“We’re finally beginning to see the face of the enemy, and we’re being told to back off?” I said.
“Not my call. Okay? I’m seriously going out on a limb here. They wanted to fire you guys and confiscate the airship. I had to talk them into letting you stay and keep your assets.”
“Will,” Eve said quietly, “if the enemy has so much influence over the media and the police, have you considered the possibility that they have influence over the Program?”
A chill fell across the room.
O’Connor pursed his lips. Sighed.
“I’m going to be straight with you. I won’t say no. I can’t. I’ve got no proof either way. All I will say is this: be very careful about who you share that thought with.”
“This seems awfully familiar,” Pete said. “When we were closing in on Sheikh Fahad, we were told to back off, too.”
“Like I said, no proof. I can’t launch a witch hunt based on suspicions alone.”
“So now what?” I asked.
“Officially? Don’t get into trouble. Don’t poke your head up. Stay under the radar until the heat dies down.”
“Unofficially?”
“Don’t get caught.”
***
The team dispersed shortly afterward. Pete and the others went off to perform their chores for the day. Eve left to check on the hackers. I followed.
As we headed to the stairs, she said, “We have to redouble our propaganda efforts. We need to get the people on our side.”
“I don’t know how much good that will do.”
“What do you mean?”
“The current narrative is that Hexenhammer is a far-right Phosterian terrorist organization and that DW attacked the Hagia Aletheia. If we hadn’t stopped the attack, the narrative would be the usual DW boogeyman striking Pantopia again.
“Since we stopped them though? In the holiest church in the world no less? It reinforces the idea that Hexenhammer is a Phosterian organization hostile toward Bahithoon. Never mind the attackers were terrorists. The narrative is still going to be fundamentalist Phosterians against hardline Bahithoon. A far-right backlash against what they call an invasion. Even if the enemy failed this time, the narrative will still be the same.”
Eve froze.
“My God…”
“Yeah. No matter what happens, Hexenhammer is still stuck with the label of ‘far-right Phosterian terrorist organization.’ The only sympathy you can expect will be from the far right. The mainstream will hate you regardless.”
“What can we do?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. This is not my kind of war.”
She continued walking down the steps. “Why didn’t you bring it up earlier?”
“What you said about Will. Let’s just say I have similar suspicions. He’s a good guy, but he’s got to report this contact to his bosses. Hell, he might have recorded the call for all we know. I want to keep my cards close to my chest.” I looked into her eyes. “You’re the only one I can trust.”
She met my eyes with an unwavering gaze. “You can count on me.”
“Thanks.”
The lounge had been transformed into the hackers’ den. Slates covered the tables. Wires crawled across the floor, feeding into sockets and strange plastic boxes. Fans whirred noisily. I had no clue what I was looking at. Probably the hardware the hackers had requested.
The hackers themselves were spread out across the lounge, seated at the furniture or lying on the floor. Most were fast asleep. The others were groggily eating breakfast or staring at screens. They exchanged greetings with Eve as she passed.
Frank was sprawled across a sofa, snoring gently. Eve kicked him lightly in the foot. He jerked awake.
“Good morning,” Eve said.
“Ah,” he said. “Good morning. You too, Luke.”
I nodded. “How’s progress?”
His smile illuminated the room.
“We’re inside Interpol.”
Zeta: The Yellow Ghost
The handler bounced his foot off the ground. It was the only sign of nervousness he dared to show.
The email from his boss had been succinct and to the point. Lin is coming to meet you. Lin’s message was equally brief: Be at the Odeon Cafe tomorrow at 1700. Come alone.
The handler had never met the man before. Didn’t even know what he looked like. Lin hadn’t bothered to ask. It was a message from Lin: I know what you look like; you can’t hide from me.
Nevertheless, the handler tried to get the best seat in the house. That meant taking a seat at the far end at the entrance. The angle afforded him a modicum of concealment from people walking through the door, but the windows negated that advantage. Anyone could peer through the glass and see him sitting there. And shoot him in the head.
The handler watched the cafe, maintaining a studiously bored expression on his face. If they wanted to clean him today, he at least wanted to see death coming.
Soft music piped from the speakers—too eclectic and too modern for him to recognize. A waitress in a white shirt, red bow tie and matching apron circulated among the tables, collecting and delivering plates and glasses. A group of young men and women in casual shirts and jeans argued furiously about some trivial point of philosophy, alternating between wide-mouthed laughter and intense monologues. Perhaps they were artists or intellectuals seeking to absorb the impressions of their comrades that had haunted the cafe for a century—and still do. An expat sat in a booth by himself, his attention divided between his slate and holophone, his poor accent immediately marking him as a Hesperian.
There was no sign of the man the Organization called the Yellow Ghost.
At ten minutes after nine, the handler’s phone vibrated against his wrist. Caller ID showed a long string of digits—no doubt a one-use-only number. The handler answered the call.
“This is Lin,” the caller said.
