She found Test Chamber C-7 exactly as she had requested it, with one small but significant addition: He was here.
Nasim allowed herself only a moment of surprise, and that remained firmly beneath the surface. “Frank,” she called coolly as she entered the viewing room for C-7. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon. I thought you were still on leave.”
Francis Santiago turned from the window, green eyes crinkled and teeth flashing in that smile of his. It didn’t seem to have aged like the rest of him did. He was bald and lanky, like God had tried to make too much man with not enough material, but that smile was always firing on all cylinders. If Nasim hadn’t known what was hidden behind it, she’d find it roguishly charming.
“Nas,” he said, using the pet name he knew she hated but in a voice that was all warm and chummy. “Little birdy told me you’d be coming down here.”
She made a mental note to find that bird and have it plucked. “Well, here I am. Is there something you wanted?”
Santiago shrugged. “Nah. Just wanted to watch the show. See if it worked.”
“Ah.” Nasim moved past him, fingertips pressed together, careful never to show him her back. “You wanted to see if you were right, you mean.”
“Oh, I know I’m right. About that.” He pointed through the window. “But the blood thing was your idea. Not your best, if I can be so bold. Doesn’t really work that way, as I’ve said --”
“As you’ve said.” She bit off her words with a sharp smile. He’s here to watch me fail. Well, she’d just have to make sure that didn’t happen. “Well, take a seat,” Nasim said, gesturing to one of the many chairs in the viewing room.
“I’m good standing.”
Very well. Nasim turned to the window. Beyond, in Test Chamber C-7, stood a pedestal. Mounted on the pedestal was the object Santiago had convinced her to spend resources retrieving. His reasoning had been sound, his credit arguably unquestionable. It had been easy to agree with him then; now, however, Nasim wondered if it hadn’t been the greatest mistake of her life. The moment she let the mad dog off his leash.
To hell with it. It was a conversation she had been meaning to have sooner rather than later. “Before we start,” she said, turning from the window. “I’d like to know what the hell you’ve been playing at.”
Santiago cocked an eyebrow. He was standing with hands in his pockets, looking utterly unfazed save for that one eyebrow. “To what are you referring?”
“London. Hong Kong. New York. Houston. Thefts. Trails of bodies. Do I need to go on?”
“Oh,” he said. “That.”
She grit her teeth at his nonchalance. “Yes, that. Human lives. Murders. You don’t deny it?”
Santiago lowered his chin slightly so that he was looking at her through his eyebrows. “No, Nas, I don’t. I seem to recall an agreement we reached some thirteen years ago, when you asked me for help and I named my terms. I told you that it would be dirty business, that you wouldn’t like some of the methods I would have to use. But in the end, I said, it would all be worth it. A few lives lost to save a whole lot more. And -- correct me if I’m wrong -- you agreed with me. Did you not?”
If it had been anyone else speaking to her in that way, they’d be on their ass in the Paris streets right now. But this was Francis Santiago, so she merely counted to three and nodded. “Yes. But I clearly underestimated the degree of psychopathy that I was dealing with. I gave you the go-ahead for a single operation in Chicago, and all this time you’ve been running around behind my back, committing global thefts and killing people!”
“Thieves.”
“People, Frank! Dead people turning up with their fucking faces melted off! Tell me, in what reality did that seem like a good idea to you? In what twisted framework were you able to justify any of that?”
He chuckled, an easy sound, warm as butterscotch. “You know, you should actually be thanking me.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear about it.”
“The project was stalling, Nas. We both knew it. Research has been spinning their wheels for almost a decade. Timid minds got us into a rut, and when you find yourself at the bottom of a hole you don't keep digging. You change your approach. So I did. I took some risks and went after what your top minds were too afraid to take.”
She gaped at him, unable to hide her disbelief. “And you honestly believe that justifies what you’ve done? The people you’ve killed?”
“I did what I did to protect us. Protect Pharos and all that we’ve been working towards.”
