Chapter Text
“I don’t know. I don't know what happens next.”
There was a storage unit on an industrial park on the edge of Atwater Village, a half hour drive from the Observatory, not a stone’s throw from Forest Lawn. It was a ten-foot-by-ten-foot breezeblock-walled cube behind a red-painted garage-type door, one of a line of identical doors along one side of a cracked and potholed parking lot. Handler rented it for two-fifty a month using one of his fake IDs, always paid on time and in cash. Nobody else knew about it; not FIRSTLIGHT, not anyone Fiona or any other blankbody could have compromised. Not even his wife.
He thought everyone in his profession probably had something like it, a secret hiding place for things they wanted kept to themselves, for things they might need if they had to drop everything and bug out one day. For insurance. For emergencies.
If this morning didn’t count as an emergency, Handler had no fucking clue what might.
He swung the rattling door down to the vertical, trying not to take one last compulsive look into the shaded gloom behind it, and hurriedly locked it in place. He shoved the keys into his trouser pocket, along with the crisp roll of twenties he had just withdrawn from his contingency fund.
Emergency, surprise, opportunity; all different words for the same thing. That was the first thing they taught you in this game. You just had to keep your head, think on your feet.
He patted the front of his rumpled shirt, feeling and hearing the crackle of paper, ensuring he had the one item he had dared remove from the well-worn US Army duffel bag with the peace sign badge pinned to it. He was not about to walk around Los Angeles with the actual goods on his person. He wasn’t a complete fucking amateur at this, whatever Clairmont might have thought.
Well, who’s still breathing and above ground, huh, Adrian? And who isn’t? Say “hi” to St. Peter for me.
The paper…it was valuable, but not exactly the crown jewels, and if he found himself cornered, he could always eat it. He’d done that before today. Everything else he had brought here this morning was securely under lock and key.
Behind that red door.
Everything.
Fuck.
All of a sudden, his legs felt like water. He sagged back onto the open tailgate of his nondescript silver-grey Toyota, which he had backed right up to the door. He sat down hard enough to make the suspension bounce.
Jitters, he told himself as he took deep breaths, blinking in the beautiful, terrible, nurturing, scorching sunlight. Just jitters. He was trying to pull off a high-wire act here, to get through this whole clusterfuck of Clairmont’s making with something more than his life and the clothes he stood up in. Under the circumstances, he would have been worried about himself had he not been feeling jitters. Jitters were good, they kept you on your toes, provided you had the resolve to push through them.
And hadn’t he told her all about the new resolve he had now…?
He could feel the sweat, cold against his forehead. He tried closing his eyes, but that made it worse. As soon as he did, he was there at the Observatory again, watching her. Watching her shine like snow in the golden dawn. So white. So bright. As he took another breath, he smelled her again. He smelled the smoke; flowers and incense and burned hair and burned meat.
Fuck.
His stomach was as uncontrollable as his legs. He did not try to fight it. Instead, he bent double, head down between his splayed legs as he tried to make sure the puke landed on the baked and fractured asphalt, and not on himself or the car. It seemed to go on for a long time. Every time he thought that was the end of it, he found himself retching again.
Flowers and incense and burned hair and burned meat, and that sad smile…
“Hey, dude, you okay?”
Handler glanced up, trying not to look surprised. He saw a young guy, maybe even late teens, wearing some kind of retail uniform and carrying a backpack with both straps over a single shoulder. Probably worked in one of the nearby outlets, maybe about to start his shift at this early hour. He was standing a few yards away from the car, watching Handler with obvious concern. That seemed fair, considering.
“Can I, like, get you anything?” the young guy asked.
Handler very calmly and precisely took a paper napkin from In-N-Out Burger out of his other trouser pocket. It appeared he had at least one packet of ketchup in there too. He unfolded the napkin and dabbed at his mouth with the same slow carefulness, as if a guy in a business suit throwing up in a parking lot at 7.30am was the most natural thing in the world. In some neighbourhoods, it probably was. “Just partying a little hard last night,” he claimed. “My partners and me, we closed a big deal. I’m sure you know how it is.”
