Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm (3 page)

I breeze past Cyrus's secretary. Brando follows and shuts the door behind us. We stand at attention. I blurt, “Sir, I know we're supposed to minimize our actions in front of civilians, but quickly eliminating that female competitor last night was the only way to make sure nobody else got hurt. I'm convinced it was the right thing, and I'll say so in a review.”

My heart pounds. My nostrils flare. Cyrus silently regards me, then Brando, then me again. He stands up from his chair. “Agreed. Zero civilian casualties, apart from emotional stress, is acceptable given where you are in your Development Cycle.”

I briefly close my eyes and exhale twelve pounds of anxiety.

Cyrus leans forward and plants his fists on his desk. “But I want to know why the hell you're following Jakob Fredericks!”

CORE (Catalogue of Records: ExOps) PER-A59–1460

From the desk of Dr. Thomas Herodotus, ExOps Medical Director

Same morning, 10:10
A.M.
EST

ExOps Headquarters, Hotel Bethesda, Washington, D.C., USA

Cyrus repeats, “Scarlet, why are you following Fredericks?”

How does Cyrus always know?

“Ahh, I … uhh.” I grope for words, freshly reminded of how smart my boss is. “Sir, may I sit?”

Cyrus sits in his chair and steeples his hands in front of his face. He takes a long time before answering. “Yes, sit. You too, Darwin.”

We flop into Cyrus's guest chairs. “Sir, I'm following Director Fredericks to practice tailing an experienced target.” I gesture to my partner. “Darwin doesn't know I've been doing it.”

Cyrus scowls at me. He inhales slowly and deeply. “I should have known you weren't going to any damned hardware store.” He shuts his eyes and rubs his temples. “Scarlet, Extreme Operations Division prohibits freelancing.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“
I
prohibit freelancing.”

“Yes, sir,” I repeat.

“Do you know why?”

Actually, I don't. I think it's a push-everyone-around control thing, but I have no idea what the official reason is. “Do you mean yourself or Extreme Operations?”

“Either one is fine.” When I remain silent, he realizes I honestly don't know, so he tells me. “Freelancing is prohibited by Extreme Operations because the brass hats upstairs think that agent is probably moonlighting for a competitor. Freelancing is prohibited by
me
because sooner or later the brass hats upstairs order me to interrogate—and typically eliminate—that agent.”

Jesus H. Christ.
Those twelve pounds of anxiety rush back into me.

“Imagine my thrill, Scarlet,” my boss rumbles, “when I got a call at four o'clock this morning to inform me one of my Levels had pulled a mission I knew nothing about. After I heard about the gunfight on the Metro, my first thoughts were of you.” He catches my expression. “That was
not
a compliment! Wipe that smile off your face!”

I force my mouth to stop smiling.

He continues, “I back-traced your No-Jack data and saw the first thing you did with that agency car was drive it to Fredericks's office. Then you spent a week using it to track him to his house up in North Bethesda,
where he's lived for five years
!”

Like a complete doofus, I ask, “You know his real address?”

Cyrus uncoils to his full height of 6'2" and booms, “Alixandra, I'm Front Desk of the German Section at Extreme Operations—”

Uh oh …

“—I've known the man for almost twenty years—”

 … this is gonna to be a loud one.

“—he's brilliant, he's dangerous—”

Here it comes!

“—and he tries to KILL my agents!
Of course
I know where the FUCKER lives!”

The chatter and clatter outside Cyrus's office stops. His eyes bore into me like drill bits. “Now, why are you following him? And cut the ‘practice' bullshit or I'll stick you behind a desk in Dubuque!”

“Sir,” Brando pipes up, “if I may interject.”

The eyebrows swing toward my partner. “What is it, Darwin?”

“Well, sir, it doesn't strike me as reasonable to expect a fully trained Level to wait for someone else to go after the man who betrayed her own father.”

“It doesn't strike you,” Cyrus says very quietly, “as reasonable?”

Oh, crap.

“Darwin, when I want to know what strikes you as reasonable—”

Here we go again!

“—I'LL BLOODY WELL ASK YOU!” Cyrus stands back and pounds his big paw on his desk. “We are
not
cowboys!” He's so steamed that he paces back and forth a few times. “Alix, I don't know who would kick my ass harder if …” He stops, frowns at his reflection in the window, and says, “Never mind. You stay away from Fredericks. Justice has warned me he's untouchable, at least until this thing with Germany gets sorted out.”

