This choice: Replace Dey to infiltrate Fane • Go Back...Chapter #21The Dilemmas of Julian Dey by: Seuzz   Hal's scheme--that you should replace Julian Dey and infiltrate Fane through him--is one that has of course occurred to you, but you'd done the right thing: You'd put Paige and Lillis in a spot where they could be neutralized; and you'd extracted yourself and made contact with your colleagues. But now is the time to think long-range.
And so, in the corner of the restaurant, you call Rosalie. You spend an hour quietly debriefing her, and she carefully asks about the risks and rewards of making a full infiltration. At the end, though, she leaves the decision to you. "You're the expert, Will," she says. "And you've a better sense of the ground."
"Yeah, I can do it," you say after a lengthy silence. Hal excitedly pounds the table. "But there's a real risk in leaving some of these Fane people to run around." Hal grabs at your arm, but you shake him off. "I might need Rick riding shotgun at some point. Can you see if he's available?"
Rosalie promises that you'll have all the backup you need, and that wraps up the conversation.
"Get me inside Fane," Hal blurts as you hang up. "This Lillis ass--"
"You do better on the sidelines," you remind him.
"Usually," he protests. "But you need someone--"
"I don't need you knocking over dominoes," you retort. "This is just intelligence gathering. I'm not going to do anything. I'll find cracks you can push at from the outside. They're paranoid anyway, and I don't want any hints the trouble is coming from inside the organization."
"Button it, Swann," Frank growls as Hal continues to protest. "This is Will's job."
Hal grumbles loudly; you try to mollify him a little. "I've got Dey's laptop in the car. Wanna play around with it tonight? Wire it up for us?"
"It have a webcam in it?" he asks cautiously. "Then no I don't. Give me an email address so I can drop in some malware remotely." You give him all of Dey's contact info so he can rig up the laptop and the phone remotely.
"How are you gonna handle the real Dey?" Frank asks.
That leads to a longer and more fraught conversation, and after a tedious lot of round-robin talk, you settle on a plan: Frank will pull the "Marta" mask off Taylor and dump him in the countryside, the way you had Conniff dumped off. He'll get the mask to you in the morning, and you'll get it onto Dey and smuggle him out of the Fane building that way. Frank will then collect him, and the two of them will return to the States. It will mean the end of the Hardesty's tour business, for OIC will definitely connect them to Taylor's disappearance and reappearance. But it's the price to be paid.
Frank returns to Oxford; Hal finds the cheapest hotel available a few miles away; and you trudge wearily back to Dey's apartment.
* * * * *
Lillis and Paige are standing in the living room when you step in; they look expectant, for of course you'd called up with the password just before. Lillis is as disheveled as ever. And Paige:
She's a small thing, very slim and very pale. She's changed into jogging shorts and a t-shirt, and swirls of tattooed sigils show on her arms and legs. Half of her head is shaved, but long tresses of dark hair hang down from the other half. Age-wise, she looks like she could be anywhere between twenty and thirty. But if she looks very young, there is a lifetime of experience in the hard gaze she's directing at you now. "Julian, what's going on?" she asks.
You drop your laptop bag to the floor of the foyer, and don't answer. You brush past her, crossing the huge living room--so fancy is this place that it's actually sunken three steps into the floor--over to the immense bay window that, from twenty-seven stories up, looks across the city. London blazes like a phosphorescent wonderland. You slip a cigarette into the corner of your mouth, but let it droop without lighting it. "Julian?" Paige says again.
You turn. "Lillis, you can take the spare bedroom tonight," you say. "Down the hall on the right. Shut the door, and don't come out unless I call you."
He stares back blankly for a moment, until he realizes that you're giving him an order. He grumbles to himself--the giant moustache waggles--and shuffles off. Paige watches as you cross to the dining nook and open a bottle of very expensive Scotch. You pour yourself a deep glass, drop some big ice blocks into it, and return to the bay window. "Julian," Paige says a third time. "I'm getting really tired of--"
"You can take my bedroom tonight." You sip the Scotch and stare out the window.
