“Don’t worry, Jake. You are not in trouble,” Lars said. His voice was gruff, like sandpaper on an antique.

  “Thanks for not saying ‘just trust us,’” Jake quipped.

  “I don’t expect you would anyway,” Lars said without humor. He stared ahead, only glancing toward the Cadillac as Giselle was escorted in.

  “You know them?” Jake asked.

  Lars shrugged. He grabbed the door handle and opened the door, looking at Jake. He took a deep breath. His eyes were watery but hard. They were grey, Jake realized.

  “My son Calvin works for them,” he said.

  Jake prepared himself to lie. The longer he did this, the easier it became. Not just to others. It was easy to lie to himself as well.

  “I didn’t know you had a son, Lars,” Jake said, trying to sound gregarious.

  “Yes you did,” Lars said. He got into the SUV without another word.

  Jake followed suit. He swallowed hard. He was not exactly scared, but he hated being caught in a lie. Lars was a hard man to work for, but he was not cruel. He was more clever and shrewd than he had a right to be. Jake supposed that was why he was a Galbraith Alliance Director and he was merely the trigger, the knife in the dark, the operator. So where did that leave Violet?

  The inside of the vehicle was blessedly warm. The seats had warmers and he had the luxury of separate controls for the heat in the back seat. Violet sat in the front passenger seat. She reached around and handed him a laptop.

  “Your passcode is your agent identification. I suggest changing the code immediately. This is a long trip. You can start there,” she pointed at the laptop “and if you have any questions, we can get you up to speed.”

  Jake opened the laptop and typed in his passcode. Security protocols flashed and the obligatory hourglass turned and then he was looking at a set of files titled “Operation Aždaja.”

  Jake looked up. Violet was staring at him, a slim smile on her glistening lips. They were driving down a narrow two-lane road lined by farms, small, white houses, and stark metal-sided buildings. He glanced at the instrument panel and saw they were heading south, putting the wind and the snow to their backs.

  “Aždaja? What is that?” Jake asked, curious.

  “A multi-headed ancient dragon of Russian lore. St. George slayed one in a famous painting,” Violet answered. Her gaze was as smug as ever. Jake felt like she was challenging him even in this.

  “I see. That is who we work for, isn’t it?” He said, realizing the significance. His head was beginning to hurt.

  Violet smirked.

  “You know nothing, Monday,” she said, turning back to face the windshield.

  “The dragon is you,” Lars said, his voice a low grumble, barely distinguishable from the sound of the icy gravel under the tires of the big SUV.

  Confused, Jake looked down at the screen again and opened up the file. It contained several other folders and some media files. He double clicked on one and watched as the media player came to life.

  It was a video of a trial.

  Jake watched Eilif testify before a judge. There was no jury. Eilif’s lawyer was pacing, asking questions Jake could barely hear. The sound was terrible, but the video was clear. Jake was about to exit the program and check out another file—he knew how this ended, so why watch it all?—when he recognized one of the people in the audience. It was Giselle. He paused the player and looked for the tool to zoom the camera.

  It was her. She wore a brown suit jacket and her hair was tied in a tight knot atop her head. She looked scared. She looked pissed.

  He realized he was being watched. He looked up at Violet in the front seat. She was smiling that familiar smug, self-satisfied smile.

  “You know nothing, Monday,” She said.

  “Giselle works for Eilif?”

  She shook her head.

  “His daughter,” she explained.

  Jake could feel the headache come back. He saw the red capital letters burning into the back of his eyes. VANITY.

  “And Calvin—“

  “Really works for us,” Violet finished. Lars was silent, but Jake watched as his jaw clenched and his fingers curled and flexed on the steering wheel.

  Jake stared out the window at the lines of trees along the road. The bucolic setting around him was strange after spending the last few days surrounded by the choppy deep blue waters west of the Channel Islands. The wiper blades beat a rhythm, and emitted a high-pitched squeal. Jake lost himself in the noise and the movement of the vehicle. The pain in his temples and at the back of his head pushed cognitive and analytical thought from his brain.