This “thing” with Germany is America's worst international crisis in thirty years. It turns out the German public has little tolerance for crashed cars, shot-up college campuses, trashed public facilities, and bullet-riddled city streets. My sheboomigans in German territory last year featured all this and more, but our ambassador in Berlin kept it quiet by distracting the local politicos and mediarazzi with buffets of all-you-can-hump professional virgins. However, nothing could suppress the story of fifty kids in a German Youth troop getting blown up by a U.S. Navy cruise missile.

The cruise missile eliminated the global threat posed by the Darius Covenant and the Blades of Persia. It also supposedly killed the Blades leader, Imad Badr, aka Winter. This didn't happen because I snuck in with the ill-fated German Youth troop and snatched Winter only moments before blam time. We timed all this to give the German Youth troop plenty of time to make it out of there before the missile arrived.

But they didn't.

Oops
.

The German press lit up like wildfire. When the forensics came back “Made in U.S.A.,” everyone from Herr Chancellor to Herr Six-Pack called for American heads to roll. This royally screwed things up.

To protect our corruption case against Jakob Fredericks, Winter's non-deadness has to be kept strictly between ExOps and our CIA controllers. He's the one person who can prove Fredericks purposely sent my father into a trap. But Winter is as good as dead if ol' Jakob finds out about him.

So Cyrus didn't file any paperwork about my mission to snatch Winter, nor did he tell the White House about it. This means only a couple of people at the Department of Justice know we're sitting on a star witness who can stick Director Fredericks in front of a firing squad.

It also means President Jackson got blindsided when German Chancellor Honecker blusteringly declared that he wants Greater Germany to dump the U.S. and join the Pan-Asian Pact. Now America is staring down the barrel of everyone's recurring Shadowstorm nightmare, where three major powers team up and gang-rape the fourth one.

The U.S.
must
have an ally, and it won't be Russia or China. Those creeps are still pissed about our presence in Japan and Korea. Our relationship with Greater Germany is crucial, and the mission to rescue it is being directed by Washington's top strategist: SSC Director Jakob Fredericks. The fucker is considered so indispensable right now we can't even bust the bastard for treason. So “until this thing with Germany gets sorted out,” we've stashed Imad Badr in a D.C. safe house. Hopefully, given some time, nobody will ask how in hell we got our hands on such a hot potato.

Meanwhile, I'm still in the doghouse. Cyrus's burning glower persists in melting the glass in his window.

Brando hesitantly says, “Sir, Scarlet and I may have uncovered something else.”

Cyrus sighs. “Let's hear it.”

My partner takes a big breath. “Director Fredericks's career has a unique pattern. He's made great contributions but has not been commensurately rewarded.”

Cyrus, still scowling, says, “Go on.”

“He's intelligent and experienced enough to direct a substantially larger office than the Strategic Services Council. Something like CIA, NSA, perhaps even the State Department,” Brando clears his throat. “However, he's been kept from higher posts by his … uhh … lack of social skills.”

Cyrus snorts but says nothing.

“Also,” my partner adds, “his resentment toward his superiors is well documented.”

“Him and half of Washington.”

“Yes, sir, but consider the way Director Fredericks handled the ExOps security breach eight years ago. He knew there were three competitive agents inside ExOps—Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio—who—”

“Yes, Darwin. I remember,” Cyrus says testily. “I lost a lot of good friends from the Russian Section, and Langley nearly shut us down. Make your point.”

“Sorry, sir.” Patrick clears his throat again. “Virgo and Libra were captured very quickly, which halted the leaks from the Russian Section, and then Fredericks broke off the investigation.”

Cyrus broils us with his oven-black googlies. “And?”

“Sir,” Brando says quickly, “we think Jakob Fredericks is Scorpio.”

There's a pregnant pause while our boss holds his glower. “Scorpio,” he mutters. “You believe the third mole was our most senior Front Desk at the time.”

Brando and I both nod our heads.

“I suppose this is why you've spent so much time in the library lately.”

