Chapter 42: Chapter forty-one

Present day

 

Back in the 1800s a group of Franciscan monks decided to build a replica of the Holy Land in Washington so that people who couldn’t afford to travel overseas could experience it. They took photos and measurements and in 1898 they broke ground on their site. Liz didn’t really get the logic of holy replicas, but as she and the man walked through grounds and into the monastery, she had to admit the effect was impressive. Sprawling gardens gave way to vast rooms of polished tile and golden pillars. There were statues and murals depicting religious scenes and the fading light poured in through stained glass windows above.

Liz could hardly have looked more out of place. She wore a bright red, flowing dress that cost as much as half her wardrobe. The man wore black, as he always did, and his suit looked slightly too pristine, as it always did. But, when they passed by the Franciscan monks, they seemed completely unperturbed by two people in formal wear strolling by heading for the catacombs. Liz wondered how these Night Market people had managed to convince them to get on board.

At the entrance to the catacombs, two large men wearing guns on their belts controlled admission and checked IDs. The man gave one of them a driver’s license she had watched him forge and they passed through without incident. Inside, things were much more cramped than she would have expected. The harsh, pitted stone walls had been left bare and the corridors were too narrow for them to pass others comfortably, which was a problem as there were servers carrying trays of champagne and canapés past every few moments. Security was sparse, just a few guards posted here and there, but all of them were very large and very armed. They passed other guests as well; finely dressed men and women drinking and having polite conversation in front of replica tombs.

Eventually, they made their way into a large room centred on a black sarcophagus. A makeshift stage had been set up on the other side of the sarcophagus and security was much tighter here, with eight armed guards positioned around the room. Here, more finely dressed criminals milled about, gathering in greater numbers than Liz had seen on their way in. This would be where the auction took place.

The man led Liz into one corner and indicated an attractive Latina woman in a dark blue dress.

“That’s Detective Price. She’s trustworthy. If things go badly and you get into trouble, she can help.”

A small knot of tension eased in Liz’s stomach. There was a tiny part of her that worried that the man was going to sell her for real and that saving her from her previous abductors had been nothing more than theft of a valuable commodity.

That could still be true, an uncharitable part of her chimed in. Saying someone is a cop doesn’t make it so.

She ignored that part of herself. She had decided to trust this man, and it was too late to start second-guessing herself now.

“How did you get the police here?” she asked, distracting herself from unproductive thoughts.

“She’s investigating the death of a man I killed. All I had to do was say I’d be here.” He gave one of his too-precise shrugs. “Mostly.”

“Wow,” Liz said. “I guess we should avoid her then.”

“Not at all,” the man said. “Let’s go say hello.”

 

 

The federal government had shelled out a hundred-million dollars, and more man-hours than Alesha would have thought possible in the short time they had, to get her into this party. So far, she didn’t see the appeal.

The space was cramped, the canapés were bad, and the security wasn’t nearly tight enough for the sort of sale that was meant to be taking place.

“I’m not sure about this,” she said, speaking quietly so only her mic would pick up on what she was saying. Outside, there were a few dozen federal agents from a handful of agencies ready to descend on the property the moment she confirmed sighting of her suspect or whatever this WMD component was.

“Not sure about what?” SSA Marks asked. “You agreed to this op. Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet now.”

“It’s not that,” Alesha said. “It’s just that something doesn’t feel right here. For the amount of money everyone is paying, there should be a lot more security here. Something’s up.”

They had already, and at some length, discussed the possibility that this whole thing was an elaborate plot to steal a hundred million from the federal government, and Agent Branson was still claiming that was the only explanation for him being left out, but if that was the case, then there was no reason to have an illicit event at all. No, this was something else.

Marks made a grim noise over Alesha’s earpiece. “Noted. Keep your eyes open. Anything more concrete than a bad feeling and we—”

Marks cut out, leaving Alesha with only static in her ear.

“Hello?” she said. “Can you hear me? I’ve lost audio.”

No reply.

“Ladies and gentlemen, a moment of your attention please,” a man said, mounting the state. He had a long face and wore an expensive, grey suit. “We will be getting started momentarily, so we have taken the precaution of jamming all radio signals. Our other guests will be making their way in now, so we can expect to begin bidding on the first item in just under five minutes. Thank you.”

Shit, Alesha thought. They were expecting security sure, but not jamming a broad range of radio frequencies.

They weren’t expecting it, but they had planned for it, and Alesha had a backup way to call for her backup. All she had to do was remain calm and wait to spot her quarry.

“Hello Detective Price,” a familiar, cold voice said.

She turned around to find the man she had been chasing standing right before her. He wore a suit so dark it looked like someone had tailored the night sky and his posture was as still as old stone. As she looked him in the eye, she could see what Mei had meant; there was something great and terrible there, like the vast emptiness of space. Perhaps more strangely than any of that though, Elizabeth Clark was on his arm, smiling awkwardly at her.

She stared open-mouthed for a moment before her hand went to her pocket to give the signal.

The man caught her arm.

“Not yet,” he said calmly. “We don’t want to scare off the seller.”

Alesha’s eyes narrowed and her other hand moved to her concealed holster at her thigh. “Take your hands off me.”

The man released her. “Of course Detective. There’s no need for violence. Just wanted to say hello and reassure you that I’m here. I understand you’ve been looking for Liz here as well.”

“How—” she began, then she shook her head and turned to Elizabeth who was looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Are you okay? Has he mistreated you?”

“What? No. Nothing like that. He rescued me from the people who kidnapped me. I’m just here to help.”

