The Dragon Factory

Interlude

Conrad Veder was unhappy.

The private jet was luxurious, the food excellent, the cabin service first rate, but he was not pleased. His contact, DaCosta, had reached out to Veder using a private number to a disposable phone that he carried for single-use communication.

“There’s been a change of plans,” said DaCosta.

“What change?”

“My client would like you to put your current assignment on hold.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“This is irregular,” said Veder.

“I know. But he was insistent.”

“Does that mean the contract is canceled?”

“Canceled?” DaCosta sounded surprised. “No. No, not at all. Apparently there is another matter he would like to discuss with you. A side job.”

“And you don’t know what it is.”

“No. He said he would like to discuss it with you.”

“I can give you a phone number—”

“No… he wants to discuss it with you face-to-face.”

“I don’t do face-to-face. You know that.”

“I told him.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?”

“He told me to say that he will provide a bonus equal to half the agreed price of the current contract if you meet with him.”

That was three and a half million dollars. Even so, Veder said, “No.”

“He said that he would wire the money to your account before the meeting.”

Veder said nothing.

“And he said to tell you that if you accept the side job, he will double the entire amount of the original contract.”

Veder said nothing.

“On top of the meeting bonus.”

Veder, for all of his deep-rooted calm, felt a flutter in his chest. That would mean that this entire job would net seventeen and a half million dollars. He thought about that for a long minute, and DaCosta waited him out.

“Where and when?”

“He’ll send a private jet.” DaCosta told Veder the location and time.

“You know I’ll assess the situation,” Veder said. “If this is a trick or a trap, then I’ll walk away.”

“My client knows that.”

“And I’ll hold you responsible for setting me up.”

This time DaCosta said nothing for almost thirty seconds.

“It’s not a setup. Check with your bank in thirty minutes. The money will have been wire transferred.”

Veder said nothing.

“Are you there?” DaCosta asked.

“How do I know that this will even be the client?”

“He told me that you’d ask. He said that if you did I was to say this: you are needed in the West.”

Veder said nothing. It was the right code. The client had to be either Otto Wirths or Cyrus Jakoby. Veder had already determined that they were the ones who had been paying him to assassinate the remaining members of the List. They were the only people — apart from Church and the woman named Aunt Sallie — who knew about the Brotherhood of the Scythe and of his code name: West.

Veder did not like it. It meant stepping out of the antiseptic world of clean kills with no emotional connection and back into the muddier world of politics and idealism. Veder held both in contempt. Thirty years ago he had been recruited into the Brotherhood for his skills, and back then he was susceptible to idealistic rhetoric and flattery. The Brotherhood was to be the world’s most deadly alliance — the four greatest living assassins. It had been done with the ostentatious ritualism of the old Nazi Thule Society. The members of the Brotherhood wore masks when they met. They swore blood oaths. They promised fealty to the Cabal and all it stood for.

How silly, he thought. He was privately embarrassed to have been coaxed into the group, though admittedly they had provided great training, excellent intelligence, and lots of money. And in a very real way they had made him the man he was, because as the List systematically dismantled the Cabal, Veder had learned habits of caution that became the framework for the rest of his life.

Since then he had intentionally distanced himself from any connection to political or social agendas. He did not like being drawn back into it now.

But the money…

Veder was detached enough to realize that Wirths and Jakoby were using money now in exactly the way that they had used idealism and flattery back then. It was trickery and manipulation.

What made Veder the most unhappy as he sipped green tea in luxurious comfort aboard the private jet was that the manipulation worked.