  “That whole thing was a setup?” He didn’t know if he was angry or just scared.

  He watched Violet open a small black case in the front seat.

  “Think of it as more of a test,” she said.

  “A test? Of what? My abilities? You called it a test before. What are you testing? Who are you, really? Answer me, Lars.” Jake put his hand on his shoulder. Lars didn’t flinch.

  Violet shook her head. She lunged, a syringe in her hand. Before he could pull his exposed hand back, she had plunged the needle in between his thumb and finger at a shallow angle. He felt a warm sensation there as she pressed the plunger. He yanked his hand, staring at her with wild eyes.

  “Not your abilities, Monday. A test of your programming,” Lars said.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. He watched as Violet put the syringe in a packet and put it back in her purse. She turned back to the front, with a glimpse at Lars.

  “Keep going through the files on the laptop, Monday. Go in order this time. It will all fit together soon,” Lars instructed. Jake ignored him.

  “Why did you do that?” Jake asked Violet. She did not look at him.

  “Aždaja. Aždaja. Aždaja,” Violet said. Her voice was firm. She said the words slowly. Then, she turned and held out her fist to him, palm down.

  He looked at her quizzically, nursing the sting of his hand.

  “Take it,” she ordered.

  He held out his hand and she dropped a heavy coin in it. It was silver with deep etchings. It looked ancient. One side held old Slavic writings. He turned it over in his hand, lazily. On the opposite side was an engraving of a dragon, awful and terrible with three heads. He looked up at Violet gazing at him as if she expected something.

  The world around him narrowed to the interior of the vehicle, the heat blowing on his face from the vent above his head, the glow of the laptop as the daylight outside waned, and Violet’s eyes. They seemed black, her face like a harpy or a medusa.

  Lars was right. It was a long trip.

  Chapter 12

  Quantum of Malice

  “Do you think they told him?” Giselle asked, the slim cigarette held delicately between her fingers.

  “I suppose they must,” Clarence said.

  “I presume he will hate me now,” she complained.

  “He will not remember.” Clarence sat facing her. He held a slender leather briefcase on his lap. It had gold clasps.

  “How long is our drive?”

  “An hour. We will fly from Syracuse.”

  Giselle stared out the window glumly.

  “I do so much hate snow.”

  Clarence remained silent. He was so polite. So professional. She hated him, too. She watched him through slitted eyes and white-grey smoke. She shook the ashes of her cigarette onto the floor of the SUV. The guards in front and back could not hear them through the glass that separated the compartments. Bullet-proof and soundproof on all sides. She felt like she was sentenced to prison.

  “Will my father require me to quit my position at Sinegem?”

  Clarence clucked his tongue, cleared his throat and then sighed heavily. He did not enjoy being questioned. Or perhaps he hates me as much as I hate him, she thought. She had tried on occasion to flirt with him, show him some leg, some cleavage, breathe on him huskily. He was iron, cold and distant. Or gay. Or a eunuch. She had literally no power over him other than the fact that her father paid him handsomely for his services.

  “Your father will undoubtedly want you to remain. I did not speak to him about this. You should pose this concern to him yourself. I am merely here to retrieve you.”

  She arched her eyebrows.

  “I see. You are a golden retriever and I am a bone. Is that it?”

  He ignored her while staring directly at her. He had a talent for that. He reminds me of my brother, Geirmund, Giselle thought wistfully.

  “Did Mr. Monday accept your offer?” He asked instead. His decidedly British face and voice betrayed no emotion. It was as if he had an overdose of botox treatments and a robot voicebox.

  Giselle squirmed in the heated leather seat. She still wore the trench coat she had been given aboard the jet. She liked the way the wool scratched at her wrists. It reminded her of the way the nicotine felt as it entered her lungs.