“Hey, tell me about it man,” the young guy replied, trying to sound like he knew all about partying, or possibly about big deals, or maybe even about both. “Seriously, though…”
“I’m fine,” Handler insisted, getting unsteadily to his feet, putting on his suit jacket and buttoning it, then wondering what to do with the vomit-stained napkin. “Nothing the hair of the dog won’t cure.” He had been considering his next move the whole drive over here, but now all the tumblers in his brain seemed to click into place: “You know a store near here, sells liquor and stuff?”
That made the young guy stare at him a moment, but then he broke eye contact to point vaguely in the direction of the nearby freeway. “There’s the Mini-Mart across the way there. They’ve got all kinds of shit. Hey, you know, maybe you should, like, get something to eat, or…?”
“The Mini-Mart.” Handler nodded, tasting his own bile. “Perfect. Thanks very much, uh… What’s your name, by the way?”
“Um, Noah. Everyone calls me Noah.”
“Thanks very much, Noah.”
“Um, dude, you’ve got, like, something on your…” Noah gestured embarrassedly at Handler, who tried to follow his directions with his free hand. “On your…there, yeah, there.”
Handler wiped at the indicated spot on his face, and was surprised to find not vomit but something else, something dry and powdery. He looked down at his fingers and saw they were dusted black, as if he had just had his fingerprints taken.
Ash.
His stomach turned another flip as the ghost of a smell once again hit his nostrils, but he clenched his teeth and kept it down this time, not that he thought he had much left to keep. He managed to close the trunk of the car on the second attempt and stumble around to the driver’s door. He almost fell into the seat.
“You sure you’re okay to drive?” Noah asked, dubiously, as he stood at the open window.
“Never better,” Handler lied, turning the key in the ignition. “Never better.”
The Mini-Mart was no more than a few minutes from the storage unit. Handler parked the Toyota in another sunlit lot, this one slightly more populated by what he assumed were workers making last-minute morning supply runs. He had spotted the pole-mounted security camera a hundred yards off and now carefully positioned the car in what his practiced eye told him was one of its blind spots. If blanks ever bothered to learn that sort of tradecraft, they might find a lot more success in avoiding the attentions of people like him, but he was not about to tell them that. There was a trashcan nearby, which meant his could finally get rid of the puke-soaked napkin.
A quarter hour later, he emerged from the store, paper grocery bag in hand. The bag contained a glossy magazine emblazoned with a large picture of Meghan and Harry; a notepad and a cheap ballpoint pen; a letter-sized brown manila envelope, self-sealing; an off-brand prepaid cellphone in plastic packaging; a disposable cigarette lighter; a fifth of Wild Turkey for later; a pack of Marlboros for right now. The clerk had given him a funny look when he had insisted on paying cash.
He put the bag down on top of the trashcan and tore the cellophane off the cigarettes. He tried not to notice how much his hands shook as he dropped it in the trash. He lit up, sucking smoke greedily. It was fragrant and disgusting in its own way, but at least it didn’t smell like that other smoke. It must have been ten years since he quit; Gillian was going to kill him if she found out.
He checked the security camera again, confirming he was outside its field of view, and got to work. He kept the burning cigarette clamped between his lips, placing the grocery bag on the ground and taking the folded paper from his shirt pocket. He quickly unfolded it, using the top of the trashcan as a makeshift desk, and briefly looked at the list of names, addresses, telephone numbers inscribed upon it in very small, very neat handwriting. Small fry for the most part, he noted, some of them already crossed out with equal neatness, no doubt as a result of the Gladius Dei’s recent escapades, but he wasn’t about to give up the really good stuff so easily. He slid the paper into the envelope. He took the notepad and pen, tearing the page off first so he would not leave an impression on the pages beneath, and wrote a brief covering note. He signed it with one of his cover names, one known to FIRSTLIGHT but which he had not used in the field before. The note, too, went into the envelope, which he then sealed and slipped inside the magazine, which he then rolled into a tight, glossy baton. That went into one side pocket of his jacket. The bottle of bourbon, now wrapped in the crumpled grocery bag, went into the other. The notepad and pen went into the trash.
