Suicide Kings

19

Monday,

December 14

Helsinki, Finland

“I don’t really want to be crawling through a computer screen in the security office,” Jaako Kuusi, aka Broadcast, mumbled around a mouthful of creamed herring.

Noel placed a spoonful of caviar, some chopped egg, and chopped onion on a cracker. “Well, how else can we do it?” He took a bite and the sharp taste of fish and salt brought an explosion of saliva to the back of his mouth.

“There’s a guy in the States. I kept track of computer aces for our service.”

Noel nodded. Jaako did occasional freelance work for the Finnish secret service, and he and Noel had crossed paths a few times. “And what does he do?”

A gull appeared out of the fog and snow, and dove past the window of the Helsinki restaurant. Its raucous cries grated like rusty hinges. “The Signal on Port 950.”

“That’s nice, what the hell does that mean?”

Jaako shook his head. “That’s his name, his handle, not his power. But it suggests his power.”

“Would you get to the point?”

“You sound just like Niemi,” Jaako complained, referring to the head of the Finnish secret service.

“You don’t have to be insulting. Niemi is a nasty piece of work.” Noel dished up more caviar.

“And Flint was such an angel?” Jaako asked. “I think you have to be a perfect shit to run one of these agencies.”

“I’d agree with that,” Noel said.

“So, why pull this heist on the Nshombos? Why not get them hauled up in front of the Hague? Rumor has it you put Flint there.” Noel just smiled, and Jaako looked disappointed. “Oh, come on, give me something?”

“No.” Noel paused for a sip of vodka. “Now tell me about the Signal. What’s his power and why do we need it?”

“The guy can project his consciousness into any computer on the Internet that is listening on Port 950. When he’s inhabiting a computer, he can use it like any user-copy files, send jobs to a printer, connect to another computer. But here’s what’s useful for us. He can also use any peripheral devices as if he were the interface software.”

Noel slowly set down his glass. “He can control the security devices in the vault.”

Jaako formed a gun with his fingers, pointed it at Noel, and pretended to pull the trigger. “Bingo.”

“Yes, we definitely need him,” Noel said.

“Which brings us back to me avoiding that whole security office issue. If you can find the guy-he’s a total recluse-you need to convince him to let me into his space so I can enter the vault from his computer screen in the United States.”

“And if I can’t find him or convince him?”

“I won’t join your party.”

“I’ll find him.” Noel paused for a moment, then added softly, “Do I need to remind you not to mention this little endeavor to anyone?”

“I won’t. A chance for a couple of mil. Mum’s the word.” He made a zipping motion across his lips.

“Yes, and just to assure your silence…” Noel slid an eight-by-ten envelope across the table.

Jaako opened it, pulled out the photos, blanched, and quickly shoved them back into the envelope.

Noel knew what they contained. A particularly horrible variety of child pornography, and he’d downloaded them from Jaako’s computer.

“How did you get these?” Jaako demanded. He tried to sound threatening, but it came out breathless.

“I stole your computer. And I’ll deliver it to Niemi if you don’t play nice.”

“You’re a bastard. Talk about Niemi or Flint. You could be running one of these agencies.”

“And you’re a pervert, but I’m going to make you a rich pervert.” Noel stood, threw down money, and walked out into the Finnish blizzard.

Saigon, Vietnam

Bugsy pressed the cell phone against his ear. The rumble of traffic was almost enough to drown out Barbara Baden’s voice.

“No,” Bugsy said. “I’m in the middle of this thing for Lohengrin.”

“You’ll need to take a break from it,” Babel said. “Jayewardene wants as many members of the Committee as possible to be at the conference for security detail. I’ve arranged a private flight for you. How soon can you be at Ho Chi Minh Airport?”

Bugsy pressed the phone to his chest, leaned forward, and asked Billy the same question. Around them, the highway was buzzing with traffic following no recognizable traffic laws Bugsy had ever seen. Semis screamed past them at a hundred kilometers an hour. Granted that wasn’t so bad when you put it in miles per hour, but three digits still made him nervous.

“Five hours,” the joker said with a shrug of his desiccated shoulders. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

Babel must have heard, because as soon as Bugsy put the phone back to his ear, she was speaking.

“I’ll have the flight ready for you. It will be official UN business, so you can skip all the customs and airport security.”

The line went dead. Bugsy closed the phone. Nick, sitting beside him, raised Cameo’s eyebrows. The guy still hadn’t forgiven Bugsy for knocking the hat off on the plane into Vietnam. “Change of plans?” Nick said.

