Shadow Page 33

“I will do whatever you want,” pleaded Meddur. “Anything you ask. Just spare them.”

  “Look into the camera,” instructed the big man. “Read out the words.”

  Meddur took the paper in his shaking hands and did as he was told.

  “The … beige hue … on the waters of the loch … impressed all,” he began.

  He was made to repeat the nonsensical English phrases over and over, until the acne-scarred American behind the camera was satisfied. Then they told him to remain in the chair while the camera was positioned in different places, to film Meddur from opposite angles.

  While he sat there, he saw Noah move to the tent flap as it came open, revealing the woman standing outside. Unmasked, she was pale like a ghoul out of old myth, her lips as red as blood.

  “Van der Greif just sent the panic signal,” he heard her say. “Brewn is nearby, he’ll check it out.”

  Noah grunted. “That poseur is nothing but a liability now.”

  “Agreed. Brewn will deal with the situation.”

  “We’re finished here,” called the man with the camera, detaching it from the tripod.

  Noah whispered something else to the milk-pale woman, then walked back inside the tent, eyeing Meddur as he approached.

  “Give him the watch,” he told the acne-scarred man.

  The American produced a thick, square wristwatch with a digital screen and snapped it into place on Meddur’s arm. The device’s display lit up with a rudimentary direction marker and distance counter.

  “Don’t mess with anything,” he warned. “Take it off and…” He mimed a gun at his head. “Bang-bang, bye-bye wifey.”

  “Go get Kyun,” Noah told him, and the American walked out of the tent, leaving the two of them alone for the first time.

  Meddur couldn’t take his eyes off the heavy pistol in the big man’s hand. He didn’t hold it like a soldier would. Instead, it dangled carelessly at the end of his arm.

  “Here comes your chance,” began Noah. “Show you have strength. Keep your family alive.”

  Meddur thought about the conversation he’d had with the traffickers—how the men who had smuggled them into Belgium wanted him to help them commit violent acts. An inexorable, gloomy familiarity settled on him as he tore his gaze away from the gun.

  “What do you want?” His voice was broken and hollow.

  “You’re going to take a walk for me. Into the city, and then back to Molenbeek. You know the way.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wish it.” Noah’s expression became stone cold. “If you disobey me. If you talk to the police. If you do anything wrong … The boy dies first. Then the women will be raped and killed. I’ll make sure your wife lives long enough to see it, and to know you are to blame.”

  Meddur gasped at the awfulness of the thought, his hand going to his mouth.

  “How do I know you won’t kill them the moment I leave?” he said, in a dead voice.

  Noah shook his head. “You are my dog now. And to keep a dog in line, you need a stick.”

  He turned as the tent flap opened and a short, nervous-looking East Asian man entered, carrying a black nylon backpack.

  “If you run away,” he added, “it will only prove me right about your cowardice.”

  The new arrival beckoned Meddur to his feet.

  “Stand up. Turn around. Arms down.”

  He followed the man’s commands. The pack slipped on over his shoulders, and the Asian man adjusted the straps so it sat high and secure on his back. Meddur felt him working on something in the pack, feeling a dense weight shift around.

  “It’s ready?” said Noah.

  “All set,” came the reply.

  The man stepped away and Meddur stood there, in the glow of the lamps, unsure what to do next. He wasn’t a fool. There was only one thing the pack could contain.

  “I am not a murderer!” he insisted.

  He had seen first-hand the bloody carnage wrought by suicide bombers in Tripoli, and the notion that he might be forced to do the same was devastating.

  “No?” Noah cocked his head. “Then your wife can carry the bag instead. It’s your choice.”

  Meddur could do nothing but give a defeated nod.

  Noah grabbed his arm, twisting it so he could see the face of the wristwatch.

  “Get moving. Follow this.”