“Without telling me.”
“Figured I’d ask for forgiveness later, when I had some deliverables worth your time.”
Nasim snorted. “Like a pile of bodies, for instance.”
Santiago shrugged. “My rules were very clear when I hired those thieves you're so broke up over. No mess, no bodies, no noise. Nothing to call attention and possibly point the authorities back our way. Most of them were able to abide by those rules. The ones that weren’t…” He shrugged. There was not the slightest hint of remorse in his voice. “I dealt with.”
“And, in so doing, brought the FBI to our doorstep. Was it worth it?’’
He nodded to the object on the other side of the window. “That was. The others will help point us in the right direction. Research is already taking a look at them. Together, we might just get this project back on track. And as for the FBI -- the way I hear it, you’ve already taken care of that.’’
“Barely. I’ve barely pulled us out of the fire that you started.”
Santiago held up his hands like a man turning himself in. “I overstepped. Message received, Nas. Next time, I’ll be laser-focused on clear communication. Now, can we get on with the show?”
“No, Frank, we cannot. You've been going behind my back for years. You’ll explain yourself and be damned grateful I’m even giving you the chance.”
He sighed and, in a tone of suffering patience, said, “What more do you need me to explain?”
“The Ark.”
Santiago gave her a blank stare. “What about it?”
Nasim forced herself to match his flat tone and suppress her own impatience. “I take it you’ve heard what happened in Sinai?”
“I have. And, not to poke a dragon in the eye, Nas, but -- well, I did voice my reservations when Marty proposed we go after it. I told you both, the old ones are always going to be a huge risk. Powerful, but unstable. The Ark had been left out in the wild for too long. Even if you had managed to bring it in, there’s no guarantee we would have been able to use it, or that it wouldn’t have ended up killing us all. Or worse.”
“Is that why you worked so hard to steal it out from under me?”
For the first time, Santiago looked confused. But was it just an act? “What’re you talking about?”
“Your plan, Frank. What exactly was it? Convince me not to go after the Ark, then hire Richard Álvarez and Kai Villeneuve to swoop in and steal it for yourself? And what if they failed? Did you really expect those terrorists to finish the job? Because you fucked that up as well. So really, Francis: What were you thinking?”
Santiago’s hands curled into fists, but Nasim wasn’t worried. Not yet. “I may not have believed in the Ark, Nas, but I’m still a team player. I would never sabotage one of our operations.”
She folded her arms. “Convince me, then. Nobody outside Pharos knew about the Ark, and you’re the only one who could have gotten as close as Ibis did.”
“Who’s Ibis?”
“Tell me. The truth. Francis. If not you, then who?”
“I don’t know,” he growled. “I believe in this project as much as you. More, when you think about it. And Marty was my friend. Whatever happened to him in the end, whatever it was that pushed him off the ledge, it had nothing to do with me. Hell, if you had brought me in to finish the job instead of shanghaiing Estelle into doing your dirty work, things might have turned out a lot differently.”
His earnestness was convincing
. Nasim decided to double-down. “So you didn’t kill Martin?”
This was met with a ringing silence, during which she could actually watch his face grow red. “How fucking dare you,” he whispered. His voice was low and shaking. “Marty was my brother, and Estelle might as well be my own God damn daughter.”
“Martin found out about what you’ve been up to. About the murders. He made that much clear in his final message to Estelle. Is that why you killed him?”
“I didn’t kill Marty!” Francis bellowed. His voice was like a bomb in the small room, and for a moment Nasim thought he was about to charge her. Instead, he took a deep breath and managed to get himself under some semblance of control. “I’m the only reason any of you have gotten this far. You know damn well that without me, Pharos would be sunk. Your dreams for a better world? Dead. So don’t you dare stand there and accuse me of this bullshit, after all I’ve sacrificed, when what it really comes down to is your own incompetence.”
“My --?”
“Marty had clearly lost it! You should have pulled him out of the field, put him under observation! Instead you wait until he’s dead and gone, only to send his daughter into the same damn place that killed him.”
