops, where the architecture provided more than adequate hiding. Alisha settled down with a pair of dully reflective binoculars held loosely in one hand, glad for the warmth of the summer afternoon. The same stakeout held in January would have been miserable, and footprints in the snow across the rooftops would have led any sky surveillance directly to her.

  A sporty red Jetta came zipping around the corner, braking hard. Alisha leaned forward, watching it. It was too sexy for the neighborhood, though not too expensive: the vehicles on the street and those that had driven through that morning were more reserved, dark colors and bigger engines. She settled back again with a little smile.
Decoy, she thought. Intended to get her attention while the real surveillance was done elsewhere.

  There was no sound of footsteps to warn her. Just the hard roundness of a gun muzzle being pressed against the soft spot at the base of her skull, covering the chip implanted there perfectly, and Frank Reichart's regretful voice: "I can't let you sell that software, Leesh."

  #

  The afternoon turned sticky, a prickle of sickness washing down Alisha's spine and following every nerve to its end, tingling hard enough to make her barely-healed soles ache with it. For an instant, she was tempted to bravado, to toss her head and say, You're going to have to shoot me, Frank.

  Except an inordinate percentage of shootings were pushed over the edge by the victim saying, 'go ahead, shoot me,' to people who weren't even trained to kill. Saying it to a man like Reichart would probably end with a bullet in her head. Alisha pressed her elbow harder against the weight in her purse and swallowed. Another chill swept through her, pushing warmth away and leaving cold sweat standing on her skin.

  "Are you really going to shoot me again, Frank?" Her voice was surprisingly steady, given that her heart felt like it was forcing its way into her throat. Alisha took a slow breath, willing calmness into the frantic beat. Concentrating on the flow of oxygen into her muscles. She would need it.

  Reichart breathed a laugh. "That won't work, Leesh. I'm not here to argue about who shot you. Come on." The gun muzzle didn't move. "Hand it over."

  Damn. The word whispered through Alisha's mind as she shook her head, barely a fraction of a movement. "I can't get the purse over my head with you holding the gun to me," she said. "I'm going to have to move." He'd have clobbered her with the gun already, if he didn't mind hurting her, Alisha thought. There was a chance she could fight, if she could get the gun away from her head.

  "Unzip the damned purse, Alisha," Reichart said dryly. "I don't need the whole thing. Won't go with my shoes."

  Alisha set her teeth together, frustrated that he'd seen through the shallow plan. "It's locked, Frank. You really think I'd be carrying this around with the bag open?"

  Reichart hesitated, no more than a breath of uncertainty. It was all she needed. Alisha twisted to the left, knowing Reichart would subconsciously expect any attack to come from the right, most people's dominant side. Her raised arm crashed into his wrists, lacking the force she needed to do damage: her seated position gave her none of the leverage or flexibility she could usually draw on. Still, it moved the weapon away from her skull and gave her an instant to get her legs under herself. She launched herself forward under the sound of Reichart's curse. He skittered back and she hit the rooftop with a grunt, rolling onto her back.

  Reichart brought the gun around again and she kicked up, connecting her booted toe with the nerve in the side of his wrist. His fingers went satisfyingly numb, clear from their sudden splay and the gun loosening in his hold. Alisha kicked the weapon again, sending it flying, and jumped to her feet. The weight banged against her hip, changing her balance, but Reichart only circled her warily, not pressing the attack as he shook the numbness from his hand.

  "Alisha, I need you to trust me."

  "Is that why you had me followed?" Alisha demanded. "Is that why you had me attacked? Why you just attacked me? Because you need me to trust you? News flash, Reichart. Holding a gun to my head? Not a good way to earn my trust. You're way too late." Something popped inside her chest, like a bit of cartilage had been held tight and came unexpectedly loose. Alisha inhaled, feeling like it was the first time in days she'd truly breathed deeply. There was a curious emptiness where the tightness had been, as if she'd held that knot inside her so long that she didn't know what to do without it.

  Its sudden absence gave her respite from caring, so ceaselessly, about Frank Reichart. There was no room for doubt or for regret in her now, just weariness that had grown for so long that it could no longer be contained.

  It was hideous. Alisha suppressed a shudder, hardly recognizing herself through that cool barrier. This was how he did it. This was how Reichart answered to the paycheck and not to any kind of higher ideal. She had never thought it was in her, the cold and calculating ability to judge a job for its monetary value, and then accept it without care for its moral code.

  She didn't like at all to find she was wrong. It laid open questions about herself—and about Reichart—that she wasn't prepared to face, much less answer. Anger splashed through her, bouncing off that inner cool so easily that it made her hands cold again, this time with uncertainty about herself.

  And Reichart's next words did nothing to alleviate that discomfort. "Alisha, that software can't be allowed on the open market. It's too dangerous."