“How would you feel about a lovely few days in Paris watching the Caliphate stall for time? Turns out there’s a peace conference that they want us to be at.”

Billy shouted something that sounded obscene and swerved violently. The tires squealed, and the car fishtailed for a few heart-stopping seconds before shifting back into a recognizable lane. Nick looked a little pale.

“Sounds fine, assuming we get there.”

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

There was another blizzard in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Noel peered through the windshield of the rented car. The wipers were in a losing battle with the snow. He’d tried to teleport to the Steunenberg farm, but Google Earth had failed him. This place was so remote and the shot from the satellites so cursory that Noel had found himself standing in ankle-deep mud with a bitter wind slicing through his topcoat, surrounded by fallow fields.

So he’d teleported to Barcelona and warmer climes, used an Internet cafe to check a location for a Hertz in Coeur d’Alene. He then teleported back to Idaho and rented a car. While he waited for a young pimple-plagued boy to bring up the car he perused through the file on his iPhone about Mollie Steunenberg, aka Tesseract.

He skipped past the downloads of season two of American Hero. It had been painful to watch. Mollie hadn’t had a good run. Her power was formidable. Her tolerance for backstabbing limited. She’d been voted off in the fifth week, and her final confessional had been filled with anger, confusion, and a desire to get even with “the Heathers.” Noel had to do a bit of research to understand that reference, but once he did, it was just another angle to use with Ms. Steunenberg. That and her age. At seventeen she’d either be idealistic or a completely self-absorbed teenager.

Noel made the last turn through an open gate in a long white fence, and then the house appeared out of the storm. It looked like a Norman Rockwell painting, complete with a Christmas tree twinkling in a front window and smoke pouring from the stone chimney. A big barn lay off to the left, and as Noel stepped out of the car he heard the lowing of cattle.

Since he wanted to test her power in a real world setting rather than the artifice of American television, he locked his keys in the car.

The brass knocker on the front door was etched with the words “Bless This House.” It was All Americana perfection. Noel considered the file he’d compiled-nuclear family, mom, dad, nine kids, eight boys and one girl, grandma and grandpa living in the house, and all of them farming the family land. Noel began to despair of ever attracting this young woman into a life of crime.

There was the sound of many running feet, and the door was flung open to reveal a long hallway filled with a sea of young boys ranging in age from seven to seventeen. “I’m looking for Ms. Mollie Steunenberg,” Noel said. “Is she in?”

“MOLLIE! THERE’S SOME GUY HERE FOR YOU!” one of the boys shouted.

“HE SOUNDS LIKE A FAG!” another yelled.

“Mollie’s got a boyfriend, and he’s a fag,” the smallest boy lisped in a singsong.

There was a clatter of boots on the stairs at the far end of the hall. Mollie Steunenberg was short, plump, and cute, with curling red hair and a sprinkle of freckles across her nose. She had dark brown eyes and they were brimming with anger. “Shut up, you jerks.” She pushed through the gaggle of boys. Now Noel could see the family resemblance, and his flagging hopes soared. “I’m Mollie,” she said, and stood, arms akimbo, and stared challengingly up at him.

“I’m Mr. Fontes with the Brookline Agency.” He handed over one of his fake cards. “We’re in the business of developing and utilizing wild card talents in a variety of industrial settings.” Noel had a feeling that a hardheaded farm girl from Idaho wouldn’t buy the idea a movie agent was interested in her so he’d invented Mr. Fontes and the Brookline Agency. “Your fourth-dimensional powers have some interesting applications, and we’d like to talk with you about employment.”

“Great. Let me get my coat.”

“Don’t you want to talk here?”

Mollie looked horrified. “Oh, God, no. There’s no privacy here.” She bestowed a glare on her brothers.

“But your parents…” Noel began.

“They’re watching Wheel of Fortune and they hate to be interrupted.”

Wheel of Fortune. It couldn’t be more perfect.

Once outside Noel made a production of having locked his keys in the car. “If we could get a coat hanger from the house,” he said.

Mollie made a face. “My brothers will think you’re lame, and I’ll get even more shit from them. I can get the keys.”

Noel watched as she focused on the car door. A small opening appeared in the metal. Mollie reached through and her hand vanished, and appeared out of the dashboard of the car. It was disturbing and rather creepy, as if her arm had bent into strange, twisted angles. But of course she was reaching through a fourth-dimensional gate. It wouldn’t be normal.