“How did you get my number?” the handler demanded.
The Yellow Ghost laughed.
“Never mind,” the handler said.
“Change of plans,” Lin said. “I am going to give you directions. You will follow. Understood?”
The handler gulped down the last of his coffee.
“Yes.”
Lin sent him on a long and circuitous route through Zurich. At every waypoint, Lin called him and gave him a new destination. It seemed like Lin was sending him to random places, but the handler knew that the route was designed to flush out anyone following him.
The handler obeyed, of course, but all the same he kept looking for his mystery man. He glanced at reflections in windows and traffic mirrors, checked his flanks whenever he made a turn and studied the cars passing him by, trying to deduce a pattern from the sea of traffic around him.
He saw nothing.
For the umpteenth time, the phone vibrated again.
“Head down the street and turn right,” Lin said. “Wait for me at the ticket office of the tram station.”
The handler was now in Central, one of the city’s major transportation nodes. To his left, pedestrians walked along the eastern bank of the Limmat River. Tall, narrow windows belonging to tall, narrow buildings stared down at him.
The road split into a crooked Y. The tram station occupied the intersection. The handler crossed one last zebra crossing and entered the tram stop.
Where would Lin come from? Schroders or the Central Plaza Hotel, just across the road? Or perhaps he was coming from across the Limmat, strolling down the bridge? Central was wide open, and with so many people, Lin could come out of—
As if by magic, the crowd parted in front of the handler, revealing a short Han man in a black windbreaker and blue jeans. His clothing, his body language, even his posture mirrored the people around him. But his dark eyes were cold and hard and flat.
“It’s me,” Lin said.
The handler heaved a sigh of relief. If the Yellow Ghost let you see him coming, he wasn’t here to kill you.
Probably.
Both men set off again on yet another surveillance detection route. Lin treated the handler with supreme indifference, instead scanning everything and everybody around him. Lin looked at everything a tourist would—shop fronts, cars, consumer goods behind store fronts—in the process examining mirrors, reflections, blind spots and traffic. He held his head and eyes at precise angles, his body language telling people he was looking at something while he studied something else in his peripheral view. Lin’s moves were so natural, so subtle, only the handler’s training let him know what Lin was really doing.
“Relax,” Lin said. “We just need to be sure we’re not being followed.”
Lin spoke with a distinct Anglian accent, so clear and precise the handler wondered if he had an implant.
The handler had expected a monster. What he got was someone… unremarkable. If he were in Beijing or Hong Kong, he wouldn’t have given Lin a second glance, and even here, in Pantopia, the man seemed to just fade into the background, as though he were a long-time resident who just happened to have a somewhat different skin tone. It was like he was a ghost.
But that was not where he’d earned his nickname. The handler had heard stories about the Organization’s activities in Afrique. Every decade or so, there seemed to be some new revolution or tumult on the continent, and the Organization was there to take advantage of the chaos. He’d heard stories that Lin had been the Organization’s point man there in the past few years and had carved a bloody swathe through the savannas and jungles of the Dark Continent. Local assets had called him the Yellow Ghost, and Lin allowed the nickname to stick.
The Yellow Ghost led the handler through a series of spirals, using every opportunity for countersurveillance, eventually taking him back to Central. To the Central Plaza Hotel.
Lin had reserved two seats at the restaurant. The handler discovered that all the walking had worked up an appetite. The restaurant offered a diverse selection of grilled dishes. After the men had made their orders, Lin looked at the handler’s face, as though acknowledging him for the first time.
“How are you doing?” Lin asked.
“Me?”
“Yes. Your nominal employers. Are they treating you well?”
“Ja. They don’t suspect who I’m working for.”
“That’s not what I’m asking about.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean your work. Are you coping well? Can you handle the workload? These are difficult times, I imagine.”
The handler didn’t know how to respond. It felt like a rug had been pulled out from under his feet.
“I’m fine,” the handler replied.
“Good. And your child? Gretchen, yes? I understand she’s in kindergarten.”
“She’s… good.”
“‘Good’,” Lin echoed. “Is she making friends? Any problems in school?”
The handler wondered where Lin was going with this.
“Yes. No, I mean, she’s making friends. No problems so far.”
“Good. And you have Maria at home to look after your child when you’re away. You’re a lucky man.”
The handler frowned. “Are you threatening my wife and daughter?”
“Not at all. Our employees’ well-being is extremely important to us. Their families most of all. Family is why we do what we do. Who doesn’t want a brighter future for his family?”
The handler blinked. He was completely discombobulated. Lin sounded sincere enough, but in this line of work, there was no way to be completely sure.
“Besides,” Lin said, “I don’t make threats. I end them.”
“What do you want?” the handler demanded. “I thought you wanted to talk business.”
Lin shook his head. “Not here. Not now.”
Dinner was surreal. Lin was supposed to be the Organization’s best cleaner. He was the one who made any problem go away, be it a leak, an uncooperative asset, a low-performing agent. By the time he was through, there would be nothing left of the problem. Nothing but what he wanted others to see.
