A BORROWED SWORD
THE LEVANTINE SEDAN pulled to a stop outside the Central Park Zoo. A large black luxury van was parked out front. This being July Fourth, the zoo entrance was crowded with families and kids all wanting to see the animals.
“Zaki, clipboard!” Moti yelled as he exited our car. Zaki followed, holding out the antique item as he made his way to their welcoming committee—a detachment of seven Levantine operatives who emerged from the back of the black van. They all wore tactical operations vests and had the faces of seasoned experts. Further evidence, as if we needed any, that Joel2 and I never really had Moti; he’d had us all along.
I wondered just then how close we had come to death. If we hadn’t figured out what Moti was up to, would he have kept us alive?
“Come, come,” Moti said, ushering us toward the van. Joel2 and I got out, walking to the nearly bus-sized transport. The inside was lined with at least a dozen seats against the walls, as well as a command center with plenty of consoles. Unlike the LAST Agency office where I had first met Moti, there was no attempt here to deceive any visitors. The van’s interior had all the trimmings one would expect of a high-end spy operation.
Zaki handed Moti his clipboard, then quietly conferred with a stern-faced raven-haired woman at the command console. After they seemed to agree about whatever she’d told him, Zaki announced to the group, “A male and female matching William Taraval and Sylvia Byram were recorded near the Chelsea Piers freight TC.”
“Time to departure?” Moti asked.
“Five, ten minutes,” Zaki answered.
“Make it five!” barked Moti. He took a drag of his cigarette and turned to us. “Good suggestion. Now you wait here and—God willing—we will return with your wife. In the meantime, you two have much to discuss.”
“Hold it,” I said. “Are you seriously trying to feed us some variation of We’ll take it from here? You really think we’re going to stay here with the red pandas while you take out Taraval and try not to get our wife killed in the process?”
“Nobody is killing anyone,” Moti said conclusively.
“We’re coming,” said Joel2.
“No.” Moti shook his head.
“We are coming,” Joel2 reiterated. “In the past forty-eight hours, we’ve been killed, resurrected—”
“Replicated,” I added.
“Kidnapped,” Joel2 said.
“Poisoned—”
“And bludgeoned.”
“We’re coming,” I stated.
Moti took an impatient drag of his cigarette, then exhaled a plume of smoke in our direction.
“Team, to me!” he shouted.
Is that supposed to be a yes?
Zaki, Ifrit, the raven-haired woman, and the other seven Levantine occupants of the van gathered around him. It was a credit to their training that not one of them did a double take at me or Joel2.
“Our target, as you know, is a man named William Taraval,” he said, sending a dossier to their comms with a gesture. “If you have ever heard the term mad scientist, that is who we’re looking for. But make no mistake: mad or not, he is a very smart individual. He knows how to play the game, and if we find him, then we must assume it’s because he’s not hiding. Expect him to expect us. What we have to be careful of isn’t some weapon that he may be brandishing, but this man’s mind. His mind is his weapon. And speaking of weapons, use yours only as a last resort! Killing someone will not only end this mission; it will end our mission. We need this man alive. I don’t need a dead body: I want a live mind. Without his capture, we fail.”
“What about Sylvia?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Joel2 said, “didn’t you just say—”
“We leave in two,” Moti said, releasing his staff back to whatever they were doing. He eyeballed us. “Gentlemen. Have you ever considered the possibility that your wife played a bigger role in this than you would like to think?” This was phrased as a statement, not a question. “Do you wonder what else she’s been keeping from you? My wife thinks I’m a travel agent. What sort of business is your wife really in? Do you know? Because I am not willing to risk the lives of my people to find out.”
No, I thought fiercely. I can’t be distracted by that kind of doubt. Joel2’s already sinking in that emotional quicksand; there’s nothing to gain by speculating about any bad shit Sylvia might have done right now. Right now we need to get her back.
“You need us,” I said.
“Why is that?” Moti asked, checking off boxes on his clipboard.
“Because we’re unexpected,” I blurted, making it up as I went along. “I don’t have working comms, so Taraval can’t detect me. And,” I said, pointing my thumb at Joel2, “Taraval thinks that he’s still in Costa Rica, maybe even dead. He’ll never see us coming. And if he does, we’re the ultimate distraction. In his mind, we’re the entire reason he’s in this mess. We’re the reason his career and his science is at risk. We’re an affront to his ego.”
Both Moti and Joel2 seemed impressed at my ad-libbed rationale.
“Okay,” Moti relented. “But you’re both under my direction, right next to me the whole time. You don’t sneeze without my permission. Understood?” He looked at both of us, his gaze serious.
We nodded in unison.
He jerked his head toward the van. Joel2 and I climbed in after him, taking the first available seats. The rear doors closed and the van pulled out, heading west through Central Park.
Moti went over to Ifrit and whispered something in her ear. She motioned to a compartment by the aft door. The ride started getting bumpy as we went off-road briefly to pass a slower-moving vehicle. Moti put his hand against the roof of the van to balance himself as he opened the compartment. He pulled out a couple of matching black T-shirts, pants, and tac vests.
“Put these on,” he said, throwing one set to me and the other to Joel2.
“You mean just drop trou and get naked in front of everyone?” I asked. “I am currently without underwear.”