She snagged the keys and tossed them to Noel. He allowed himself to biff the catch, and had to fish them out of the snow and mud.

Special Camp Mulele

Guit District, South Sudan

The Caliphate of Arabia

Mid-afternoon in the sudd was the hottest part of the day. Some hippos drowsed in the nearest arm of the river with just their ears and bulbous eyes and road-humped backs showing above the brown water. Even the little birds that groomed their thick hides for ticks and parasites had given up and sought shelter until the heat of day passed.

Tom touched down on white dirt packed firm by small feet. Special Camp Mulele drowsed under open-sided tents and awnings that did little more than cut the sun’s sting. Some of the child aces sobbed quietly to themselves. A pair of the younger kids sat cross-legged playing patty-cake, one with child hands, the other with the blunt furry tips of giant spider legs. Ayiyi was an Ewe kid from Ghana’s Togo River region, west along the coast from Nigeria. His folks had moved to Lagos looking for work a year before its liberation. Only ten, he had a kid’s head sticking out of the body of a black-and-white spider with a yard-long body and an eight-foot span on his eight fuzzy legs. Like any spider, Ayiyi had humongous fangs and creepy little jointed leg-things to bring food to his maw. But he ate with his human mouth. It was a process Tom could never bear to watch. Those nasty fangs injected a venom that immobilized its victims with sheer pain, as it liquefied them inside their own skin.

“Listen up, kids,” Tom called in French, then repeated it in English. “We got things to do.”

They stopped and turned to him. Some faces were sad, some horrifying. In all of them he saw a kind of hunger, avid as that of any starving man peering through the window at a plutocrat’s feast. They’re looking at me, he thought. They know I have something to give them. A purpose to their poor twisted lives. Purpose to their suffering. Is that really such a bad thing?

“It’s time to step up and fight for the Revolution,” he said, and grinned. “We’re gonna have us some fun.”

International House of Pancakes

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

They found a twenty-four-hour IHOP. Noel, fearing what would pass for cuisine, satisfied himself with a cup of coffee. Mollie was tucking into Stuffed French Toast drenched with strawberry syrup and piled high with strawberries and whipped cream.

“You know that came out of a can,” Noel said with a nod toward the whipped cream. “It has never come within even waving distance of an actual cow.”

“It’s good.”

Noel suddenly felt far older than thirty. He was preparing his opening statement when Mollie took it away from him. “So, is there really a Brookline Agency? ’Cause I’ve never heard of it, and I’ve been looking for some way out of here, and away from farming.”

Noel leaned in confidentially. “No. But I’m going to found it right after the holidays. It seems to me the most logical and frankly brilliant idea.”

“So, why did you come asking after me?”

“Because I do want to utilize your powers. Just not as a means of securing spent nuclear fuel.”

“Hey, now that’s a cool idea.” She took another huge bite of toast and mumbled, “Okay, but what is it you really want me to do?”

“Help me liberate some ill-gotten gains from some very bad people.”

Mollie frowned. “That doesn’t sound legal.”

“It’s not… technically… but morally it’s very pure.”

“I don’t want to go to jail.”

“The funds are in Africa.”

He watched the frown vanish, and he could even follow the thought process. Outside of the United States it’s anything goes. If you steal from foreigners it’s not really stealing.

“And I’d get paid for this?”

“Three million dollars.”

“Sign me up.”

In the Jungle, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

The jungle was their enemy, as much as any pursuers.

The jungle didn’t want them to walk straight east. It forced them to jog north or south to find a good place to ford the frequent streams, or to avoid pools where crocodiles lurked in the rushes. It made them bypass hills that were too steep for the children and the burden of the jokers like Eason who they carried. It laid tree roots and ravines across their path. It send hordes of mosquitoes and huge black flies to torment them. It yammered at them with a thousand eerie and strange sounds that made the children shudder and cry in return. It plagued them with heat and humidity; it wrapped them in a claustrophobic world of green and brown that smelled of wet earth and rot.

Despite Waikili’s continued insistence, they’d yet to have any visible indication of pursuit. Jerusha didn’t have time to worry about that. The environment itself was trial enough.