  Meddur took a cautious step, then another and another, walking out through the tent flap. Beyond it, he saw that the shelter had been erected inside a corroded, decaying warehouse, and he smelled the stale odors of diesel fuel, canal water and rust. The direction pointer aimed him toward an open roller door and the street outside.

  Out on the cracked concrete floor beneath the warehouse roof, he saw a second tent and a pair of trucks, including the one that had brought them here. The pale woman stood at the cab. He thought he heard Aksil cry out from inside the back of the vehicle, but the woman glared at him when he dared to look in that direction.

  “Keep moving!” Noah shouted out behind him, making Meddur jump. He twisted, and saw the big man behind him, standing by the tent. “We’ll be observing you all the way!” he called. “So be a good dog.”

  * * *

  “You think he’ll actually do it?”

  Ticker folded his arms over his chest as they watched the terrified mule walk away.

  Verbeke cocked his head. “Axelle wouldn’t have picked this one if she didn’t think he’d obey.”

  “Hope she’s right,” grated the American. “All the work we put into this, and we leave the last step in the hands of a goddamn sand monkey.” His lip curled. “Saw enough in the Gulf to know every one of them is as dumb as a box of rocks.”

  “You want to take his place?” Verbeke’s anger had not fully subsided, and the hacker’s habit of constant complaining tested his patience. “You look enough like one of them.”

  “Fuck off!” Ticker instantly reacted to the insult, but caught himself in time, before he said something he might regret. “Yeah, real funny.”

  He laughed it off nervously.

  “Just do your part,” Verbeke warned him.

  “I will. I have,” insisted Ticker. “GPS is gonna track mule-boy’s location to within two square meters. Once he’s on site, the nozzles will open.” He made a spreading motion with his hands. “And then it’s adios muchachos.” The American nodded at Kyun. “He’s the one you wanna make sure don’t screw this up.”

  Verbeke watched the North Korean shakily lighting a cigarette.

  “He’ll stay in line. He saw what happened to that bitch in Iceland.” His attention returned to Ticker. “Why are you standing around? Get the fucking video ready.”

  “I’m doing it!” Ticker bleated, retreating. “It’s already compiling. Thirty minutes, tops. Then our little pet jihadi will say anything you want him to.”

  In the other tent, Ticker’s portable mainframe was humming away. The same software that had allowed the Lion’s Roar to create a credible simulation of Ji-Yoo Park’s family would soon spit out another deepfake video. This one would have their erstwhile bag-carrier sitting in front of a black ISIS flag, decrying the powers of the West and taking responsibility for the virus outbreak in Brussels.

  The release of the video would take place in time for the evening news cycle in central Europe, several hours after the weapon in Meddur’s backpack would be spent, its lethal content carried along the man’s route. Kyun had promised infection numbers in the thousands, and a firestorm of panic along with them.

  Verbeke imagined the moment when the police eventually got around to kicking in the door of Meddur’s dirty little apartment. He pictured them in hazmat gear, pushing through streets choked with immigrant corpses in body bags, a ghost town version of Molenbeek where the foreigners were dead or bleeding out. The cops would find the evidence Axelle had planted there. Cell phones with logs of dozens of calls directed to a certain garage in Benghazi, incendiary Islamic extremist books—all the expected detritus to be l
eft behind by a fanatic militant.

  The Lion’s Roar would fan the flames of righteous anger that came next. The outbreak in Libya had been designed to look like an accident, a slip of the hand from some overzealous terrorist. The connection would be inexorably drawn between the refugee infestation in Belgium and the rats’ nest they spilled out of. Verbeke already had a plan of attack set up and ready to go, with other cells of Lion’s Roar members across the continent standing by to firebomb mosques and stir up rage on social media. The ones he trusted the most would release false flag propaganda, pretending to be the enemy and praising the attack. The Combine promised that their troll farms in Russia would put their weight behind the disinformation campaign, amplifying it across the gargantuan echo chamber of the internet.