This amused Zaki. Through deep-throated laughter he quipped, “Then please, don’t spend too much time being naked!”
“Why do we have to change?” Joel2 asked Moti.
The spy stretched a hand toward Joel2’s face. He flinched and tried to dodge, but Moti caught the back of his head and ripped off the bandages covering both his temple and his right eye. “Because if he thinks one of you is dead, it’s better if you are both the same you,” he said, throwing the bloody dressings to the floor.
Joel2 and I obliged. I wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but considering I’d spent the earlier part of the day running around with my ass hanging out of a hospital gown, the notion of a bunch of Levantine spies gawking at my junk didn’t move the embarrassment needle much. I was actually pleased to part with my dirty makeshift fake-doctor outfit in favor of some clean clothes. Also, the vest made me feel a bit like a badass.
“We’re here,” Zaki said just as Joel2 and I finished changing. “But it looks like we have some company.”
The rear door of the van opened, revealing the silhouette of a certain waifish woman who’d recently made both my and Joel2’s acquaintance. She looked almost ethereal against dusk’s last blood-orange embers and the high-intensity lights that illuminated Chelsea Piers’ twenty-four-hour operations at night.
“Pema,” Moti breathlessly said her name.
“Pema!” Ifrit said excitedly.
Pema stepped toward our vehicle. She wore an oversized shawl-collared granite-colored sweater that dramatically swayed as a gust of misty wind off the Hudson enveloped her body.
“Hello, Joel and Joel. It’s good to see you both in one place. May I ask which is which?”
Before either of us could answer, Moti asked her point-blank, “What are you doing here, Pema?”
“You asked for a deal. I got you one.” She winked at Ifrit.
The Levantine woman blushed.
“Eventually, Pema,” an uncharacteristically irritated Moti said, “conscientious objector, double agent, or loyalist, you will need to choose a side.”
“There are no sides, Moti. Nothing is black-and-white. Corina doesn’t need me to tell her what your designs for Taraval are. International Transport is well versed in the methods of the Levant. They know you want leverage; you know they want control. Don’t pretend like you’re not playing the same game on the same board.” She put her hand into a black satchel she carried on her back. Seeing her movement, several of the Levantine soldiers pointed handheld weapons. Moti remained steadfast, merely raising a curious eyebrow.
“What is it?” he asked as she held up a brushed metal orb roughly the size of a softball.
“A prototype.”
He took it from her, rolling it around carefully in his hand. “So it’s true?”
She nodded. “A Honeycomb grenade. Technically, it doesn’t exist. The perfect weapon for hostage extractions.”
“Or kidnapping people,” Moti said pointedly. “And Corina sent you to tell us this? Doesn’t she know that we already have a backdoor into Honeycomb? Any Levant they try to grenade there we will simply extract and delete.”
“She only knows what I tell her,” Pema said.
Moti tsk-tsked. “You don’t give her enough credit, Pema.”
“The way it’s supposed to work,” she said, ignoring his affront, “is to teleport everyone within its ecophagy cage and send them to the glacier for safekeeping. Then the wielding party releases who they want, when they want.”
“And what’s an ecophagy cage?” interjected Joel2.
“Nanotech one oh one stuff, apparently,” I told him. “It’s a cage that keeps self-replicating nanos in check. Without it, the nanos that clear people in TC foyers would keep on going, killing everyone in their way.”
“And how big is this cage?” asked Joel2.
Pema pressed her fingertips together. “It’s meant to be adjustable in production models, but the radius for this one is around four meters.”
“But?” asked Moti expectantly.
“But—there’s no Punch Escrow,” she admitted. “Anything goes wrong, there’s no safety net. No guarantees that the teleportee doesn’t get lost en route to the glacier.”
“Ha!” Moti snapped his fingers. “Well, it would appear Ms. Corina Shafer knows more than you think, Pema. She trusted you would bring us the grenade and that we would be foolish enough to use it. But I have no interest in handing William Taraval over to International Transport. I assume the real reason she sent you here is because Mr. Taraval deleted all his previous backups from the glacier, and they would like us to procure a new one for them at the expense of Levantine life. How kind of them. No, I think we will do things our way.”
Moti looked Pema over. “You tell Ms. Shafer that I’m not here to capture her rogue vizier so she can get him back naked and unarmed in her custody. We won’t be her black-bag assassination squad. You tell her that her peace offering is rejected.” He considered the prototype grenade, then carefully placed it in the same compartment from which our borrowed clothes had come. “On second thought, no. We will have a counteroffer for her shortly. Zaki, please keep Pema comfortable here—”
“I’m not—hey!”
Zaki was more brisk than I, and certainly Pema, might have anticipated for a man his size. In a blink he was behind her, pinning one hand to her waist and the other to the back of her neck. He pressed her forward, deeper into the van’s cabin. “And if she tries to comm anyone?” Zaki asked.
“She won’t,” Ifrit said. “Will you?”
Pema shook her head obediently, though it was plain to see she was seething beneath her facade. Oblivious or apathetic to her anger, Zaki pushed Pema firmly into the seat next to Ifrit. She sat down beside her, crossing her legs and arms tightly.
“Good,” Moti said, fetching another TIME cigarette from his packet and lighting it. “Now, let’s see what we are dealing with out here.”