He spun on his heel, turning his back to her. Nasim stared at him, taken aback. This reaction, this…pouting, was uncharacteristic. “You’re actually upset about this.”
“I get my hands dirty, Nas, but I’m not heartless. Marty didn’t want her wrapped up in any of it.”
“And yet you encouraged her to start digging, the day of her father’s funeral. To become involved. I don’t understand, Frank. I regret what happened to her, but what is it, exactly, that you think I did wrong? You pushed her into this as much as I did.”
He turned to face her fully, and there was a confused frown wrinkling his brow. “What? I didn’t -- I don’t…”
This time she knew it wasn't an act. “My God,” Nasim breathed. Her bewilderment transformed to genuine shock. “There really is some of you left, isn’t there?”
Santiago blinked, pressed both palms against his eyes and rubbed vigorously. When he dropped his hands, his eyes were red. But his vision seemed clearer. “Estelle has promise. I directed her towards you and Pharos because she can be a good asset, given time.”
The change was instant and total. Whatever conflict, whatever confusion she had glimpsed in him, was now gone. In its place was the cool, confident swagger that she recognized as that other Francis Santiago. The one she didn’t like to deal with, but was forced to if she hoped to see Pharos succeed.
“Now,” he said, enunciating very clearly. “Are we finished with this interrogation?”
Were they? Nasim studied him, studied herself, wondering what she had learned, if anything. Santiago had readily accepted responsibility for the murder of those thieves, yet so vehemently denied involvement in Martin Kingston’s death and the Sinai debacle. Did that mean he was actually telling the truth? Or was he simply weighing his options, taking the hits he could absorb and using that credibility to deflect those he knew would be KOs?
“Somebody inside Pharos tried to sabotage me in Ethiopia,” she said slowly. “Somebody has been working against me. I intend to find out who, and why. Right now you’re the prime suspect, Francis, and it’s going to remain that way until the evidence says otherwise.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
“And as for your extracurricular activities,” she continued. “Let me make it absolutely clear, since it apparently needs clarification: This is my project. You don't make moves without coming to me first. You have no authority that does not come from me. So next time you feel like running off and doing something reckless, you find the time to knock on my door. Understood?”
“Perfectly.”
And that was that. Until her suspicions could be proven to be anything more than that, Nasim couldn’t afford to move against him. Loathe though she was to admit it, even to herself, she knew that without him there would likely be no Pharos. The worst part was, he knew it too. Santiago knew how valuable his mind was, how irreplaceable, even if neither of them fully understood it.
At the same time, he had been chided. He knew now that his actions did not escape her gaze, even when he thought he was being covert. Maybe that would be enough to keep him in check, make him think twice about going behind her back again. At the very least, it would buy her time to make up for her own carelessness and get ahead of him. Ahead of whatever it was he was planning. Because if there was one thing that Nasim had been certain of from the start, it was that Francis Santiago could not be trusted.
He gestured to the window behind her. “So. You going to start the party or not?”
Nasim turned to face the window, finally presenting her back to him. This had better work, after all the blood that’s been shed.
And if it did work? Well, that would just mean Santiago had been right about the value of the object, which in turn would vindicate all the things he had done to get it, which would all but negate what small victory she had achieved in the course of this conversation. Even if it didn’t work, it would be another win for him, another I-told-you-so. One way or another, he could walk out of this room believing that he was on top. That she still needed him. That was why he had come: to bear witness to her powerlessness.
Fortunately, she had an ace up her sleeve.
She slipped one hand into her pocket, retrieving the heavy, ancient iron ring and slipping it onto a finger.
“What’s that?”
Nasim smiled inwardly, detecting the note of surprise -- and maybe concern? -- in Santiago’s voice. She’d changed the rules of the game and it had thrown him. Good. Let him wonder about his place. Let his confidence crack.