  We will start an avalanche, Axelle had told him, that night in a field in Slovakia. As he stood there, with the adrenaline of the escape from the train fading away, he listened to her voice outlining the Combine’s offer. And for all his hatred of those moneyed old whores, he hated the mongrels even more. We will strike a blow for our race, she said, and he smiled his predator’s smile.

  “The time is now,” Verbeke said to himself, basking in the righteousness of his sentiment.

  For years, he had watched as the idiotic fantasy of a unified Europe ate away at the sovereignty of nations. The only way to shock the system out of this self-destructive course was through violence, to reclaim their blood and soil, and eject the corruptive influence of all that was foreign. The nation was for its people, not for outsiders.

  Lions and not sheep.

  His stepfather’s words echoed in his memory. The sheep would see the death and disease and believe the immigrants were responsible for the outbreak. They would cry out for lions to rid them of this infestation.

  His hands tensed into fists.

  It will happen.

  Walls would rise across Europe. Nations would be strong again.

  He glanced at Ticker.

  “Your little computer trick. You can do it with other languages? Arabic?”

  The American nodded. “Sure, I guess. I have variations of the sampling text, the phonetic pangram.”

  He gestured at one of the trucks.

  “The wife and kids are in there. Do the woman.”

  “Okay—but I don’t have the bandwidth to render video of her. It’ll be audio only.”

  “That’s good enough. Program some generic replies in her voice, in case we need it. Begging her husband to help them. That sort of thing.”

  Ticker smirked as he walked away.

  “Don’t need the tech for that. I’ll slap her around some.” He leered at Axelle as she approached. “Lotta women love that shit.”

  Axelle treated the American as if he didn’t exist, and crossed to Verbeke’s side. She was holding a satellite phone in one hand, the thick tube-shaped antenna pointing up at the roof.

  “Somebody wants to speak to you,” she said.

  “Now?”

  He snatched the sat-phone handset from her and studied the screen. The display indicated a signal with a blocked sender.

  “It’s only to be expected,” she said. “The Combine wants to check in on its new partners.”

  Verbeke raised the phone to his ear.

  “I don’t answer to you,” he began. “Watch the news. You’ll know when we are done along with the rest of the world.”

  “I apologize if I have interrupted you at a busy time.” The familiar, metered speaker on the other end of the line acted as if Verbeke had never uttered a word. “But your attention is required.”

  He put a face to the voice. It was the Japanese, the one who had been waiting for him after the breakout from the train.

  “You again? What is it this time?”

  “The same as before. I am here to provide assistance to you.” In the background of the call, Verbeke thought he could hear the rumble of jet engines. The Japanese was aboard an aircraft. “It would be in your interest to listen.”

  He chafed at the foreigner’s irritatingly mild tone, and fought down an urge to throw the sat-phone across the concrete.

  “So talk.”

  “You should be aware that the Rubicon agents are in Brussels. They tracked you from Reykjavík.”

  “Bullshit!” he snapped. “They froze to death out on the ice. Axelle made sure of that.”

  “Did she? The Frigga facility belongs to my employers. They have confidential sources embedded in the Icelandic government, in order to monitor it. We have learned that the reports of the dead bodies found on the glacier are false. A smokescreen.”

  Verbeke took a breath to moderate his surging annoyance, sparing Axelle a venomous glare.

  “What makes you think they are here?”

  “An independent facilitator whom my employers hold on retainer made us aware of this fact. One of the Rubicon agents made a purchase of several firearms from him a short time ago.”

  Suddenly, Axelle’s earlier comments about Van de Greif sounding his panic alarm snapped into sharp focus. Verbeke’s mind raced. The antique dealer knew the site of the warehouse by the canal, where the second bioprinter was set up in the back of the other truck. If he spilled his guts to Rubicon, there was a chance that this location was already compromised.

  He muffled the phone’s audio pickup with his hand.