They were moving down a long slope to where-well below-Jerusha could see the glimmer of yet another stream. She was trying to help the kids carry the improvised stretcher with Eason, so that they didn’t spill the joker child onto the ground. That had already happened too many times. The sight of Eason flopping on the ground with his fish tail reminded Jerusha uncomfortably of her childhood when her goldfish had leaped from their bowl onto the table. “Careful, Saadi,” she said to one of the children. “Watch where you’re stepping.”

From behind her, upslope, there was a cry, then a shout of “Bibbi Jerusha!”

She left Eason and went running up to where several of the children were gathered around someone. “It’s Efia,” Cesar said as she approached. “She’s been bitten. A snake…”

Jerusha crouched down alongside Efia, who was sniffing and holding her right leg. At the girl’s ankle, there were beads of blood and the joint itself was puffy, the skin blotchy and dark. She was speaking in Baluba, her voice choked with sobs. “What’s she saying?” Jerusha asked Cesar.

“It bit her twice-on the ankle, then on the hand when she reached down.” Efia held out the hand. Like the ankle, it was already visibly swollen, the skin darkening around the puncture wounds.

Jerusha had already swung her pack from her shoulders, digging in it for the snakebite first-aid kit. “Did she see the snake? Does she know what it was?”

Cesar asked Efia, who shook her head and spoke a quick few words. She was panting, her breath too fast.

“It was brown and yellow, about as long as her arm. It’s not one she knows. It went back into the brush after it bit her.”

“All right,” Jerusha said. “Everyone be careful, that snake is still around here. Tell Efia it will be okay. Just lay back and relax. Here…” She handed Cesar a roll of bandages. “Tie a strip of this around her leg and arm right above the wounds-tight, but not too tight.” There was cobra antivenom in the kit, but without knowing if the snake was a cobra or not, Jerusha didn’t know whether it might do more harm than good. The instructions in the kit were of little help.

Efia was crying. Jerusha stroked her head. The girl was sweating. “Kafil-get some water and a cloth. Put it on her head.” Jerusha opened the suction device in the kit and placed it over the wound, pulling on the plunger. An ugly mixture of pus and blood came out. The children gathered around made noises of disgust, and Efia’s cries became louder. “Hush!” she told them. “Let me work…”

She knew from her experience in the parks and the occasional snakebites there that suction usually did little to remove the venom, nor could it stop the necrosis of the tissue. She also knew that victims needed to be seen by a doctor as soon as possible after a bite. Here, there was only Jerusha and whatever was in the kit.

The swelling was worsening, and Efia’s breath was shallowing. Her eyes were closed. Jerusha could feel panic rising in her own chest. She quickly filled a syringe with the antivenom and injected it into Efia’s arm.

She resumed using the suction device on the bite sites. “Come on,” she breathed toward Efia, who had slipped into unconsciousness. “Come on, girl…”

She worked on the girl, as the jungle howled derision at her, as the children watched, as monkeys chattered and chased each other through the tree branches overhead, as the shafts of sun slid through the gaps in the canopy overhead. Efia’s breathing continued to worsen. Sweat poured from her, then ominously stopped. The skin around the wounds putrefied sickeningly.

Jerusha suddenly realized that she hadn’t heard Efia take a breath in far too long. “No!” she shouted. To the jungle, to the children around her. “No! Efia… ”

There was no answer. Only the still and silent body in front of her.

Damascus, Syria

The Caliphate of Arabia

Damascus lay on its plateau gleaming like scattered self-luminous jewels in the night.

Tom Weathers touched down in the old town on a plaza in front of a giant white building whose dome and minaret, lit respectively gold and blue, marked it as a major mosque. Under his arms he carried Ayiyi and the Mummy. The Darkness rode his back, her arms around his neck and her pipe-stem legs wrapped around his waist.

There wasn’t much traffic here this late. Tom let them down to the pavement. “Okay, this time you’re on your own,” he told them. “The Darkness will give you cover; you other two wander around and, y’know, spread the love.” He looked closely at the Darkness. She had her arms crossed and a dubious expression on her dark pixie face. “Candace, you sure you’ll be okay by yourself?”

“Of course I will, silly fool,” she said. “No one can see me. No one find me.”

Solemnly she touched the eyes of both other children. Venom dripped from Ayiyi’s spider jaws and fell hissing on the pavement. The Mummy only nodded, her face unreadable beneath the bandages that covered her.

Candace raised her arms, and Darkness issued from her mouth, ears, eyes. Rolled away from her like smoke. In a heartbeat she was gone, shrouded in black fog.

Before the cold black tentacles closed around him Tom Weathers was in orbit.