He wished he could erase his memory from Islamabad so easily. But he needed it. If he was to remain honest to his mission and his country he must not go cutting valuable information from his memory banks. The eight Agents’ purpose here was far too important to the future of his species for him to give in to the whims of his conscience.
Returning from his daily trip to the city, he mounted the subway steps once more and wandered out into the autumn evening. The street was alive. People were standing on corners and congregating around the doorsteps of their apartment buildings. Latin music, both old and new, blared from various small stereos and a couple of cars, their doors open to let the sound out, even as its high volume corrupted and warped the car’s cheap speakers.
Shahim navigated the groups of people that always populated the streets of his neighborhood in Queens, finally stepping through a group of three laughing Puerto Rican men at the door of his building. They ignored him, as they always did; he was harmless, the poor rag-head.
Entering his walk-up, he climbed the steps three at a time to the third floor and stopped at the door to his studio apartment. As he always did, he scanned the door handle, the frame, and the tattered mat in front of it before entering, the risk of discovery ever present.
On the handle were three fingerprints that had not been there that morning, his resolved sight picking them up as he scrutinized the metal with his eyes’ wide spectrum. Seeing this, he looked up, and through the wooden door. Activating the advanced radar and infrared beacons in his right eye, he reviewed the room behind the door. The radar passed back limited information through the cheap wood, but his infrared heat sensors returned confirmation that there was no one in the room.
It was entirely possible that one of his more dubious neighbors had merely tried the door on the off chance that it might be unlocked.
But there were other possibilities, and the Agents, like any covert operative, tended toward assuming the worst. He activated his weapons array in his left eye, but kept it in its sheath. He could deploy it in a moment if he was, indeed, in trouble. Then he stepped forward and inserted the tendrils in his forefinger into the keyhole and opened the door.
No clicks, no electronic signatures indicating an explosive device had been activated.
He entered. His sensors had confirmed that there was no on in the single-room apartment so he was momentarily confused by the sight of the woman sitting on his only chair.
Only momentarily, as he very quickly recognized her from his records and numerous Council meetings. There was no heat signature in the room because there was no human in the room. An Agent was, by design, much harder to detect than the humans they mimicked, unless it chose to mimic a human’s warmth, or project an X-ray skeleton onto a panel in a mockery of the way one would have shown there if they weren’t thoroughly impervious to them.
“Good evening, Lana. How are you?”
She smiled thinly, “Let us not use these plebian names, I grow so tired of them. You will address me by my appropriate title, my noble Hamprect cousin.”
“I thought we were under strict instructions to use only our Agents’ names, even in our Council meetings. Something about the fallibility of our frail personality overl …”
“Enough, Lord Mantil!” she did not shout, but force and venom soaked her words as she spat them at him. “Save the petty irrelevancies for the Council and an AI that cares for such things. You will address me by my title!”
Even though she had no power over him here, even though she was just a copy of the monumental bitch that was the Princess Regent of Balachai, a lifetime of accordance with the strictures of his standing made him comply.
“My apologies, your majesty.” inadvertently he even bowed a little.
She bristled, the man’s obsequiousness like a drug to her spoiled veins.
“Good. Now, let us speak openly, Lord Mantil. The Hamprect Empire has long been in the good graces of the Emperor Balachai, even before the peace that this noble enterprise imposed on Mobilius. I hope you feel the same fraternity of purpose that we enjoy toward you?”
“Of course, your majesty.” it was surprising to him how quickly the old ways came back, how natural they were. His home of Hamprect had indeed long been a semi-servile ally of Balachai, the wealthiest and most powerful of the great empires. But it had not been a marriage of equals, and he, like his countrymen, had long resented the superiority of the Balachans.
This Princess Lamati had been the worst of them. She clearly believed in her own divinity, and her personality’s election to the eight Agents had been mourned by many, including Lord Mantil; though in silence, of course. But she was here now, or at least, the substrate of her personality was. And he had attended at her father’s court enough times to feel the weight of her inherited power upon his back.