  “Change of plan,” he told Axelle. “We’re not waiting until the dispersal is complete. Start the tear-down now. Ticker will have to finish on the move.” He pointed toward the back of the warehouse, where a disused loading dock opened out on to the canal. “Get the boats here. Tell everyone, weapons free.”

  She saw the look in his eyes and knew enough to follow his commands without questioning them. Verbeke sucked in a breath through his teeth and returned to the sat-phone.

  “You understand,” the Japanese was saying, “that this raises some concerns.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “What could they know? Not enough to stop us. So let them run around and panic. If they’re in the city, even better. It would be fitting if they get to see the effects of Shadow up close.” Verbeke grinned at the thought of that. “Let them die puking blood and knowing how badly they fucked up.” When the man on the other end of the line didn’t respond, he seized on the moment. “That’s what those old shits holding your chain want, isn’t it? Blood in the streets? A breakdown of order that they can exploit? At the end of it, we all get what we want, yes? Less of your kind, and each nation a fortress.”

  “You paint a … singular picture,” said the other man, masking his antipathy. “I hope this information proves useful. My employers wish to see this endeavor reach its conclusion. They have invested a great deal in it.”

  “Don’t expect me to thank you,” snapped Verbeke.

  “I would not dare,” came the reply, and the line went dead.

  * * *

  Marc found an unsecured window in the attic of a chocolatier that had yet to open, and he and Lucy made their way down the fire escape, through a back alley and to the street, a block away from the VdG gallery.

  They were both dirty and stank of smoke, but the area was still relatively empty of foot traffic, and the few people who were on the street focused on the gallery in flames and the police presence. Stripping off their jackets to hide their guns in the folds, they walked unhurriedly in a wide loop that took them the long way around, back to the dusty office building. Lucy walked hand in hand with Marc as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  No one stopped them. By the time they returned, fire units were in place and the police had the street cordoned off. The helicopter hovered unmoving overhead as if it was bolted to the sky, and both of them were careful not to look up, knowing that the aircraft’s high-definition cameras would be recording everything happening below.

  They slipped inside, secured the room and pulled the blinds. Marc sat heavily on the floor and ran back the footage from the cameras to watch events unspool all over again. I
t was only when he realized Lucy was deathly silent that he stopped and looked up at her.

  “That could have gone better,” he said.

  Lucy fixed him with a glare that could have burned through an inch of steel plate.

  “You think?” she spat. “We’ve lost the only lead we had.”

  “I know, I was there,” he shot back, his temper fraying.

  She started to change clothes, stripping off the smoke-tainted gear and pawing angrily through her bag for fresh garments.

  “Only play we can make now is go to the local law and hope they don’t throw us in a jail cell…”

  She trailed off suddenly as a muffled warble sounded from the pocket of Marc’s jacket.

  He pulled out his smartphone.

  “Delancort,” he said, reading the caller ID off the screen.

  There was an “urgent” flag next to the incoming call message. Marc shot a look at the smoke-blackened gallery across the way, where the fire was already out and emergency vehicles clogged the street.

  “He can’t know what just happened…?”

  “Answer it,” she told him. “Don’t give him an excuse to get pissy.”

  Marc tapped the speaker icon and put the device on the folding table next to his laptop.

  “This is Dane,” he began. “Look, this is a bad time, we’re having a few issues here—”

  “We can discuss your issues later. I have someone on the line who wishes to speak with you.”

  Delancort talked over him, and the French-Canadian’s manner was brittle and sharp. Lucy heard the tone of his voice and sensed the same thing Marc did. Something was wrong.

  He expected the next voice he heard to be Ekko Solomon’s—but the careful, cut-to-length words sparked an entirely different connection, to a man Marc had last seen caught under the guns of Somali pirates. A man Marc had personally stabbed through the shoulder with a six-inch-long steel dagger.

  “Mr Dane,” said the man called Saito. “There are matters we should discuss.”

  Lucy mouthed the words what the hell? but Marc’s mind raced as he tried to process what he was hearing.

  “I thought you were dead.”