She ignored him, instead concentrating on the object in Test Chamber C-7. She drew a deep breath, exhaling through her nose, centering herself. It wasn’t easy to do with Santiago making the back of her neck prickle, but years of practice helped her along, and soon she had become relaxed and clear-headed.
Focus. Feel it within you. Imagine a thread, reaching out…
She let her eyes drift, moving of their own accord, coming naturally to rest on the hollow sockets that looked back at her from behind the window. The moment that happened, she felt a spark deep within her. The excitement that followed nearly threw her out of her relaxed state, but Nasim was able to let it pass her by as harmless as a gentle breeze.
Reaching out…
Her right hand floated up, independent of any conscious command on her part. It simply felt natural, reflexive. It was what she needed to do. The ring on her finger felt warm.
She was aware of Santiago moving up to stand beside her. Nasim let his presence pass her by, did not allow herself to become distracted. Her focus remained on those hollow eyes.
Reaching out…
What had begun as a spark ignited, triggering ripples of flame that swept through her veins and along bundles of nerves to explode in the back of her brain. Nasim saw a burst of color and geometric shapes that defied three dimensions, crystalline and vivid for a single unchanging instant, and then they were gone from her sight. An echo of electricity bounced back to her across space.
On the other side of the window, mounted on the pedestal, the crystal skull began to glow with a pinkish luminescence. It emanated from within the cranium and was channeled out through the eye sockets in laser-like beams of pure white, beams that seemed to enter directly into her eyes and form a solid link between her mind and that of the skull.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Santiago muttered.
Hold onto that link.
It was like trying to hold onto a live wire. The pink glow of the crystal skull began to ripple, shifting towards red, scarlet, crimson, deepening, becoming violet, now a black non-light that filled the clear crystal like liquid smoke. Yet the eyes remained alight, burning with pure white.
Test Chamber C-7 darkened, until the only source of light were those two pale glowing eyes. Nasim held
their gaze, unable to look away if she had wanted to. Something was unfolding in her mind, vast shapes and constructs of data, webs interlinked across space, algorithms and waves collapsing into nodes. And in the blackness of the test chamber, lines of golden light began to trace through the air, connecting to form diagrams -- symbols -- shapes -- a map --
Something popped behind Nasim’s eyes, and it all collapsed, the golden light and the darkness rushing back into the crystal skull. In an instant it was no more remarkable than a hunk of quartz, and Test Chamber C-7 looked as it had before she entered the room.
Nasim blinked away hot tears -- no, not tears. Reaching up, she touched the corner of her eye. Her finger came away red with blood. More began to flow from her nose, steady and thick. She wiped it on a sleeve, noticing as she did so that the dull grey of the ring on her finger had become somewhat brighter, closer to silver.
“Well,” Santiago said, looking at her appraisingly. “I’m man enough to admit when I was wrong. And, boy, was I wrong. Damn good show, Nas.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Nearly had it.”
Her head was pounding, her heart beating as if she’d just sprinted a mile. Nasim barely noticed, barely even registered Santiago’s touch. Her attention remained on the crystal skull, now silent. She idly twisted the ring around her finger, tried to remember what the skull had shown her, what she had felt -- it had been so powerful, so vivid, so very nearly clear…
No good. It was gone like water down a drain.
Nearly had it. Santiago was right about that much. And, as anyone who knew anything about Nasim al-Faradi could tell you, give her an inch and you might as well give her the whole damn world.
One way or the other, she’d get what she wanted. And the world would thank her for it.
Acknowledgments
Writing is often a lonely task, but it rarely happens in a vacuum. This story wouldn’t exist without the help and support of some very generous folks, including Liz Mueller, Brent and Melissa Erlauer, my nerdy family, and the courageous members of the Dublin “Writers in their 20s” group. For the amazing cover art I have to thank Jake Caleb, whose fantastic work can be found at jcalebdesign.com. Formatting was expertly handled by Bodie Dykstra, who also does editing at bdediting.com.
A Covenant of Thieves Page 74