Hammer of the Witches (The Covenant Chronicles Book 2)

by Kai Wai Cheah

  “Good,” she said. “We use an internal blockchain for record-keeping. Every computer on our blockchain network secures the blockchain and verifies the entries. No one can make changes to the records undetected, and our blockchain prevents retroactive edits. Every alteration will leave a record on the blockchain. There is no way to alter the records without anyone noticing.”

  The globe’s high-tech industries—banking, commerce, remittance, cryptocurrencies—used blockchains as their favored record-keeping and smart contract platforms. And now vigilantes were employing that tech.

  What is the world coming to?

  “It’s a very sophisticated setup,” I said.

  She nodded. “If paper records and physical inventory don’t match up with the blockchain, there’ll be a lot of explaining to do. It’s our way of ensuring internal transparency and preventing rogue operations.”

  “It didn’t prevent Chios.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” she snapped. “I’m giving you proof that we didn’t do anything. And if we do find evidence that damns anyone in Hexenhammer, I’ll give them to you. Fair enough?”

  The insinuation of guilt must have touched a nerve. I filed that tidbit away.

  “That’s fair,” I said. “Do you think there’s a split in your group?”

  “No, not at all. We vetted our members as carefully as we could, and we monitor the blockchain closely. There’s been no anomalous transfer of funds or equipment. At least, none that I’m aware of.”

  “Show me your records.”

  “I don’t have my phone on me right now,” she said. “It’s the only device I have with access to the blockchain. I’ll show it to you later when we talk to the ultras.”

  “All right.” I said. “I’m going to need the names and profiles of the people you’re investigating.”

  She tapped her holobuds. “I’ve got a list here.”

  “Send it.”

  She transferred it to my devices wirelessly. She must have been ready for this demand and prepared the information accordingly. It was a sign of trust: I’m showing you I’ve nothing to hide.

  As for whether she deserved that trust, the jury was still out.

  I sipped at my water. “Why did you recruit the ultranationalists?”

  She smiled thinly. “Look at what we do and what we stand for. What kind of people do you think we appeal to? Not moderates, surely. We can’t afford to exclude potential talent or condemn existing members just because they hold politically incorrect views.”

  In this line of work, you don’t get to choose what your allies believe in. More often than not, if you’re shooting at the same enemy, that’s enough reason to bring them on board. But they aren’t like you, and you should never treat them as such.

  “Do you trust them?”

  “I do.”

  “But we’re talking about them as though they’re suspects.”

  Her expression soured immediately. “Just what are you suggesting?”

  I set my utensils down.

  “I’ll be frank. We—the Agency—have been keeping an eye on you for a while. We’re not convinced you’ve got what it takes to play in the big leagues. Sure, you did good, but from what I’ve seen, your performance just doesn’t match up to our standards.”

  “We’re not like you,” she said, her voice quaking. “We don’t have your level of funding, training, resources, political support… We have nothing. Nothing. But we fought anyway.”

  “Yes, and you did good. But not good enough. How do we—how do I—know that you didn’t let in some random nutjob off the Net? Yes, you can say you vetted them, but your performance does not inspire confidence. Look at what happened in London for God’s sake. You damn near blew the entire op!”

  She gritted her teeth. She touched her hands to her head, as through trying to run them through her hair, before remembering she was still wearing a headscarf.

  “I own what I did in London. I’ll do better. But I don’t do vetting of recruits. Someone else does. Someone I trust. We run background checks, we cross-reference them against criminal databases, we investigate their friends and family… we don’t just recruit‘random nutjobs, as you say.”

  “So why are you talking about the ultras as though they were suspects?”

  Looking away, she muttered darkly under her breath. “This is… Look. I know what it looks like to you, okay? I know you think these ultras are loose cannons. I want to prove their innocence to you. Our innocence.”

  She was still defending her operatives. Admirable, but the naked emotion suggested she wasn’t completely certain of their loyalties.

  “And if you find proof of guilt?”

  She clenched her fists. Took a deep breath. Her brow furrowed. My question must have cut deeper than I thought.

  “If we find traitors within Hexenhammer, I’ll help you destroy them,” she said. “I promise.”

  “Fine. But no more amateur hour screw-ups, understand? When we’re in the field, you do exactly as I say. We do not need to be caught up in a manhunt.”

  “I understand.”

  I gave her a moment to cool off. And myself.

  “We good?” I asked.

  She inhaled deeply. Exhaled sharply.

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. Who are we meeting in Amarantopolis?”

  Her face settled into the same professional mien I’d seen the first time I’d met her.

  “Cyrus. He’s the head of our Hellas cell. Anything that Hexenhammer does in Hellas goes through him.”

  Nothing in the dossiers O’Connor sent me mentioned anyone named Cyrus.

  “What can you tell me about him?” I asked.

  “He was a conscript when World War Three broke out. He fought three armies down the length of Hellas and back up again. After the war, he continued his service in military intelligence. Today, the only thing he hates more than communists are Bahithoon. He’s rough around the edges; he can be brusque, but… he’s our people.”

