Blades of Winter (32 page)

Our efforts to penetrate Carbon have not been robust. Much about Carbon is unknown to us. The contents of our thin case file were harvested primarily from our brief access during the Warsaw Confrontation and by passively observing known Carbon facilities.

CORE Entry Update: A recent spike in visits from high-ranking government officials indicates that something significant may be happening inside Carbon. Perhaps Gen-2 has been a success.

“Three fifteens for six, a pair royal for six more, and eight from my crib,” Trick announces. I harrumph and toss down my cards. He’s dangerously close to beating me in our traditional in-flight game of cribbage. I catch my partner’s eye and wink at him as I slowly glide my tongue across my lips. My hair is too short to toss around seductively, but I still primp it a little and flutter my eyelashes at him while he grins and gathers up the cards.

“Don’t worry, Hot Stuff. I’m sure your luck will change soon.” Trick winks as he deals out the next hand.

“It better.” I pick up my cards and arrange them by suit.

We’re lucky I remembered to grab the cribbage set. We had only three minutes to pack because our orders gave us practically no time to make this flight. Info Coordinator Harbaugh briefed us and then offhandedly told us we had to leave for Switzerland immediately.

Our mission is to track Kazim Nazari while he visits the University of Zurich. He’s been invited to attend a fund-raiser on behalf of the Darius Covenant. That’s not why he’s going, though.

The Info Department already knows the school hosts part of Carbon, the program Winter was granted special access to for capturing my dad. There’s no way it’s a coincidence Kazim’s visiting this place; we think he’s here to get something for his boss. The Blades of Persia have sunk their talons into Carbon and tailing Kazim is our best chance to find out why.

Despite Kazim’s connection to both Carbon and the
Blades of Persia, the agendas don’t seem related. In fact, they seem to be at cross-purposes. Carbon is about furthering German dominance, whereas Winter and his Blades are about ending it.

ExOps allocated us to this Job Number because we fit the cover and our capabilities match the mission parameters. We’re also the only living ExOps agents who have seen Kazim Nazari in the flesh. Our cover story will be that we’re newly arrived American students. This gives us a built-in excuse for “accidentally” being in high-security areas while we shadow Kazim, explore the college, and hoover up all the intel we can.

Today has flown by like a whirlwind: get debriefed, visit Chico the Med-Tech, receive the assignment, sprint up to our room, pack as quickly as possible, race to the airport, gallop through the terminal, and dash onto the plane. We motorvated so fast that anyone trying to follow us would have needed Acme Rocket Skates to keep up.

Now that we have nothing to do but drink and play cards, I can have Patrick catch me up on the details of our mission.

I quietly ask him what’s up with all the science and research I saw associated with the Darius Covenant. “I thought it was a scholarship fund.”

He lays down a five of hearts and glances around. “It is, but it’s more than that.”

“So the kids going to college is a front?” I pounce on my partner’s five with a ten, making fifteen for two points.

“No,” he comms, “not exactly.” When I give him a confused look, he sets his cards down and spells it all out for me.

Patrick whispers that according to the intel we swagged from the lab, the scientists working for Kazim at White Stone Research are engineering an oil-eating bacteria that can thrive in an airless environment. Normally this bacteria has to have air or it dies. White Stone calls this project the Darius Covenant, the same name as
the scholarship fund. The Darius files include those suspicious-looking briefcase schematics, which are for some kind of portable bacteria factory. That brown liquid I pushed Trick into contained a unique strain of bacteria. Our Med-Techs found that it can survive without air.

Trick says that all this research is ostensibly to clean up oil spills more efficiently. Info Coordinator Harbaugh believes that the Darius Covenant is related to Winter’s notorious statement, “If the infidels think it will be a cold day in Hades before we reclaim our birthright, then I shall give them a winter they will never forget.” This is, not coincidentally, why the CIA calls him Winter.

The college scholarships, the bacteria research, even Hector’s trip to New York, are all connected to Kazim Nazari and, through him, to Winter. And Winter has got the ExOps brass losing a lot of sleep. Anybody who can protect a secret identity from both the CIA and the Abwehr is trying pretty hard. Winter’s Blades certainly don’t want us getting anywhere near the end of this riddle. Add in that we have no idea how Winter’s people managed to deliver a Level 20 Liberator—alive—to a competitor and you have one secretive, dangerous motherfucker.

“Wait,” I say. “The college fund still sounds like a front.”

Patrick takes a sip of the coffee brandy we brought for ourselves. “No, it’s a legitimate scholarship fund.”

“Except all the scholarship recipients wind up at White Stone.”

“Right.” Trick nods.

“I bet I can guess what they work on.”

“Right.” Trick nods again. “Oil-eating bacteria.”

“How come the Germans haven’t looked into this?”

“Ha!” My partner tops off my drink. “That’s the best part. The Germans are paying for it.” He tells me that Kazim won a grant from the German government to improve
emergency responses to oil spills. The Krauts had three bad spills a while ago, one right after the other. The Germans suspected terrorists, but nobody stepped forward to claim responsibility. The investigators’ report was inconclusive, and the matter was pushed to the back burner. New safety procedures were dictated for the tankers, and a call went out for better cleanup techniques.

Enter Kazim Nazari with his state-of-the-art microbiology research facility. His pitch wowed the German parliamentary committee so much that they gave him more than he asked for. Not that money is a problem for White Stone Research. The place is swimming in so much cash that you could make a money lake and race porpoises in it. Except for the grant from Germany, all that dough is from private sources. And all of those are anonymous. Of course.

We finish our cribbage round, and I deal out our next hand. While I sort my cards, I ask, “You saw that Imad Badr is on the list, too?”