  “No. But it does not matter. Sinegem will hire Galbraith Alliance to perform this. And they will use Mr. Monday for this assignment. I will see to it. The farce to which I was subjected was performed for just such a reason as this.”

  Clarence smirked and then nodded.

  “I bow to your wisdom and foresight, Ms. Giselle.”

  He was mocking her. She felt her anger rise in her throat.

  “I did not spend three days at sea bundled up in a wool sweater and rubber boots to have you mock my plans, Clarence,” she said as she emphasized her point by stabbing the cigarette at him.

  He blinked and raised his eyebrows.

  “Actually, your plans are sound. However, Mr. Nicholaisen will not be pleased to hear that the man who was so instrumental to his incarceration is not closer at hand.”

  She tried to temper her fear and her hatred long enough to get an answer to a question that had bothered her for weeks.

  “Have we discovered who hired Galbraith Alliance to embarrass my father?”

  Clarence looked quite pleased that she had asked that question. He smiled and splayed his fingers out across the dark leather of the briefcase on his lap. She did not know what to think. She had never seen him smile before. His small, square teeth and short pink tongue were exposed when he did, which might explain why he refrained.

  “Why, Ms. Giselle, it was your esteemed employer, Sinegem.”

  She furrowed her brow and extinguished the cigarette on the seat beside her. She could smell the burnt leather.

  “What? How? Why? Father is on the board of six of their acquisitions.”

  “Many questions. Good ones, all of them,” Clarence said, tugging his right shirt sleeve out past his jacket sleeve. “It seems you are missing the best question of all. Who? We know the what: three murders were performed in his house and staged to appear that Mr. Nicholaisen was to blame. We know the how: someone hired the most expensive and sophisticated terrorist and assassination group in the world to murder two of his guards and to plant a body and a weapon to appear as though Eilif was the murderer. Of course, in the course of the investigation, many of Eilif’s white collar crimes came to light and therefore his sentence was an open and shut case. We even know the why.”

  She had never heard him talk so much since she had known him. Stunned, she had allowed him to continue. He tugged on his other sleeve. Clarence was quite fastidious. She suspected that he even oiled and waxed his bald pate.

  “Why, then?” She asked impatiently.

  “Mr. Nicholaisen has been buying more shares of stock than some of the other stock holders are comfortable. Of course, Eilif could not accomplish this without using other revenue streams. Revenue that comes from some of his more, shall we say, illicit profit centers. We simply have some who have become weary of Eilif’s propensity for gain.”

  She chuckled.

  “They should have embarrassed you and sent you to jail, then. You are the master of Eilif’s coin.”

  Clarence nodded. His smile was thin, hiding his Chiclet teeth. He was quite proud of his prowess for increasing her father’s fortunes.

  “This is true, actually. I regret that very few are aware of my role in this. But, that is not the point. We knew all the answers but the who. Until yesterday.”

  “Good. I can kill him, then,” Giselle said. The venom in her voice was genuine.

  “Them,” Clarence corrected.

  “More than one? Who?”

  “It seems that Eilif has angered someone who has a large following. Someone who has much more power than he deserves.”

  “You are speaking in riddles, Clarence.”

  “Some would say that Eilif’s enemy would be untouchable.”

  “I thought you said there was more than one.”

  Clarence stopped smiling and turned the briefcase around. The clasps snapped open. He turned the briefcase around. A single folder sat inside. She took it, impatient and irritated at Clarence’s attempts to be an enigma.

  She opened it and rifled through its contents. She saw numbers, and columns, names and corporations. Without studying them closely, she saw nothing that connected these with the who. Confused, she looked at Clarence and shrugged.

  “What am I seeing here, Clarence? Stop being diffident.”

  Clarence cleared his throat again. He was always clearing his throat or sighing. Giselle was sick of his pompous nature.

  “Clearly, the files you are glancing at are the companies and individuals who have invested in our enemy.”

  “Our enemy?’

  “Your father’s enemy. His comrade, fellow investor at Sinegem and hundreds of Sinegem’s investitures, and his great nemesis, the mysterious client of Galbraith Alliance.”