“Now, Lord Mantil, I find that you have ended up in my … area of control. Naturally, it is not through any fault of your own, but your mission was in Pakistan, and mine in the United States. I am sure you will return to your own lands soon, but I am sure you will also agree that while you are here I have a certain right to … express my opinions on your actions.” She let that hang out there for a bit.
Shahim was quite sure that she did
not
have that right, or anything like it. “Your majesty, while my undying allegiance to my king, and his treaties with your father, make me ever your willing servant, I feel it my duty to point out that, by the purview of every emperor and trading family that signed the Treaty of Conquest, we are all equals while on this mission.” He stood firm and did not bow again, in the hopes that this would reinforce his message.
“Lord Mantil,” she smiled demurely, itself quite a disturbing sight for anyone that knew her, “I do not mean to rewrite the sacred decrees of my father and his fellow rulers. I merely mean to offer … an opinion on your enterprise here. I would never dream of imposing my will or that of my family upon you. We are, as you say, equals, for the length of this mission, and when this copy of my personality is reunited with my royal self on Mobilius years from now, I would not dream of holding any of your actions here against you, or your family.”
To call the threat veiled would be a profound insult to veils. Lord Mantil of Hamprect nodded to the woman in front of him. He was painfully aware that he was, as of now, not speaking with a fellow Agent, but with the beloved and conniving daughter of the most powerful man on his world.
“So, Lord Mantil, as I was saying, I came here to discuss the mission at hand, and your actions as they affect my mission here in my target country. You see, my lord, I have decided that we have an opportunity, an opportunity to accomplish something. Your arrival here allows us some freedoms that the AI and our fellow Council members were too scared to pursue when it was most pressing.” She paused, but not long enough to invite a response. This was a diatribe, not a conversation.
“But,” she sighed and smiled beatifically, “better late than never. Lord Mantil, as expected we have encountered precious little resistance since our arrival here. And no one’s actions have shown how weak the humans are to greater effect than your attack on one of their leaders. One day I will no doubt do the same to the leadership of this country, but till then I have to work within their pathetic society’s laws.”
She locked eyes with him and delivered her next words with regal weight, “But you are not hobbled by such things, Lord Mantil, young freedom fighter that you are. So you have the ability to close those loose ends that my respectable colleagues and I cannot.”
“Your majesty, what, exactly, is it that you believe I should be doing while I am here in your country?” he put a little emphasis on the word ‘your’ but she did not allow his subtle insolence to phase her.
“Oh, nothing very important, Lord Mantil.” She smiled pleasantly. “On the list of targets your leaders gave you were two ambitious options thrown in, no doubt in the hope that your improbable success in Islamabad might be something close to divine intervention, a thought that is more accurate than they realize.
“I merely point out that one of the people who we suspected of discovering our arrival here spends a lot of time at the White House and the Pentagon. So why don’t you use your time here to plan an attack on, say, the Pentagon, and while doing so, kill one of the men that may have some level of suspicion that we are here? It is merely a case of two birds with one stone.”
It seemed almost reasonable. But she had always been able to couch her schemes and ambitions in logic. It was a skill she had applied with a broad brush to get her personality elected to this mission in the first place. But Lord Mantil knew that this was, in truth, just the whining of a spoilt child, still frustrated that her attempts to have this man killed in India had been voted down.
Lord Mantil knew that her spite was limitless. He had seen too many good people, in her own government and his, fall to her whims and petty acts of vengeance. But that said, this knowledge that her proposal was actually motivated by her seemingly bottomless well of spite wouldn’t necessarily stop him from playing along.
After all, this man she wanted killed was going to die at the Armada’s hands even if Lord Mantil spared him. Why incite the fury of the Princess of Balachai? And so, Lord Mantil bowed, his ‘noble’ roots remembered, and said, “Your majesty, I can see no reason why a lord of Hamprect cannot do this thing for such an honored ally.”