We nod our heads again. According to what we found in CORE, Virgo and Libra exposed every one of our agents and assets in the USSR, many of whom were executed or remain in prison. The third mole—Scorpio—seemingly had a separate agenda that continued after the two Russian agents were packed off to Leavenworth.

The Office of Security interviewed everyone at ExOps and discovered dozens of staffers who had briefly misplaced their IDs sometime in the previous year. The investigators determined that all of those IDs had been used to access classified data about the Asexual Reproduction Initiative before magically reappearing.

Cyrus rubs his jaw. “I assume the Scorpio reports you read were sanitized.”

“Yes, sir. No names.”

“Well, let me tell you, then, since I was here when all that happened. After Security started monitoring the traffic into CORE, they only tracked one query for ARI-related materials. By the time they traced it, the trespasser was already gone. That was the last we ever heard of Scorpio.”

Brando asks, “Whose ID had he used?”

Our boss fixes a stare at us to say,
Guess who.

I grumble, “Fredericks.” My partner and I look at each to see if we've got big cartoon donkey heads.

Cyrus returns to his desk chair. “And before you ask, Fredericks was at Camp David getting his picture taken with President Nixon at the time. The Secret Service knows Fredericks by sight, so he didn't realize his ID was missing until he tried to get back into his office later that night.”

My boss stretches his arms over his head. “So, I'm afraid Fredericks is not a likely Scorpio suspect.” A couple of his joints crack as he extends his hands over his head. His armpits are dark with perspiration. “I've always thought it was Russia or China trying to jump-start their cloning program by stealing it from us.”

“The same way we stole ours from Germany?” I butt in.

Cyrus scrutinizes me for a moment. “You
have
been doing your homework. Yes, exactly.” He drops his arms and slides one of his desk drawers open. “Fredericks has more than enough clearance to access all the ARI files he wants, but the son of a bitch wouldn't waste his time. He knows as well as I do we're a long way from getting mixed up in cloning again.” He nods toward Brando. “Despite the positive results achieved.”

Brando lowers his eyes to his lap. “Thank you, sir.”

“Your efforts are commendable—” Cyrus pulls a pair of file folders out of his desk drawer. “—but Scorpio is a mystery for another day.” The drawer slides shut. “There are more pressing matters to attend to.” He slides the files to us. “Scarlet, this should keep you out of trouble for a while.”

My partner and I each grab a folder.

Cyrus stands up again and paces across his office. “This is a big one. In fact, it's the largest covert action I've ever seen. It's called Operation ANGEL. Every section's Front Desk will contribute all available resources. That's Russian, Chinese, American, and, of course, my German Section.”

Brando peeks inside his mission brief.

“Scarlet, you and Darwin will travel to York in northeast England. There you will establish contact with an underground resistance group called the Circle of Zion. This is a great opportunity for you two, but make no mistake. Our country's fate hangs in the balance. Our cousins in Berlin
must
be diverted from joining the Pan-Asian Pact while simultaneously lowering such an alliance's appeal to Moscow and Beijing. We can't fabricate the proper situation from outside Germany's borders, but we
can
induce it within them.”

Meanwhile, Brando's eyes have almost bugged out of his head.

Cyrus stops pacing. Then he knocks our socks off. “ExOps has been ordered to incite a slave revolt inside the Reich. And you're going to start it.”

Oh, my God! It's the job of a lifetime!

I turn to face my partner. Brando's mouth has dropped open, and I think he's stopped breathing.

CORE MIS-ANGEL-006

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

Mission Parameters

The goal of Operation ANGEL (Affected Naturalization of Germany's Enslaved Labor) is to preserve America's alliance with Greater Germany. It will temporarily destabilize the Reich by instigating a revolt among the slave population in Europe, beginning in England. This rebellion will be supported by America's clandestine community until our embassy in Berlin persuades Germany to rejoin the North Atlantic Alliance. At that point, our pro-rebellion support will cease.

Long-term success of the insurgency is undesirable, but to achieve this diplomatic goal, our deployed field agents must develop a convincingly chaotic situation. You will withhold our true purpose from your operatives and direct them as though this uprising is to actually succeed.

Background

This situation has been brewing for months. On 3 October of last year, agents of Extreme Operations Division severely damaged a Carbon installation in Zurich. News of this event was not happily received by our opposite numbers in the Reich, but they suppressed the story to maintain Carbon's minimized media presence.