  She barked a laugh. "Like you care. Who sent you, Frank? Don't tell me you're here out of the goodness of your heart. Somebody's paying you. I want to know who."

  He fell back a step, lowering his hands, palms out. Neither of them had stopped moving until then, though training kept them both crouched low, refusing to make spectacles of themselves against the Moscow skyline. "The Russians. You know that."

  "I don't know anything anymore," Alisha spat. She wasn't even sure she knew herself.

  Reichart moved in that instant of her own self-doubt. Launched himself forward as quickly and easily as a striking snake, the action so fluid Alisha barely thought to react. She twitched to the side, not enough to avoid him; the impact caught her in the ribs and sent her stumbling. Reichart rolled with it, coming to his feet. Alisha slid the purse off her torso, wrapping the leather-covered steel strap around her hand twice. It made for a good weapon, weighty and solid, and she and Reichart both thought of his gun at the same time.

  He dove for it, making a long lean shadow across the rooftop. Alisha went after him, giving her purse, with its heavy hard drive inside, a powerful swing.

  It connected just as he curled his fingers around the gun's butt, and even underhand on its upward arc, even with the padding offered by the purse's fabric, it split his temple. Reichart went down without a sound and Alisha waited for her own internal wince of sympathy.

  It never came.

  Cold all over, Alisha glanced at the sun, then her watch. It was nearly six: no time to get an unconscious man to the safe house. No way to do it, either, at least not without drawing attention. She could certainly carry him, but—she shook her head and simply ripped the lining from her purse, tearing the fabric into strips that she knotted around Reichart's ankles and wrists.

  There was still nothing in her, as she looked down at the bound man at her feet. No regret, no anger, no pain. I wanted it to hurt, she remembered thinking as she faced Brandon Parker. She'd broken through the coolness then, but it seemed to fill her now, a scar over her emotions. There wasn't even the lingering glee of battle, just blank resolve.

  Alisha shrugged, and went to finish the mission that had cost her soul.

  Chapter 28

  Almost nothing else could go wrong. Alisha sat in what had once been the safe house's study, watching the screen for the single surveillance camera she'd installed over the door. She'd made no attempt to hide it, nor was it attached to any kind of video recording system. Anyone who shied away from the camera wasn't a serious enough contender for the software to worry about. The rest would ignore it or smirk at it, as suited them.

  With Reichart out of the picture, she promised herself again, almost nothing else could go wrong.

  Almost. Boyer hadn't answered her calls when she'd tried putting them through. Erika had; she'd promised the corrupted copy of the software had gone directly into Greg's hands. Whether he'd passed it on to Boyer, copied or not, Erika didn't know. Alisha picked up her phone again, dialing Langley one last time in hopes of catching Boyer and learning whether or not they knew which side Gregory Parker was on. It was morning in Virginia; Boyer should be in. But Alisha only reached a pleasant-voiced secretary who told her the director was unavailable and offered to take a message. Alisha hung up without leaving one.

&n
bsp; The first arrival, just minutes before six, was Greg. Even in the grainy camera feed he looked thinner and more worn than he had the last time Alisha had seen him, only a few days previously. Maybe serving two masters, if indeed he did, was wearing on him, she thought. She hoped so.

  A trio of men she didn't know, not even by reputation, followed Greg. They were thick-shouldered and dapper at the same time. Mafia, Alisha thought, either Russian or Italian. It was a good sign to have them there. It meant outsiders were taking the auction notification on the boards seriously.

  On the other hand, it would have been easier to lay the investigation to rest had no one beyond the Sicarii and the CIA responded. Alisha shrugged one shoulder, folding her leg up to massage the tender sole of her foot. Easier was not in the job description. At least the Mafia's arrival—and that of the next trio that followed, this time an Asian woman flanked by two men—couldn't be construed as something actually going wrong. Alisha leaned in, frowning at the woman.

  No: she wasn't the one Reichart had sent after her, the woman Alisha had shared an airplane ride with and then fought on a building roof in Zurich. Alisha leaned back again, switching feet. The energized blood flow made her soles ache, but also warmed her whole body. She still felt removed from her own emotions, but the warmth began to energize her. She would need to be at the top of her game in just a few minutes.

  Brandon and Rafe arrived separately, the latter with a sneer of confidence that she imagined would go over poorly with those already waiting. She wouldn't be lucky enough to have them decide to eliminate the competition, but Rafe's cocky stride might set someone against him enough to make the bidding interesting.

  The thought jarred her, sending a spike of cold over her body. A matter of life and death—her own life and death—had been relegated to merely interesting inside her mind. The idea that accompanied it jolted her further: it wouldn't be terribly difficult to simply make the sale and disappear with the cash. Overlooking the minor detail of the explosive set into the base of her skull, Alisha reminded herself, but she'd never before been tempted to sell out.