He ripped open the packaging on the burner phone and switched it on. He quickly keyed a text to a number he had memorised months ago, never expecting he would need to use it. The message consisted solely of a location and, after he had quickly calculated routes, security precautions and LA traffic, a time. He then carefully placed the phone on top of the trashcan.
He smoked while he waited, idly looking out across the rows of parked cars, at the passing shoppers, trying not to think. The sun was bright this morning, as it usually was in LA, reflecting blindingly from the bleached ground. He found himself blinking as the cold sweat trickled into his eyes; he wiped his sleeve across his forehead. For a long time now, he had thought of daytime as a refuge, the only time he felt halfway safe, and then only halfway. This morning, though…
He blinked again, and in the instant his eyes were closed he saw white lace blazing gold, white hair turning black, tiny pink petals wilting and crisping…
The witless cheeping of the cellphone mercifully snapped him out of it. At least he felt less jittery now; the nicotine definitely helped. His hand was rock solid as he dropped the cigarette end on the paving and ground it beneath his dusty shoe. He picked up the phone, smiled grimly at the answering text it displayed. The number still worked; they hadn’t had time, or hadn’t yet thought, to cut if off. He’d been betting that would be the case, based on what he knew of their procedures and the diligence, or lack of same, with which they followed them. He removed the SIM from the phone and dropped it on the ground next to the cigarette butt before similarly stamping it to death. He threw what was left of the phone in the trash.
As he pulled out of the parking lot, Handler found his retro aviators in the glove box. At least they made the sunlight bearable. The location he had specified was over in Burbank, twenty minutes away if he stuck to the freeway, an hour allowing for rush hour traffic and the necessary precautions to confirm he had not picked up a tail. He had been watching for one all morning, ever since setting out for the Observatory in the dark wee hours; so far, he had detected none. That did not mean he intended to stop looking.
Some might have considered all this cloak and dagger shit overcautious. Some might also have got their undercover source killed by unwittingly leading one of the blanks’ blood-addicted thralls straight to them. He not only had a new resolve, but a new respect for the enemy, a new perspective on the dangers he, and all living people, faced. He did not want back in solely to restore his own position, he told himself as he followed the freeway alongside the arrow-straight silver and concrete ribbon of the Los Angeles River. There was more at stake. She had been trying to tell him that too.
“What you are doing is noble.”
Shit.
The smell hit him again. Flowers. Incense. Hair. Meat. He reached for the pack of smokes he had thrown on the passenger seat.
He deliberately turned off the freeway at the wrong ramp, then took a significant detour to double back on his planned destination. At every stop light, every abrupt corner he took, he checked his mirrors for all the signs, subtle and unsubtle, that he had followers.
He seemed to be good so far.
Handler was a little disappointed, to be honest. After his dramatic approach the other night, he would at least have expected the Baron of Hollywood to send one of her pets to birddog him around town, to see who he met, what he did, to try and judge whether he was on the level or something else. If she did send someone, he was pretty sure she would send Demetrios. He seemed to be her main guy. Handler hoped the Baron sent Demetrios. Demetrios had been through all the same Bureau training courses he had; counterintelligence; surveillance and countersurveillance; undercover tradecraft; clandestine operations; tactical driving… He knew Demetrios’s moves, because they were his moves. Spotting him would be easy.
He thought back to the late-night meet in the Presidential Suite at the Roosevelt. All cut flowers in antique vases and dim tasteful lighting and dimpled leather furniture…and her. He did not think he had ever felt as scared as he had gazing upon the Baron’s full, unveiled magnificence. He must have watched the surveillance tape of what Fiona had done to Agent Stillwater a hundred times, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. Now he knew what it felt like from the inside, except the Baron’s power might have been even more frightening for being so insidious. Fiona had bludgeoned Stillwater’s mind into grovelling submission, brutally dominating him with a glance and a word. The Baron though… It had been like a spotlight turning on, on her; she had not moved, not spoken, but suddenly she had been the most beautiful, most awful, most fascinating thing he had ever seen. Without warning, he had found himself a stammering wreck, aching for her approval. In that moment, he had almost been hers. Another lapdog. Another Demetrios.
Only almost, though. The memory of Stillwater, watching a man’s utter doom unfold so casually on grainy security video, that had helped him resist.