"And you'll take the couch?"
"No, I'll take the other side of the bed. But I have to make some calls before then. With luck I'll be in to see you before daybreak."
"Jesus. The fuck is--?"
"You're not cleared to know what's going on, Paige. I've been trying to figure out what I can tell you, but-- Well, I'm not sure I'm cleared to know about it either." You take another long sip of liquor. "I hope I recognize you when I see you this weekend. If I do."
"You think they might flense you?"
"I don't know. Depends on what I tell them."
She puts her hand on your arm. "Oh, Jesus, Julian. Don't tell them anything that could--"
"That could put me in a hole?" You turn and hold her eye. "Flensing's the best case scenario. I don't know what happened back there this evening, after you left."
"It didn't have anything to do with me, did it?"
"No." You put an arm on her waist, and pull her in close. You brush your lips over hers, but you don't kiss her, and she doesn't kiss back. "You'll be fine. You'll always be safe. You're an asset. Me, I'm just--"
She grabs you hard. "Julian, I'm not doing this for them. I'm doing it for you. If they do something to you, I'll tell them I'll--"
"If they do something to me, I'll deserve it." You let her feel your rising cock, and grip the back of her neck. "We've had fun," you murmur. "We've had an amazing run."
Now you do kiss, but there's an agony in it, as though it might be the last kiss between you ever. When you break it off, you pat her on the rump. "Okay, into the bedroom and shut the door. No eavesdropping. I have to make these calls alone."
* * * * *
The first call is back to the Diana station for an update on the search. The report is negative, naturally; you carefully question the supervisor on duty, and you both conclude that the subject has managed to escape the building. You order security tightened, with doubled patrols to continue for the next twenty-four hours.
You then call Montague, Dey's immediate supervisor in "Dark Stars." It's a call Dey himself would dread, and you also feel nervous, since you have to protect your own position as well as Dey's.
"You have a crisis, dear boy," he says crisply as soon as he answers.
"You've heard?"
"You wouldn't call at this hour if there weren't. Luckily, the Prime Minister was just leaving."
You wince. "We had a breach at Diana," you say. Montague is not one for small talk. "I can tell you what I know, but not what it means."
"At Diana or involving Diana?" he asks. "Diana" is also Paige's code name; Dey has grumbled at the ambiguity it creates.
"The facility. Diana pulled off her job perfectly, copied and replaced an OIC agent named Trace Conniff. She went back to seize the targets, but they were in motion and got away. They may have gotten a warning. Another OIC agent, Taylor Koudelka, was supposed to be watching them. He may have tipped them off."
"I thought OIC was trying to get them for themselves."
"I don't know who Koudelka is really working for. He may be working with the Hardestys. But whatever the case is, Diana wasn't able to fool him, and when she realized he'd spotted her as a fake, she brought him back to London. We subjected him to a battery of tests, in case he was the shapeshifter, but they came back negative. But either he's the best goddamned foot soldier we've ever tangled with, or he's something more, because he managed to slip his restraints and get out of the facility after shooting two of our guys and punching me in the face."
"What kind of security are you running there, Dey?" Montague's voice is as icy as a glacier and as hard as granite.
"Well, I've got surveillance footage of the incident, so you can see it. It's incomplete, because he shot out a bunch of cameras before slipping away. But he might be metahuman. When the two guards and I burst into the room, we didn't see anything before the shots sounded. But the footage shows him standing in front of us, in plain sight. He even used one of our guns, pulled it out of a holster. But none of us saw him in the room, even though the cameras picked him up."
"Are you saying he was invisible?"
"Not to the cameras, but to us, yes. It's spooky enough that I had some brains flensed and the footage erased after saving off a copy for myself. I figured it was something only the top brass should see." You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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