  “So, these individuals, these companies invested in this enemy? So this is where you get the ‘them’ comment.”

  “Yes. Just.”

  “How are these people to blame?”

  “Why, they supported his campaign.”

  “Campaign for what?”

  Clarence smiled and slid a photo across to her. In it, a man in a suit stood atop a podium, jubilantly raising his hand, a woman in a sensible dress and three children stood behind him, smiling. Red and blue confetti littered the air around him. His face was very familiar.

  Of course it was.

  Her stomach lurched. This is too big. Even for father, Giselle thought.

  “I know what you are thinking. But, perhaps your plan for Galbraith and Mr. Monday contain more wisdom than you think. Don’t despair, Ms. Giselle. Tears and blood will flow soon. Debts will be paid in spades. Mr. Nicholaisen is a vengeful man and I am a dutiful servant. And you, my dear, are a talented daughter that can make all this work.”

  She swallowed and looked again at the photo. Clarence was trying to inspire her, but she only felt dread.

  “I am going to need some more champagne, I think.”

  Clarence smiled and checked the nails of his fingers.

  “Besides, Giselle, I happen to know someone who wants this man dead more than your father does. Perhaps I can speak to him and get his input and influence.”

  Giselle stared at him. Clarence would be a very dangerous enemy, she realized. She brought a smile to her face and raised her empty champagne glass in a silent toast.

  Chapter 13

  Back in the Saddle Again

  Jake was glad the winter was behind him.

  The last few months had been a whirlwind of activity. He could barely remember the assignments, the locales, the faces of the men who deserved the justice he provided.

  Justice. What a funny word to call murder, he thought. He reasoned that his conscience would spit the word “murder” out like bad sushi, or choke on it like a foreign object lodged in his throat. In order to better swallow the reality that was his profession, Jake had created the fantasy that he was secretly protecting something dear to his heart. The truth was, he felt like his heart was as empty as a politician’s promise. What compelled him to cling to the moral high ground? What impelled him to continue to come to work every day?

  He pondered these weighty things while standing in line awaiting his daily joe. He stared at the menu board, wondering if he should deviate from his normal fare. He was proud of his ability to be unpredictable, but he seemed to have one habit of bespoken familiarity. He ordered the same thing every weekday. It just seemed to fit.

  Once he had his caramel macchiato and strawberry cream cheese danish in hand, he made his way to the elevator queue. Members of his old team were already there.

  “So, I told her that next time, she would have to do better than just the two tickets to the Brooklyn Nets,” Gary was saying. Violet stood next to him, pretending to be interested. Gary was really just showing off for the new girl. She stood, smirking and sipping her coffee.

  Violet glanced at him. He could see the hatred in her eyes. He had not seen her in over three weeks. With the sudden change of venue, Jake had almost forgotten her. He wished that he could erase the feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  The images that ran through his mind were a dragon, a fiery-headed Gorgon, and an alien with deep black pupils. He fought the urge to turn back to the lobby. Instead, he gave the obligatory lifting of the chin and a slight smile.

  Nothing untoward has happened between us. You do not intimidate me. These were the messages he hoped he was sending. I bested you, he tried to say with his eyes. Of course, she would take it as a challenge. Or worse, an allurement.

  She looked at him fully and licked her finger.

  “You ready for another round? Sergei says you have been avoiding training,” Violet challenged.

  “I don’t have time. They are keeping me pretty busy on the 55th floor,” Jake countered.

  Her eyes floated from his knees to his eyes slowly. Meaningfully.

  “That is what everyone is saying. Remember, it won’t be the same next time. The longer you put it off, the more likely it is that you will be broken when we are done,” Violet offered.

  She made pain sound so…sensuous. Jake was afraid she might like it a bit too much.

  “Well, they don’t call me Humpty for nothing. I will see when I can clear my schedule and shoot you an email,”

 

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