Yet here he was, making small talk about family, world affairs and the economy.
But it wasn’t quite right either. His questions felt scripted. His emotional effect was shallow, superficial, like an alien masquerading as a human by stringing phrases together into sentences, coherent to the casual listener, but lacking something essential. Something like empathy.
The handler chanced a glimpse into Lin’s eyes. Something cold and reptilian looked back. Whatever it was that lived in there, it wasn’t human. Not anymore.
After dinner, Lin guided him to the hotel’s piano bar. When they entered, the live band was in the middle of a lively piece. It sounded like jazz, but the handler didn’t have an ear for such things.
In a corner booth, Lin placed his phone on the table and activated an app.
“I’m running a jammer,” Lin whispered, so softly the handler had to strain his ears to hear him above the music. “We’re clean.”
“Are we going to talk business now?” the handler asked.
Lin nodded.
“Yes. The organization has a problem. You have a problem. I’m here to help. Tell me what’s going on.”
The handler blinked.
“You’re here… to help?”
“I didn’t fly halfway around the world and spend so much time walking the streets of Zurich with you just to kill you.” Lin leaned forward. “We know of your troubles with Hexenhammer. The organization has given you one last chance to deal with them. I’m here to help. What do you need?”
“Eve is more… resourceful than I thought. She has allies. I don’t know if they’re new Hexenhammer members or someone else, but I’ve seen the footage of the Hagia Aletheia strike. They were pros. They had to have a military background.”
Lin looked bored. “I’m not here to listen to excuses.”
“Look: these people don’t fit the Hexenhammer profile. Hexenhammer doesn’t have this kind of direct action capability. They must be a state actor. Maybe Hesperians. This isn’t the first time we’ve clashed with them either. I need access to investigative resources in Hellas, Germania, Italia. There has to be a thread we can use to track their movements.”
“You have the Interpol task force.”
“Yes, but we don’t need them connecting the dots back to us. I need people who report directly to me, with investigative authority across Pantopia. Police, military, intelligence, everything we have.”
Lin nodded. “Very well. Is that all?”
“There is… one more thing.”
“What?”
“One of our assets claimed that Eve has covenanted with a god. Sol Invictus. Heard of anything like that before?”
For a fraction of a second, Lin went completely still.
“Do you have independent verification?” Lin asked.
“No. Just his word.”
Lin pursed his lips. “If you do, tell me straight away. If you can capture her alive, do so.”
“What’s the matter? Do you know something about it?”
Lin shook his head. “We—the Organization—only has rumors to work with.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“That there are higher-order beings, more powerful than daimons, seeking covenanters.”
“What the…”
“I cannot verify them. Yet. But the Organization is keenly interested in this phenomenon.” Lin licked his lips. “What can she do?”
“The asset told me she can transmute her soul into aetherium.” He paused. “He also said her male partner covenanted with Hakem Dunya. That one has the powers of the Void at his disposal.”
Lin shook his head slowly. “If this is true… it explains what happened at the Hagia Aletheia. We cannot have them subverting the Organization’s plans. If it’s too inconvenient to take them alive, so be it. But if we can… we should make it a priority.”
“Understood.”
Lin steeple
d his fingers and rested his elbows on the table.
“The Organization wishes this matter wrapped up soon, but management is not pleased with your handling of the situation. Convince me you shouldn’t relinquish control.”
“I have achieved our strategic objectives, haven’t I? I just need more time and resources.”
“We don’t waste time and resources on nonperforming assets.”
“Hexenhammer is almost finished. Pantopia is turning against the right, and they are rallying around the Afarit even after Hagia Aletheia. Everything is according to plan.”
“Hexenhammer countered the Hagia Aletheia attack. That woman giving the speech was Eve, yes?”
“She still played into our hands. We could use the speech she delivered to accelerate our own narrative.”
“She complicated the narrative. She made Hexenhammer appear more than just cartoon villains. There are elements in society that will be sympathetic toward them. Why, these people are on Memet and uStream as we speak, praising Hexenhammer to the heavens.”
The handler waved his hand dismissively. “They’re just a small group of radicals. They can be dealt with using Pantopia’s hate speech laws.”
“It only takes a small group of radicals to change society. And those radicals are migrating to alternative technology platforms. These sites are hosted in countries with strong free speech laws. Attacking them all will take time and resources you don’t have.”
“I just need one more chance,” he said. “That’s why you’re here, right?”
“I’m here to see if you merit that chance. Tell me your plan to deal with Hexenhammer.” Lin raised an eyebrow. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Tell me.”
The handler had known this was coming. He trotted out his presentation, crafted this morning and rehearsed in the afternoon. At the end of it, Lin nodded.
“Very well. We’ll get you what you need.”
“Thank you.”
Lin stood to go.
“Remember this: there will be no second chances. You do not want me visiting you again.”
Hammer of the Witches Page 37