To think there had been a time when he had not taken this enemy seriously, or not seriously enough. He had thought they were like the cartels or the Mob, or the terrorist networks that had been the main threat when he first joined the Bureau. Dangerous, sure, but vulnerable to all the well-honed techniques people like him had been using to take down organisations like theirs for decades. More vulnerable, in some ways, despite all the hokey talk about strange powers and ancient prophecies. The Book of Nod; Cain and Abel from Sunday school, but one of them drinks blood now. You ever heard anything so fucking goofy? Now, though…now he understood.
“We are…monsters…”
Shit.
He drew smoke desperately into his lungs.
The thing was, he was not sure the Baron knew she was a monster. If she carried any self-doubt beneath that bulletproof poise, she hid it very well indeed. The other one, though, this morning… For all her talk of her own monstrosity and damnation, if anything that one seemed…
Blazing gold. White lace turning black. Wilting petals.
Fuck.
Handler thought he understood Demetrios too now. He pitied him, actually. He had been a good soldier, once. A good man. Not so long ago, Handler had still considered him a valuable asset, a source at the very heart of the blanks’ organisation. He realised now how naïve that had been. How could any double agent spend night after night so close to that…presence and stay true to themselves? He could still make use of Demetrios, for things like leaking Clairmont’s location to the blanks, or arranging the interview at the Roosevelt, or as a cut-out for future dealings with the Baron because he had no intention of meeting with her face to face again. He knew now, though, that he could never turn his back on the man. Not if he did not want a bullet in it.
But let Demetrios think otherwise. He had told the Baron Demetrios was “one of our best agents,” present tense. Let them both think he bought their play, that they could use him the same way they had in his naïve days, like the time they’d dropped the dime on Fiona, tried to make him their hitman by proxy. Let them think that was how the deal he had suggested would work out. That would only make them more likely to agree to it. And then… Let them go on underestimating him then, too. It would be their funerals, just like it had been Clairmont’s.
What did Demetrios think he was getting out of his current arrangement, though? Was he even capable of thinking about it? He still talked like he hated blanks, but he certainly did not act like it. Was he just grateful whenever the Baron gave him a radiant smile or an empty profession of love? Or did he know full well what he was doing, did he think he was going to be rewarded with immortality one of these nights?
Well, I’ve got news for you, Greg. Some people who’ve experienced immortality don’t seem to think it’s worth the price.
Was there hope for Demetrios? Handler wondered as he made another sudden turn. Could he still be saved, and not in the sense people like Clairmont meant? It was a good question, but like a lot of things it would have to remain Future Drew’s problem for now. This morning, he was not sure he believed in redemption.
The meet had been arranged at a small park in the commercial heart of Burbank, an empty lot between blocks of stores and businesses. Handler parked the Toyota a couple of streets away, walking another indirect route to the location. He stopped a couple of times to gaze at storefronts, doubled back on himself a time or two. Rush hour was over now, both road and foot traffic thinning out a little. As far as he could tell, when he came to sit on one of the half-dozen slatted benches along the brick footpath crossing the little green space, he did so unaccompanied.
The jitters were back. He could feel them as he took the rolled magazine from his pocket and casually placed it on the bench beside him. A couple of people walked past, paying him no heed, and he returned the courtesy, running a trembling hand through his hair. His fingers came away damp. The cigarettes were in the car; smoking was illegal in most public spaces around here. He still had the paper-wrapped bottle stuffed in his other pocket, and seriously considered taking a pull from it. That was probably illegal too, but even if it was not, it would still be a pretty terrible idea.
Nearly as terrible an idea as starting all this, but he had never been about to take what Clairmont had tried to do to him lying down. The situation kept shifting though, the calculation of risk with it. That was what made it a high-wire act. Selling the Society of Leopold out to Demetrios, that had been his first step out into the void, uncertain and tottering, never daring to look down at the bright ring of sawdust so far, far below. The Roosevelt the other night, that had been the second, and much more frightening. If the Baron or Demetrios at any point realised his claims of reinstatement and his confidently proposed deal had been ninety-five percent bluff…
He had expected the third step, and the steps after that, to be even more difficult. He had always expected this to be a long and difficult path, requiring him to sustain his caution and nerve for months or maybe years on end. That was still true to an extent, but what had fallen into his lap at the Observatory this morning suddenly made everything a lot easier. He just had to make use of it.