She beamed, stood, and walked over to him, placing her hand flat against his chest, a gesture of blessing from a member of the royal family such as she.
“Thank you, Lord Mantil. I will not forget this accommodation in the future.” She nodded slightly to him, then lowered her hand. “Now, I must return to Washington, I have a flight tomorrow to Georgia to start as a junior lieutenant at King’s Bay Submarine Base. Getting closer, Shahim, soon I will try for a posting at US STRATCOM in Omaha, or failing that, Fleet Command in Virginia.”
She smiled and he bowed slightly. She spoke once more, in an offhanded tone, “I see no need to report this conversation to the Council. I will duly support you when you announce
your
plan at our next meeting.
“The Pentagon would seem an easier target than the White House, anyway, and you can simply kill Danielson as he enters the building. But of course, I will leave the details in your capable hands.”
She smiled once more then left the room.
Shahim Al Khazar was left standing in the small, dirty slum, alone once more. Now, to prepare for his move to DC. His contact would be here in a few days. Shahim would give him a list of requirements and some specialists he would need to request to make the show complete. Can’t have it seem too easy to his superiors. Nor did he want the cowardly terrorists to be without loss in the coming attack. If he had to kill unsuspecting civilians then he would sacrifice a few of their so-called ‘warriors’ to the altar as well.
Shinobu Matsuoka had been more than accommodating since their last conversation a few weeks ago, dedicating the whole branch of the facility in North Dakota to their needs.
The facility manager had been told in the strictest possible manner that he was to follow Madeline’s orders to the letter and that he was to subdivide the entire enterprise under the same research cost brackets he had worked under to date. Above all, he had been told that under no circumstances was he to ask any questions about the purpose of the team’s work.
Under the guise of keeping the company president happy, Ayala had also asked that he come by at least once a month to check on their progress. In truth, this was more so that Ayala could keep checks on him and assess his mood, making sure that the man stayed in line.
After they had co-opted an angry and then scared Shinobu Matsuoka into their conspiracy, Ayala had left on another of her tours to DC and Massachusetts, leaving Madeline for a few weeks to the arduous process of creating a computer schematic of their cellular warriors. In that time, Madeline had also decided to carve out a new appearance for her prolonged stay in North Dakota. It was this new Madeline that greeted the returning Ayala inside the building’s lobby, smiling at the Israeli woman’s double take.
“Hello, my old friend,” said Madeline, reaching out her hand and smirking. She was wearing a frilly white blouse that buttoned up to her neck, and a long blue pleated wool skirt. But the real coup de grâce was her hair. She had shed her wigs and done something more fundamental, dying her hair a dark blond color, and perming it into a broad, eighties semi-fro. Ayala looked at her, flinched, then stifled an involuntary laugh. Madeline kept her face completely deadpan to increase the other woman’s struggle.
“Something wrong, Ms. Zubaideh?” Madeline asked.
“No … wow … I … umm …” Ayala looked to either side and was further disconcerted to see that the receptionist sitting across the room was in a disturbingly similar outfit. Ayala doubted that the other woman had also been going for irony when she got dressed this morning so she merely nodded and looked back at her friend. A laugh tried to escape her lips again and her brow furrowed, her lips pursing as she held it inside.
Madeline relented on the poor woman and allowed herself a small smile. Leading Ayala through the security doors with her badge, they made their way in relative silence to the small office that had been the site of their meeting with Matsuoka.
Closing the door behind them, Madeline turned to her fellow conspirator.
“Well, what do you think?”
Ayala allowed herself to laugh openly now, a tear of mirth even running down her face, “My lord, you look … delightful.” Madeline looked at her, laughing as well, while also feigning indignation and defending her new look.
“What? This is a very nice blouse, I’ll have you know. Some women in a local church group make them.” This new twist made Ayala redouble in laughter.
“Oh, it’s lovely,” said Ayala between giggles. “And how is your husband the vicar?”