  Hellas was the forgotten front of WWIII. Shortly after the first waves of Rhosian tanks rolled across the Fulda Gap and the North German Plain, the combined might of Arberia, Macedonia and Bolgharia descended on Hellas.

  The Eastern Bloc had sought to knock out Hellas early in the war to protect its southern flank. Instead, the Hellenes made the communists pay in blood for every inch of ground. They held the line at Amarantopolis and Thermopylae, long enough for the Atlantic Alliance to deliver reinforcements. And tactical nuclear weapons.

  After the war, Hellas followed the lead of every other Pantopian government and imported thousands of migrant workers from South Asia and the Near East to rebuild. While Hellas hadn’t faced the onslaught of nuclear and chemical weapons the way West Pantopia had, the current war in the Near East was driving a second wave of mass migration to Hellas.

  For now, the refugees were concentrated in camps on the outlying islands, with many migrants seeking to move on deeper into Pantopia. But there was talk of Pantopians closing off the borders, and I didn’t know how long that would last.

  Maybe the Hellenes would send the refugees back. Or maybe they would be allowed to settle down. Not my country. Not my concern. But it was Cyrus’s. The more I knew about him, the better.

  “What’s his role in Hexenhammer?” I asked.

  “He’s preparing our network for operations in Hellas. Setting up safe houses, keeping an eye on the news, identifying possible targets. That sort of thing.”

  “And how does he feel about Bahithoon?”

  “Absolutely loathes them. He sees the presence of Musafireen in Hellas as a covert long-term invasion. He wants them all out. Through deportation, you understand, not extermination. Even he doesn’t want mass murder.”

  I wondered if the last statement was for me, or if she were merely trying to reassure herself.

  “You said he’s an ultranationalist. Why is he working with, well, foreigners like you?”

  “We’re on the same side.
We’re not interested in invading his country, merely in restoring the sovereignty of all Pantopian nations and destroying evil. He can live with that.”

  As we finished our food, I raised my glass.

  “Yeia mas,” I said. To our health.

  She raised hers. “Fi sahitak.” Cheers.

  I sipped at the wine. “What’s the plan with Cyrus?”

  “I’m arranging to meet him tomorrow morning at ten o’clock at a cafe near my hostel. Are you coming with me?”

  I pursed my lips. It would be tempting to listen in, but with the authorities on high alert and Interpol acting weird…

  “I’ve got a better idea.”

  6. Players of the Game

  We spent the rest of the night walking the streets and preparing for the meet. When I returned to the hotel, I sent Eve’s list to O’Connor and studied the profiles she’d written up.

  There were twelve names. She tried to be thorough, but there were still plenty of gaps. Some members only had first names or nicknames. All had biographies, but most were brief paragraphs detailing prior service, skills and current positions in Hexenhammer. I had no doubt that at least part of that was Eve holding out on me, and if I tried to press her, she’d simply say that that was all the information she had.

  But if she was willing to provide this much information off the bat, she could be persuaded to give me more later.

  In the morning, I applied makeup, making my brows appear thicker and adding a hole mole on my left cheek, reinforcing the disguise with a pair of display spectacles. I left my holophone, currently associated with the Anderson identity, in my hotel room and hit the streets. When I was a safe distance from the hotel, I turned on my Agency-issue holobuds.

  I wished we had actual radios, but O’Connor refused to release them to me. This was, after all, simply an “assessment.” If something went wrong, the first thing the authorities would do would be to scour the phone logs in the area. An unusually long phone conversation between two people just a street away would attract the wrong kind of attention. We could not use burner phones on an op; these days everybody had to register their identities whenever they bought a phone, even if it were a last-gen dumb phone.

  We worked around that by using burner apps and rooted devices. Last night I altered my holobuds’ IMEI numbers, loaded them with fresh Agency-supplied nano SIM cards, and generated a throwaway number on my burner app just for this job. The International Mobile Equipment Identity number identified a specific device on a mobile network while the Subscriber Identity Module card did the same for the network subscriber. If the job went sour, I would have to change the IMEI number and the SIM card to kill the link to my cover identity.

  Eve told me she had already done this prior to meeting me. I hoped I could take her at her word.

  As in London, my buds had been hacked to allow me to turn the projectors off on command. With the buds switched on and the screen off, I swept the area a block around Eve’s hostel, checking for signs of surveillance. No loitering vehicles, no reflections off telescopic lenses, no suspicious people lingering in the area.

  Standing across the road from the hostel, I lit up a cigarette and took a shallow puff. I hated smoking, but it made excellent cover for action, especially in a country where smoking indoors was prohibited. Quite a few locals lit up, too, walking and puffing as they went about their day.

  A few minutes later, when I was certain there wasn’t anyone following me, I used the buds’ voice function to call Eve.

  “This is Fisher. All clear,” I said.

  “Okay. Coming out,” Eve replied.

  A moment later, Eve stepped out of her hostel. She had the glamour of a movie star, but she knew how to be low profile when she had to. Today she wore a conservative gray headscarf paired with a dark blouse and a skirt. I knew she was wearing holobuds under the scarf. She had slung a cheap pleather handbag around her left shoulder and positioned a pair of sunglasses over her forehead. She disappeared against the street, just another young woman on the street who appeared to be of Near Eastern descent.