Emergency, surprise, opportunity; all different words for the same thing.
This meet was another risky step, maybe the riskiest. If he assessed Demetrios’s plight correctly, surely there was a chance the same applied to the source he was contacting now? How could you be embedded with these creatures for any length of time and remain uncompromised? It was a calculated risk, though. It was not as if he had any other line of communication to FIRSTLIGHT that had not been cut when they burned him. This source had never shown any hint of unreliability, of doubt in the mission. Then again, they never did. Until they did.
He checked the time. Not long. He tilted his head back and let the sun’s heat fall on his face, welcoming it but also recoiling from it. Just like she had. He blinked again, behind the shades, and he could see her. A shimmering white silhouette outlined in molten gold and delicate curls of glowing smoke. Or was that her hair floating in the breeze? Shining.
He remembered reaching out. He remembered the heat singeing his palm. He could feel it now as he flexed his hand unconsciously. A phantom pain.
Flowers. Incense. White hair turning black. Wilting petals.
He leant forward and took off the sunglasses, slowly folding them and putting them in his breast pocket, concentrating wholly on the task in an effort to stave off more daymares. That…that was the worst thing he had seen in a catalogue of bad things he had seen since he was read into FIRSTLIGHT. He had stood there, frozen, watching in stunned awe while wrestling with his own horror and indecision, and then…
Then…
He looked up again to see his contact walking towards him. He immediately resumed staring aimlessly into the middle distance.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see she was good at this. She ambled along the footpath, pausing to look at a public information board, rummaging in her large shoulder bag, smiling at a dog someone was walking in the opposite direction. She looked everywhere but at him. When she sat on the bench beside him, setting aside the bag to fiddle with the buckle of her shoe, she did it with complete nonchalance.
“I need immediate extraction,” she murmured.
He chanced a quick glance at her. She had done very well at blending into the scenery, he thought; she looked and dressed exactly like the sort of young woman you might expect to find working in a New Age magic shop on Magnolia Boulevard. “You’re blown?” He kept his voice low, barely breaking into a whisper.
Shoe secured, she removed her black-framed cat’s-eye glasses and methodically started to clean them. “I think so.”
“What, the wicked witches been giving you funny looks?”
She was professional enough not to rise to this flippancy. “Kind of, yes.” She paused as she slowly polished a lens. “The strikes that went down, they hit a couple of places only I could have told you about.”
Handler gave a tiny, mirthless laugh. “Those Vatican motherfuckers really screwed everything up, didn’t they? What can I say? Calling them in seemed like the smart move at the time. Seemed.”
“It won’t take Hester and the others long to do the math, and when they do…” She took a deep, audible breath. When she spoke again, just as quietly, he could hear new emotion in her voice: “I’m fucking scared, Drew.”
“You’re right to be scared, Lydia.” He did not know her real name; not his department. Her cover identity would have to do.
“I need out,” she insisted. “Now.” She blew on the glasses before giving them one last buff. “Or I’m going to fucking die. Worse than die, maybe.”
“I hear you,” he told her, softly. “They fucked me too, Lydia. That bastard Clairmont got me fired when I tried to talk him out of his bullshit. I’m a burned asset now, yesterday’s fucking man.”
That actually made her raise her voice a little. “What?” She hurriedly put her glasses back on and made to rise from the bench.
“Sit down,” he hissed, urgently enough to stop her in her tracks. “Listen to me. You used one of your emergency contact routines, right?” It would have been some real old-school John le Carré shit, he knew; a certain symbol chalked on a certain flagstone on a certain street corner; a poster about a missing cat with a certain name pinned to a certain telephone poll at a certain time of day. That kind of thing still had its place in modern intelligence work. “You signalled you needed a crash meet?”