Something clicked into place from the description of the items up for sale that night.

Expertise of prominent expert in advanced prostheses.

“You’re selling her?” she demanded.

The man inclined his head slightly. “Not all of us have government sponsors. I needed a way in so I could prevent the Program getting the targeting system they need for their weapon.”

“That’s what the component is then? The targeting chip?”

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That had been one of the taskforce’s top three contenders for what the WMD component could be based on what was up for auction, but it was still nice to have confirmation of the target.

The man nodded. “It’s for a series of kinetic bombardment platforms disguised as a philanthropic satellite project.”

Alesha wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded a bit sci-fi to her. From someone else, she might have thought it the paranoid ravings of a madman, but this man seemed entirely too competent for that.

“You know I’m bringing you in, right?” she asked. “You murdered Lance Bryson.”

“I know you’ll try,” the man said, unperturbed. “But the weapons system must take priority for the moment. I imagine I’ll see you later.”

With that he left, taking Elizabeth Clark with him, and returned to the other side of the room.

Alesha was left to decide whether to hold off on calling in the cavalry, and risk losing her suspect, or call them in now, and risk losing the targeting chip.

In the end, she was a cop, not an agent. If there was a murderer in front of her, she was going to take him down.

She reached her hand into her pocket.

 

 

The man in black held Detective Price’s backup alert in his hand. It was a high-pitched alarm that was outside the range of human hearing but that would carry for most of a mile and be picked up by the equipment the federal government would have close by. She would be just realizing it was missing as she tried to call for backup to arrest him.

He slipped it into his pocket and turned back to find Alesha staring daggers at him. He gave her a polite smile and nodded towards the stage where the auction was about to start.

The man with the long face got up to introduce the first item. It was a hard drive someone had dubbed semper visibilis that supposedly contained the identities of every MI6 agent currently operating. The bidding for this got fairly intense.

While that was going on, the man was scanning the room for any additional security. He had made twenty-six guards since they had arrived, and he suspected there were at least forty within the premises. The Night Market had managed to replace all the Franciscan monks with their own people, and the servers were far too observant to be genuine. Between that and the federal agents that were bound to have the place surrounded by now, it could get messy if he had to fight his way out.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the plan.

Once the Market was done auctioning British intelligence to the highest bidder they moved onto a ballistic missile. Then came a stolen Gauguin, then a submersible vehicle, then some next generation body armour. The black-market goods came out, people bid large sums of money for them, and then they were taken away through the corridors to finalize the transaction elsewhere. There was perhaps a half-hour of that before the tracking chip came up for sale, introduced by the same long-faced man as everything else.

“Bids start at eighty-million,” he said. “Do I hear eighty-million?”

After an early smattering of interest, a bidding war between two parties broke out. One was a dark-skinned woman who held herself with the air of a royal. The other was a man who looked to be Japanese and, from the way he sat, looked to have some combat training. He would be the Program’s agent then.

“One-hundred-thirty-two to the lady in the back,” the long-faced man said.

The Program’s guy raised his hand. “Two-hundred million.”

In another room that might have provoked a moment of silence, but that wasn’t even the largest bid that had been made that evening. Still, it made the woman back off, and he was ushered out of the room to complete his purchase.

“Stay here,” the man told Liz. “If you come up for auction while I’m gone, signal Detective Price to outbid the other offers.”

The man moved over to the detective.

“You’re going to need this,” he said, offering her the distress signal.

She took it and pressed it immediately. “Thank you. Now, I’m placing you—”

“No time for that now,” he said. “I have work to do.”

Detective Price made a move towards him, but he was already slipping away towards the exit and, until her backup arrived, she couldn’t risk doing anything that security would object to.

 The man slipped out of the room as best he could, though the security was tight enough there was no way he could do it unnoticed. It was too late to follow the buyer directly, but he had gone over the plans for the catacombs before coming and figured out the most likely chamber they would use for private transactions.

There were a pair of guards directly outside it, pistols already in hand. No way to take them out without alerting the people inside and losing the element of surprise

The man had always found surprise to be overrated anyway.

He walked towards the guards as nonchalantly as he could manage. They clearly didn’t find it particularly convincing, as their guns came up immediately.

With the nearest guard’s pistol halfway to drawing a bead on him, he abandoned any pretence of subterfuge and instead showed the two men exactly who he was.

Moments later, they lay on the stone floor and the man held one of the pistols. Neither had gotten a shot off, but the sounds of fists hitting bodies and heads hitting stone had been loud enough to notify everyone inside the chamber that they were under attack.

The man darted into the room and put a bullet between the eyes of the inner guard, who was waiting for him. That just left the buyer and a Night Market staff member in the room. The Night Market’s man screamed and practically threw himself to the ground. The buyer went for a gun.

The man put a bullet through his wrist.

“Go ahead and die,” the man spat in Japanese, which was more insulting in that tongue than English.

The man stepped into the room and took the targeting chip off the small folding table it was sitting on. “Where were you planning on taking this?” he asked, also in Japanese. Then, switching to English, he added, “Where is the Program’s location?”

“What program?” the man asked.

A piece of the man entered a room in his mind palace. A room wallpapered with pictures of body-language and filled with rows of voice-analysis machines. As far as he could tell, and that was far indeed, the buyer was attempting no deception. He didn’t work for the Program

Which meant…

The man heard the noise of boots running on stone behind him and turned in time to see a squad of men with automatic weapons heading towards him.

It was a trap.

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