“Yeah, I did.” Patrick smiles at me in surprise. “You’re getting a lot better at research. Pretty soon you won’t need me at all.”

I reach over and take his hand in mine. “Tricky-Trick, if I ever thought it would come to that, I’d stop reading altogether.”

He smiles again and leans over to give me a kiss. I resist the urge to peek at his cards and instead concentrate on how good his mouth feels.

As we play through our round, we get back to Imad Badr. My partner figures that high-society events like this are part of how Badr maintains his steady supply of intel for his handlers.

I ask, “Do you think Badr and Kazim know each other?”

“It’s likely,” Patrick comms. “Heck, Badr probably knows Winter.”

“Why hasn’t Badr ratted him out?” I throw down a six.

“Maybe he’s waiting for the most profitable time.” Patrick drops a nine and makes fifteen for two points.

“What a slimeball.” I drop a two for seventeen and ask, “Isn’t it a big problem that the Darius Covenant bacteria can destroy oil?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if they decide to clean up
all
the oil, not just what spills out of ships?”

“Oh my God Alix, there’s way too much oil for that.” Patrick drops a four for twenty-one.

“How much is there?” I slam a king down for thirty-one and two points.

“In the world?”

I nod my head as I scoop up the crib.

“Twelve hundred billion barrels, give or take.” He tallies his score and moves his peg up the board.

“So it would take awhile for that bacteria to eat it all.” I add up my take and slide my peg past Trick’s.

“Forever, essentially.” He shuffles the deck and deals out the next hand.

I arrange my cards and ask, “What do we have on Carbon?”

“A whole lot of nothing. It’s been off the CIA’s to-spy list since our own cloning program collapsed.” Patrick quickly orders his cards. “We’re on the first Job Number aimed at Carbon in almost twenty years.” We quietly trade discards for a minute, then he says, “I’m pretty excited, actually. I’ve always wanted to know more about clones.”

I earn eighteen points and win the hand. I’m really clobbering Patrick now. He must be distracted by how great my hair looks. He shuffles the cards while I debate how to tell him about my hallucinations. The rule is I have to tell my IO
everything
.

As Patrick distributes our cards, I take a deep breath and ask, “So, on a different topic, is it possible that someone’s vision Mods would make them see things that aren’t there?”

Trick stops laying cards down. “You’re seeing things?”

“I’m not talking about
me
. I’m only asking.”

“Well, I
am
talking about you. If you have a problem, you have to tell me.” He’s still frozen in middeal.

I mutter, “Keep dealing, will you.” He deals, puts the pack down, doesn’t pick up his cards, and looks at me. I try to talk, but my voice shakes too much.

Trick takes my left hand, gives it a little squeeze. “Hey, it’s okay. What’s going on? You can tell me.”

Another deep breath. “I’ve seen that bug-eyed girl, but I don’t want anyone to know. Because if they take me out of the field, you’ll get reassigned to another Level and I won’t see you anymore.”
So much for the cool, unflappable seductress
.

Trick blinks a couple times and asks, “Bug-eyed girl?”

“The one in New York, remember? I nearly blew her arm off. Then she bled all over the place. Then we—”

“Yes, yes, I remember. But what about her?”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen her a couple of times.” I tell him how I thought I saw the girl at the café in Paris and at Chico’s office in Riyadh. He sits back for a moment, still holding my hand.

“You know, your father had stuff like this.”

“He saw things?”

“It was more like nightmares, but they were pretty debilitating.”

I remember the nightmares. We’d all be asleep, and I’d spring awake as he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Motherfucker! I’ll kill you! You stay away from them!” I’d listen to my mother try to calm him down. Sometimes it worked, and other times it didn’t. When it didn’t, I’d hear Dad stomp down to his shop. We’d find him in the morning, passed out on his ratty old couch with a few empty bottles on the floor. My mother would silently gather them and throw them out.

I’d climb on the couch and curl up next to him. He’d wake up after a while and run his fingers through my hair. I’d be careful not to put my weight on his stomach.
My father got grouchy when I did that, especially after he’d been in his shop all night.

Patrick ponders what I’ve told him. Finally he says, “We’ll need to take care of this, but I’ve heard much worse.”

“Do we have to tell Cyrus?”

“Oh, yeah. Alix, this rule is for you as much as anyone else. You need treatment.”

I groan and take his hand again.
Christ, I’ve only been doing this for five years and I already need to see a shrink about my job?
“What’s wrong with me?”

“It’s post-traumatic stress disorder. It happens after someone has been under a severe strain, especially over an extended time period.”

“Does this happen to the other Levels?”

“Totally.” Now it’s my turn to blink a couple of times. I ask Trick to tell me what he knows about this. It turns out he knows a lot. Most Levels have some kind of reaction to the work—typically substance abuse problems and nightmares. Sometimes it’s paranoia or schizophrenia. Every once in a while a Level dive-bombs into flat-out delusional insanity.

All Levels are monitored for this stuff as well as secondary issues like hallucinations and potential suicide. Some Levels have taken their own lives, and it’s thought that some other field personnel have stopped caring and purposely let themselves be killed.

“Jesus,” I whisper. “Do Levels ever get old?”

“Sure. Your father was in his forties when he disappeared.”

“Forty? Trick, that’s not old!”

Patrick looks down at the cards and mumbles, “It is for a Level.”

I jolt awake, covered in sweat, and gasp in a mouthful of air. Another nightmare. But I heard someone call out to me—a voice I know but can’t quite place. Now the room is quiet. I switch my vision to infrared. We’re in our student apartment at the University of Zurich: tiled bathroom, efficiency kitchen, two desks, two closets, and two twin beds that we pushed together when we got here three days ago. I don’t see any heat signatures except for Trick in bed next to me.