“Yes, last night,” she confirmed. “I thought that was why you…”
“You’ll have been assigned a new case officer by now. They’ll make contact, probably today, to arrange your extraction, and when they do…”
She gathered herself for another attempt at leaving. “If you’re burned, I shouldn’t be anywhere near you. For all I know…”
“I said listen.” He felt her sink back onto the bench. “You know what happens to UCs like you when you’re blown?” He let his tone grow a little heated. He needed to make her stop and consider her situation instead of just following the playbook. “You’re just like the cellphone I texted you from before; one use only. They’ll get you out if they can, bringing their people home is a point of pride, but they can’t risk you in the field again once you’re known to the competition. You’ll spend the rest of what you jokingly refer to as your career driving a desk in Quantico, assuming you don’t just end up on the junk pile like me.” He actually risked looking at her again directly, and saw she was already looking at him. “Did you sign up for this shit, Lydia?” he demanded. “Because I know I sure as fuck didn’t.”
She continued to look at him, very calmly and levelly. Even when he looked away again, he could feel her eyes on him. “What do you want me to do?”
“The magazine.” He tapped it where it lay on the bench between them. “Put it in your bag. When your case officer makes contact, give it to them. Tell them where you got it.” He had been rehearsing this spiel under his breath on the drive over, when he hadn’t been thinking about Demetrios; it tripped off his tongue now. “Tell them it’s just a sample, there’s more where that came from, a lot more, but only I can give it to them. If they’re interested, they know how they can get hold of me. They will be interested, believe me.”
He fell silent, and so did she, for what felt like a long time. He watched another few wanderers trailing by, blinked in the sun, tried not to think about sunrise at the Observatory while he waited for her decision. He knew what it was going to be.
“And if I don’t…?” she asked, eventually.
There you go.
“What are you going to do then?” She was trying to sound doubtful, but did not fool him for a second.
“You want to be in on this, Lydia,” he assured her with a glib self-belief he wished he was actually feeling. “Just being the bearer of these good tidings is going to put you in a lot of powerful people’s good books, and I’ll make sure to repay you very handsomely indeed for doing this for me. You can trust me on that.”
“Trust you?” She gave a snort of bitter amusement, because that was the one thing people in their line of work could never afford to do. “Right.”
He could not help grinning in response. “This is exactly what we both need; a passport back in, and a meal ticket once we’re there. We’re going to do very well out of this, Lydia. A lot better than we’re doing right now, anyway.”
They sat in silence for another little while, and then she stood and walked away without a word or a backward glance. She continued ambling along the footpath, in the same direction as before, until she disappeared from view. Another quick glance told him the magazine was no longer on the bench. He allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction, leaning back a little against the wooden slats. After a few minutes, he rose too and made his winding way back to the car.
He was tired, he realised as he paused to check a storefront reflection for any sign of pursuit. He had been about to turn in last night when he got called to the Observatory. That reminded him; he was going to have to find out just where the hell she had got his contact details. He did not like to think they were easy to come by, but at the moment that was another Future Drew issue.
He yawned as he unlocked the car. He knew he was going to crash terribly this afternoon or this evening. It would be a different motel room for him tonight, booked under a different fake ID from the one he had used yesterday. He had no intention of going home to Gillian until he knew it was safe. If “Lydia” played her part as he hoped, that might be sooner than he had expected.
And who would he have to thank for that? He slammed the car door shut as gold and white and glittering embers flashed before his eyes. One cinder had touched his cheek, he remembered, as hot and shocking as a lit cigarette end, but only for an instant. That was where the smudge on his face must have come from.
He had learned to fear the night; sundown especially filled him with dread. But this morning, whenever he felt the sun on his skin… He was not looking forward to trying to sleep tonight. Every time he closed his eyes…
Flowers. Incense. Hair. Meat.
Well, that was what the bourbon was for, he told himself. He unshipped it from his pocket and tossed it on the passenger seat with the cigarettes. Right now, he had some more work that needed doing before his adrenaline ran out.
He started the engine and pulled out to join the flow of traffic.
So much to do, so little time; he did not suppose that was something blanks ever had to worry about. He was willing to bet, though, that when their end came, all of them wished they could have had just a little longer. Another day. Another hour. A minute. A second.
Blazing gold. White lace turning black. Wilting petals.
Or maybe not all of them.
Continued…?