  I took a final puff and put out my cigarette, storing it inside a cigarette case. Eve turned right and walked down the street. I followed, matching her pace. Meandering down the pavement, I glanced at storefronts, people, the road. I was just another tourist taking in the sights and sounds; nothing to see here.

  An hour ago, I had swept the block for signs of surveillance. Now, I was doing the same, covering her back as she made her approach.

  The city was on edge. I read the tension in the bodies of its citizens. A Turkish storekeeper smiled at passers-by, but his wary eyes bore through everyone he saw. Clips adorned the pants pockets of a few individuals, betraying the presence of aethertools or folding knives. A handful of men glanced at Eve and just as quickly looked away.

  We wound our way to our destination, walking in an ever-narrowing circle. The multiple turns provided ample opportunities to check my six to identify possible tails. There was still no sign of danger, but you could never allow yourself to be too sure.

  An hour later, Eve arrived at Meira’s Coffee House. The signboard was in Hellenic and Anglian, the clientele a cosmopolitan mix of locals and tourists. There were no seats left outside.

  “I’m going in,” she said.

  “Roger. I’ll stay outside.”

  She passed through the swinging double doors. I moved on, finding an ouzeria with plenty of empty outdoor tables. I angled myself to face Meira’s and scanned the menu.

  There were plenty of finger foods and ouzo on offer, but I had already had breakfast, and I was not going to drink on the job. No coffee, so I went with fruit juice, an in-house blend of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and cranberries. As I paid the waiter, I began to wonder what I was in for, but it was too late for regrets.

  “I’m in place,” I said.

  “Copy.”

  ***

  Eve hated being late. This morning, she had compensated by waking up an hour early. Which meant she was now thirty minutes early.

  She positioned herself at a table at the far end of the bustling cafe and placed her bag on her lap.

  Her black scarf and the position of her bag were her go-ahead signal. With every active Hexenhammer member needing to change their faces every so often, it was better to rely on messages and signals than facial recognition. She thought that Luke might have understood that… but then he had a point about needing to know about a new face, too.

  She ordered a cup of coffee to secure her position in the cafe and then turned her attention on the crowd. Every now and then she fiddled with her holophone the way women did all the time, just to keep up appearances.

  Presently, a man in a light brown coat entered the cafe. He was old—older than his years. Scars webbed across his face. He walked with a pronounced limp on his right side, and his right arm dangled nervelessly from his shoulder. But he had his pride: he kept his back straight, and his eyes were bright and clear.

  “Luke, Cyrus is here. He’s the old man who just entered.”

  “Roger.”

  Cyrus scanned the room, finding Eve. She waved him over. Cyrus carefully hobbled to her, easing around people and furniture. She took his arm and gently sat him down.

  “Efkaristo,” he said, his voice a little too loud for comfort. Thank you. “You’re looking well.”

  “You, too.”

  In the final days of the war an artillery shell had gone off too close to Cyrus. The blast and shrapnel wrecked everything below the right knee, cut half the nerves of his right arm and permanently destroyed his hearing in his right ear. The doctors had pumped him full of drugs and ambrosia, but there was only so much they could do.

  In truth, most of the damage could be repaired with modern technology. He was just too much of a stubborn old goat to start now.

  “I see you like dressing up like our eastern neighbors,” Cyrus said.

  He stared intently at her lips. Eve slowed down her speech, caref
ully articulating her words.

  “In times like this, it’s the one disguise the police won’t dare to examine.”

  He laughed. “True, true.”

  After placing his order, Cyrus asked, “This place is secure, yes?”

  As far as she knew, nobody had followed her in. However, her holophone was recording the conversation. Luke had insisted on it. Cyrus would object to the latter, but he didn’t need to know about Luke.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Good.” Leaning in, he said, “If I get my hand on the karioli who betrayed us, I will choke the life out of him if that is the last thing I do.”

  “Betrayed? What do you mean?”

  “What else could it be? Who else but a traitor would know our name and know how to pin the blame on us? In their ‘manifesto,’ they used all the right words. ‘Globalist tyrants,’ ‘Musafireen rapists and invaders,’ ‘Phosterian civilization.’ The same language we use among ourselves.”

  “The same language the more… outspoken elements of the Neo-Right use.”

  “Exactly. Now, I know you wanted us to be secular, but we are majority Phosterian. They are painting us as a Phosterian terrorist group no different from the Wahi State.”

  “I heard the police are cracking down on you.”

  “Yes, yes. I see their agents everywhere now.” He leaned in. “The only reason I’m here today is to meet you. After this, I’m going underground.”

  Eve nodded. “Understood. I have friends in the Western intelligence services. They think you did Chios.”

  His face tinged pink. His eyes blazed.

  “Nonsense. An operation like that needed manpower, firepower, resources, training… Our cell doesn’t come close.”

  “Could you elaborate?”

  “Our mission is primarily support. Moving supplies, identifying targets, tracking possible criminal and activities on the darknet. Not operations. We don’t even have access to the kind of heavy weapons and equipment used at Chios.” He sighed. “Speaking of Chios, we lost a man.”